Create and Counterpoints Arts are pleased to announce the 2024 Summer School on Collaborative Practice and Social Change for up to 14 artists and cultural activists. The Summer School will take place over six days: 10 – 15 June 2024, at Killary Lodge, Co Galway. The deadline for submission is 5pm, Monday 15 April 2024.
In a world increasingly shaped by the erosion of democracy and public trust, together with the impact of global displacement, the Summer School on Collaborative Practice and Social Change invites socially engaged artists and cultural activists to take part in a unique and timely learning space.
The Summer School will focus on the central role that grassroots communities play in the strengthening of local and trans-local democratic practices. The School is shaped by a belief in the power of cooperative and transdisciplinary ‘thinking through doing’; in the transformative potential of projects that can facilitate new political imaginaries from the ground-up; in public sphere projects that are co-produced via creative alliances between artists, activists and communities of place and interest.
Now in its seventh year, the Summer School will expand its focus on the importance of countering disinformation and false narratives through mobilisation of the place-based sensibilities of socially engaged arts practice; combining participation and collaboration across diverse communities, with the storytelling and reporting skills of investigative journalism and digital activism.
We encourage applications from artists and cultural activists who are involved or are interested in social change and movement organising in relation to structures of inequality, further inviting intersectional practices shaped by a range of mediums including music, film, theatre, creative writing, journalism, architecture and design and visual arts, amongst others.
The six-day format of the Summer School is designed as an immersive incubator inviting participants to work on an imagined cooperative commission, alongside skills training workshops, comparative case studies, peer-to-peer reflection and one-to-one mentoring.
If you are interested to participate in the 2024 Summer School on Collaborative Practice and Social Change, please submit a short Expression of Interest (EOI) giving us a sense of your socially engaged practice and/or cultural activism to date; and what you wish to bring to the cooperative values and ethos of the School (see EOI guidelines for more information).
The Summer School is delivered in partnership by Create and Counterpoints Arts with funding support from The Arts Council of Ireland and the Rowan Trust.
Summer School Director: Dr Áine O’Brien – Curator of Learning and Research and Co-Founder, CounterpointsSummer School
Producer: Áine Crowley – Programme Manager, Arts and Engagement, Create
Visiting artists and facilitators:
Ismail Einashe, Investigative Journalist and Cultural Activist
Khaled Barakeh, Socially Engaged Artist and Founder/Director, co culture
Kate O’Shea, Socially Engaged Artist and Cultural Activist
