Egan J., Gatens L., Graham E., Khalaf A., Thorp A. (2023), How We Hold: Rehearsals in Art and Social Change, Serpentine Education and Civic, 2023

Suggested by Aliaskar Abarkas

Serpentine Education and Civic present a new publication, How We Hold: Rehearsals for Art and Social Change. The book is an invitation to arts educators, cultural workers, facilitators, organisers, and anyone who wants to use creative practice to work towards change.

Drawing directly from a decade of projects generated by artists and groups of people through Serpentine Education and Civic programmes, How We Hold gathers project notes, documentation, conversations, commissioned texts, and exercises. It delves into the timely questions: Where do we go when things fall apart, when home has been taken away, when the cracks appear? How do we find moments of rest, joy and pleasure within ongoing crisis? How do we organise?

Designed to be used both within organisations and as a tool to critique them, How We Hold supports dissenting and oppositional conversations, and offers pragmatic challenges to neoliberal and colonial models of education and administration found in museums, arts organisations and other institutions today.

The book honours and amplifies the creativity and resistance of artists, organisers and the many people who have shaped these projects—from children in nursery schools to labour organisers, educators and carers, young people in academy schools and those navigating the immigration system. It celebrates those who find hope, possibility and life in the most difficult of circumstances.