Reorganising Cultural Institutions

Description

If we could start again, how would we organise the production and dissemination of culture within the UK? How can we learn from international models with different histories and conceptualisations of culture and institution? This symposium will take place in the Project Space gallery and the BxNU Experimental Studio, High Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne. The symposium is free but booking is essential. Reorganising cultural institutions, three days of talks and discussions about how cultural institutions function in the UK, their social and political history and the ways in which they shape value and taste, is the first in a series of BXNU initiatives on the topic which aims to bring together the work of European intellectual deliberation and local, national and international forms of organisational praxis.Lectures, panel discussions and seminars over two days will take place covering the following topics: Constituents Governance Critical production Economies Equality The mature system of cultural bureaucracy that is now pervasive in the UK is based on a logic of central distribution that has complex social and political roots – both within systems of emancipation and welfare state provision and within the increased econometrics of cultural value. When we think about cultural provision in the UK it is normally to the network of large and small-scale government-funded organisations that we turn, many of which have in themselves complex histories and associations often homologised through currencies of administration. Alternative associations, small scale acts and initiatives, exist and have always existed, fighting to preserve a heteroglossia of practice through workers education, artist-run initiatives, community arts, cooperative organisation. How might we learn from these without co-opting systems of the strategically invisible into the light of the attention economy? How can UK organisations learn from international experiments in cultural organisation? The BxNU Institute is a centre for international artistic and curatorial research and practice instigated by Northumbria University and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art led by Andrea Phillips, BALTIC Professor of Art. We develop exhibition ideas, discussions and events that are ambitious and interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on critical themes of priority at both institutions.

Period	2019 → …
Event title	Reorganising Cultural Institutions
Event type	Conference
Location	Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International