Decentralising Political Economies: Roaming Symposium is a research event with art professionals (artists, curators, and directors of cultural organisations), academics, researchers, constituencies and practitioners who apply art as a tool to be used as a resource for social, economic and political change.

According to the recent usological turn, more and more art practitioners create works that welcome use, misuse, transformation, and repurpose in concert with constituencies.  The sessions, unfolding over a month, will explore how usership manifests within museums and institutions of education in particular looking at pedagogical models and toolkits as part of DPE.tools platform, which use the principle of Arte Útil and socially engaged art to rethink the composition of the curriculum by producing projects-as-tools.

Focusing on urgent questions animating the debate around radical education and the recent disruptions caused by the pandemic, the roaming symposium would be a moment to look closely at the proliferation of both online and offline platforms and methods which aim to facilitate the documentation, activation of case studies, and the application of toolkits.

Invited guests include artist Daniel Godínez-Nivón (MX), curator and art historian Gemma Medina (ES/NL), educator and curator Gabriela Saenger Silva (BR/UK), curator Lisa Heinis (BE/NL), artist Owen Griffiths (UK), Tŷ Pawb’s artistic director Jo Marsh (UK), the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy – Manolo Callahan and Annie Paradise (USA), curator and researcher Kuba Szreder (PL), Lead officer and cultural coordinator at Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Sarah Lovell, art collective The Alternative School of Economics – Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck (UK), the Whitworth and Manchester Art Gallery’s director Alistair Hudson(UK), artist Suzanne Lacy (USA), artist Tania Bruguera (CU), and others to be confirmed. 

The event is organised by John Byrne (Reader at LJMU and Director of The City Lab), Poppy Bowers (Curator of Exhibitions at The Whitworth), and Alessandra Saviotti (PhD researcher at LJMU).