Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FEINART (The Future of European Independent Art Spaces in a Period of Socially Engaged Art)
Reporting period: 2020-03-01 to 2022-02-28
The FEINART PhD training programme, is an ambitious attempt to map and assess the practices of the new small-scale, independent institutions and agencies involved in the production and reception of socially engaged art (art involved in collaborative forms of social interaction that do not involve the primary production of objects), so as to support new forms of artistic work and change the priorities of EU funding for socially engaged art and the independent art institution. Since March 2020 the programme has trained 11 Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) across the subject areas, art and political philosophy, curating/art administration, and art theory/practice, providing the relevant skills to engage with the critical and funding challenges of this new artistic and cultural landscape. These 11 ESRs are spread across four academic Beneficiaries (University of Wolverhampton, University of Iceland, University of Edinburgh, Zeppelin University, Germany) and 7 Partner Organizations (POs) Tensta Konstall, Sweden; BAK, Netherlands; State of Concept, Greece; W-Est, Italy; Tranzit.ro Romania; Teatr Scena Prezentacje (Biennale Warsawa), Poland; and Icelandic Academy of the Arts, Iceland. The selected POs represent an exemplary cross section of small-scale and larger independent spaces – projects spaces, cultural centres, art labs/research hubs – working under different demands and expectations, yet all providing invaluable support and resources for artists working in the area of participatory, community, performance and praxis-based art activity.
In its unprecedented integration of political philosophy, artistic theory and practice, and cultural policy and arts administration into its programme of study and non-academic training, FEINART is the first interdisciplinary interrogation of the future of socially engaged art in Europe in relation to questions of democracy, the new cultural landscape, and the future of the public art institution. FEINART, then has 4 substantive objectives: 1) to highlight the importance of socially engaged art in maintaining art’s critical relationship to public values in civil society in Europe, as a defence of a ‘new enlightenment’ project for art against all the current attacks by conservative forces on such practices; 2) to assess and defend the important of independent spaces in the realization of these values; 3) to analyse the economic conditions/constraints on these spaces and forms of practice, across national and regional territories, as the basis for supporting and sustaining socially engaged practice in the future; and 4) to explore and develop new modes of democratic participation and collaboration in socially engaged art, as a means to support these public values.
Consequently, overall, FEINART provides a progressive contribution to, and critical dialogue with, the European Union’s Work Plan for Culture 2015-2018. Firstly it defends the EU’s fundamental commitment to cultural democracy, as defined by the EU’s recent adherence to the transformation of ‘spectators’ into ‘actors’ (Chapter 7 ‘From Audience to Actors: How to Involve People in Creating Art?’, A Report on Policies and Good Practices in the Public Arts and in Cultural Institutions): “the numbers of those who directly participate in the creation of artistic and cultural activities are lower than the numbers of people who attends cultural events” (p93). And secondly, it assesses and outlines the possibilities that critical forms of socially engaged art bring and the independent art sector brings to the cultural renewal and expansion of European civil society, in a period when the ‘taken for granted’ public values of democratic inclusion are under threat.
In its unprecedented integration of political philosophy, artistic theory and practice, and cultural policy and arts administration into its programme of study and non-academic training, FEINART is the first interdisciplinary interrogation of the future of socially engaged art in Europe in relation to questions of democracy, the new cultural landscape, and the future of the public art institution. FEINART, then has 4 substantive objectives: 1) to highlight the importance of socially engaged art in maintaining art’s critical relationship to public values in civil society in Europe, as a defence of a ‘new enlightenment’ project for art against all the current attacks by conservative forces on such practices; 2) to assess and defend the important of independent spaces in the realization of these values; 3) to analyse the economic conditions/constraints on these spaces and forms of practice, across national and regional territories, as the basis for supporting and sustaining socially engaged practice in the future; and 4) to explore and develop new modes of democratic participation and collaboration in socially engaged art, as a means to support these public values.
Consequently, overall, FEINART provides a progressive contribution to, and critical dialogue with, the European Union’s Work Plan for Culture 2015-2018. Firstly it defends the EU’s fundamental commitment to cultural democracy, as defined by the EU’s recent adherence to the transformation of ‘spectators’ into ‘actors’ (Chapter 7 ‘From Audience to Actors: How to Involve People in Creating Art?’, A Report on Policies and Good Practices in the Public Arts and in Cultural Institutions): “the numbers of those who directly participate in the creation of artistic and cultural activities are lower than the numbers of people who attends cultural events” (p93). And secondly, it assesses and outlines the possibilities that critical forms of socially engaged art bring and the independent art sector brings to the cultural renewal and expansion of European civil society, in a period when the ‘taken for granted’ public values of democratic inclusion are under threat.
Since March 2020 FEINART has rolled out an integrated programme of non-academic and academic work packages. The first phase of the project from months 1 to 8 was devoted to developing the administrational foundations of the programme and preparing for the recruitment of the 11 ESRs. The advertisement for the research positions ran from 5 March until 30 September 2020 with interviews conducted between 5 and 27 October 2020. The following period from months 9 to 18 focused on placing the ESRs with their respective host Beneficiaries (BFs) – namely the University of Wolverhampton (UoW), University of Iceland (UoI), Zeppelin University (ZU), and University of Edinburgh (UoE) – as well as supporting the individual research needs of the ESRs, which included the Personal Career Development Plans, which were all finalised by 30 April 2021. These covered details of the planned framework of the ESR’s research, confirmation of their secondments (up to 10 months for each ESR), short-term research objectives (publications) and long-term career goals, and reflection on the improvement and development of their academic and non-academic skills. From month 19 onward, the delivery of the secondments and work packages phase started and saw the placement of the ESRs both within the network of BFs and POs.
As the project enters its second half, when ESRs now concentrate on the completion of their PhDs, it has become clearer how the work packages have shaped the overall dynamic and direction of the programme. The ESRs have benefited from the intersection of non-academic and academic training, insofar as the development of their skill range across art and philosophy, art theory/practice and curating/art administration, has strengthened the key professional outcome of the programme: the training of a new generation of practitioners, theorists and curators/administrators, that possess the widest possible skills to initiate, develop, and organize socially engaged art projects across a range of social contexts and institutional settings. The collective knowledge produced by the 11 ESRs on completion of the PhDs then will provide a body of knowledge and theoretical templates, regarding the present conditions and future of socially engaged art in Europe (and beyond), that will form an invaluable set of critical perspectives and analyses, that can serve as the basis for a number of policy recommendations to EU cultural organizations and funding bodies regarding art and public culture and the development of new artistic institutions. (The forthcoming Summer School 23-24 September 2022 at ZU, will be a crucial opportunity to discuss this). Indeed, the future development of policy recommendations is particularly pertinent to the continuing part that new and older immigrant communities in Europe can play in a new socially engaged art agenda, in order to reshape the democratic provision and horizons of public culture, and the generation of a possible englobilizing Europe (a Europe that is home to a richly diverse ‘Europeanness’). So, the collective knowledge produced by the ESR PhDs stands to have far reaching socio-political consequences regarding the production and support of socially engaged art in the short-term and long-term.