How Does Collaboration and Joint Authorship Support Young Artists in Building Artistic Agency and Status?
In 2008, five thirteen-year-olds from the outer Melbourne communities of Upwey and Belgrave asked photographer Tiffaney Bishop to support them in making and presenting a body of artwork – artwork that would speak to their contemporary experiences and collective identity. As a photographer drawn to social documentation, this request delighted Tiffaney, and she agreed. What followed was the development of a more than decade-long collaborative arts practice that has supported more than one hundred young creatives in artmaking and presentation. This artistic collaboration is known by the moniker tbC and is the site of this investigation.
tbC is a thirteen-year-old youth-driven, adult and peer mentored artist-run initiative. Young members range in age from twelve to twenty-something and self-identify as artists. Examining how collaboration and joint authorship manifests at tbC and how this model of practice supports young artists in building artistic agency and status is the main aim and primary focus of this research, as is the theorising around agency and status and the defining of the two terms. tbC’s dedicated arts practice, egalitarian governance and informal arts pedagogy potentially support the success of this united front approach to building artistic agency and status and will be a secondary focus of this investigation.
The inspiration for this research comes from studio conversations at tbC about artistic agency and status – conversations that regularly focus on how tbC artists often feel that their age, experience and perceived lack of expertise restricts the building of artistic agency and status. These conversations routinely culminate in collective declarations that it shouldn’t matter if an artist is young and that artistic merit should be viewed through an aesthetic lens rather than a biographical one. In response to this ongoing dialogue, tbC focuses on collaborative art and joint authorship practices that facilitate a united front approach to making and presenting art, an approach that privileges artwork ahead of the artists’ identity. This research examines the proposition that this united front approach liberates young artists from the constraints of their biographies and supports the building of earlier artistic agency and status.
As this is an artistic inquiry, creative expression and academic exposition are intertwined. This multimodal thesis includes a dissertation and a creative outcome in the form of a companion website. The dissertation presents the central theoretical tenets of this investigation. The companion website contributes important experiential, descriptive and case study knowledge on the subject - operating as a digital platform (where online communication, interaction and archiving take place)[1] and a digital portfolio (that electronically presents and examines artistic works and working processes).[2] Hyperlinks appear throughout the dissertation, linking the two sites of knowledge.
The linear structure of the dissertation and the non-linear layout of the companion website reflect the hybrid dynamics of the artist-researcher’s position, mapping an ecology of practice and inquiry via interconnected dialogue and multisensory expression. Despite the website’s constant state of becoming (reflecting tbC’s living arts practice), the links embedded in the dissertation connect the reader to stable pages that provide ongoing access to the investigation’s data and theorising. Together, the dissertation and companion website provide a fuller understanding of how a collaborative arts and joint authorship practice supports young artists in building artistic agency and status.
Chapter One begins by defining the term youth. It also distinguishes youth arts from youth development and studio learning from arts education. This discussion contextualises youth arts as a voluntary, self-directed activity that engages young artists in creative practices and outcomes, as opposed to youth development, which is a more structured activity that reaches out to young people in general through broader education, health and welfare programming. It contextualises studio-based learning as self-organising, informal and driven by practice, as opposed to arts education, which is more formal, school-based and driven by prescribed curriculums. tbC operates outside formal education, health and welfare programming and is specifically interested in advancing young artists artistic agency and status.
A review of the literature around young people has revealed a plethora of research within what academic Reed Larson calls the “burgeoning field of youth development”[3] and what arts educator Jennifer Bott calls “the growing body of research in arts education.”[4] In contrast, this review has revealed a distinct lack of research around the benefit and value of dedicated youth arts practice and limited practical examples, especially within the visual and experimental arts. Chapter One builds a case for more dedicated youth arts research and practice by demonstrating the limited instances of both.
Chapter One also examines contradictory youth discourse, which scholar Henry Giroux argues both celebrates and reproaches young people.[5] It critiques what social psychologist Christine Griffin refers to as the common perception of young people as troubled or troubling[6] and the cultural tendency to fear and/or misunderstand young people in general. It discusses how this fear and misunderstanding of the youth condition stigmatises and marginalises young people. Chapter One further argues that there is a disproportionate focus on the educational and welfare benefits of youth arts practice and that this devalues the intrinsic artistic qualities and benefits of such practice. It also argues that this disproportionate focus interrupts the building of artistic agency and status.
