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Workaday

‘Workaday’ is a practice-led research collaboration exploring what is produced in the day-to-day of Grand Union where Julie Crawshaw is working alongside staff in the production of a durational book project.  

a photograph of Julie Crawshaw, a white woman with dark ginger hair, pulled back in a loose ponytail with some hair falling loose around her face. A smile plays on Julie’s lips as she looks directly into the lens of the camera. She stands with her hands in her pockets, visible from the waist up. She is wearing a white cardigan that has embroidered parrots on each side, and flowers growing over the shoulders. Julie is standing at the centre of the image, and behind her is a striking beach landscape, littered with boulders. The sky is turning from pink to blue as the sun sets.

Exhibitions, when they are on, or events, when they are happening, are a popular focus of academia. Which often positions artworks as the central stars of sociological studies of art in urban or rural development. But what about the expanded work of art by which we mean the associative relations that produce organisations? What can this art-organisation can bring to Digbeth and other situations? This is our practice-led question which we will explore in workaday practice. 

Dr Julie Crawshaw is an ethnographer and Associate Professor in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University where she is Head of Subject for Art Practice and Conservation. She is author of ‘Art Worlding: Planning Relations’ (2022) published by Routledge.