Calling all early-career artists and creatives!
Feeling stuck or searching for fresh ideas and guidance? Want to connect with like-minded peers and tackle the challenges you’re facing together? Join us for a brand-new series of practical and supportive sessions designed to help you build confidence, gain practical guidance, and develop your professional practice.
Curated in response to artists’ feedback, this course offers diverse perspectives on professional development, challenging conventional approaches while drawing on institutional knowledge. Each session is packed with insights from our team, contributions from arts professionals, and inspiring interventions by artists Dana Olărescu, Abi Palmer, and Rachael Clerke, who also played a key role in shaping the programme.
Please note: Tickets are sold per session to keep things flexible, but the three sessions were designed as a complete course. We encourage you to attend all three if you can!
Session 1: Associate, Collaborate
We kick off with a deep dive into collaboration – exploring it both broadly as a way to understand the relationships between artists, institutions, and audiences, and specifically as a vital mode of artistic production.
- Explore the aesthetics of participation – what you can learn from engaging and creating with others.
- Understand the dynamics of collaboration with institutions.
- Gain insights into how institutions operate and how to work with them effectively.
Guest artist: Dana Olärescu
Dana aims to challenge the concept of individualism in artistic practice, emphasising that collaboration is not just an option but a necessity for creating deeper and more impactful work. Through practical examples from socially engaged practices and hands-on creative exercises, you’ll discover tools to navigate both the challenges and rewards of working with others.
This is the first of three sessions, tickets are sold per session to keep things flexible, but the three sessions were designed as a complete course. We encourage you to attend all three if you can!
Concession tickets available: £25 (available for those who self-identify using our concessions policy)
Friends received early booking on this event. Find out more about joining as a Friend here.
We offer a range of facilities to ensure we are accessible to visitors. Please click here to find out more about visiting Modern Art Oxford. If you have any questions about your visit, please get in touch at info@modernartoxforg.org.uk.
Dana Olărescu (b. 1985, România) is a London-based socially engaged artist working at the intersection of installation, performance, and social design, whose practice challenges minority exclusion and environmental injustice. Through participatory methodologies that democratise access to art and knowledge, she aims to give under-served migrant groups and people habitually excluded from decision-making processes the agency to become active co-producers of culture.
At present, she is leading Abundant Futures, a long-term project supported by ArtHouse Jersey, focusing on transforming a small island into a hub for inclusive engagement with migrant communities through food politics. Additionally, she is collaborating with Guildhall Gloucester and Counterpoints Arts to explore radical hospitality as part of the 80th-anniversary celebrations of the Moomins during Refugee Week 2025.
Her work has been showcased in leading arts institutions and platforms, including Tate Modern, the London Short Film Festival, the National Maritime Museum, the Low Carbon Design Institute, Art Gene, ArtHouse Jersey, Art Walk Projects, x-church, in-situ, Pier Projects, Incheon Art Platform (South Korea), La Virgule (France), and Tanzhaus NRW (Germany).