As an artist-researcher, Tiffaney is a participant and observer, simultaneously engaging in creative and scholarly practices. Chapter Two examines how this embedded and symbiotic relationship methodologically shapes the design, purpose and value of this investigation via what academic Kelly Guyotte refers to as “a rich entanglement of thought, art and language.”[7] With the help of theorists like Guyotte, Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, this chapter advances the theory that artistic practice can be a mode of thinking,[8] revealing valuable implicit knowledge that theorists like Carole Gray, Julian Malins and Shaun McNiff argue only emerges through the actual process of artistic expression.[9] This discussion also highlights the importance of making this implicit knowledge more explicit – something artist-researcher Barbara Bolt argues can be achieved by examining the recurring and evaluative data that emerges from and within creative practice.[10] This chapter further argues that when combined with the discursive space of the dissertation, this recurring and evaluative creative data can lead to the successful explication of implicit knowledge.[11]
The past thirty years have seen the emergence of a range of research methodologies specifically aimed at supporting artist-researchers and artistic inquiries. Key examples include arts-based research,[12] practice as research,[13] practice-based research,[14] practice-led research, research-led practice,[15] action research,[16] arts-based action research[17] and research-creation.[18] These differently named but similarly enacted modes of artistic inquiry situate the creative practice within the research activity (or the research practice within the creative activity) and share an underlying understanding that valuable knowledge can be found in extralinguistic experimentation, examination and expression.
Chapter Two includes a detailed review of the expanding literature around artistic inquiry, mainly focusing on the nuances found within the above approaches and how this review led to the decision to engage a research-creation methodology for this investigation. An extended discussion focuses on a range of academic viewpoints about research-creation’s defining features and its application and potential. This includes the methodology’s track record for what Natalie Loveless refers to as the interdisciplinary scope of research-creation,[19] the potential Owen Chapman and Kim Sawchuck see in research-creation’s ability to support new media experimentation,[20] the way research-creation supports what Manning describes as the inherent collaboration often found within artistic inquiry,[21] as well as the pedagogical innovation that Loveless and Stephanie Springgay attribute to the methodology.[22]
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s metaphorical concept of the rhizome[23] supports the theorising around the design and presentation of this research-creation. Chapter two demonstrates how the rhizomatic and adventitious nature of tbC’s practice has influenced the cross-media format of this research. Concepts like multimodal and multimedia, hypertext and hypermedia will be defined and contextualised - especially in terms of how these cross-referencing tools support this artistic inquiry's horizontal, extralinguistic and multifaceted context and design. The metaphorical concept of the rhizome also supports theorising around tbC’s non-hierarchical model of group practice and governance.
Chapter Three extends tbC’s foundation story, which includes discussion around the characteristics that define the group and its modus operandi. While the main focus of this research is on tbC’s collaborative arts practice and joint authorship model, underpinning the success of this model is a dedicated arts practice, non-hierarchical governance and informal arts pedagogy. Chapter Three examines these key underpinnings before a more detailed examination of the group’s collaborative arts and joint authorship model in Chapter Four.
The first part of Chapter Four defines, historicises and contextualises established understandings of collaboration and demonstrates this understanding within the context of tbC’s contemporary collaborative arts practice and this inquiry around it. It specifically demonstrates what theorist Claire Bishop describes as the “empowering creativity of collective action and shared ideas”[24] and how this supports young artists in building artistic agency and status. This discussion also speaks to the sites, modes and materials of collaborative arts practice at tbC and their critical role in the journey towards artistic agency and status.
The second part of Chapter Four defines, historicises and contextualises the concept of authorship and how joint authorship supports tbC’s united front approach to developing artistic agency and status for young artists. Stéphane Mallarmé’s philosophy around the authorless text/artwork speaking for itself,[25] Roland Barthes’ philosophy around the inherently collaborative and social nature of authorship[26] and Michel Foucault’s philosophy around how the function of authorship affects the way we view, value and validate texts/artworks[27] help theorise the way tbC’s joint authorship practice presents young artists and their work through an aesthetic lens (rather than a biographical one) and how this directly supports the development of artistic agency and status.
Chapter Four includes a comparative analysis of other collaborative arts and joint authorship practices, such as New York City’s Tim Rollins and The Kids of Survival (K.O.S.) and Dublin’s Rialto Youth Project.
