Rights to the City? Forum

How can we re-imagine the communities we live in? What does social practice in arts education look like today? As London neighbourhoods continue to feel the effects of austerity and gentrification, the Serpentine presents Rights to the City?, a one-day forum at Conway Hall on Saturday 12 May, where artists, organisations and practitioners from around the world will gather to explore the place of social and political activity in art making.

‘The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is … one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.’  David Harvey

Fifty years after the worldwide protests of 1968 and the publication of Henri Le Febvre’s influential book, Le Droit à Le Ville, the forum launches a six-month series of public workshops and events, reflecting on the Serpentine’s own legacy of co-commissioning projects with communities, artists and activists and asking how arts education might contest the increasingly privatised and commodified social and public space of our cities.

Participants will include long-time Serpentine collaborators and international guests: Simone Browne, Sumesh Sharma, Luis Camintzer, Paul Maheke, Mick Wilson, Adelita Husni-Bey, Sondra Perry, Jesus Bubu Negron, Koyo Kouoh, Emily Pethick, Barby Asante, Amol K Patil, Jasleen Kaur, Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad, Ain Bailey, Rehana Zaman, Gail Lewis, Mia White, Patricia Thomson, and Jo White from the Portman Early Childhood Centre.

Serpentine Education & Projects builds dynamic relationships between art, artists and people, challenging where art can be encountered and by whom. Over the past ten years, the programme has worked on redefining the role of the arts during periods of social change, addressing issues such as migrant rights, care, schooling and labour with individuals and groups excluded from the decision-making processes that shape the places where they live and work. Through sustained, community-centred and embedded projects with a focus on communities local to the Serpentine Galleries in Kensington and Westminster, participants have realised their power and developed strategies to change their lives, their cities and their world.

For more information visit: www.serpentinegalleries.org/learn/rights-to-the-city/rights-city-forum