All of us have had to learn how to work differently and move differently through the world as a result of the global pandemic. With this project, we wanted to hold a space for sitting in the uncertainty and confusion, and give artists an opportunity to reflect on how their creative practice and priorities have changed. We also want to use this as an opportunity to reflect on the distinct challenges that transitioning to virtual or web-mediated interactions pose.

The opportunity to develop an agile, responsive and cooperative publication platform that - in the spirit of dispatches from the field - facilitates conversations between diverse voices from across the globe in addressing both the challenges to and capacities of socially engaged art in a time of global pandemic. We value the combined experience held within the partner organisations, bringing academic, organisational and practice led expertise to a rich transdisciplinary and collegiate ground from which to advance this project.

In the many different situations it has touched, the global pandemic shows up structural inequality and, at the same time, creates a need for human cooperation and mutual aid. Social art practice has arguably always focused on crisis conditions and issues of social concern. This project is an opportunity to reflect on this work now that it has become more urgent, but also more precarious.

Drawing upon the ethos and values of the Counterpoints Arts’ Learning Lab programme, the inspiration is to find a way to work cooperatively and horizontally with international partners in the context of the pandemic. Specifically to explore through the prism of social art practice alongside other insights and perspectives, the inequalities and fault lines exposed by COVID. How might we create a virtual platform for dynamic cross-sector conversations and modes of collaboration between people, projects and organisations? How might we listen and learn from different social actors; to move beyond our relative (even if well-meaning ‘) ‘silos’.

Counterpoints Arts had just completed a survey asking artists in our network to spell out the impact of Covid on their lives and socially engaged practices. We also asked artists what they needed from organisations like ours, how they’d like us to respond. This project has felt like a very appropriate way to respond – for us to work with others to pull resources, our networks, different disciplines and skills, and to create a partnership project, a space where we could collaborate, imagine and curate with others, be creative in amplification of new thinking and learning from all kinds of different contexts.

The meaning for me in this project is represented by the absolute necessity of working together now, across the world and with many people. Although the arts have much to say about the pandemic and the rupture this has caused, and art as social practice is under pressure because of it, this work is not limited to the cultural sector. This is also not about agreeing on difference, but rather a stepping forward into true collaboration. The question of how to effectively reach people with diverse views is answered by this initiative and echoes much of the work I am doing currently with diverse communities in the city and in building the profile of the new School of Critical and Cultural Studies at PCA.

Drawing upon the ethos and values of the Counterpoints Arts’ Learning Lab programme, the inspiration is to find a way to work cooperatively and horizontally with international partners in the context of the pandemic. Specifically to explore through the prism of social art practice alongside other insights and perspectives, the inequalities and fault lines exposed by COVID. How might we create a virtual platform for dynamic cross-sector conversations and modes of collaboration between people, projects and organisations? How might we listen and learn from different social actors; to move beyond our relative (even if well-meaning ‘) ‘silos’.

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented us with a host of challenges, some individual and some collective. One particularly clear challenge that we have faced is that we find ourselves less able to develop our ideas for the future and our ongoing work in an environment of such uncertainty. We now operate in a context of substantially less security and predictability than beforehand. There is a tremendous need for us to question the work we do; the current situation has underlined the need for us to reconsider our understandings and definitions of terms like ‘safety’, ‘certainty’ and ‘security’. There is no quick fix for this. Rather, we must review, adapt and improve the structures with which we have worked historically. There is a similarly great need for stakeholders in national cultural sectors to look beyond their individual nations and converse with experts and stakeholders in other sectors internationally. This syndicate has opened up the possibility for us to explore the new and different conversations.