It is important to note upfront that although this investigation focuses on the power a collaborative arts and joint authorship practice has in developing artistic agency and status for a group of young artists, this focus doesn’t invalidate or ignore the individual artist. Chapter Four includes a discussion around how tbC’s collaborative arts and joint authorship practice simultaneously build collective and individual artistic agency and status by developing skills, experience and confidence within both the group and the individual.
Chapter four concludes by addressing recurrent challenges to the democratic nature of group practice and the persistent figure of the individual author, as well as the tension found in presenting solo-authored research about a collaborative and jointly authored practice. While tbC artists are not co-authors of this research, they are co-creators of the work and practices being examined.[28] Respect for the impact this collaborative environment has had on this research is expressed in more detail in Chapter Five.
This research-creation uses the case study as an “in-action”[29] method of data collection, reflection, and analysis. Chapter Five presents four case study artworks that illustrate tbC’s united front approach to making and presenting art and the success this approach has in building artistic agency and status. tbC’s key operating characteristics (collaborative arts practice and joint authorship, a dedicated arts focus, non-hierarchical governance and informal arts pedagogy) act as analytical frameworks for this examination. Again, while the main focus of this investigation is on how a collaborative arts and joint authorship practice enables a group of young artists as practitioners and how this model of practice builds artistic agency and status, references to the way a dedicated arts practice, egalitarian governance and informal arts pedagogy support this building of artistic agency and status are interwoven throughout the case study examination.
Although not as formal as solicited interviews or surveys, these case studies reveal valuable experiential knowledge which is validated through embedded experience, deep reflection and a critical analysis of recurring and evaluative data. Three of the four case study artworks are dialogical,[30] engaging what social practice artist Joseph Beuys describes as “interdisciplinary and participatory processes in which thought, speech and discussion are core ‘materials.’”[31] The knowledge contained within these dialogical artworks and the in-practice discussions that supported their making and presentation constitute valuable artistic data. The dissertation periodically links the reader to the companion website where these dialogical artworks and in-practice discussions are creatively housed to provide a fuller understanding of how this united front approach to making and presenting art succeeds in supporting young artists in building artistic agency and status.[32]
The decision to employ a case study data-gathering method also stems from the fact that many members of tbC are under eighteen years of age. Most of these young artists also engage with the project independently of their parents. This makes seeking consent for formal data collection (via interviews and surveys) complex. Chapters Four and Five explain how this observational research manages consent issues while benefiting from the valuable creative data tbC’s practice reveals.[33]
The four case study artworks at the centre of this investigation include:
1. Hoodie Mag: A collaboratively made and jointly authored youth arts publishing project that combines literary, visual, interactive and digital creations in a group presentation. Hoodie Mag is published in both a printed format (as a book) and an electronic format (as a website) and has been in development since 2010. This case study focuses on the 2017 edition of Hoodie Mag and examines the artistic agency and status achieved through a collaborative and jointly authored publishing practice.
2. Blacksmiths Ways Graffiti and Street Art Project: A collaboratively made and jointly authored public art project created in a semi-anonymous way by means of the pseudonym.[34] This case study focuses on the 2017 iteration of this project and examines the artistic agency and status achieved through a collaborative and jointly authored public arts practice.
3. The Art of Conversation (Digital): A collaboratively made and jointly authored dialogical artwork that engages the public in conversation with tbC artists via interactive digital technology. Anyone can scan the artwork (with a free app) and engage in a creative conversation. Conversation starters come from tbC’s social and studio spaces. The wider public adds to these conversations by interacting with the artwork. This case study focuses on tbC’s 2017 version of The Art of Conversation (Digital). It examines the artistic agency and status achieved through a collaborative and jointly authored practice that is socially engaged and digitally augmented.
4. The Art of Conversation (Gallery): A collaboratively made and jointly authored exhibition project. Works take the form of 2D prints on paper that contain fine mesh-like layers of text (and sometimes accompanying imagery). These works present colloquial and visual dialogue about young artists, tbC’s group practices and the collective building of artistic agency and status. This dialogue originates from tbC’s social and studio spaces and practices, and the work is authored and presented as a group conversation. This case study focuses on tbC’s 2017 exhibition of The Art of Conversation (Gallery). It examines the artistic agency and status achieved through a collaborative arts and joint authorship practice within the gallery space.
