Privilege and the Displaced, Artist Residency – full application brief

1. Introduction and context

We are seeking proposals from artists to undertake a two-week research-based residency in LADA’s Study Room in Hackney Wick, London, exploring Live Art practices and methodologies in relation to the experiences of the displaced.

This will be one of four Residencies at LADA as part of our project Restock, Rethink Reflect Four on Live Art and Privilege.

Restock, Rethink, Reflect (RRR) is an ongoing series mapping underrepresented artists, practices and histories, specifically in relation to ideas of cultural identities. The series aims to mark the impact of Live Art practices and approaches to questions of representation and agency, whilst supporting future generations of practitioners through artist’s development opportunities, resources, projects, and publications.

The first Restock, Rethink, Reflect was on Live Art and Race (2006-08), the second on Live Art and Disability (2009-12), and the third on Live Art and Feminism (2013-15).

Restock, Rethink, Reflect Four (2016-18) will focus on issues of cultural and economic privilege. It is being developed in collaboration with Dr Amit Rai of Queen Mary, University of London, and aims to mark and map the ways in which Live Art has developed new forms of access to, and understandings of, knowledge, agency, and inclusion in relation to the under-represented, marginalized and disenfranchised constituencies of:

1. the young
2. the old
3. the displaced, and
4. from the perspective of the lived relations of class and privilege

The first year of Restock, Rethink, Reflect Four (2016-17) will be research based: mapping the territories, unpicking the most critical questions, and developing new partnerships, strategies and approaches.

This research will primarily take the form of four two-week long artist-led residencies in LADA’s Study Room.

The residencies will also form part of, and contribute to, LADA’s work for the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP), an EU-funded research project looking at collaborative practices within socially engaged contexts. The overall goal of CAPP is to improve and open up opportunities for artists who are working collaboratively across Europe, by enhancing mobility and exchange whilst at the same time engaging new publics and audiences for collaborative practices. The principle aims of the CAPP residencies are to explore new models of participation and co-operation and encourage an exchange of artists’ methodologies, contexts
and ideas.

2. The Residencies

LADA’s four RRR4 / CAPP residencies in 2016-17 will consider –

• How Live Art practices and methodologies have engaged artists, participants and audiences that have been historically and socially excluded from the experience of art?
• How Live Art methodologies can activate political questions of different forms of privilege effectively?
• How the distinct experiences of knowledge, research, access, and collaborative approaches within Live Art can be a generative ground to develop new methodologies of participatory arts development?
• Whose knowledge is valid and valued, and why?
• What forms can research take?
• How can disenfranchised peoples access the arts, be heard in our culture, and have their experiences valued?

The four residencies will ask how Live Art as an experimental, practical, and political response to inequality and exclusion, can develop new, and reassess the emergent, approaches and methodologies that can contribute to disadvantaged individuals and communities in material ways, especially in the area of arts provision and social and political engagement.

The residencies will centre on LADA’s Study Room resource which acts as both a repository of knowledge and a generator of activities. They will particularly focus on The Library of Performing Rights, a unique resource housed within the Study Room of materials examining the intersection between performance and Human Rights. The Library was developed by Lois Weaver of Queen Mary University of London in collaboration with LADA for Performance Studies international 12: Performing Rights in 2006. The RRR4 residency/research project aims to reactivate and reanimate the Library as a resource accessible at LADA, online, and on tour.

At the conclusion of the four RRR4 residencies the lead artists will work with LADA and its partners on devising a seminar/symposium drawing out the key findings from the research project, showcasing the outcomes and mapping future projects and possibilities. This event is planned for March 2017.

3. Residency on ‘the displaced’

This residency is in partnership with Counterpoints Arts.

The two-week residency can take place anytime between September and December 2016.

The residency is a continuation of LADA and Counterpoints Arts’ collaboration on the dis/placed programme of events in 2015 which was organised in response to global demographic shifts and unprecedented levels of human displacement.

This residency is an opportunity for artists who are, or who are interested in, engaging with experiences of people who are ‘staying temporarily’, sometimes for generations, in stateless limbos, detention centres, refugee camps or urban settlements – living within a country’s borders yet outside its political, legal and civic life.

The residency will consider the ways that Live Art has both responded to, or could respond to, such experiences. It will look at the ways that Live Art has offered a context where the dispossessed, disenfranchised and disembodied can become visible and vocal; a space to represent, and embody, lived experiences of displacement; and a strategy to give agency to the disempowered and silenced.

