I began my doctoral research at University of the Arts London in 2021, based in the Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice centre at London College of Communication. I am currently an AHRC-funded, part-time, practice-based PhD student, with the support of Dr. Mark Peter Wright (Director of Studies 2025-), Dr. Irene Revell (Second Supervisor), Prof. Cathy Lane (Director of Studies 2021-25) and Dr. Nela Milic (External Supervisor).
Title: Listening With: Practices for Community-Based Art
Abstract:
Community-based art is a broad term I use to describe artistic practices taking place with specific groups—often marginalised communities. Dialogue is central, with the focus as much on process and participation as on material outcomes. Though emerging from countercultural movements of the 1960s, the adoption of such practices by institutions and funding bodies in the 1990s has resulted in a largely depoliticised field today (Belfiore, 2007; Hope, 2017), yet social justice aims remain embedded and visible. This thesis investigates the role of listening within such practices, and asks how listening might contribute to such aims.
In recent years, listening has increasingly been framed as an essential tool for justice across a range of fields. Political scientist Susan Bickford (1996) describes listening as vital to democratic process, sound studies scholar Brandon LaBelle considers who is heard within public discourse and calls for ‘acoustic justice’ (2020), feminist thinker Sara Ahmed links listening with action as she writes of the ‘feminist ear’ (2022). Since beginning my research in 2021, listening theory has proliferated, with new methodologies emerging for listening to environments (urban areas, melting glaciers), events (conflicts, protests), and material legacies (technologies, colonial histories). My project asks: what does this expanding discourse on listening offer to the field of community-based art? And what might community art, in turn, offer to this discourse?
Through practice-based research, I critically examine my own community-based art projects, paying attention to moments of listening and not-listening. I interview practitioners working directly with community groups, tracing the methodologies they use to attune to participants and to centre collective voices and aims. I also speak with colleagues in adjacent fields such as teaching and social care, asking what types of listening are embedded within their disciplines. These findings are mapped against strategies proposed by sound studies, experimental music and performance art, activist movements, pedagogy, and psychology. I record my listening in a journal, and trial a series of listening activities in workshops with both community participants and practitioners, exploring what is required of us to enact forms of listening that facilitate equitable - or even transgressive - encounters.
What emerges is a body of knowledge particular to artists working relationally: a disciplinary sensitivity to group facilitation, care, collectivity, and power dynamics. Common barriers to listening also become clear—timeframes, access to resources, and rigid expectations from institutions and funders. Despite these hurdles, both my own practice and the accounts of my peers demonstrate ways to resist these pressures and to keep listening at the centre of the work. Ultimately, listening emerges as the essential driving force for the ‘good’ that practitioners believe community-based art can do.
The public outcomes of this research include: a glossary of listening terms with texts from over a hundred practitioners across disciplines; a podcast series of interviews with artists; a symposium bringing practitioners together; a series of workshops with artists, social workers and teachers; several artworks and an exhibition; a catalogue collecting experiences related to listening from community art projects. This research is designed to reach practitioners directly, and to keep social justice at the heart of this rapidly evolving field.