The Crafting of Practice

We are currently part of a group made up of artists and academics; im not sure the group have a name, but we are currently talking/posting at
http://thecraftofpractice.blogspot.com

The group are interested in:
Knowledge exchange between Universities and communities.
How communities can be represented.
What issues or problems lie within the construction of communities.
Historical ties that bind communities.
but also recognise that missing from much of this rhetoric is a focus on (intuitive) practice – in particular those kinds that third sector organizations, community representatives and artists have to articulate when engaging in knowledge exchange. We also know that increasingly ethnographers are being asked to work with organizations who are encountering a gap between the successful work they do, the funders who want a very specific form of evidence, and the policy makers who are not hearing the voices of the users.

All members of this new group are due to meet formally on the 16th Jan at MIRIAD - Manchester Met, with the aim of bringing together different experiences of practice and by beginning to make these explicit try to provide alternative forms of ‘rigor’ and ‘evidence’. From this day we hope to form a Connected Communities AHRC alongside other ambitions.

As a group we have formed out of Seven Sights - http://7sights.blogspot.com. This earlier incarnation was made up of 7 artist and 7 academics who came together to look at cross disciplinary working and site specificity [see diagram!] Seven Sights was started by Steve and I, off the back of a really productive collaboration and project at an archive - Artemis in Leeds - http://artemisartists.blogspot.com , that Steve and I devised and got funding for. As an extension of this residency in Leeds we were awarded ACE money to enable Seven Sights to gather at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Whereby new collaborative relationships could be encouraged and so with it the exploration and questioning of site from different perspectives. With the MIRIAD group it seems our hopes are happening.