Abstract :
Three years ago I started work on the exhibition Get
it off your chest, a multimedia project exploring the
personal and social role of the breast within British
culture. The project would involve over one hundred
people as contributors, engaging with ongoing
debates within academic, media and informal
contexts as to what constitutes and impacts upon
constructions of the female image within our society,
particularly in relation to the breast as a primary
signifier. The working practices evolved in creating
Get it off your chest were instrumental in generating
a synergy in my own creative activities,
enabling some measure of unification to occur
within the strands of my art-making and art educational
roles. This synergistic approach, which I term
‘creative community working’ will be discussed in
this paper alongside the epistemological focus of
the exhibition, its inception and its consequent
structure, presentation and wider educational role.
I will focus throughout on exploring the development
of creative community working contexts: the
impulse to integrate what sometimes seem like
rogue elements of the professional and creative
identity is one shared by many members of the art
educational community and I hope that this paper
will generate feedback and discussion on the
diverse ways in which colleagues generate synergy
in their own working lives.
