Richard Ing, 2012: Experiments in Place Making. London: RSA.
http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/581451/Experiments-in-place-making-case-studies.pdf
"Arts & Social Change is a project that belongs to the Citizen Power Peterborough programme. Citizen Power Peterborough (CPP) is a two-year programme of action supported by Peterborough City Council and RSA. The aim of CPP is to build connections between people and communities, get people more involved in public life and encourage active citizenship."
"Arts and Social Change looks at the role of arts and imagination in creating new connections between people and where they live in order to strengthen participation in community life in Peterborough.
This programme involves a wide range of projects that place artists at the centre of re-imagining the possibilities of what a place could be and how to create this together."
"The artist has to create a project design that is sensitive to local needs and that offers more than a targeted workshop approach. Ideally, their intervention should act as a catalyst for social and even political engagement. Although each experiment is small scale, it should serve to show how a more lasting change might happen."
EXPERIMENT 1: PUBLIC CHRISTMAS CARD
"On the morning of 15th December 2010, the residents of Crawthorne Street and Monument Street in Peterborough awoke to find a handwritten Christmas card on the doormat. Opening it, they found seasonal greetings from two local artists, a question and a set of five colour-coded cards. The question was: What gift would you most like to give this Christmas? Each of the cards bore a single word in capitals: PEACE, HOPE, GOODWILL, LOVE and COMMUNITY. On the reverse were some instructions: Place this card in your downstairs front window, with the COLOURED side facing out, and leave it there for one week.By Christmas Eve, 31 out of the 81 houses in these two streets had displayed one or more of the cards. Passers-by might not immediately spot what the cards said, as the chosen word was printed unobtrusively, in a lighter tone of the background colour, but the neighbours here would know"
The Happy Prince: Social Art and Citizenship
December 13, 2013
Creative Gathering, #SocialArt by RSA in London
Arts & Social Change, a project of the Citizen Power Peterborough programme, supported by RSA.http://www.thersa.org/action-research-centre/public-services-arts-social-change/citizen-power/arts-and-social-change
RSA (Royal SOciety for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) is a London NGO established in 1754. Its mission is public Enlightment.
Its programme Citizen Power Peterborough is focused on citizenship connections building.
Creative Gathering is the most important action of Arts & Social Change project.
http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/707162/RSA_Arts_Social_Change-Creative_Gathering.pdf
(a) Short-term goal: space where people can meet, share & learn. and practise.
(b) Long-term agenda: better arts community 4 citizenship empowerment.RSA
It promotes "the role of arts and imagination in creating new connections between people and where they live in order to strengthen participation in community life".
RSA (Royal SOciety for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) is a London NGO established in 1754. Its mission is public Enlightment.
Its programme Citizen Power Peterborough is focused on citizenship connections building.
Creative Gathering is the most important action of Arts & Social Change project.
http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/707162/RSA_Arts_Social_Change-Creative_Gathering.pdf
(a) Short-term goal: space where people can meet, share & learn. and practise.
(b) Long-term agenda: better arts community 4 citizenship empowerment.RSA
It promotes "the role of arts and imagination in creating new connections between people and where they live in order to strengthen participation in community life".
It places artists at the centre of re-imagining the
possibilities of what a place could be.
"The ‘gathering’ has emerged from a
broader trend in community activism that Peter Block, in a paper
entitled ‘Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community’, defi
nes thus: “ We use the term 'gathering’, because
the word has more signifi cance than what we think
of as just a ‘meeting’. A gathering is hosted;
it is the product of an act of hospitality.
Meetings are called or scheduled. They are intended for
production rather than hospitality… They either
review the past or embody the belief that better
planning, better managing or more measurement and
prediction can create an alternative future. In this way
they become just talk, not powerful
conversation."
December 08, 2013
Steve Cutts, 2013: Man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU
Steve Cutts Channel in Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/user4630714
In Movement NGO, Art for Social Change
InMovement, Art for Social Change
European NGO with field work in Uganda
http://www.inmovement.org/
"In Movement: Art for Social Change is a registered non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 2006, that implements arts education programmes with underserved young people in Uganda. We also share our creativity-based approaches to empower youth through training intensives with youth workers, teachers, social artists, counselors, and others."
Our Vision. Young people from underserved backgrounds are empowered through the arts to be active participants in their societies, and are leading productive and meaningful lives.
European NGO with field work in Uganda
http://www.inmovement.org/
Our Vision. Young people from underserved backgrounds are empowered through the arts to be active participants in their societies, and are leading productive and meaningful lives.
