Curating an Artist Panel at Tate St Ives

Panel discussion in progress with some of our audience members - Tate Collective Open Studio, Tate Collective, December 2023

As part of the Open Studio event in December, I chaired a panel discussion with our resident local artist and members of the Tate Collective, focusing on how we responded to the Casablanca exhibition when curating our Open Studio activities. From transgressive approaches to art, subjective interpretations of exhibitions, and making inclusive and accessible workshops, we led our audience through some of the key themes of our work in the space of the half-an-hour timeslot.

I wanted to incorporate some background context about the exhibition throughout the talk, such as the importance of the Moroccan Independence movement in transforming the direction of the Casablanca Art School. I wove this into our discussion about transgressive approaches to art and modernising how we engage with audiences and young people.

We also wanted to encourage the audience to imagine the exhibition in different places and whether this context changes the way we interpret the art, harking back to the sunny streets of Morocco in the 1960s when this work was originally shared.

These prompts and other interactive elements of the discussion were a key part of how I structured the conversation to engage with the audience, rather than following the traditional model of audiences being passive observers of a formal interview.

I received some great feedback from the Assistant Curator of the Young People's Programme in response to the event:

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"Thank you so much for all your work on the event, you chaired the discussion so beautifully and all your planning and thought made for a really interesting conversation. You could tell that everyone felt so comfortable and confident delivering the talk and I loved how you broke the ice with the audience and got everyone involved."

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The discussion also allowed us to promote the work of the Tate Collective Producers and enage with potential new members of the collective in the local community.

Members of the panel - Jasmine, Marija and Sam - preparing for the event.