Author: Marcelo

Imperial War Museum, Public Engagement & Learning / Participation 2023 – 2024

Head of Delivery for IWM’s Public Engagement and Learning department which we renamed Participation with a focus to co-create with schools, adults, young people, and families in order to understand and explore the human impact of conflict.

• Part of the Leadership Team that devised, delivered and evaluated  all engagement programming across 5 museums in 3 locations in England.
• Provided direct leadership and management of operational systems and processes, supported by a team of Senior Producers, Producers, Operations Assistants and Facilitators.
• Worked with colleagues across the all branches of the museum to deliver collaborative projects that fostered an engagement and programming cross over and ensure compliance with policies and governance, creating new policy and trainings where needed, and focussing on visitor growth of emerging audiences.
• Developing and delivering a new Participation Strategy and five-year business plan, including responsibility for a new lifecycle process for core and temporary engagement activities, a new Evaluation Framework and redevelopment of the Social Impact Framework.
• Led the Department’s operational activities, coordinating cross-departmental functions with teams including Visitor Experience, Volunteering, Finance, HR, Facilities and Customer Services. This included the transition to a new ticketing system from TOR to Digitickets and working with Service Design to implement user-centred changes.
• Oversaw all Departmental processes including programme lifecycles, risk management, project and partnership management, and KPI reporting, ensuring compliance with business standards and governance.
• Overall management of the Delivery and Operations team of 60 Learning Assistants, 13 Facilitators, 5 Operations Assistants and 1 Senior Producers of Operations.

Development Associate 2020 – 2022

Axis is a membership charity that supports contemporary visual arts in the UK with resources, opportunities, and platforms to support and showcase work. During this period, I worked alongside the CEO, building a new business plan for the charity that focuses on providing arts-based services across the UK. This has included diversifying income streams, having secured funding from new sources such as Artfund, Arts Council England and the Arts & Humanities Research Council as well as maintaining strategic relationships with key stakeholders. I led on fundraising that brought £10,000 from Artfund for the Social Art Library and £79,000 from Arts Council Project Grant for Social ARTery; Two new platforms launched with the aim to gather and build resources around hybrid/blended participatory art. I was also responsible for the restructuring and redeveloping of Job Designs, allowing all employees to become part of a holistic working team.

• Work alongside CEO and a team of 5 in an artist membership charity providing arts based services across the UK
• Developed and launched two new platforms for social practice: Social Art Library (online database of work) Social ARTery (action learning commissioning and resource building around hybrid/blended participatory art) 
• Developed new business plan for the charity which included milestones around diversifying income streams, sustainably grow the charity’s work across the UK and develop new beneficial partnerships for the charity. Recent successes have included securing funding from new sources including Artfund, Arts Council England and Arts & Humanities Research Council. I have formed new strategic partnerships in Government Levelling up areas across the UK with creative sector and local authority partners to grow the reach of the charity and its memberships.
• Develop and maintain strategic relationships with key funders and stakeholders including local authority Councillors and officers in Sheffield, Creativity Works (arts & mental health charity), Socially Engaged Arts Salon (Brighton).
• Successful grant applications include: £10,000 from Artfund for Social Art Library, £35,000 from Arts Council for Emergency Covid Relief funds, £79,000 from Arts Council Project Grant for Social ARTery, £90,000 from AHRC for Social Art for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion fellowship.
• Created a new programme of restructuring and redeveloping Job Designs in relation to the corporate strategies, resulting in new updated job descriptions for all employees including clear roles and responsibilities between each team member as a holistic working team rather than independent workers.

 

 

Development Lead
Let’s Get Phygital commissions series
2022-2022

Conceptualised, fundraised (70K) and delivered an action research learning partnership that commissioned artists across England to develop hybrid digital and physical participatory practice.

These commissions supported creative practitioners through radical and innovative ways of how we integrate everyday technology into our lives in a post-pandemic world.

