The multi-layered strategy incorporates print, sculpture, the theatrical and the bureaucratic and moves from gallery space into schools, town squares and streets. Socially engaged work may need this social activity. It also needs to ‘cultivate the science of human relationships.’ (Roosevelt, 1945).
The socially engaged art projects drive a search for an artist’s social role, one that could be translated as a service through engagement, without compromising the freedom of individual expression. This contains a step-by-step strategy for complex socially engaged projects.
The objectives are to identify situational and everyday concerns, from hunger to sustainability because in an interdependent world between daily lives and politics, we are interlinked. The image connects the banalities of life, the narrative and the minutiae that make us human. Frimodig seeks to transform the seemingly mundane through creativity and imagination in order to examine the structures of society. It is a way to invent new forms by elevating ‘the language and images of everyday life into meaningful ideas’ (Zeitlyn, 1974: 29).
These lead to hands-on projects which engaged with causes broader than a singular individual artistic expression, without losing sight of the aesthetics and visceral final print.
The Five Step Strategy offers a structured and adaptable model for arts social practice. Each completed project presents outcomes that can be broken down, analysed, and refined and built upon for future projects. It also offers proof, through aims and completed outcomes in a structured form. It provides a structure for the process that spans across creative, social and academic fields, the educational and the political and opens up more opportunities to deliver impact.
• Identify clear objectives
• Instigate preparatory activities through workshops and training
• Connect through public engagement and community activities and education
• Present, reflect and disseminate across disciplines
• Embed knowledge in practice by making and showing own and shared work
