Periodic Reporting for period 2 - FEINART (The Future of European Independent Art Spaces in a Period of Socially Engaged Art)
Reporting period: 2022-03-01 to 2024-08-31
The FEINART ITN PhD 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, which is 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 curating, and as such change the priorities of funding for socially engaged practice and the independent art institution sector across the EU. Between March 2020, and March 2024, the programme trained 11 Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) in the field of socially engaged art across the subject areas, art and political philosophy, curating/art administration, and art theory/practice, as the basis for building the relevant ESR skills to engage with the critical and funding challenges of this new artistic and cultural landscape.
The 11 ESRs were spread across four academic Beneficiaries (University of Wolverhampton [PI], University of Iceland, University of Edinburgh, Zeppelin University, Germany) and 7 non-academic 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, Reykjavik. The beneficiaries all have a long-standing critical commitment to socially engaged art; the POs represent an exemplary cross section of small-scale and larger independent spaces – projects spaces, cultural centres, art labs/research hubs –that are working at the cutting edge of social engaged art, and as such were able to provide support and the necessary resources for the ESRs to pursue non-academic research in the area of participatory, community, and praxis-based art activity.
As a result, FEINART has fulfilled, three substantive objectives:
1) the highlighting of 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) the assessment and defence of the importance of independent spaces in the realization of these values.
3) the analysis of 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.
The 11 ESRs were spread across four academic Beneficiaries (University of Wolverhampton [PI], University of Iceland, University of Edinburgh, Zeppelin University, Germany) and 7 non-academic 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, Reykjavik. The beneficiaries all have a long-standing critical commitment to socially engaged art; the POs represent an exemplary cross section of small-scale and larger independent spaces – projects spaces, cultural centres, art labs/research hubs –that are working at the cutting edge of social engaged art, and as such were able to provide support and the necessary resources for the ESRs to pursue non-academic research in the area of participatory, community, and praxis-based art activity.
As a result, FEINART has fulfilled, three substantive objectives:
1) the highlighting of 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) the assessment and defence of the importance of independent spaces in the realization of these values.
3) the analysis of 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.
These outcomes were achieved through a range of actions and strategies: the support of a maximum 10 months of ESR secondments to the POs, providing each ESR with the opportunity to work on a newly initiated project or project already programmed by the PO, and meeting with specialists in the geographical area of the PO; an extensive public online global lecture programme; Beneficiary workshops and research days for the hosted ESRs; joint workshops for everyone and guests (University of Iceland, Reykjavik, ‘Network workshop’, March 2022; ‘Make Up’ art centre, Berlin, workshop, March 2023); a summer school (Zeppelin University, September 2023) and a final conference (University of Edinburgh 2024).
The project FEINART has involved thousands of researchers, students and invited guests across 9 European countries, generating new contacts and alliances, between cultural centres, arts organizations and academic research centres. In turn, given the interdisciplinary nature of the project, the public discussion of socially engaged art across the training programme, has provided the conditions for a multiplicity of voices and perspectives to contribute to the development and critical reframing of social engaged art agendas, most crucial being the reassessment of socially engaged art in Europe from a global, planetary and decolonial basis. The emerging decolonial mandate in cultural and academic institutions in Europe, the global North and South has been decisive in the development of the ESRs research themes, and the nature of the public discussion and disciplinary critiques afforded by the interdisciplinary character of the project and the ESRs work on the ground with the POs. This is significant because it fundamentally underwrites the programme’s view of socially engaged art as singularly important in keeping open the public and democratic channels for art and social transformation. In addition, between March 2022 and August 2024 – based on Google analytics - the website received approximately, 7,500 visitors and 40,000 visits.
The project FEINART has involved thousands of researchers, students and invited guests across 9 European countries, generating new contacts and alliances, between cultural centres, arts organizations and academic research centres. In turn, given the interdisciplinary nature of the project, the public discussion of socially engaged art across the training programme, has provided the conditions for a multiplicity of voices and perspectives to contribute to the development and critical reframing of social engaged art agendas, most crucial being the reassessment of socially engaged art in Europe from a global, planetary and decolonial basis. The emerging decolonial mandate in cultural and academic institutions in Europe, the global North and South has been decisive in the development of the ESRs research themes, and the nature of the public discussion and disciplinary critiques afforded by the interdisciplinary character of the project and the ESRs work on the ground with the POs. This is significant because it fundamentally underwrites the programme’s view of socially engaged art as singularly important in keeping open the public and democratic channels for art and social transformation. In addition, between March 2022 and August 2024 – based on Google analytics - the website received approximately, 7,500 visitors and 40,000 visits.
The project in its final phase has also completed for publication an ambitious critical overview of the themes of the project within a global framework, entitled Socially Engaged Art, its Politics, Publics and Infrastructures: Towards a Planetary Perspective. This contains contributions from the ESRs, the supervisory teams, the POs, and external contributors to the public lecture programme and the training-events. It is edited by Prof. John Roberts and Prof. Karen van den Berg and is currently being considered by a number of publishers. It contains over 50 contributions.
General exploitable results: all the PhDs will be made available through open access; all documentary materials produced by the network, will be uploaded onto the website, along with a complete archive of external ESR publications and projects; videos of public lectures and network talks are already available. In addition, the final publication will become the basis for a range of events across the network, including a conference. We also see the publication as a key future discussion document, not only for practitioners, administrators and activists, but as a valuable pedagogic addition to teaching across Universities, art academies, and those engaged on the ground in sustaining and developing socially engaged art practice. In this respect, accumulatively, across the PhDs, the book, and published articles, the quantitative and qualitative research undertaken provides an invaluable generational reassessment of the problems and horizons of socially engaged in art in Europe now. That is, this generation of researchers is the first generation of researchers to work on an intellectually mature and institutionally supported corpus of socially engaged art practice – almost thirty years of work in fact. In this FEINART’s research outcomes are distinguished by a de facto engagement with both the vicissitudes and delimitations as well as the proliferating multiplicity of socially engaged art across the globe – that continually feeds into the agendas of socially engaged practice in Europe.
General exploitable results: all the PhDs will be made available through open access; all documentary materials produced by the network, will be uploaded onto the website, along with a complete archive of external ESR publications and projects; videos of public lectures and network talks are already available. In addition, the final publication will become the basis for a range of events across the network, including a conference. We also see the publication as a key future discussion document, not only for practitioners, administrators and activists, but as a valuable pedagogic addition to teaching across Universities, art academies, and those engaged on the ground in sustaining and developing socially engaged art practice. In this respect, accumulatively, across the PhDs, the book, and published articles, the quantitative and qualitative research undertaken provides an invaluable generational reassessment of the problems and horizons of socially engaged in art in Europe now. That is, this generation of researchers is the first generation of researchers to work on an intellectually mature and institutionally supported corpus of socially engaged art practice – almost thirty years of work in fact. In this FEINART’s research outcomes are distinguished by a de facto engagement with both the vicissitudes and delimitations as well as the proliferating multiplicity of socially engaged art across the globe – that continually feeds into the agendas of socially engaged practice in Europe.