Activities in the Field of Social Sculpture

A full list of workshops and seminars is available here. Selected activities are outlined below.

From Deep Down. Social Sculpture Soil Seminar
(2012 onwards)
This seminar invites participants to develop a new awareness of soil through connecting the cultivation of soil with what economist Ernst F. Schumacher called the 'culture of the inner human being'. 'From Deep Down' is designed for people from all disciplines, backgrounds and professions. It offers ideas and a creative approach that can be integrated into various fields of endeavour.

For further information, and to participate, contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Shifting Gardens. Social Sculpture Workshop
(2012 onwards)
Drawing on the double meaning of the German word 'wandelnd', which translates as both 'strolling' and 'transforming', The Shifting Gardens suggests that the primary garden is in ourselves - invisible, yet very real, as our mindset, our consciousness.
In the context of community gardens and urban gardening, this workshop offers insights and creative practices that help to relate in new, fertile ways to oneself, to each other and to the world.
For further information and to participate contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Agents of Change and Ecological Citizenship
Social sculpture workshop at Oxford Brookes University, July 2011. This summer school, run in conjunction with artist Shelley Sacks, was embedded in the exploratory practices of the Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University. It provided an introduction to social sculpture and its role in bringing about a viable, sustainable world.

Warmth Sculpture Workshop Heiligengeist School
The Warmth Sculpture Workshop is part (Wing II) of the Growing Sculpture Heiligengeist School Lüneburg (2009). Here teachers and parents have worked collaboratively towards creating consciousness for the humane capacities and potentials within individuals at the school. Central questions were: how can existing social skills and cultural wealth be made visible and their true value recognised? Could collectively developed rituals possibly be an appropriate means to achieve this? The Warmth Sculpture Workshop connects George Steinmann’s concept of “a growing sculpture” to the idea of social sculpture.

The results of the workshop can be found here.

The New Muse: Impulses from Art to Overcome Consumer Culture
This is the title of my dissertation completed at the Institute for Cultural Studies at Humboldt-Universität, Berlin in 1999.

The term “new muse”, coined by Josef Beuys in his installation “Stack Monuments” stands for the awareness of a creative potential that reaches beyond the art world: a non commercial creativity which cultivates respect instead of superiority; whose objective is more than the production of artefacts; a creativity which strives to be receptive to transformation processes and no longer separates humans from nature.

Other engagements in the field of Social Sculpture include: