OPEN CALL: Co-Act

Each artist will receive a fee of £5652. 

This is based on 36 days’ work over 18-months, at £157 per day (which is in line with NewBridge’s Fair Pay Guidance and AUE residency rate for an artist with 3+ years experience*). This has been imagined as 16-days for research and development; 5-days shadowing another artist working with collaborative, socially engaged methods; and 15-days developing and realising a new commission. In reality, these phases will not be so distinct and you will be able to manage your own time, with group meetings and regular sessions agreed together in advance. 

In addition to the artist fee, you will each have a budget of £1500 for the development and production of the commission

You will be supported by our team, with regular small group sessions led by us – Fran and Dan – and by an artist mentor; undertaking 8 mentoring sessions with an experienced socially engaged practitioner that we will identify together. You will have the opportunity to shadow on a project as part of our programme or with another artist; and we will organise several workshops and tailored learning sessions with invited artists, practitioners and other members of the NewBridge team throughout the programme.  

NewBridge also has a small access budget to support people delivering and taking part in our programmes. If selected, when you start the programme we will invite everyone to make an access rider, which helps us to understand any access requirements that will enable you to take part in Co-Act. An access rider can also tell us about the conditions in which you work best. See this guide from Access Docs for Artists for help on how and why to make an access document or rider and further information on Disability Arts Online.

All applications will be reviewed by a small panel of artists and NewBridge staff in November. Any shortlisted artists will be invited for an interview on 14 November 2025.  

The criteria we will use to review and select the two artists, are:  

• Clearly demonstrates 2 – 4 years experience working as an artist using collaborative or socially-engaged methods or equivalent experience working in community organising.  
• Potential of your approach to the opportunity (ie: bringing new ideas to our existing work, describes the creative potential to develop over 18-months)
• Identifies (at least some initial) methods and techniques for working with other people & areas for development that are in line with our ethos (as in not using people as a material, but a commitment to reciprocal processes and relationship building)
• Realistic – grounded in reality of what can be done in the timeframe. Remember that these ways of working take time and building on the existing work going in Shieldfield or with networks that you are embedded in has more elements in our control than starting from scratch. 
• Tangible – explain tangibly what you like to learn and do.
• Relevant to our context (linking to existing projects, communities or bringing new groundwork) and/ or to social, political urgencies of today.

This is a paid opportunity to develop your practice. It is based on working alongside the structures you and NewBridge already have in place, to improve your theoretical understanding of, and practical ability to, work with people to create socially engaged art.

The ethos is one of openness: openness to learn, to share and to allow ideas to develop over the duration (rather than setting a predetermined goal and working towards it). Mutual relationship building is at the core of Co-Act and the work we will develop together if you are selected.

Co-Act aims to build on the groundwork that NewBridge has developed in Shieldfield and with communities across the North East – as a “community-oriented art organisation. They have real people involved in almost everything they do; real people not being used as material, or to tick diversity boxes, but who come because they like it.” (Lesley G, Corridor 8) 

How might you connect your ideas to, or learn through being part of, the existing fabric of activity happening here in Shieldfield? 

This activity includes: 

• Reading Room – a borrowing library and growing resource of thought provoking books. It is part of a national network of reading rooms, developed in partnership with Pluto Press and Left Book Club, that open up local spaces for reading and collaboration; serving as a catalyst for creative thinkers, critical minds and artists.
• For Solidarity – a network of organisations, communities and individuals in the North East who are all working toward social and climate justice. In 2025 For Solidarity will include a public gathering in our gallery bringing together artists, activists and groups working across social and environmental justice.
• Memory Café – an ongoing project run in collaboration with The Forum Café for Shieldfield residents who are living with dementia and the people who support them. Through arts activities the Café encourages engagement, creativity and self-expression, and confidence building.
• Lady Parties – we have been working with women in our neighbourhood over the past two years to host dance parties, these events led by and for women include chef and community leader Kaltouma Hassaballah, and resident Hana Azahed.
• The Collective Studio – an annual development programme for early-career artists or recent graduate artists. It provides participants with affordable studio space, opportunities to test out new ideas, and access a training programme of events, mentoring and socials.
• TopSoil – a weekly queer gardening project which started in 2023, as part of For Solidarity. TopSoil is growing and learning together while creating a community resource. Together they are learning from how to grow and care for a shared allotment, and deepen knowledge on sustainability, queer ecology, natural dyes and gardening as an act of resistance.
• Shieldfield Youth Programme – run by our dedicated Youth Team in partnership with Dwellbeing and in collaboration with young people living in Shieldfield. SYP creates space for young people to come together, build new friendships, develop their skills and talents, and explore new ways of thinking and doing things together.

