Social Making
Our biennial symposium which brings together communities and practitioners working in socially engaged ways to share learning.
Since 2016, Take A Part have been delivering an international biennial symposium ‘Social Making: Socially Engaged Practice Now and Next’. Social Making brings together artists, curators, community members, commissioners, policy makers, audiences, researchers and anyone with an interest in social practice in the arts. For Take A Part, social practice is collaborative and puts people at the heart of the artwork, and it is this spirit that we bring to our symposium. Each iteration of the symposium has been different but we always strive to move to a more active engagement with our delegates rather than the traditional conference experience.The aim of the symposium is to bring examples of international socially engaged practices to the South West of the UK, giving the region exposure to a wider network of projects and organisations, and an opportunity to consider a range of methods and their impact. This provides support and learning for the socially engaged arts ecology, ensuring that the region continues to produce and support high-quality, risk-taking and ambitious public arts programmes. It is also about sharing socially engaged practices in Plymouth and the city’s ambitions outwards, as innovators and risk-takers and as a centre from which projects are tested and grown.
Turner Prize Winner Helen Cammock. Photograph by Magda Stawarska-Beavan.
In 2016 the symposium focused on different methods of approaching socially engaged work and its impact on audience and communities. Our programme included the Turner Prize 2015 winners Assemble, Mammalian Diving Reflex’s Darren O’Donnell, and HomeBaked’s Britt Jurgensen. Research papers were presented by Dr Rory Shand (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Peter Harris (Wolf + Water) to showcase the innovative and inclusive methods of Plymouth-based organisations Take A Part CIC and Effervescent Social Alchemy.
In 2018 the symposium considered social practice and its engagement with identity(s); how art can help communities and audiences reconsider their understandings of, and positions on sexuality, gender, race, economical, political, social, bodily, historical and geographical identities. We explored how social practice can help us reconsider the notion of community itself. This year we be showcased the work of cross-disciplinary practitioners; from visual artists, to theatre-makers, to poets, including: Take A Part Carlow, Freï von Fräähsen zu Lorenzburg, Darren Henley, Tom Marshman, Natalie McGrath, Marice Cumber of Accumulate, Rommi Smith, Patrick Fox of Heart of Glass, and Davis & Jones. Thanks to support from Visual Arts South West we were able to offer a platform for South West based practitioners to share work via pecha kucha presentations, from Far Flung Dance Theatre, LOW PROFILE, Vickie Fear, Sarah Filmer, and Beyond Face. We held micro-exhibitions from artists and community members working with social practice, including Marcella Finazzi, Bridey Borda, Tim Mills and Tabatha Andrews. We also held a SOUP funding dinner to offer an opportunity for seed-funding for socially-engaged art projects that would take place as part of Plymouth Art Weekender.
We're back in 2022 hosting the next iteration of Social Making post covid, and we're excited to share what's coming up, check it out here.