The significance of this research is demonstrated via its contribution of an aspirational model of collaborative youth arts practice and its contribution to the scholarship around such practice. It is hoped that this research will encourage other youth arts projects and even ambitious teachers and classrooms to explore and experiment with collaborative arts practice in a similar way. This investigation also highlights limited (longitudinal) research around dedicated youth arts practice and the benefits and value of such practice, with the aim of inspiring others to contribute to expanding the research in this area.
[1] “What is Digital Platform,” IGI Global Publisher, accessed May 10, 2021,
https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/beusin/55829. A comment inspired by this source.
[2] Terry Wiedmer, “Digital Portfolios: Capturing and Demonstrating Skills and Levels of Performance,” Phi Delta Kappan, 79, no. 8 (April 1998): abstract, https://www.proquest.com/docview/62553652?accountid=12372. A comment inspired by this source.
[3] Reed W. Larson, “Toward a Psychology of Positive Youth Development,” American Psychologist 55, no. 1 (2000): 170, https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0003-066X.55.1.170.
[4] Jennifer Bott, CEO’s forward to Education and the Arts Research Overview: A Summary Report Prepared for The Australia Council for the Arts, by Mary Ann Hunter (Canberra: Australia Council for the Arts, 2005), 4, https://www.ampag.com.au/wapap/Campaign/2-education-EducationAndTheArtsResearchOverview.pdf.
[5] Henry A. Giroux, “Teenage Sexuality, Body Politics, and the Pedagogy of Display,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 18, no. 3 (1996): 307- 308, https://doi.org/10.1080/1071441960180307.
[6] Christine Griffin, “Imagining New Narratives of Youth, Childhood,” Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research 8, no. 2 (2001): 148, https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568201008002002.
[7] Kelly Guyotte, “Encountering Bodies, Prosthetics, and Bleeding: A Rhizomatic Arts-Based Inquiry,” Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 8, no. 3 (2017): 55, https://doi.org/10.7577/rerm.2557.
[8] Erin Manning and Brain Massumi, Thought in The Act: Passages in The Ecology of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), preface.
[9] Carole Gray and Julian Malins, Visualising Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2004), xi; Shaun McNiff, “Art-Based Research,” in Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research, eds. J. Gary Knowles and Andra L. Cole (California: Sage Publications, 2008), 29; McNiff, “Opportunities and Challenges in Art-Based Research,” Journal of Applied Arts & Health 3, no. 1 (2012): 5 and 7-8, https://doi.org/10.1386/jaah.3.1.5_1.
[10] Barbara Bolt, “A Performative Paradigm for the Creative Arts?” Working Papers in Art and Design 5, School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications (2008), http://hdl.handle.net/11343/29737. A comment inspired by this source.
[11] Bolt, “A Non Standard Deviation: Handlability, Praxical Knowledge and Practice Led Research,” Speculation and Innovation: Applying Practice-Led Research in the Creative Industries, (2006): 12. https://www.academia.edu/939331/A_Non_Standard_Deviation_handlability_praxical_knowledge_and_practice_led_research. A comment inspired by this source.
[12] Thomas Barone and Elliot W. Eisner, Arts Based Research (California: Sage Publications, 2012).
[13] Robin Nelson, Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
[14] Linda Candy, Practice Based Research: A Guide, (Sydney: Creativity & Cognition Studios, University of Technology Sydney, CCS Report: VI.O November, 2006), 1-19, https://www.creativityandcognition.com/resources/PBR%20Guide-1.1-2006.pdf; Candy and Ernest Edmonds, Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner (Oxfordshire: Libri Publishing, 2011); Gray and Malins, Visualizing Research.
[15] Brad Haseman and Daniel Mafe, “Acquiring Know-How: Research Training for Practice-Led Researchers,” in Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts, eds. Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 211-228; Estelle Barrett and Bolt, eds. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry (London: I.B Tauris and Co Ltd., 2010); Smith and Dean, eds. Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
[16] Kurt Lewin, “Action Research and Minority Problems,” Journal of Social Issues 2, no. 4 (November 1946): 34–46, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1946.tb02295.x.