Our Mission. We create positive social change in developing societies by providing transformative arts and imaginative education to underserved young people.
Presentation of the goals of the NGO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KKPOcGv8Pg
Project. InMovement, 2007: “Journey for self
discovering”. Performance with children and teens from Orfanage and poor
communities. Educational Social Art Workshop. Kampala, Uganda. 6:07m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdwcamuigSM
Project. Another performance with teen from
Kampala, Uganda, in 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJe9mTigAKY
Project. InMovement, 2012. Five days Art Camp for young
people in Uganda. In collaboration with the US NGO Partners for Youth
Empowerment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAo5Aa0eyR0
Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzYAMS1AMyA
Raudenbush, new civilization in the desert
Kate Raudenbush, sculptures for social awareness, education and civic dialogue.
http://www.kateraudenbush.com/
Born in USA and resident at New York City.
Raudenbush's Sculptures are palaces in the desert, the new beginning of a civilization or the last seed of a lost world. You can inhabit inside these sculptures. For Raudenbush, these creations are new places for inspiring civic dialogue and social awareness through meditation and new boundaries.
Kate Raudenbush, 2009: Braindrop.
Recalling sacred spaces created to honor the water gods of ancient times, Braindrop is a meditation space to honor the element of water in modern times. Its purpose is to raise the consciousness of our species to an increased respect for a most humble yet all-powerful element. Braindrop brings us together in the starkness of the dry desert to contemplate our role in the evolutionary history of water yet to be written."
Listen to Raudenbush in...
Kate Raudenbush, 2011: On socially conscious art. TED, Black Rock City. 10:20m http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JhRIEsqyoE
http://realitysandwich.com/1053/kate_raudenbush/
"The act of creation is enormously powerful; it is the
ability to bring into being something that existed only in the mind."
"Artists are
the mirrors of our society. In a way they are also portals to the future."
"I am driven by the desire to create an interactive
gathering space for community to connect with each other and together be
inspired by their collective and individual experience."
"I seek to distill an
idea down to its essential form, its essential question, its essential
metaphor, and to build unity from opposites in the most harmonious and elegant
way possible. My intention is to create a sculpture that you can feel, that
possesses it's own energy, that is transporting."
"We are blindly, foolishly participating in a
planet-wide game of musical chairs, and there are fewer and fewer seats because
we are paving and mining and chopping down all the wood in our home. What
diabolical maniac is in charge of this game? We are."
"More and more people are growing conscious of our own interconnectivity. But
let’s get real. Unless we act with this
evolved consciousness and apply it boldly, globally and physically in our daily
lives – unless this consciousness gets truly
catalyzed- – our evolution will remain in the
imagination."
Kate Raudenbush, 2010: Futures Past.
“Crossing through the cacophony of progress in our shining
desert Metropolis, we waver and stop to witness a modern utopic vision surrender
to a dystopic fate. A monument to man’s technological advancement has been
mysteriously abandoned to time and left to seed. In its place, a monument to
nature grows out of its fertile ground. The angular black steel roots of modern
computer circuitry in the shape of a stepped pyramid give way to the ancient
roots of a sacred Bodhi tree, as it reclaims this relic of our Future’s Past in its embrace.
Future’s Past is a modern ruin, an
architectural artifact found in the future. Once built as a monument to
technological progress, this pyramid of system circuitry has been abandoned
through unchecked consumptive collapse, but reclaimed by the resilience of
natural forces, and evolved consciousness, symbolically represented by the
roots of a sacred Bodhi tree, a symbol of Siddhartha’s seat of enlightenment,
and our own.
Taking inspiration from explorations of lost civilizations
akin to the pyramid temples at Chichen Itza (Mayan Peninsula, Mexico) and the
massive root systems of the trees at Ta Prohm temple (Angkor, Cambodia), this
tree both supports and consumes the immortal archaeological efforts of mankind
with its slow-motion grip that both crushes and buttresses the temple walls.
These collapsed civilizations of the past have much to teach us through their
failures of ecological sustainability and the mercilessness of nature. Yet, in
this sculpture, the conjunction of the tree and the pyramid symbolize more than
just the evolution of nature trumping the machinations of man. Future’s Past is a symbol of the human evolution of
consciousness triumphing in our precarious modern developmental struggle.
