From Thursday 12th January to Sunday 14th January I took part in a series of talks, discussions, seminars and workshops at Grizedale Arts, and Grizedale Art’s The Farmers Arms, which were aimed at laying the groundwork for a new long-term research initiative called ‘The Valley Project’. After twenty Five years or more as Director of Grizedale Arts, Adam Sutherland and his staff, colleagues, comrades, constituents, artists and fellow activists have developed a wealth of archival material gleaned from the process of reimagining and reinventing what we might know of as socailly engaged art practice. In Sutherland’s hands, Grizedale Arts has also reimagined what an arts commissioning agency can be or could become. By initially inviting arts to ‘do something useful’, rather than offer the more standard approach of studio space and a final exhibition, the sheer wealth of groundbreaking activities that have come out of Grizedale Arts is breathtaking. The Valley Project Seminar placed a marker, a will to begin organising, archiving and sharing this material for the good of all whilst, at the same time, beginning to set this activity within the historical and critical context of the Lake District’s Crake Valley, where both Grizedale Arts and The Farmers Arms sit, and which has acted as a magnet for artists, poets, thinkers, makers and doers, since the mid-nineteenth century.

For me, Grizedale Arts is also the home of Useful Art, a place which welcomed me to collaborate back in 2005 – and from which my interests in Useful Art, Arte Útil and activist art have grown and developed alongside the work of so many Fellow Travellers across the world over these last two decades. I’m both eternally grateful and looking forward to the next adventures.