This Social Art Map produced in 2015 by Emily Druiff and Sophie Hope was intended as a starting point or resource for people interested in social art practice, including those engaged in producing, commissioning, curating, collaborating and participating.

Supported by funding from Creativeworks London, Emily Druiff (Peckham Platform) and Sophie Hope (Birkbeck, University of London) came together to do this mapping of commissioning processes in order to understand better these often hidden procedures. Over several meetings they made collective timelines of each project with the artist(s), commissioner/producer/curator(s) and local/participant/collaborator(s).

By using the contested term ‘social art’ the authors refer to contexts where artists work with people in the co-creation of a public outcome.

This mini-resource focuses on five commissioned projects that took place in London within the field of social art practice between 2010-2015. By mapping the project’s timelines the authors aimed not to present a model of best practice, rather a range of portraits that provide windows into the different processes, hurdles, motivations and experiences of artists, commissioners/ curators/ producers and locals/ participants/ collaborators involved.

Through a six month piece of research these labels were contested, as were the terms ‘social art’ and ‘socially engaged art’. Rather than foreground these terms, the authors therefore referred to the names of the people and the capacity in which they were involved with these processes.

To avoid flattening out the complexities and nuances of the projects or squeezing them uncomfortably into a neat definition of social art, the authors tried to maintain the detail, keeping the seemingly mundane aspects alongside crucial moments of decision-making.

With this in mind, the authors hoped to reflect the vital complexity of the processes involved and avoid one dominant version of events being told.