Variant Open Forum: Speakeasy no. 1

Speakeasy no.1: Mediascapes & discourses in contention > cultural governance & organisational stance

You are invited to a workshop to explore your experiences and concerns over discursive practices and organisational stance in the arts in Scotland, and how these relate to self-organised and co-operative practices.

It forms part of Variant’s current enquiry (part-funded by Creative Scotland) into how changes in cultural governance correlate with our communication and mediascapes, and how these impact cultural practices.

Speakeasy follows on from Variant’s range of discussions, articles and workshops over recent years concerning the sites and situations of communication, as well as an interest in our own and others’ form of self-organisation in a rapidly restructuring cultural field (and ever louder calls for resilient business models).

With ‘communication’ and ‘language’ having, in many ways, taken centre-stage in the re-articulation of access to cultural funding and influence, we intend to examine what has remained at stake in these accentuations. What has been the context and situation that artist-run organisations, and others who attend to self-organised forms, have found themselves in?

Moving between large group and smaller table-based discussions, we will draw on different materials and experiences to enquire into their range, resonance and divergence; to then explore in more detail the spaces for dialogue in relation to artist-run, self-organised and other collaborative practices.