Working with Mobilizing Citizenship (MC), both as a visiting artist and workshop organiser, stands out as a uniquely positive experience for me. From its home at Kunsthall Stavanger, the project assembled an exceptionally supportive team who ensured that space, supplies, and participants were ready for the artists when they arrived. MC is a rare example of a programme with the adequate time and structure to facilitate true exchange between artists and young people.
MC shares a vision with Get Your Life! (GYL!), the collaborative art project I initiated and led from 2014 to 2019 in Baltimore, Maryland. GYL! emerged from my long relationship with a neighborhood art center as a collaboration between young people and practising artists. A small, dedicated group of 12-to-16-year-olds developed, designed, and starred in video artworks that adults worked with them on to produce and edit.
MC is a rare example of a programme with the adequate time and structure to facilitate true exchange between artists and young people.
It was important to maintain GYL! as an independent artist project. Often, the challenge of seeking support comes with pressures to grow—to reach more young people at more community sites and to define more specific outcomes. When I first spoke with MC creator Kristina Ketola Bore in early 2019, we connected over this question of scale: Could growth be measured over time rather than by the numbers of young people involved? Could we think about increasing scale by deepening relationships over a longer span?
This attention to time and depth allowed both Mobilizing Citizenship and Get Your Life! to create genuine and meaningful art experiences for young people and artists. And it was this same sensitivity to duration that recognised when it was time for these efforts to end. The energy of these projects was not lost in their closure but given space to shapeshift and ripple through the people involved.
It’s been my pleasure to work with Kristina and an international group of artists to compile the reflections, workshop outlines, and exercises that comprise this toolkit. While it stands as a document of the MC programme, the publication is also a resource for educators and institutions working to create meaningful art experiences for youth.
While it stands as a document of the MC programme, the publication is also a resource for educators and institutions working to create meaningful art experiences for youth.
Inside are contributions from the artists and organizers that made MC possible. Kristina and youth worker Trine Ottosen meet to discuss Trine’s invaluable role supporting Mobilizing Citizenship to be a place of safety for artists and participants. Bergen, Norway–based artist collective Walk of Shame share how they craft fictional spaces within their workshops to shift the way participants engage with each other and express themselves. Mikey Kirkpatrick of London’s Goldsmiths Alchemy outlines a week of workshops guided by Deep Listening. My collaborators Delali Ayivor and Lex Brown write from Accra and Italy with insights on how their training and experiences outside of visual art shaped their workshop offerings. And renowned Miami, Florida–based artists Chire Regans and Loni Johnson come together to reflect on the early days of their friendship as teenagers and the impact that visiting MC had on their practices back home. I first met Loni when I was a teenager attending an intensive youth art programme that she was facilitating. She has been an influence and guide ever since, and it is particularly special for me to reunite with her in this context—it is a testament to the power of these programmes to create authentic and enduring relationships.