Community
Art made with a community, not about one.
Commissioned, art-led projects that bring people together around a story worth telling. They sit where community health, creativity, local history and narrative meet, and they leave something behind that the people who made it are proud to stand next to.
Apple Michigan Avenue · Everyone Can Code + Create
The Masks We Wear
An augmented reality installation made with students in Chicago. They built masks standing for the personas we present to the world, and the piece turns them outward: step up and it finds your face and puts one on you.
Made with, not about.
Participants are collaborators. They shape the questions, the words and the way their story is told. Craft and technology are there to hold space and amplify, never to speak over the top.
What it connects
Five threads, one project.
The best community projects do several things at once. These are the threads we look for, and a good commission pulls on most of them.
Community health
Making things together is good for people. Creative work opens conversations about belonging, identity and wellbeing that are hard to start any other way.
Art
Real craft, real materials, real finish. The work has to be good enough that the people who made it are proud to stand next to it.
Creativity
Most people have been told at some point that they are not creative. A good project quietly proves otherwise, usually within the first hour.
Local history
Every place already holds its stories. We look for the ones that have not been told properly yet, and the people who carry them.
Narrative
Whose story gets told, and who gets to tell it. Participants are authors of their own account, not material for someone else's.
How it runs
From first conversation to opening night.
- 01
Listening
Time on the ground before any decisions. Who is here, what matters to them, and what they would actually want to make. This part is not a formality.
- 02
Shaping
Choosing the form together. A film, an exhibition, an AR layer over a place, a book, an installation. The form follows the story rather than the other way round.
- 03
Making
Hands-on sessions where participants are collaborators, not subjects. They shape the questions, the words and how their story is told.
- 04
Sharing
A screening, an opening, a launch. The moment the wider community sees the work and the people who made it are seen making it.
- 05
Leaving something behind
The finished piece, and the skills. A project that ends when we leave was not built properly.
Forms it can take
- Short film and documentary
- Exhibition and installation
- Augmented reality placed in a real location
- Publication and printed work
- Workshop series
- Digital archive of local stories
Who commissions this
- Councils and local government
- Community health and wellbeing services
- Galleries, museums and libraries
- Youth organisations
- Festivals and events
- Historical societies and heritage groups
- Schools and school communities
Commissions
Have a community in mind?
Tell us about the place, the people and what you would like the work to do. Funding and timelines can be worked out once we know the shape of it.
Community projects
Start a conversation
A few quick questions. We read every one.
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Prefer email? Send us the details directly.