You will also bring your own groundwork to the project through your own networks, interests and ideas; and we’re keen to hear about this when you apply. This could be existing relationship and new ones you are developing.

It is for anyone who reads this call out and thinks it’s appealing, with a few caveats.

As part of the programme you’ll definitely have to meet, interact with, talk to, enthuse and make connections with strangers. Some of them will know and like art, and some will be indifferent, or might come with different expectations of the situation. 

Some of what we cover will deal with techniques for interaction, confidence, approaching new settings and gently leaving your comfort zone, but if you don’t actually want to interact with the public then this opportunity may not be for you!

Early-career is a term we try not to define in a set number of years, but in this instance, we are talking about having some track record or previous experience with social practice, social engagement or community organising. We’re looking for someone with 2 to 4 years experience.

This might mean, you have delivered workshops to the public, co-produced a project with other people, intiated or managed a participatory process. You might have different strands to your practice, that until now feel separate. Perhaps you are a youth worker and you make sculpture, and you want to know what happens when these things come together; perhaps you have led workshops as part of a formal learning programme and you’d love the opportunity to think more holistically about your art practice given the time and space; perhaps your background is in community development and political activism and you have initial ideas of how to bring this together within the context of an arts organisation.

Socially engaged art is a slippery term, not easy to define. We don’t want to set fixed boundaries for what it encompasses, if anything, socially engaged art can be understood as defined by process – not-fixed, open to change, and the unexpected.

To us, socially engaged art is a process of working with people to catalyse and develop new ideas together. This can happen across varying scales and contexts, whether through chance encounters in a public space or working with a specific community (geographically defined or shaped around a shared interest, in say, gardening or housing justice). The ‘art’ can be in the techniques and means of engaging people, in the act of conversing and getting to know one another, and in the things you decide to do together.

We are not interested in finding members of the public to execute an artist’s grand, pre-determined vision, or in parachuting artists into a situation or context to ‘fix’ social problems. Our work is informed by the slogan “nothing about us without us” from the disability rights movement, which articulates that those with lived experience of oppression are best placed to set the terms of what they need. Like us, you might be interested in how art and aesthetics can make change in the world. Let’s do this while paying close attention to politics and ethics of working with other people. We don’t want to see other people used as material or tick boxes for your practice; but want to hear about how and why you are interested in bringing people together and what methods you might use to do this. As aptly described by artist Lady Kitt, “in my experience, socially engaged work is messy – physically, conceptually, socially, emotionally, joyfully messy.”

Because perhaps you don’t see yourself as a socially engaged artist. That term might feel too contained or doesn’t describe what you do. 

Community organising, to us, is about bringing people together around common concerns or needs, to take action, build collective power, overcome social injustice, or create spaces that we don’t see in the world. When brought together with art, this can look like video activism, youth work, or community resource building; it could really take any form but at its core are processes of working with existing communities or building community through a specific activity.    

NewBridge is an organisation made up of a constellation of people with expansive and diverse practices. Some of these artists identify as socially engaged practitioners and others don’t, but are using collaborative, participatory or co-operative methods. There are many histories of socially engaged art and community arts that inform our work and we might want to draw on during the programme, which give us inspiration and strategies for working within communities. Together, we’ll start by “digging where we stand” (to borrow from the public education and archival labour history movement of the 1970s), to look at the work happening in Shieldfield. We can also explore histories of the community arts movement, collective organising, new genre public art, community video, DIY print and zine making, co-production, and civic programming. Don’t worry if you don’t know about any of this yet, we’ll tailor learning around the specifics of your practice.

Collaboration, to us, is mutually supporting one another to develop ideas together. It always involves some form of negotiation, setting terms together, not everyone necessarily plays the same role in a process. 

Co-operation to us is working on something together, but it might be that person A makes a pot and person B glazes it – two separate skills in sequence rather than collaborating throughout.

Participation to us is people other than yourself getting involved in doing something per your instructions. Take a look at the ladder of participation to think about the different forms and where power and decision making lies.

Co-production in the context of art is coming together as a group of people or partner organisations with a shared or mutual goal, with a focus on delivery of an outcome, this could be an event, film, artwork. Within the co-production, decisions could be made collaboratively or using a co-operative model. 

Co-creation places emphasis on the planning phase of a project, developing ideas together as a group, or an act where everyone plays a part.