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The Whitworth Social
Andrea Hawkins, Head of Public Engagement at Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery and artist Lucienne Cole talk about an innovative approach to publicly-engaged art.
On 17 May 2008 around 220 people arrived at the Whitworth Art Gallery for a thoroughly Mancunian celebration of dancehall culture and popular music. Amateur and professional dancers, mainly sixty to seventy-six years of age, worked with artist Lucienne Cole and freelance Project Manager Amanda Griffiths to create an intergenerational project that took command of the South Gallery. A few months earlier, the Whitworth Art Gallery launched a new public engagement strategy with the aim to create new opportunities for collaboration and community participation. This strategy aimed to support co-created projects that responded to the building, collections or exhibitions, and was social, intelligent and imaginative. Quite simply, this needed to be tested and I needed to work with someone that I could trust. I've known Lucienne for many years and respected her work, and I also valued her interpersonal skills and her very great ability to work with people. And, so it was that I approached her with a question: how would you use the gallery institution as a site for community interest? The practical stuff was important if the project was to get off to the best start, therefore we needed to...
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