Open Eye Gallery’s Head of Social Practice Liz Wewiora will be taking part in Socially Engaged Art and Ethics conference, discussing socially engaged work in the gallery and running a workshop around ethics of care.
This day-long, in-person conference aims to interrogate the inherent entanglements between power, politics & socially engaged art. It hopes to explore and unpick the ethical assumptions about art in the public domain in a way that does not seek to provide universal answers, but rather give room for critical reflection.
Friday 9 May / 9am–5pm / Queen Margaret University, EH21 6UU / tickets
What are the ethics around Socially Engaged Arts? This work – and the related activities of Participatory Arts, Community Arts, Relational Aesthetics, Arts & Health, etc – all work with communities and groups who can sometimes be the most vulnerable in society. Along with an artist’s own desire to engage with such people, funders and policy frameworks also push to ensure that ‘public good’ is a key output of artistic activities. But is it the purpose of art to make the world ‘better’? Can it actually make the world better? Whilst self-expression undoubtably has a individual benefit, can it solve structural inequities such as poverty and other inequalities? How is this work ‘doing good’? And whose definition of ‘goodness’ is being used?
This event aims to explore some of these questions, taking as its starting point a new edited anthology: “Socially Engaged Art and Ethics: Power, Politics and Participation” (publication date estimated June 2025), and will feature a diverse mix of participants and speakers that will provide case studies, examples and/or research insights
The conference is free to attend.
Image by Rob Battersby