Contemporary curatorial practice is increasingly preoccupied with notions of public engagement and participation, in the context of debates over Relational Aesthetics, socially engaged arts practice and the relationship of art and activism. Curatorial Studio: Curating in Social Space enables students to operate creatively, critically and effectively within this context as both initiators and collaborators.

This studio aims to equip students with a critical understanding of some of the key theoretical and practical issues confronting curators working in “social space”. The studio is aimed at those wishing to extend the curatorial field beyond existing audiences of the “white cube” to reach variegated, specific and diverse publics both within and without gallery spaces. Through this studio students will critically evaluate notions of “community”, “participation”, “collaboration” and “public” to develop their own ideas on how to construct an encounter between “audience”, “social praxis” and “art”.

This course will provide real life situations, supported by partnerships with experienced individuals and institutions, where students can develop their own independent approaches to curating in social situations. By the end of the course students will have chosen a specific community within which to work, developed a curatorial premise, produced a project text, and curated a project. Students will develop skills in determining who is their intended audience, attempting to reach that audience, and evaluating how successfully their project has operated within the defined social space.

This studio will equally weight participatory, collaborative, curatorial and textual components encouraging students to engage with the complexity of how curatorial knowledge is produced and activated. This studio will encourage self-reflexivity by integrating forms of self-assessment within external assessment procedures.