Our Provocation.

The Innovation in Engagement Conference 2021 will profile and celebrate innovative social and cultural organisations and initiatives which adopt radically inclusive and collaborative practices. Funded by The University of Lincoln’s Centre for Culture and Creativity, and supported by Common Wealth and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art the co-authored programme will present new ways of coming together, being together and exercising solidarity and new economies in increasingly divisive global politics.

The two-day online event developed by the conference organisers alongside arts and social justice organisation MAIA will champion, necessarily diverse organisations across the UK that are delivering work that takes risks; is led for and with underrepresented groups and presents viable and vibrant alternatives to the statistical exclusivity of the arts and cultural sector. 

With increased dialogue around socially engaged practices specifically within the artist-led sector, the organisers and project partners recognise an associated paucity of organisational and infrastructural dialogue. The Innovation in Engagement conference will be an urgent response to this omission – facilitating national cross-organisational and cross-sector learning as well as the generous sharing of the complex challenges associated with delivering radically inclusive work. 

The programme will feature perspectives, projects and strategies for social change from creative practitioners, activists, organisations, charities, artists, policy makers and communities.

In the fall-out from the COVID pandemic and in stark acknowledgement of the Black Lives Matter campaign, it is more urgent than ever to interrogate the infrastructure, civic value and responsibility of cultural organisations. Situating such conversations in the immediate aftermath of recent global events will serve to re-imagine, and begin to re-build cultural organisations as civic institutions for public benefit - organisations which are reactive, sustainable and accountable to the needs of the communities they serve.