‘Industrial Actions’ is an action-research and social engagement project by RESOLVE Collective, as part of Grand Union and Cooking Section’s ‘Field Commissions’ series, that celebrates histories of resistance, organisation, and reimagination by exploring the misuse and sabotage of industrial tools and instruments in Digbeth, the Black Country, and in a number of Britain’s ex-colonial territories.
‘Industrial Actions’, RESOLVE Collective, Birmingham, 2023.
‘Industrial Actions’, RESOLVE Collective, Birmingham, 2023.
Looking at the tool as a means of shaping not only the physical nature of our environments but also how we see and value the world around us, ‘Industrial Actions‘ will incorporate archival research, community workshops, collaborative installations, and a series of communal gatherings. Through these methods, the project will ask how we might re-use and misuse historic and contemporary tools, inventing our own in the process, in order to work towards more equitable futures.
Recognising and celebrating the historic and contemporary role of labour, particularly of underrepresented and marginalised groups, is a key tenet of the project. Moments that connect to the Digbeth site, the creation and reimagination of new tools during the community workshops, and our relationship with the land beneath us will be socialised at intervals as part of three gatherings on the site over the course of a year, which we are calling General Assembly Carnivals. These will also be collated digitally in order to distribute the learnings and reflections of the project and encourage the further reimagination of the tools we will create.
First Industrial Actions event, RESOLVE Collective, Birmingham, 2023. Image by Nina Baillie.
About RESOLVE CollectiveOpen accordion
RESOLVE is an interdisciplinary design collective that combines architecture, engineering, technology, and art to address social challenges. They have delivered numerous projects, workshops, publications, and talks in the UK and across the world, all of which look toward realising just and equitable visions of change in our built environment.
Much of RESOLVE’s work aims to provide platforms for the production of new knowledge and ideas. An integral part of this way of working means designing with and for young people and under-represented groups in society. Here, ‘design’ encompasses both physical and systemic intervention, exploring ways of using a project’s site as a resource and working with different communities as stakeholders in the short and long-term management of projects. In this way, design carries more than aesthetic value; it is also a mechanism for political and socio-economic change.
You can find out more about RESOLVE here: https://www.resolvecollective.com/