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Image credit: Artist Yara El-Sherbini

Our Arts work has allowed for the sharing of creative ideas and concepts from UK artists to a US audience.

Explore our past programs

Arts and Social Practice Fellowship

The Arts and Social Practice Fellowship was a reciprocal exchange program with our US partners offering fellowship grants to socially-engaged artists in the US and UK. Fellows were offered residencies of 2-3 weeks with host organizations in the US and the UK. Each residency was self-determined by the artist whose practice involved public interaction and addressed contemporary social issues through the lens of arts and culture. 

Los Angeles/UK Fellows 2012-2014

  • Malcolm K. Darrell
  • Sabra Williams
  • Dena Younkin
  • Ed Webb-Ingall
  • Maria Oshodi
  • Owen Griffiths
  • Orode Faka
  • Richie Cumming
  • Sally Lockey

Portland/UK Fellows 2015-2016

  • Yara El-Sherbini and Davina Drummond
  • Phoebe Davies
  • Travis Souza
  • Travis Neel

Chicago/UK Fellows 2016-2017

  • Elaine Forde
  • One of My Kind (OOMK) - Sofia Nazi, Rose Nordin, Heiba Lamara
  • The Floating Museum - Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford and Faheem Majeed
  • Billy McGuinness

Artists' Salon at Arizona State University

In 2013, the British Council hosted discussions on innovative, socially-engaged practices, with the Arizona State University Art Museum and Arizona State University Gammage Theater. 

The British Council hosted an artist-led salon supper during a time when British and American artists were working together at Arizona State University Gammage Theater and Arizona State University Art Museum.

The event provided a platform for artists from the US and UK to discuss their participatory practices and innovative, socially-engaged art practices with an audience of more than 40 people at a communal outdoor festival. The artists who took part included Matt Moore, Clare Patey, Leslie Hill and Helen Paris of Curious, Aaron Landsman and Mallory Cattlet, Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir, Mark Wilson, and Gregory Sale.

PEN World Voices Festival

The British Council enjoyed a 3-year partnership 2013-2015 with PEN World Voices Festival to present leading British voices in the festival. Including Simon Critchley on Memory Theatre with the topic of Obsession; a series of works on Dylan Thomas including tribute evening events; and Aminatta Forna who featured on 3 panels and shared her vision on what the world will look like in the year 2050.

Performance Studies International (PSi)

Performance Studies International (PSi) is a professional association of many of the world's leading contemporary performance studies experts. The association holds an annual convening in different cities around the world with public performances.

When PSi was held in Stanford, California in 2013, the British Council supported the three British artists headlining the public program: Curious, Hugo Glendinning, and Marcia Farquhar. As faculty members at Stanford University, Curious also curated the program as a whole.

PSi's use of the small 'i' demonstrates an awareness of the complexity of what it means to be international. Internationalization is not only a matter of the cultural phenomena that are the subject of study or of the worldwide expansion of one particular research paradigm but is rather about diversification. 

Artists' Exchange at the Public Theater

Together with the Public Theater, we presented the Artists' Exchange, March 8, 2014, with MacArthur Fellow Tarell Alvin McCraney and Baltimore Stage's Kwame Kwei-Armah. The two discussed McCraney's creative process in directing Antony and Cleopatra, Kwei-Armah's experience as a British artist working in the US and the state of transatlantic collaboration as a whole.

HowlRound live-streamed the event to allow people to watch live and participate in the dialogue by sending their comments and questions via Twitter, using the hashtag #artistexchange.