(RE)Connecting You(ths): Monument to the Job Centre

(RE)Connecting You(ths): Monument to the Job Centre

An Exhibition Proposal

Date of document: November 29th 2021 

Jobseeker (2016) by Sleaford Mods 

Exhibition Concept

In Chaosmosis, Felix Guttari (1995) stated, ‘[…] how do you bring a classroom to life as if it were a work of art?’ This exhibition asks: How do you bring a jobcentre to life as if it were a work of art? 

Inspired by Hirschhorn's monuments and personal involvement in Critical Practice's #TransActing: A Market of Values (2015), this exhibition turns the gallery into a monument to the jobcentre, which will playfully connect people and provide real support by using booths, screens to show films made during the preparation of the exhibition, a stage for dramatised re-enactments of research material, and a public programme that includes performance lectures, presentations, and open discussion. According to Bishop (2012, p.260), Thomas Hirschhorn’s large scale social projects in the form of 'monuments', often dedicated to philosophers and produced in collaboration with residents who live near the sites of making, usually on the outskirts of a city. For example, Musee Precaire Albinet (2004), and The Bijlmer-Spinoza Festival (2006). While, A public works project, #TransActing: A Market of Values (2015) organised by Critical Practice, over a dozen artist-academic-practitioners-critical thinkers affiliated with Chelsea College of Art, created a '[...] bustling pop-up market featured artists, designers, economists, civil-society groups, academics, ecologists, activists and others who creatively explore existing structures of evaluation and actively produce new ones' (Publicworksgroup.net, n.d.). This exhibition will use participatory design and research to an exhibition that raises awareness of charitable organisations, while also sharing skills and using the formate of an exhibition to reach a wider audience. The result will be shared experiences and resources pulled together to address social issues. 

According to the Irish curator, artist, writer and educator, Paul O'Neill (n.d.),  'In order to focus on the spatial context of the exhibitions, any implementation of thematic displays of related works is resisted […]. Instead, the gallery is a setting for the staging of spatial relations between works, and between viewers' (O’Neil, n.d.). Following Paul O’Neill’s principles for curating culture, this exhibition delivers open access viewing and participation with stalls for social workers, coaches, and charitable organisations across the UK that work with young people between the ages of 15-34 that are unemployed, undereducated, or untrained. I've included a shortlist of 28 charities and non-profit organisations and programmes that either teach arts or creative skills or use the arts to socially engage or teach young people a wide range of practical, life skills. 

This exhibition also offers a linear narrative using a visual timeline of material brought in by participants. Participants will bring material related to their role or organisation for a collaborative timeline that maps their activities over the years. Everyone invited to participate in the exhibition can do so either in-person or over Teams. For remote participants, the booth will have a screen. All participants can decorate their booths with whatever material they like. The exhibition contents include 2-D works, text, and moving images arranged throughout the gallery. The exhibition will also show different films: a documentary-style set of interviews with social workers, coaches, and young people during the preparation of the exhibition; a moving playlist of images, texts, and audio gathered during exhibition preparation; and documentation of performances during an opening, public event. The exhibition stage will be used for performance lectures and a dramatised re-enactment of interviews/presentations/ narratives generated through the exhibition research process (transcribed interviews, for example). 

Inspired by Joseph Beuys and Paul Chan, the performance lectures will be part of an open, public programme where social workers, young people, academics, and students talk alongside one another by giving presentations on ideas, telling stories, or presenting personal objects. For example, Beuys’ work at the Tate and Whitechapel in 1972, Bureau for Direct Democracy for Documenta 5, and the blackboards bearing traces of performance-discussions become installations (a trace of social and intellectual exchange); 100 Days of the Free International University for Documenta 6: 13 interdisciplinary workshops open to the public, featured trade unionists, lawyers, economists, politicians, journalist, community workers, educationalists, and sociologists speaking alongside actors, musicians and young artists and moving beyond the humanities into the social sciences (Bishop, 2012, p.244). Paul Chan's Waiting for Godot in New Orleans (2007) was a DIY residency, workshops and teaching, open-air performance and a shadow fund in which money was raised and left behind for local organisations. While taking inspiration from The Theatre of Mistakes (1974-81)'s Raven Row exhibition (2017), this proposed exhibition will include a dramatised re-enactment based on a selection of text-based material gathered during the exhibition research. This staged performance will piece together samples from presentations, interviews, and film recordings to create a narrative that reflects the harmonious and dissonant values between public, private, and academic organisations and communities of social workers, coaches, and young people. 

