SHIFT: Hannah Kemp-Welch

For this SHIFT film, Kemp-Welch presents key aspects of her doctoral research at University of the Arts London at the Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice centre at London College of Communication. 

Her work in community settings often responds to social issues and she investigates tensions around participation, ownership and representation in socially engaged art. Her research explores how social art can “challenge uneven power relations, even when set within frameworks serving neoliberal agendas”, drawing on the role of listening as a practice that can help facilitate equitable collaboration.

She explores the potential of ‘distributed’ or ‘collective’ listening practices to create space for true co-production in social art practice as well as the idea of listening itself as an artistic practice.

Finally, she critiques the concept of ‘active listening’, looking at how this idea has been co-opted into a persuasive tool used in the corporate world and to model a particular mode of desired behaviour in mainstream schooling.

Hannah Kemp-Welch is a sound artist with a social practice working in London. 

This film is part of SHIFT – Freelands Foundation’s seasonal series of short films spotlighting varied practices, approaches and philosophies within art education. 

All audiovisual material and research is courtesy of the artists.

Produced by Nathan Marsh.

Captions and editing by Sixbetween.