We have been awarded a Sustaining Creative Development Award by Creative Scotland!

Autonomy of Practice, a period of research & development

We are so delighted to have been awarded an Open Fund Sustaining Creative Development Award from Creative Scotland. We will undertake a period of research and development focusing on a creative and embodied exploration of the concept of care and relational autonomy, to support and adapt our artistic participatory practice to the new emerging context brought about by the Pandemic.

We want to better understand the potential of care and relational autonomy to guide how we creatively work with each other and with others.

We will be working with two fantastic mentors Artist / Clore Fellow and Researcher Nicola Naismith, and reconnecting with philosopher Prof Ben Colburn who has been so supportive of this work to get us to this point.

In Phase 1 we will explore the invitation to make a mark, in its widest sense. This will be the vehicle through which we aesthetically explore ideas of care and autonomy. A workshop format will be explored as a principle aesthetic and dialogical form for these ideas. We will invite three other Creative Collaborators into this process and we are so excited to be working with Nadine George of Voice Studio International as one of these.

The learning gained during the first phase will be used to develop an online pilot workshop for a small number of participatory practitioners in Phase 2 of this project in Summer 2022. Our aim is to foreground an exploratory and embodied understanding of autonomy in relation to the practice of care within participatory arts practices.

In keeping with the participatory aspect of our practice we would like to open out this reflective process to explore how this can support the wellbeing of arts, health and participatory arts practitioners themselves.

We will be setting up a new blog to document and share aspects of Autonomy of Practice soon and will share the link when we have more details.