These two performative elements will make up part of the public programme, which will be documented and displayed in the space on screens for the exhibition's duration. The public programme will be part of a test-bed approach to exhibition-making where the potential of participatory art and design methods will be tested. The approach to making this exhibition pushes the boundaries between content, concepts, and audience engagement with exhibition content, for example with UK/EU based social workers, coaches, and young people, who all work together to address social, economic obstacles, and individual identity within the UK society. This exhibition also delivers social impact through high-quality research into charitable programmes in the UK, and raise awareness of these organisations, individuals, and their social-serving programmes.  

The material generated during the public programme will be used in a publication and made available as part of a virtual exhibition that follows. The exhibition will be mapped in MatterPort to become a virtual exhibition that backlinks viewers to participants online content and resources to help teaching, learning, and job seeking. 

Potential UK Participants for Job Centre Exhibition Proposal

Youth Carter, Olympic Park, London
Kettle’s Yard and Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge
Wolverhampton Art & Culture, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
Rich Mix, Bethnal Green, London
Young People, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle 
Young Creative | Barbican, London
Young Craft Citizens, Crafts Council, London
Coach Core, Berkshire, Birmingham, Bristol, Derbyshire, Devon
V&A · Young People, London
ThinkForward, Nottingham, London
Talent Development — UK New Artists, Nottingham
Young People – Space Studios, London
Forty Second Street, a young people’s resource for mental health support. 
CommonWealth Theatre – Theatre in the Mill, Bradford Producing Hub, Bradford
Circuit Programme for Youth Engagement – Tate Modern, London
Rosetta Arts, London
In-Situ, Brierfield, England
Impact Arts | Young people, Glasgow
Local Government Association (LGA) and York Consulting LLP, eleven councils across England including: Blackpool, Birmingham City, Derbyshire County, Hampshire County, Isle of Wight, Liverpool City Region (including Halton BC, Liverpool City Council, Knowsley Council, Sefton Council, St Helen’s Council and Wirral Council), Norfolk County, Peterborough, Southampton City, Wigan (representing Greater Manchester Combined Authority), Wolverhampton City
Department of Work and Pension, London and across the UK
Creative Youth Network, Bristol
Core Arts – Promoting positive mental health, London
Welldoing.org Sample list of Coaches, across UK
Groundwork, Birmingham,
Children and young people | Arts Council England, across the UK
Daisi: arts inspired learning, Exeter, Devon
Art for Youth, Mall Galleries London
Watershed, Bristol

Expected Scale: 

The exhibition will fill the Stephen Lawrence Gallery with booths/stalls (some with monitors for remote participants), three large monitors for showing films, a staging area, and artworks, designs, and text (such as Noel Hensey's work listed below). The exhibitions include performance lectures, dynamic displays (including a collaborative timeline), films, a public programme event, which will be mapped into a virtual space where information about participants and valuable resources can be accessed. The public programme will also produce a publication and archive of material. 

Type of work to include: 

The exhibition will showcase a variety of materials. Participants will decorate their space with information about the work or services, such as Core Arts (a potential participant). The exhibitions will include a timeline, which participants (including EYES) will add material to, so the viewer is greeted with a chronology of events as they occurred. The exhibition includes 2-D artworks and designs on themes of application and rejection and quotes from EYEs data and theorists (such as Fredrich Schiller, Herbert Read, and Felix Guarttari). The exhibition will show a few films works made during the preparation for the exhibition. Participants may choose to bring in 3-D objects, which could be displayed in cases depending on the item's significance to the proposed themes: labour inclusion, citizenship participation, alternative education, and social impact. The exhibition will also include performances, lectures, and a public programme opening up dialogue across participants and audiences and generating content for the exhibition.  

