Peckham Platform: Social Art & EDI
Presented by Social Art Network London and Peckham Platform
Wednesday 23rd March, 5pm – 7pm
SAN LDN is exploring Equality, Diversity and Inclusion from 3 important perspectives: working-class art students, digitised systems of oppression, and policy for arts organisations. Part of the research for this meetup is develop from the AHRC funded fellowship Social Art For Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (SAFEDI) held in partnership with Axis and Manchester Metropolitan University.
You can read more about SAFEDI here.
Guest Biographies
R.M. Sánchez-Camus (Marcelo) – SAN LDN Lead
Marcelo is Director of Applied Live Art Studio (ALAS) a social art practice studio. His interest is in democratising culture through collaborative works of art that uncover social narratives while giving a space for reflection. His practice incorporates community co-authorship into public and social art through installation, performance, and text with a focus on co-creation, participation, psychogeography, and community wellbeing.
He also builds support and exchange systems for communities, creative practitioners, art workers, and scholars working in and invested in cultural democracy. He co-founded Social Art Network, a UK wide association of creative professionals dedicated to socially-engaged work. He co-convened the Social Art Summit, the first national UK review of socially engaged practice. He is a creative consultant on Axisweb’s Social Artery and Social Art Library (SOAL) two new online platforms dedicated to building legacy around social practice and Leads on Social Art For Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (SAFEDI) AHRC fellowship with Manchester Metropolitan University producing research findings around arts access and arts policy.
Website: https://www.appliedliveart.com
Social Media: @appliedliveart
Image description: Portrait of a smiling latin-x man with cropped beard and short hair wearing a bright red t-shirt with the slogan: Site-responsive written across the front with each 4 letters on different lines in white and black lettering.
Yuen Fong Ling
My current art practice finds connection with omitted histories, people, objects and places seen through my own biographical story-telling, and sense of ‘self’. My approach to practice has developed from previous artworks reconfiguring the traditions and conventions of the life model, and the public and private life class. As a concept of social engagement, I developed a ‘tactical life model’ position that shifted between roles of artist, model and tutor. Where I would actively become the assumed passive object to draw out other’s active subjectivity, whilst making participants the focus of the artwork.
Since COVID-19, the BLM and Rhodes Must Fall movements have intensified with protests and demonstrations by activists wanting removal of public statues relating to Britain’s colonial past. I began to align with this work critically, having developed research in alternative forms and methods for memorial making emphasising collaboration, co-design, and community participation. Simply driven by wanting to wrestling the conversation away from the ‘culture wars’ debate, party politics, and actively engage artists from ethnically diverse backgrounds into the discussion.
Website: www.yuenfongling.com
Image Description: Black and white portrait of man with shoulder length hair wearing black rimmed glasses and a white button down shirt with printed graphics.
Ama Ogwo (She/Her)
Ama Ogwo is a mixed media artist, whose practice is concerned with aspects of Black Identity, Black Individuality and Black Experience, within physical and digital spaces. Her work aims to expand upon the present repercussions of racism on individual Black Experience as well as collective Black Experiences by addressing systems, environments, attitudes and creations complicit in perpetuating racial marginalisation and dehumanising rhetoric. Ama draws inspiration from her own experiences of racial isolation/displacement, but also from artists such as Tanoa Sasraku, Emily Mulenga, Adam Farah and Sola Olulode.
Instagram: @remodelled.notions
Vimeo: Remodelled.notions
Image Description: A black woman kneeling on the grass, resting her elbow on her knee and resting her head on her hand. She is wearing black jeans and a baby pink top. On the left of the top is hot pink cursive writing that reads “it’s kill or be killed innit”.
