Resources

Create News 35 – Art and Social Action International education in collaborative and socially engaged art

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Create’s role as a national resource organisation for collaborative arts has naturally led to a long history of engagement with third level arts education in Ireland. Our organisation has developed alongside the offer of third level institutions and the practice of those working in the sector over the past forty years.

Create often acts as a bridge between formal education and professional practice, supporting recent graduates and other emerging practitioners to develop their methodologies, their critical thinking, and their networks
of support and guidance.

This issue of Create News features some select reflections on the state of socially engaged art education, from our colleagues from SPCUNY (Social Practice, City University New York), who we invited to contribute to this publication alongside those involved in the new MA/MFA Art and Social Action at NCAD, in which Create is a partner.

published 11 April 2024

related programme Dublin 8 Neighbourhood Residency
related programme Art and Society Learning Programme

Create News 34 – Evaluate This! Thinking out loud on process-based evaluation

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Evaluating socially engaged arts practice can be a sensitive issue. This wide-ranging term describes a variety of artworks and projects, and so, how best to evaluate socially engaged practice evokes competing opinions about its character and value. In March 2023, Create invited Dr Gráinne Coughlan, postdoctoral researcher at TU Dublin, to unpick some of the assumptions around evaluation in conversation with artist Dr. Susanne Bosch. This public event, entitled “Evaluate This!” directly informs the current issue of Create News, in which we invited Gráinne and Susanne to expand on topics discussed during this public event, and to share some modes of thinking about evaluation for socially engaged practice.

published 17 October 2023

related programme Evaluative Framework

Create News 33 – Meditations on the role of the artist in the age of impending collapse

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Rita Marcalo is the Artistic Director of Instant Dissidence, a dance company based in Cloughjordan Ecovillage. As a socially and ecologically engaged company, Instant Dissidence foregrounds the role of dance as a social engine.
In 2020 Rita was awarded the Create and SIRIUS Arts Centre Artist Residency Award, funded through the Arts Council of Ireland’s Artist in the Community Scheme, which is managed by Create.
The residency took place within the wider context of Instant Dissidence’s work in dance and the climate emergency. This issue of Create News features the edited transcript of a talk given by Rita at Nordic Street Conference organised by PASSAGE festival / Helsingør Teater (Denmark and Sweden) on 10th June 2022. Rita’s participation at the conference was scheduled as part of Instant Dissidence’s European tour of SlowMo, funded by Perform Europe.

published 17 May 2023

related programme Artist in the Community Scheme

Create News 32 – The Artist Archive, A reflection by Creative Places Tuam Bursary awardees

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Jojo Hynes and Midie Corcoran, Tuam-based artists, were awarded a Creative Places Tuam Bursary in July 2020. The purpose of the bursary was to support and nurture socially engaged artists’ practice, specifically
aimed at artists with a track record of working collaboratively with communities of place or interest. Jojo and Midie have used the time afforded by the bursary to reflect on their experiences as collaborative artists, and to research inspiring collectives and explore best working practices within their community. They were guided in this work by mentor Kate O’Shea.

This issue of Create News features some of their observations and conclusions, in conversation with Kate O’Shea.

published 26 October 2022

related programme Creative Places

Create News 31 – The Power of the Arts in Enacting Social Change

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John Bissett is a community worker who lives and works in Dublin. John has been involved with a broad range of social movements working to effect positive change and to challenge the imposition of policies and actions which dominate and inflict suffering across the social body. He has been involved with grassroots youth and community work in the city of Dublin since the late 1980s. This has led to participation and leadership in many groups and social movements over the past four decades in Ireland, Australia and with groups across Europe. John is currently a member of Housing Action Now and Red Wheelbarrow Productions.

John is currently preparing a book for publication about the lives and struggles of public housing tenants, titled ‘It’s not where you live. It’s how you live’ to be out before the end of 2022. In this piece, John writes about the long history of arts and activism, focusing in particular on his working base of Rialto, Inchicore and Bluebell, in Dublin’s south inner city.

published 22 June 2022

related programme Multi-Story