Social Practice Workshop at the Rijksakademie in partnership with Framer Framed

Bert Scholten in Werkplaats Molenwijk. Foto: Margot van Ruitenbeek

Social Practice Workshop at the Rijksakademie in partnership with Framer Framed

Framer Framed & the Rijksakademie join with artists to create ways of working with various communities through the Social Practice Workshop.

The Social Practice Workshop at Rijksakademie
Artists are increasingly working outside the framework of the established art world, and searching for a meaningful role within a social context. They work with individuals or groups on projects where the end result is not necessarily physical work, but a critical intervention, a debate or a social exchange. The Social Practice Workshop at the Rijksakademie is created to facilitate artists who work, or want to work, in this field. The workshop also explores how the individuals and communities the artists’ work with can be accommodated in their needs.

Partnership with Framer Framed
Since the Rijksakademie established its Social Practice Workshop in 2021, Framer Framed – as a neighbouring art and project space in Amsterdam East – has been working closely with several affiliated artists to create connections in the local context and beyond. This has included facilitating workshops, ongoing dialogue and developing artists projects. The collaboration is based on shared interests in the social potential of art and of artists working in broader social arenas. Projects have organically developed through an ongoing dialogue between the Social Practice Workshop and Framer Framed, which has enabled both organizations to expand their reach, depth of engagement.

This includes the project by arts and educational collective Homing (psychologist Charlaine Reval and Rijksakademie alum Laura O’Neill), where storytelling events around migration and the pandemic from the elderly Suriname community in Amsterdam first took place at Framer Framed, and later introduced to a wider public at Amsterdam Museum. In addition, the kitchen, originally established by Donghwan Kam at the Rijksakademie as a communal space between artists for a large part of the artists residency, was moved to the social centre BOOST via the Social Practice Workshop for a series of cooking sessions, and later on presented more publicly at Framer Framed.

Another project by Bert Scholten initiated within the Rijksakademie explored the history of baking moulds through a series of workshops and exchanges. The project was developed further together with Framer Framed and reached a wider range of exchanges with local residents via a residency at the Werkplaats Molenwijk, a neighbourhood space in the North of Amsterdam established in 2018 by Framer Framed. Lastly, artist Ratu R. Saraswati developed a series of works in close dialogue with the Social Practice Workshop during her residency at the Rijksakademie, and is currently undertaking a residency at Werkplaats Molenwijk.

Seeing the potential of institutional collaboration and collective forms of knowledge production, Framer Framed and Rijksakademie will continue to co-create exchanges around artistic and educational social practices together with affiliated artists. Future details of the programmes will be announced at a later date.

The activities and programmes of the Social Practice Workshop are developed in collaboration with resident artists from the Rijksakademie and with Framer Framed.