Through a combination of support we investigated how creativity expressed and participation made simultaneously online and in person.

Supported by Digital Mentor John Whall.

Project Announcement

Original Call Out for Submissions

Project Blog

Webinar:

Toolkit:

AHRC EDI Fellowship, Co-Lead
Social Artists for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (SAFEDI) 2021-2022

A research project that brought together social artists, community participants, arts organisations and policy-makers to understand what kind of barriers underrepresented people face around access, culture and creativity.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as one of ten pilot Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Engagement Fellowships, SAFEDI was initiated by Professor Amanda Ravetz of Manchester Metropolitan University and developed with R.M. Sánchez-Camus (Lead Artist), Axisweb and Social Art Network. Six social artists worked with six audience-communities affected by exclusion, approaching practice as research to include the voices of participants who are not listened to in debates about the visual arts.

Project announcement

Project Blog 1

Project Blog 2

The artists and projects:

Meet the artists

Artist Blog

Research Outputs:

The project aimed to develop support for social artists and share learning with the cultural sector. This initiative was especially urgent given the Covid 19 pandemic and civil rights movement during lockdown, which has prompted UK cultural organisations to review their collections and policies to determine how these reflect historical issues around colonisation and racism. Art Fund’s 2020 survey revealed that the number one concern for arts institutions upon reopening was how to attract audiences again whilst Art Council’s research stated that the creative industries are ‘failing to make use of diverse talent in the UK’. In response to these issues SAFEDI encourages solutions, bridging between innovative social art practices that are currently unacknowledged, and mainstream visual art organisations requiring guidance, benefitting both while amplifying the community voice that the cultural sector is required to serve.

Reports observing the successes, challenges and benefits of the pilot have now been published.

Process and Findings Report

Executive Summary

Evaluation Report

Co-Lead
Social Art Library (SOAL), 2020-2022

An interactive digital space, for and about social art practice. SOAL holds a collection of projects submitted by artists, custom content created and commissioned by Axis, outcomes from an artist/librarian-in-residence programme, and a digital archive of current thinking around the intersection between art and society. This can all be accessed on the library’s website.

During the complex and tumultuous events of 2020, the team sought to create a centralised hub for all things social practice, placing the control of its histories and narratives in the hands of those who knew it best, whilst developing a useful resource for institutions looking to commission new projects.

R.M. Sánchez-Camus received support from Art Fund and partnered with Social Art Network to select 12 Art Ambassadors that developed innovative ways of documenting and archiving social practice. Their projects established useful and meaningful approaches to showcase knowledge within the field, and have been documented on the Axis website.

Postcard designed by Kitty Hopking as part of Art Ambassador Anna Horton Cremin’s project ‘Mycelium Mail‘ – A socially distanced postal game that encouraged neighbours to get to know each other through play, growing, sharing recipes and thinking about the future and the climate.

Development Lead 2020-2022

An interactive online exchange platform that helped facilitate remote collaboration and creative making. Conceived in response to the growth of community-centred art and the need for better digital solutions to support participatory work (as a result of Covid-19), the platform represented an alternative to mainstream social media sites, to create and present participatory art innovatively, run workshops, host peer-to-peer meetups and archive the learnings for the benefit of the wider artistic community.

Project Team: R.M. Sánchez-Camus (Lead), Lucy Wright (Producer), Mark Smith (Axis), Daniela Liberati (Coordinator) and John Whall (Digital Mentor).

Meet The Pioneers:

In 2020, the ARTery project team worked closely with a selection of artists (known as The Pioneers), to trial the platform before it become more widely accessible. The project, supported by an Arts Council Emergency Fund, explored the intersection between online and in-person participation and how exciting new ways of working with audience could be established. Read the Launch.