Contemporary Relevance: 

This exhibition represents combined and distinct struggles and gives volume to unheard voices across the UK. This exhibition highlights the unique narratives and relationships between social workers and young people in the UK, and Northwestern European Countries post-Brexit captured during EYES research. This exhibition reflects UN sustainable development goals initiatives, and delivers social impact through digital tools, platforms, and alternative education. 

The comparable exhibitions:  

The overall exhibition theme will be like Hirschhorn’s The Bijlmer-Spinoza Festival (2006) monument. However, this exhibition will not use the same DIY aesthetics nor focus on the local Bijlmer area of Amsterdam and the Dutch Philosopher, Baruch Spinoza. Instead, this exhibition focuses on real social work happening across the UK and notions of art, education and play in Herbert Read (1974) and Felix Guarttari (1995). This exhibition will take visual inspiration similar to Forensic Architecture’s  War Inna Babylon: The community’s struggle for truths (2021) and rights and Group Material: Tracing Alienation by Lars Bang Larsen in A history of Irritated Materials  (Feb to May 2010) at Raven Row. These inspirational exhibitions present social-based and action research as active installations and displays, which will serve as a methodological approach for visualising this exhibition. (For example, the look of the timeline that accumulates materials as participants add to it). The booths follow a similar theme to the exhibition, MUSEUM OF ARTE ÚTIL, at the Van Abbe Museum from 07/12/2013 - 30/03/2014 Initiative by Tania Bruguera. However, instead of displaying archived reports, this exhibition emphasises the usefulness of getting coaches and young people together to present their materials and reconnect in real life. The public programme reinforces this connection by acting as a participatory event, where much of the exhibition's content will be generated, installed, presented, documented, and reshown to secondary audiences. The public programme takes its framework from the Hirschhorn mentioned above the monument and the exhibition, The Individual and the Organisation: Artist Placement Group 1966-79 at Raven Row Gallery (September 27th to December 16th 2012). However, this exhibition will instead focus on themes specific to labour market inclusion and social integration, which connect the exhibition to social impact through the arts, specifically on art’s ability to nurture education (self-development) and citizenship participation (self-improvement). In that respect, this exhibition is similar to Move: Choreographing You (Oct 2010- Jan 2011) at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre ), loosely inspired by the Department of Culture, Media, Sport's 2011 strategy to promote wellbeing through dance. However, this exhibition is different because it focuses on different aspects of social impact and government policy, mainly those associated with the UNSDG, EU, and Interreg. 

Potential Audience:

 Academics, Social Workers/Coaches, Activists, Students, and General Public

Potential Tour Venues:

organisations in the UK, France, Belgium, Netherland, and Germany

Details of any publication:  

Open editions (will include material generated during the public programme. 

 References: 

Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso Books.

Guattari, F., Bains, P. and Pefanis, J. (1995). Chaosmosis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hirschhorn, T. (2009). «THE BIJLMER SPINOZA-FESTIVAL». Available at [at]: http://www.thomashirschhorn.com/the-bijlmer-spinoza-festival/ [Accessed 21 October 2021].

O’Neil, P. (n.d.). Co-productive Exhibition-Making and Three Principal Categories of Organisation: the Background, the Middle-ground and the Foreground. In: Oncurating.org. Available [at]: https://www.on-curating.org/issue-22-43/co-productive-exhibition-making-and-three-principal-categories-of-organisation-the-background-the-middle-ground-and-the-foregrou.html#.YZ-QnvHP3UI

Publicworksgroup.net. (n.d.). public works: Projects: #Transacting: A market of values. [online] Available at: <https://www.publicworksgroup.net/projects/transactinga-market-of-values> [Accessed 29 November 2021].

Ravenrow.org. (2017). Raven Row. [online] Available at: <http://www.ravenrow.org/exhibition/incasethereisareason_the_theatre_of_mistakes/> [Accessed 29 November 2021].

Read, H. (1970). Education through art. London: Faber and Faber.