Reframing the Class Divide Caring Imaginaries, Class Struggle and The Social Turn

An exploration into socio-economic inequality in socially engaged art practice and convivial listening as an aesthetics of critique, care and change

Reframing the Class Divide investigates whether it’s possible to use caring and convivial practices of listening to successfully challenge the UK Creative and Cultural industries exclusion of working-class subjects, artists and experiences, and if so, to what affect. I make site-specific sound installations and gather primary data from audiences who encounter the work, examining the affects of site-specific convivial listening. Additionally, I conduct in-depth context reviews of existing literature and site-specific sound art practice, intersectional justice, ethics and practices of care and exclusions in the field of socially engaged art in the UK. Through my praxis I evaluate the caring and critical potential of peer to peer listening in terms of rebalancing socio-economic exclusions in the art world. I argue that my work in part addresses class exclusions taking place within the production and consumption of socially engaged art and the British creative industries at large.

Remote Sensing is a new platform exploring challenges encountered in creative place-based fieldwork during a time of restrictions on sites, collections, and communities. In the wake of dramatically altered global environments, Remote Sensing explores material and digital approaches to fieldwork and how this area of research continues to function as a rich source of enquiry for creative practitioners. Hosted by the Illustration Programme at Camberwell, University of the Arts London, this one-day online symposium includes keynote presentations from Dr Helen Wickstead (Kingston University), Dr George Jaramillo (Heriot Watt University), and Catherine Anyango Grünewald (Konstfack).