Dragon of Profit and Private Ownership
- Submitting institution
-
University of Edinburgh
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 54009928
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Ashington, Northumberland et al.
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- May
- Year of first performance
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Dragon of Profit & Private Ownership was a performative, socially-engaged, multi-component practice research project produced by Zoe Walker and her collaborator Neil Bromwich (University of Newcastle).
The work investigated the use of mythical archetypes in socialist imagery of the 1920s and re-invigorated this imagery to empower communities to reflect on ideologies of labour and re-imagine their relationships to dominant social values.
The output centred around a ‘social sculpture’ that was made collectively with local communities and presented in a satirical public pageant. This performance was accompanied by a film, A Plea for Common Ownership, which was also made collaboratively with local communities, and served both as a documentation of the project and offered historical context to the project.
The output was produced through a £20k commission by Museums Northumberland and BAIT. It was further developed as one of the major 2017 commissions by Edinburgh Art Festival (£30k), where it was presented as live performance and the sculpture was exhibited for the duration of the festival. As part of this commission, Walker and Bromwich extended the research to communities in Scotland, specifically Wester Hailes in Edinburgh, where unemployment has been a problem since the 1970s. They worked with pupils and staff at Canal View Primary School to create costumes and props for a live performance in the streets of Edinburgh for the start of the Edinburgh Art Festival.
Walker and Bromwich were awarded £10k by the Scottish Government Pupil Equity Fund and Bridgend Growing Communities Award to extend collaboration with the school into a year-long residency, resulting in further outputs.
Walker and Bromwich were subsequently invited to re-stage the work in a solo exhibition, Walker & Bromwich: An Act of Participation, at De Montfort University Gallery, Leicester, enabling contextualisaton of the research within the critical and pedagogical framework of the University.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -