The Council Estate as Artistic Medium and Practice: Doing Good or Do Gooders?

Part of Look At The (E)state We're In (LATEWI) - 'The Council Estate as Artistic Medium and Practice: Doing Good or Do Gooders?' was a symposium with presentations from Barby Asante, The Drawing Shed's Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd, and Jordan McKenzie.

What motivates artists to work on estates? Many times when working in ways that may be termed ‘socially engaged’ the artist has to work in a double register, making work that in meaningful ways benefits residents of the estate but also fulfils the demands of making, showing and producing ‘contemporary art’. How do artists negotiate this? Has ‘socially engaged practice’ managed to critique the art market or been co-opted by it? By working with these communities are artists just doing ‘social work on the cheap’? The panel will discuss the complexities of working in these ways in regard to their own work as practitioners and the wider territory of social engaged practitioners working in this area of arts production.

McKenzie is a visual performance artist whose performances, installations, drawings and video works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally. For two years he co-curated LUPA (Lock Up Performance Art) from a disused garage on the council estate that he lives on in East London. In 2014 he was awarded a Live Art Development Agency DIY award to hold a summit meeting focusing on art and social practice for an invited group of artists and cultural theorists that was held in his flat.

McKenzie was also a Co-Director of LATEWI with Patti Ellis (BA Sculpture and Contextual Studies Lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts) and Emily Druiff (Executive Director of Peckham Platform), 28-29 May 2015.

About Look At The (E)state We're In (LATEWI):

LATEWI was an experiment in social engagement. An exploration of the unmapped relationship between the council estate, the community and the arts. In partnership between Camberwell College of Arts and Peckham Platform, the project aimed to provide a forum to discuss, dissect and disseminate the collision of the utopian ideal of socially engaged art with the equally Utopian notion of the council estate and how these visionary ideas translate into reality: can art be used to solve social problems? How do estates, class and culture interrelate? Can art foster community?

Through a public event in Peckham, a short documentary film and a publication, LATEWI will presented a current and honest discourse on the (e)state we’re in through the involvement of practitioners, artists and researchers within related fields, but also with the inclusion of the local community through workshops, panel discussions and interviews. The event took place in May 2015 at various community venues throughout Peckham, including Peckham Pulse Healthy Living Centre, Peckham Liberal Club, and Kentish Drover pub; points of convergence between the diverse class and culture within the area and adjacent to PeckhamPlatform, our partnering organisation dedicated to accessible social arts practice.

• http://www.peckhamplatform.com
• https://www.facebook.com/L-A-T-E-W-I-The...
• https://twitter.com/latewi
• http://www.jordanmckenzie.co.uk/lupa/
• https://youtu.be/IZIUzMkqfDg