92. The Labour of Participation: Socially Engaged Practice, Publics and Institutional Responsibility

Participation has become a central language through which contemporary art institutions articulate their public role, foregrounding values of access, agency, care and dialogue through socially engaged art practices. This session asks what kinds of labour make these practices possible, and how responsibility for that labour and for the relationships it produces is distributed between artists, institutions, practitioners and publics.

Since the 1960s and 1970s, participatory practices have developed across artistic, feminist and community-based contexts, challenging established relations of authorship, spectatorship and institutional authority. From the 1990s onwards, participation became increasingly consolidated within contemporary art and progressively incorporated into cultural policy and institutional practice, tied to agendas of access, social inclusion, audience development and, increasingly, public value and institutional accountability. More recently, demands for racial justice, decolonisation, care and public accountability have intensified expectations that cultural organisations build sustained and accountable relationships with “communities.” As participation has become more embedded in institutional practice, these developments have also placed new labour demands and asked for different working conditions on the people and relationships on which it depends.

Building on debates around dialogical, collaborative and socially engaged art practices, the session approaches participation as affective, relational and organisational labour. It explores the infrastructures and conditions that sustain participatory work, including long-term community partnerships, community archives and co-curated exhibitions, and considers the tensions these practices expose around governance, funding, accountability and public responsibility.

We invite papers examining participation as a practice shaped by institutional priorities, curatorial and educational methods, community relationships, documentation, evaluation and funding structures. What becomes visible when participation is approached through labour? Who sustains the relationships on which it depends, and under what conditions? How are care and conflict, risk and accountability negotiated? What happens when durational and relational practices are translated into exhibitions, archives or impact frameworks?

We welcome contributions addressing socially engaged art, co-curation, community-led archives, institutional critique, feminist and anti-racist organising, and alternative governance systems across historical and contemporary contexts.

Themes: participatory practices, socially engaged art, institutional critique

Additional format comments: We imagine this shaped as a session including 4 (20 minutes) papers and a panel discussion at the end.

Lead Convenor: Agnese Politi, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, United Kingdom

Co-convenors: Sofia Cotrona, University for the Creative Arts / Imperial War Museums, United Kingdom

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.