[17] Timo Jokela, Mirja Hiltunen and Elina Härkönen, “Art-based Action Research – Participatory Art for the North,” International Journal of Education Through Art 11, no. 3 (2015): 433–448, https://doi.org/10.1386/eta.11.3.433_1; Jokela and Maria Huhmarniemi, “Arts-Based Action Research in the Development Work of Arts and Art Education,” in The Lure of Lapland - A Handbook of Arctic Art and Design, ed. Glen Coutts, Elina Härkönen, Maria Huhmarniemi and Timo Jokela (Finland: University of Lapland, 2018), 9-25, https://lauda.ulapland.fi/handle/10024/63653; Jokela, Huhmarniemi and Hiltunen, “Art-based Action Research: Participatory Art Education Research for the North,” in Provoking the Field: International Perspectives on Visual Arts PhDs in Education, ed. Anita Sinner, Rita L. Irwin & Jeff Adams (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2019), 45–56; Jokela, “Arts-based Action Research for Art Education in the North,” The International Journal of Art and Design Education, Special Issue: Visual Art-based Education Research 38, no. 3 (2019): 599-609, https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12243; Jokela, “Arts-based Action Research in the North,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods in Education, ed. George Noblit (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
[18] Natalie Loveless, How to Make Art and the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019); Loveless, “Towards a Manifesto on Research-Creation,” Canadian Art Review 40, no.1 (2015): 52–54, www.jstor.org/stable/24327427; Owen Chapman and Kim Sawchuck, “Research-Creation: Intervention, Analysis and ‘Family Resemblances,’” Canadian Journal of Communication 37, no. 1 (2012): 5-26, https://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2489/2298; Manning, “About,” SenseLab, accessed March 20, 2019, http://senselab.ca/wp2/about/; Stephanie Springgay and Sarah Truman, Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human World: Walking Lab (London: Routledge 2018).
[19] Loveless, “Research-Creation and Social Justice,” Kule Research Cluster Project at the Thinking Communities: Celebration of Research in KIAS & Arts Event,” YouTube, March 1, 2016, video, 4:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwfoAXjWCdo.
[20] Chapman and Sawchuk “Research-Creation,” 6.
[21] Manning, “Immediations,” Erin Manning, accessed March 20, 2019, http://erinmovement.com/immediations.
[22] Loveless, How to Make Art, 9-10; Springgay, “About,” The Pedagogical Impulse, accessed March 23, 2020, https://thepedagogicalimpulse.com/about-2/.
[23] Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
[24] Claire Bishop, ed. Participation: Documents of Contemporary Art (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2006), 179.
[25] Stéphane Mallarmé, Divagations, trans. Barbara Johnson (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007).
[26] Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” originally published, Aspen no. 5–6, (1967), 144. A comment Barthes made in relation to surrealism.
[27] Michel Foucault, “What is an Author,” first presented as a paper in the Bulletin de la Societe Francaise de Philosophie 63, no. 3 (1969): 126. https://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/handouts/8906/What_is_an_author_foucault%20.pdf.
[28] As noted in the front matter of this dissertation, all members of tbC own the copyright of the artworks made at tbC, the use and acknowledgment of which is covered by a Creative Commons (CC BY) licence. This copyright arrangement is the result of inclusive studio conversations about artistic terms, uses and outcomes, which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Four. See Craig, Joyce, Copyright Law (Australia: LexisNexis, 2013).
[29] Donald Schon, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books 2008).
[30] Kester describes dialogical art as a discursive aesthetic based on conversation, dialogical exchange and the social and relational experiences such exchange creates. Grant H Kester, “Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework for Littoral Art,” Variant 9 (1999/2000): 3, http://www.variant.org.uk/9texts/KesterSupplement.html; Also see, Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); Kester, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); Kester, “Conversation Pieces: The Role of Dialogue in Socially Engaged Art,” in Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985, eds. Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung (New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 153-165.
[31] “Exchange Values: Social Sculpture Research Unit,” Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University, accessed June 10, 2019, http://exchange-values.org/shelley-sacksssru/ssru/.
[32] This in-practice knowledge and dialogical artmaking has been in the public domain for years, with no adverse consequences.
[33] Underpinning this collaboratively informed research is an informed consent model – one that is defined by tacit but conscious agreement negotiated through durational practice. Studio conversations and self-regulated governance are at the heart of this consent model. There has been no issue with this consent model during tbC’s thirteen years of practice.
[34] A pseudonym is a fictious name used by an author or artist wanting to obscure their real identity. See, Oxford English Dictionary, “Pseudonym,” Version 11.7. 712 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).