Conducting Participatory Arts Projects: A Practical Toolkit

This toolkit is intended to help artists and artsresearchers to plan, organise, document andevaluate participatory arts projects in differentcontexts. Its publication evolved in thecontext of a Europe-wide research projectfunded by the EU Research and Innovation programmeHorizon 2020. This research project –Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture(AMASS) – is an arts-based three-year project(2020-2023) that aims to bring people basedin different European contexts together withartists to work collaboratively on creative andexperimental research. Through participatoryapproaches conducted in new artistic productionsand research projects, AMASS exploresand analyses the role of the arts in engagingwith societal challenges and evaluating the societal impact of the arts. It also addressesthe marginalisation of certain groups insociety by analysing power imbalances and exploring artistic, pedagogical and other waysof promoting inclusive strategies and sharingthe benefits of innovation and service solutions. The many strategies adopted by differentAMASS partners call for the involvementof various stakeholders like NGOs, artists, regionalarts advocates, community membersand others in decision-making tactics andforum group discussions revolving aroundsocial needs and constraints. Strongly embeddedin the value of alternative knowledgesystems and the belief that the arts can initiatesignificant transformations in policy andperceptions, AMASS is intended as a catalystfor change in various contexts, and multi-disciplinaryresults emerging from an evaluationof its testbed will contribute towards policyrecommendations at local, regional and internationallevels. This toolkit shares many ofthe challenges and enthusiasm for the artsthat characterise AMASS and its activities.