Anna Taylor is a co-director at In-Situ where she works on critical engagement.
She is establishing dialogical methods and critical feedback loops for the collective exploration and development of programme, policy and practice and their impact in the wider world.
Thinking Out Loud
A platform for collective critical thinking and imagining around the role of art in everyday life. This programme is for the community connected through In-Situ; team, residents, young people, collaborators, commissioned artists, Board members and partners. Centered around our Art Library, it involves supporting the development of writing from perspectives around our practice, developing exploratory films and holding space for community conversations that explore, shape and define a collective imagining around themes such as relationship, value(s), structures and systems.
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Fluid Structures
In-Situ has a unique organisational structure that includes flay pay, consensus decision making and a horizontal team structure that enables fluid leadership. We offer staff 'reading weeks' for creative development and use coaching methodology which supports progressing ideas. We work with an internally developed Code of Ethics and within an Embedded local context in which many of the team are resident. This all presents opportunities and challenges which we are continually exploring, shaping and adapting and are sharing this process through films and talks.
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Climate Lab Pendle
Climate Lab Pendle is bringing together adults and young people, business and council leaders to amplify voices and experience and advocate for policy change. It is an interdisciplinary community education programme combining art, climate science and psychology and underpinned by the Active Hope methodology. We are creating space for intergenerational dialogue around the inequality at the heart of the climate crisis, and a space to name our feelings about the crisis together as community and redirect these towards collective action.
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Kill Your Desires
Project with Mums 2 Mums group exploring everyday life, domestic caring responsibilities, female bodies, trauma, faith and connection to nature. Holding space for deep sharing and vulnerability across difference. Over 9 months we talked and ate together, danced, went on walks and on outings, including a trip to Ingleton Falls. At the end we created an installation at Nelson Library for the group to own, share and facilitate further explorations with other women.
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About In-Situ
In-Situ is a creative organisation based in Lancashire, UK, working at the intersection of community development and arts practice. Embedded in the locale; a post-industrial mill town with a large migrant population, it encourages dialogue and action around everyday life, surroundings and civic decision making. Over its 12 years, In-Situ has fostered longstanding reciprocal relationships within the community, inviting artists into this active context for residencies and commissions.
In-Situ has a flat organisational structure and equal pay, its own code of ethics and an evolving methodology around ‘fluid leadership’.
In-Situ was established by three artists working longterm in one place, challenging the temporary and outcome-focused nature of artist commissions within communities. It is now a state core funded organisation with its own building and small team. It works in close partnership with other organisations, the local authority and agencies to develop and sustain collaborative processes that support greater participation and new possibilities.
Anna joined the organisation in 2018, with a focus on critical engagement, policy and practice. Her interests are around alternative organising structures and creating space for collective thinking. Her aims are to generate questioning, build equitability around narratives around art and the institution and to strengthen the capacity for accountability.