Programs

Human geography, wayfinding, mapping
This theme expands on mode of human togetherness in which a range of human activity is preserved and actively pursued so that freedoms can appear. A common ground is not the goal but rather articulates an interest in a common world that promotes democratic forms of collective action, and how such forms might be advocated for and sustained. These forms of human action through which freedom can appear; educational actions and interventions (beyond schools) that have political a/effect and impact have been widely acknowledged through the pandemic. While traditionally formulated in terms of transformation, liberation, emancipation, social capital, community cohesion or good citizenship, contemporaneously a more, pluralistic approach inclusive of more than human and posthuman intervention in the urban public space/domain/sphere is required.

Physical versus temporal space, digital publics
Public venues have increasingly used digital technologies to engage a locked down or hesitant public, which has opened up a space to evaluate, review and create or design both outside and inside existing public institutions such as galleries and museums. This theme “draw[s] attention to public memory, the ideological nature of display, the epistemological influence of historical forces, embodied and affective forms of learning beyond language, and historical sites of public discourse” (O’Malley et al., 2020, p. 5).

Public art, public space, domestic/public space
Projects enacted through the pandemic have shifted the focus on how meanings are created through the interactions between the artworks and their participants and how public arts projects work pedagogically to disrupt dominant discourses in/with public space. Private spaces have also increasingly become public changing the way the domestic space is configured, scrutinised, used and shared.

Feminist activism, resistance, social activism, policing and politics of space, environmental activism, public activism
The pandemic has seen artist and designers engaged in activism, as we saw the pandemic aggravate existing social inequalities—from the identification of essential workers through access to healthcare and childcare during lockdowns to domestic violence, and racism. Responses called for a political reconstitution of public art spaces to highlight the activist possibilities of artistic/design engagement. Feminist communitarian public pedagogy as a robust conceptual framework recognises that thriving requires interaction, iteration and integration.