From Social to Sociable - Keefe, Verity-Jane; Batchelor, Kate (S.l. : Peabody, 2024)
This is a book that offers a slice of a place in time, a five-and-half, six-year window into a place, its residents, and a building. It centres around care and relationships. What it is to breathe new life into a building that has existing histories? What are the logistics of bringing a speculative funding bid to life? What is it to be an artist working on a design team? What is the role and potential of the artist working within regeneration? How can we work with communities to make things public? At its heart this is a book that documents and demystifies process – not as a traditional case study of a project, but an honest open conversation between the client and commissioner, Kate Batchelor and Lead Artist on the Design Team, Verity-Jane Keefe. It aims to share some of the mechanics, politics and realities of what it takes to get things done, the importance of respecting both the building and community, and how this is merely the next chapter in the Moorings Sociable Club’s lifecycle. A “then”, a moment, that follows on from historic moments and precedes future “thens”. This is not a guidebook on how to do things, nor is it a manual for suggested best practice. It is an archaeology and atlas of a building and a project, which is both the backdrop and protagonist, and collaborative processes between a client trying to do things differently and an artist finding herself working within architecture to positively disrupt how “regeneration” might be done (slowly). It is an artwork, and a container of process and practice.
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Keywords: Keefe, Verity-Jane