Our Methodology for working runs throughout all of our projects
We adapt this way of working continually to suit the particularities of the area we are working in, who we are working with, the time frame that we are working for. This methodology has also dervied from various artist, critical thinkers, that we are inspired by and learn from.
We are motivated by a set of questions and interlinking relationships -
What is the role of citizens in radical system change, how can we together create more democratic, distributed and open source social and civic infrastructure - what is the role of art, and radical imagination within this? We have learnt so much from the mutual aid groups in Covid, from historic forms of care/infrastructure- through public libraries and the early formations of the NHS - how we can we continue to develop that to build a future civic society?
Collaborative Processes
We understand creative collaborative processes and play to be great tools in helping to resist systems of oppression, exhaustion and isolation and we are constantly thinking about how to suit our medium to our changing circumstances and trying to find creative solutions to a collective need, directed by the individuals we are working with. We believe play can be radical. [1] We believe imagination can be radical [2].
We have learnt through working with various different groups and communities, that it takes time to know the way you make things together. We hope to listen, learn and heal through collective storytelling - the above are ideas which we could use to facilitate conversations, and inspire imagination. Fundamentally, we believe it is important to build from a place of abundance, not scarcity, and draw on the knowledge and experience. We are based in Friendship, conversation and collective joy.
We engage with the multi-sensory as a way of navigating space
Westernised ideas of linear time and cartography have continually marked landscapes with lines of control; recording, tracking, and categorising. This colonial legacy, at its core, relies on monumentalism, permanence and standardisation. Over past four years, we have used sustainable mapping techniques, which oppose the colonial lens of extractivism and linearity in combination with collaborative film, sound and text-based art-making working with carehomes, precarious workers, food cooperatives, migrant support, anti-raids-groups. Following a trajectory which has been paved by many postcolonial, feminist thinkers/artists before us, we want to listen, to feel, to touch, to sense, to taste, employing methods that minimise our environmental impact.
Ecology of our practice and interdependace
We work to identify a need and support existing networks of care already in place. We work to unite existing infrastructures, formal/informal economies of care and resources. We don’t try and bring ‘the outside in’ but instead distribute material where it is needed. We want to build phsycial lasting legacies and infrastructure that is ‘life-affirming’, including ‘Infrastructure of Feeling’ - see Ruth Wilson-Gilmore. These are non-exhaustive, emotionally, materially and structurally. We treat our practice like we treat our bodies, we try to feed it, listen to it, see it in a context of various moving parts.
[1] Scholar Miguel Sicart describes this as an innate
human necessity: ‘we play because we are human, and
we need to understand what makes us human, not in an
evolutionary or cognitive way but in a humanistic way.
Play is the force that pulls us together.’ Sicart, Miguel (2014) Playful thinking series:
Play Matters, Cambridge: MIT Press, p6 - this is learnt from the resource and work of Albert Potrony https://d37zoqglehb9o7.cloudfront.net/uploads/2020/04/parp_booklet.pdf
[2] Radically Imagining Our City - Questions to ask as we steward in creative collaborationby Joon Lynn Goh, Co-Director Migrants in Culture & Civic Futures Fellow 21-22 and Freedom Dreams
Robin D.G. Kelley
Worksheets and prompts to reflect upon our work and contexts. Inspired by pirate.care.syllabus.