Print by Dara Greenwald, Josh MacPhee, and Olivia Robinson from Spectres of Liberty’s Open City Workshop
Learning Lab: Stories of Collaborative Leadership and Social Change
Event · Seminar · Workshop
Learning Lab: Stories of Collaborative Leadership and Social Change invites attendees to learn and unlearn together, through the values of conviviality and mutual care. To explore what leadership might look like in a committed collaborative context.
Socially engaged art (SEA) is not for the faint-hearted. It demands a bewildering mix of skills, learned on location with communities of place. These include deep listening, walking alongside and ‘hanging out’, as Clifford Geertz puts it, together with the ability to initiate civic trust aligned with different forms of social activism rather than (narrowly) artistic practice. The socially engaged artist is often a cultural catalyst, code switcher, listener, mediator, editor, problem solver, strategic thinker and an advocate for the re-imagining and activation of social spaces. Perhaps the most salient skill of the socially engaged artist is to be able to ‘leave one’s ego in a box outside the door’. Not easy, but arguably essential?
Learning Lab: Stories of Collaborative Leadership and Social Change is an initiative of the Create/Counterpoints Arts Summer School on Collaborative Practice and Social Change
Participating Artists:
Tobi Balogun
John Conway
Cathy Coughlan
Jijo Sebastian-Pallaty
Silvina Sisterna
Steph Saidha
Tatiana dos Santos
Presenters and Facilitators:
Awate Abdalla
Abdullah AlKafri
Áine Crowley
Ismail Einashe
Kate O’Shea
Learning Lab Director:
Áine O’Brien
