Collaboration & Joint Authorship:
Supporting Young Artists in Building Artistic Agency & Status.
This PhD research sits at the intersection of youth arts, socially engaged art and informal arts pedagogy. It investigates the impact tbC’s collaborative arts and joint authorship practice has on the development of young artists between the ages of twelve and twenty-something, specifically examining how a united front approach to making and presenting art supports young artists in building artistic agency and status.
Four case study artworks examine how tbC’s united front approach to making and presenting art supports young artists in building artistic agency and status. They include a publication called Hoodie Mag, a public art project called The Blacksmiths Way Graffiti and Street Art Project, a digital artwork called The Art of Conversation (Digital) and a gallery project called The Art of Conversation (Gallery). Data is mapped as an ecology of practice and inquiry via a dissertation and this companion website. Scholarship around relational art, authorship and the rhizome help theorise this communal and egalitarian model of arts practice and the design of this multimodal submission.
While there is substantial research around programs that engage and support young people in general, there are fewer examples of research, especially longitudinal, around the practices of young artists and what supports them. This investigation addresses this gap and is relevant to self-identifying young artists and those working with them. The significance of this study can be found in the way a collaborative arts and joint authorship practice positions the young artist as a practitioner and the agency and status this positioning builds.
Although undertaken by co-founding tbC member Tiffaney Bishop, this doctoral research is collaboratively inspired and informed.
Link to Dissertation.