I taught the Public Acts Studio at The Cass, alongside Bob and Roberta Smith during the 2013-14 academic year.
Public Acts is a cross department and cross course initiative that aims to cheerfully address the social responsibility of art and question the laypersons’ idea that public art is a lump of bronze in a park. Our aim is to develop initiatives that invite people to enjoy, feel part of and comfortable within the ideas the art world inhabits, engaging the chance passer-by as much as the determined gallery goer. Public Acts is itself determinedly progressive and cross disciplinary with participants setting their own agenda and working in a variety of media – from the plein air painter to the psycho geographer, from the polemicist printmaker to the socially-engaged sound or performance artist. Public Acts will help students find their voice by identifying the issues they want to tackle and finding ways to incite curiosity and action in their audience.
One of the initiatives that the Studio is engaged with is The Art Party Conference at The Spa, Scarborough, hosted by Crescent Arts. The event aims to showcase a wealth of artistic talent and provide opportunities to debate the future of arts and education. There will be artists’ interventions, performances, film screenings, music, readings, happenings. I will be hosting a special edition of my talk show The O Show around the theme ‘Indebted By Art’. In preparation, my students and I worked together to produce some promotional Art Party images.