‘Activation, Permission, Validation and Agony‘ was a zoom performance by ARTery Pioneers The Women’s Art Activation System (WAAS). When discussing their Pioneer commission they stated that:

‘Being part of the ARTery gave us a chance to bring our practice online in a way that we wouldn’t have been able to. There was an intimacy in our digital sessions and the fact that we can stay connected in the ARTery also creates a sense of having a longer-term relationship that is sometimes missed at live events.’

The Pioneers: Sandra Bouguerch, Cath Carver, Niki Colclough, Sarah Dixon & Shaon Bennett, Bronia Evers, Rik Fisher, Anna Francis, James Harrington & Jennifer Booth, Pete Kinisington – Preston Street Union, Shonagh Short, Lady Kitt, Gil Mualem-Doron, Kajal Nisha Patel, Anna Smith, Simon Tyszko and Jo Wheeler.

Let’s Get Phygital:

This commissioning series, for hybrid physical/digital participation, continued the learning of the programme. The project considered how we can share and use the basic resources at hand for meaningful engagement. How is creativity expressed and participation made simultaneously online and in person? Artists were encouraged to think through radical and innovative ways of integrating everyday technology into our post-pandemic lives. Their works can be viewed on the Axis website.

Patrick Furness and Eddie Parker, two of the Phygital artists, were sub-commissioned by R.M. Sánchez-Camus for the Applied Live Art Studio’s 2022 ‘Stars of Westgate’ installation. Alongside the projection of stars made by the local community, they combined a soundtrack of electronic sounds, bells and Westgate street recordings to be played in the Cathedral.

The Phygital Artists: Patrick Furness, Eddie Parker, Hull Artist Research Initiative (HARI) – Sarah Pennington & Thomas Robinson, Bolton Contemporary – Andee Collard & Rebecca Harrington, Simon Hall, Pamela Crowe, José García Oliva.

 

Co-Founder, Co-Director

Social Art Publications (SAP) aims to develop expanded critical and reflective dialogue around the work of socially engaged practice, be a platform to showcase new work, strengthen peer support for artist book distribution, and be a database of current and historic publications.

We offer a collection of ISBNs and a partnership with Live Art Development Agency’s bookshop Unbound, we are supporting artists to publish their artists book and find distribution.

Developed at the Social Art Assembly of Social Art Network.

For more information www.socialartpublications.org

Founding Co-Director of a national mutual aid group for social practice artists in the UK.

Social Art Network is a UK based community of artists committed to building agency for the field of art and social practice. Through sector-specific meet-ups four key factors are focused on to support artists and strengthen the field: A platform to showcase and discuss current work; Expanded critical and reflective dialogue around the work; A national network of artists to strengthen peer support and artists’ development; A database of current, past and historic projects.

My key role was ensuring the organisation’s future resilience, having successfully received £15,000 from Arts Council for the Social Art Summit and £10,000 from Artfund for Social Art London’s online meetups, that supported creative practitioners working with communities during lockdown. Over 2,000 people per year have participated in the delivery programme, many of which have been young NEETS, adults with mental health conditions and adults and carers living with dementia. Building the partnership with Axisweb led to over 200K in partnership project funding. Social Art Publication was developed as an independent publishing house offering ISBN’s for socially engaged publications. I set up both steering committees to run each organisations. 

• Successfully led the organisations through new governance development and management process to shape a new business plan and diversify income streams and ensure organisation´s future resilience. 
• Successful grant applications include: £15,000 from Arts Council for Social Art Summit, a national review of socially engaged practice, £10,000 from Artfund for Social Art Network London online meetups during lockdown to support creative practitioners working with communities. 20K of Social ARTery Project Grant towards SAN/SAP partnership. 
• Development and implementation of organisational wide data capture and evaluation/impact methodology to capture social impact and new audience’s data
• Line managed 12 national hubs, each with 2-4 representatives, and oversaw the organisation´s delivery programme including, high profile artist public realm commissions with Axis, SAFEDI and socially engaged projects with over 2,000 participants per year including disabled children, young NEETS, adults with mental health conditions and adults and carers living with dementia among others.