We know that technology alone will not to save us. Technology,
after all, is crafted by the hands of humans, ruled by both integrity and
ignorance. Technology is a tool. It is our mindsthat
use it, to build and communicate, to destroy and to heal. It is our minds that choose the path towards failure or
survival. For true advancement to have real value, any technological objective
today must require an evolved awareness of the earth’s finite, interdependent
resources, and enough empathy for the fragility of our home planet to strive to
be part of the solution to our survival. We are no longer just nations or
political parties, races or religions; ecological disaster has blurred those
lines for us by now. We are all in this mess together. But we can evolve out of
it. We can, if we choose, use our technology - together with our creativity -
as a tool to create a Global Bio-Consciousness movement. This "awakening"
is the first step in the process to save us from ourselves, by collectively
demanding global ecological responsibility not just from our leaders, but more
importantly, from each other....
This we also know: Action-- or inaction-- in this face of global change is the fulcrum on which the survival of a species rests. To be an active participant in the present moment is the only way to shape what is to come. Our Future’s Past is now.”
This we also know: Action-- or inaction-- in this face of global change is the fulcrum on which the survival of a species rests. To be an active participant in the present moment is the only way to shape what is to come. Our Future’s Past is now.”
December 03, 2013
André Devambez, the point of view of the highest window
The french painter and illustrator André Devambez was born in Paris, 1867 and died also in 1944, also in Paris. His most famous paintings were social-political scenes of moder street life. Frequently their works were painted from the point of view of the highest window of a building. Through that distance and in the security of his home, a neighbour looked at the dramatic scene -worry but safe-. That perspective is the modern point of view of a lot of citizens which are not involved in social issues but they are eyewitness of dramatic episodes of our urban life.
La Charge (The Police Charge), finished in 1902, is a Musée d'Orsay's painting about a confrontation between police and citizens in a street in Montmartre. Devambez achieved to show the archetype of the street confrontation between policemen and demonstrators. Police forces realize a perfect deployment against people. About these people, the painter didn't want to show their membership nor ideology because it could be anyone. The fierce and effective police prefect Chiappe had this painting in his office for a long time because it reflects perfectly the scene. Most of the features of Devambez style are there: high point of view, crowds without faces, lines face to face, urban borders, distance, risk or empty spaces in contrast with the density of crowds.
The Barricade, painted in 1911 shows the Parisian Commune and one of the famous barricade. Barricades are symbols of urban confrontations and demonstrations. Anew crowds and conflict urban borders are present. The paving stone is a relevant component of the painting and an icon of Parisian demonstrations.
1910 (Quai de Metro heure de pointe) Rush Hour Metro reflects the age of crowds and the risky modern life.
The 1915 illustration (Les tranchees) "Trenches" presents the lines of war in the First World War. The land is divided in sets because war and nobody has face: trenches are plenty of crowds. It is interesting to compare "Rush Hour Metro" (1910) and "Trenches" (1915): crowds are waiting, people are passing over the line, risk, anxiety..
In 1928, André Devambez painted the Salle Pleyel. Is it Social Art? The illustrator reflects some of his features: the high angle for the point of view, crowds without faces, distance, lines... Devambez is author of the new age of mass. Distance, division and risk are their worries.
Tjeerd Royaards, project between 300 students and 125 cartoonists
Tjeerd Royaards, Dutch, is master in
Political Science and professional cartoonist. Editor-in-chief of Cartoon
Movement since 2010 and member of the Board of Advisors of Cartoonist Rights
Network International.
Twitter: @royaards
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/royaards
A project between 300 students and 125
cartoonists
"In 2010, you organized a project
where you connect 300 students between the age of 15 to 18 to 125 cartoonist
from around the world and asked the students to come up with cartoon ideas
related to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Would you tell us a little
something of the project and how that turned out?
This project revolved
around a collaboration between high school students and professional
cartoonists Around themes related to the MDGs (like hunger or poverty, or human
rights) we build a digital class room (which we call a newsroom), where we
invite students to think on a particular subject by coming up with ideas for
cartoons on this subject. Together with professional cartoonists they talk
about the ideas, and vote for the submitted sketches. The best ideas are taken
up by the cartoonists and transformed into professional cartoons. Out of all
these cartoons we selected 98 to be published in a book; this book is now used
by high schools in the Netherlands to teach students about the Millennium
Development Goals." Interview with Angelo Lopez http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2012/04/an_interview_with_cartoonist_t.html
In 2010, Tjeerd received a Citation for Excellence in
the United Nations Political Cartoon Award. Global Justice, citizenship,
capitalism and poverty are frequent issues in his cartoons.
Pure life, 2013
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