The aims and anticipated outcomes of the residency include –

1. The research and acquisition of a range of new resources to enhance LADA’s Study Room holdings around issues of displacement.
2. A ‘toolkit’ of methodologies to be disseminated through LADA and the artist’s and partners’ networks within the cultural sector and Higher Education, and through our work as a partner on CAPP.
3. A Study Room Guide in the form of case studies around these territories.
4. An evaluation report for LADA/CAPP.
5. Contribution to a public event in March 2017 (as noted above).

The lead artist will shape the form and approach of their residency, but it is expected that the residency will involve conversations/collaborations with a diverse range of participants and partners including artists, researchers, scholars, activists, producers working in these fields.

It is anticipated that the artist will research and plan much of their residency in advance of being in situ at LADA, and will liaise with LADA in advance on their plans and what LADA needs to acquire or prepare for them.

4. Eligibility

The residency is aimed at an artist who is from, or based in, one of the CAPP partners’ territories – the UK, Ireland, Spain, Finland, Hungary and Germany.

The residency is aimed at an artist with lived experience of displacement or with direct experience of working with the displaced.

The artist must work within the area of Live Art and have at least five years experience of making and presenting work.

The artist must have direct experience of, and an interest in, working collaboratively.

The artist must have direct experience of, and an interest in, undertaking self-determined research and developing new approaches to, and understandings of, research in relation to Live Art.

We are interested in proposals from companies and collectives as well as individual artists, but they must be open to involving conversations/collaborations with a diverse range of participants and partners including artists, researchers, scholars, activists, producers working in these fields within their residency.

We particularly welcome proposals from artists from culturally diverse backgrounds and artists working in/with ‘underrepresented’ territories.

5. The offer

The artist will receive a residency budget of £6,000.

The residency budget is intended to cover a fee for the artist; any related taxes; travel costs to, from and within London; visas (if relevant); all meals and hospitality; and accommodation for the duration of the residency (which the artist must secure and pay for directly).

The residency budget is also inclusive of all planning time, and for the artists’ contribution to the final event in March 2017 (however, LADA will separately cover travel and accommodation for the residency artist to attend the event).

The residency budget is inclusive of any fees and expenses to be paid to any other collaborators or artists, researchers, scholars, activists, producers who are invited to contribute to the residency, and any hospitality provided for them.

LADA will provide additional resources for the acquisition of Study Room materials, the production of the toolkits and Study Room Guides, and the production costs for the final event in March 2017, including travel and accommodation for the residency artists.

6. Application process

Artist are invited to submit applications via an online application process 

– Full name, contact details and URL (where applicable)

– Up to 250 words on the nature of their practice, recent and current projects and activities.

– Up to 250 words on their experience of working with these issues and of their experiences of, and approaches to, collaboration.

– Up to 500 words on how they would approach their residency and how the residency would contribute to their own practice.

– A proposed allocation across fees and expenses of the £6,000 residency budget.

– Proposed dates for the residency.

Applicants must complete a monitoring questionnaire and applications will not be eligible without it.

The deadline for applications is 14 July 2016

Artists will be selected by LADA in collaboration with Almir Koldzic of Counterpoints Arts and Dr Amit Rai.

Applicants will be notified by early August 2016

7. Partners

The Live Art Development Agency (LADA)
LADA is a Centre for Live Art: a knowledge centre, a production centre for programmes and publications, a research centre setting artists and ideas in motion, and an online centre for digital experimentation, representation and dissemination.
LADA houses an open access research library, the Study Room; runs Unbound, an online shop for Live Art books, DVDs and editions; pioneers models of artistic and professional development, dialogue and debate; contributes to research culture and education; and develops inventive ways of increasing access to, and engagement with, Live Art through programming and publishing projects. All aspects of LADA’s work are informed by issues of difference and diversity, and are grounded in a commitment to creating the conditions in which innovation, experimentation and risk can thrive.

Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP)
CAPP is a transnational cultural programme focusing on the dynamic area of collaborative arts. CAPP partners: Create Ireland (Dublin, Ireland), Agora (Berlin, Germany), Heart of Glass (Liverpool, GB), Kunsthalle Osnabrück (Osnabrück, Germany), Live Art Development Agency (London, GB), Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, GB), Ludwig Múzeum (Budapest, Hungary), m-cult (Helsinki, Finland) and hablarenarte: (Madrid, Spain).

Counterpoints Arts: 
“We engage with refugee and migrant experiences through arts and cultural programmes. Our mission is to support and produce the arts by and about migrants and refugees, seeking to ensure that their cultural and artistic contributions are recognized and welcomed within British arts, history and culture. Central to our mission is our belief in the ability of the arts to inspire social change and enhance inclusion & cultural integration of refugees & migrants. We work across all art forms and collaborate with a range of people and partners: artists, arts/cultural and educational organizations and civil society activists. We are based in Hoxton, London working nationally and internationally.”