Emotional Labour of Social Practice Artists
This afternoon forum offers space to discuss online a variety of perspectives and experiences of emotional labour and burnout of social practice artists.
Photo Credit: Sally Labern
Friday 17th June, 2pm-5pm
Sign up here via Eventbrite!
* Please note this is an online event
This open forum is an important part of the seed project ‘Emotional labour of social practice artists: moving towards sustainable collective care,’ a UCL SHS Dean’s Strategic Fund project in partnership with Social Art Network – the mutual aid network for social practice artists in the UK. Building on responses from a questionnaire circulated in advance, the forum hopes to be a place of discussion and sharing, opening with critical prompts from invited speakers.
The arts are often cited as beneficial in alleviating burnout more widely, and are a key strategy in social prescribing in the support of wellbeing, but very little is understood about burnout in artists whose primary method of creation involves emotional labour.
How can we build sustainable collective care into these working practices and ecologies?
What infrastructures of care, resources and training need to be implemented to safeguard artists in their work?
We want to hear your experiences and insights and learn/unlearn together.
Speakers
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: 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.
Elsa James
Elsa is a British African-Caribbean conceptual artist and activist living in Essex since 1999. Her practice intervenes in the overlapping discourses of race, gender, diaspora, and belonging. Her black British identity ignites her interdisciplinary, collaborative and research-based practice, located within the fields of performance, film (in which she also performs), text-based art, and socio-political and socially engaged art. Her social practice includes advocating for the inclusion of marginalised voices and communities in the arts sector; New Ways of Seeing, Telling and Making (2018), a visual provocation and live debate, challenged how the art sector can genuinely address barriers to participation and involvement in the arts for Black, Brown and other minority communities living in Britain.
She was one of the ten UK-based artists selected for the Syllabus VI 2020 – 21 programme and one of the four co-curators selected for the live digital online opening weekend for Estuary 2021.
Elsa is a member of Girl Gang (since 2014) – a UK-wide group of women artists utilising performative actions to challenge expectations in public spaces. She is also a member of the feminist activist collective the Essex Girls Liberation Front (since 2017) based in Southend.
Website: www.elsajames.com
Social Media: @thisiselsajames @FPGSouthend
Nicola Naismith
Nicola Naismith is a visual artist and researcher. She has over 20 years experience working in the arts and was the Visual Artist Fellow on the Clore Leadership Programme in 2017/18.
She leads the Reflective and Ethical Practitioner and Professional Practice modules on the online MA Art and Social Practice programme at University of the Highlands and Islands.
She also works with organisations to develop programmes of support and training, and is a practising action learning set facilitator, coach and mentor supporting cultural leaders and creative practitioners who work in a range of participatory and studio-based settings.
She is a collaborative partner with the Culture Health and Wellbeing Alliance for the annual Practising Well Award, which seeks to highlight initiatives that make positive contributions to affective support for creative and heritage practitioners working in health and wellbeing contexts. Nicola works as a freelancer and is based in Norwich.
Website: www.nicolanaismith.co.uk
Social Media: @nicolanaismith1
Discussion Facilitator
Sally Labern (SAN LDN Lead)
Sally Labern is a multidisciplinary artist working across arts and science partnerships in the Climate Emergency. Her short-term collaborations and durational socially engaged projects
focus on the necessity of cultural equity within co-production, cultural democracy and social justice for wellbeing. She has a particular interest in trauma informed practices and shared deep listening.
Sally is Artist Director of the drawing shed, a contemporary arts organisation situated across two host housing estates in East London, and received her PDoc from University of East London in 2021. ‘A Community Rewilds…’ The Public Wash Station (㏄) and Split Forest (㏄) are all new co-creation works in development.
Burnout has been close, but Social Art Network has been closer.
Website: The Drawing Shed
Social Media: @wordinthehand @spittingstars
Project Leads
Rebecca Gordon
Dr Rebecca A. Gordon is a freelance researcher and writer in modern and contemporary art and has taught in the History of Art Departments at University College London and University of Glasgow, as well as guest lecturing at University of Amsterdam and New York University.
Her current research focuses on care and emotional labour of social practice artists, a posthumanist ethics of care, and conservation of contemporary art as a counter- extinction activity. She is also a member of the organising team for the upcoming international conference ‘SUSTAINING ART: People, Practice, Planet in Contemporary Art Conservation,’ taking place in Dundee, Scotland, and online 9-11 November 2022.
Website: rebecca-gordon.com
Naomi White
Dr Naomi White is a Clinical Psychologist, researcher and lecturer on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology training programme at the University of Glasgow. She has worked in clinical health services in the NHS and also for third sector organisations including Freedom from Torture and the Specialist Health and Work Service of the Beatson Cancer Charity.
Her research interests include practitioner wellbeing/burnout and systemic approaches to mitigating psychological trauma and distress, particularly using qualitative multi-perspective
methodology.