Art/Process/Change: inside a socially situated practice

Dr. Loraine Leeson will talk about some of the lessons learned through the span of her art practice that encompasses activist work from the 1970s/80s, projects with communities and young people in the 1990s, experiments with new technology and collectivity in the new millennium, and more recent engagement with older people and environmental issues.
Central to Leeson’s work have been processes of collaboration and participation that have lent cultural dimensions to activism and brought community-based knowledge into the public domain. She will discuss how early lessons learned from working alongside the trades union movement and the campaigning communities of London’s Docklands informed subsequent engagement with a range of groups, organisations and individuals, drawing on new technologies as they emerged to enable these voices to be heard. Lastly Leeson will indicate how these lessons now inform interdisciplinary research that draws on the arts to address issues of global significance.