Art360 Foundation and The National Archives hosted a series of three connected workshops from Tuesday 16 to Thursday 18 November 2021, exploring how creative practitioners have historically interacted with institutional and artists’ archives, and how they might engage with such spaces in future.
Our aim was to open a dialogue with the creative community in order to understand and address the opportunities present in the archive for creative practice and the barriers preventing artists’ engagement.
These workshops also considered how artists approach the creation of their own archives, and look to share ways that archivists have worked with artists through the Art360 Programme.
A description of the workshops can be found below. Recordings of the event will be made available soon.
Archives as creative practice
Tuesday 16 November, 10.30-11.45
This first workshop will explore different approaches to creating archives, how elements of artists’ practice can be archived and how artists’ archives differ from, or share affinities with, institution-based archives and other archival sites and structures.
Creative encounters with archives
Wednesday 17 November, 10.30-12.30
This second workshop invites our participating artists to share their experiences of engaging with the structures and selected objects from The National Archives’ collections. The Visual Collections team at The National Archives will share their learnings from the project. Together, they will then explore how a wider and more dynamic creative engagement with archives can be facilitated.
Art and Archives: A Deep Dive
Thursday 18 November, 10.30-12.30
The final workshop will encourage a deeper dive into the themes covered in our first two events, and will involve active participation from those attending. Participants will discuss their takeaways from the workshops and discuss the possible frameworks for collaborative working between arts organisations, artists and audiences that can be utilised more widely.
Bursaries were available this series of workshops. Find more information about bursaries here.
We would like to thank the Friends of The National Archives and Art360 Foundation for their generous support of this series of events.