Mathematics of Participation:Scale in Social Practice

This two part workshop explores the relationship of scale in participatory or relational art through discussion and workshop critiques of participant projects.

Session one:
Suzanne Lacy and representative collaborators (Knowle West Media Centre, Arnolfini Gallery, University of Bristol, BBC and the Bristol City Council Public Art Program) present The University of Local Knowledge as a case study on scale, strategies, and impact of working across sectors within communities. The University of Local Knowledge is a multi-year artwork that explores inequalities and hierarchies of knowledge and asks which values are placed on which spheres of 'expertise'. The cross-platform project includes academics, artists, and activists, working with the community of Knowle West, a social housing estate in Bristol. The presentation is followed by a conversation that engages the audience in strategies and critical implications of participatory art in an era of increasing poverty and austerity.

Approximate duration: 2 hours

Tickets for session two are available here

Suzanne Lacy (b.1945, Wasco, California, USA)
Suzanne Lacy is a writer, activist and pioneering visual artist whose work has been described by an art writer as 'radically political, urgently demanding and intensely compassionate.' Since the 1970s, she has created installations, video, and large-scale performances on social themes, using art to resist racism, promote feminism, denounce violence against women and explore challenging human relationships. In the late 1970s she began organising large groups of people in public art events and in 1987 produced The Crystal Quilt, a performance broadcast live on the American PBS television network, which featured hundreds of older women in Minneapolis. Between 1991 and 2000, Lacy worked collaboratively on various projects under the acronym TEAM (Teens + Educators + Artists + Media Makers), primarily in Oakland, California, a city characterised by a history of political activism and extraordinary racial diversity, but which is also beset with high rates of violent crime, poverty and school drop-out. In her socially-oriented public performance work with TEAM, Lacy aimed to empower youth, and also to demonstrate how art affects social change.