How to work better: Collective Action in London and Amsterdam

My paper asks the question: how do contemporary artists create a sense of home and belonging in an increasingly globalised and insecure world? I focus on two artists’ collectives: Black Obsidian Sound System (London) and If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution (Amsterdam) to explore particular forms of everyday artistic labour and cultural work involved in homemaking and community building. Drawing on Marsha Meskimmon’s (2011) concept of Cosmopolitan Imagination, these are positioned as dialogic, conversational negotiations between localised and rooted communities and global and transversal narratives and movement. Moving beyond simple tropes and representations, I explore how contemporary artists - on their own terms - meaningfully inhabit a global world and demonstrate how we can live and work better together.