The studio developed an ethical participatory framework for the Whitworth and University of Manchester with Dr Janna Graham, in collaboration with Poppy Bowers and designed by Giles Round. Drawing on research across 3 projects ran by the Whitworth, the framework explored power, consent and value to support more equitable approaches to participation and collaboration with constituents.

We co-developed and produced 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, published by Penguin in collaboration with Serpentine. Working closely with the curators Hans Ulrich Obrist, Kostas Stasinopoulos, Lucia Pietroiusti and Rebecca Lewis we coordinated contributions from 140 artists, translating artistic responses to the climate emergency into an accessible publication.

We use theories of change to think about how systems, communities and local ecologies can shift over time. We look at what has been tried before, learning from existing models and adapting them to new contexts. Nature is also an important source of knowledge. We often look to the ways natural systems organise, adapt and sustain themselves as a guide for how we might work together.

We believe change happens at different scales. A small intervention can influence a relationship, a project or a place, and over time those changes can ripple outwards, allowing an idea or new way of working to enter wider society.

We support organisations and institutions to analyse their own practices. Drawing on tools from devised theatre such as active spectatorship, we make systems, structures and behaviours visible so they can be examined collectively and differently. Often, the tools available in a community or facilitated session are simply a pen and paper. We develop visual languages for social change, using drawing and mapping not just to describe a system, but to help people recognise patterns, imagine alternatives and rehearse change.

We are interested in what becomes possible when a system is drawn out in front of us. Where does power sit? What patterns repeat? Who is participating, who is observing, and what might shift?

We also look beyond the arts, analysing how other industries support their publics, staff and communities. Alongside this, we learn from the ways artists have created their own support structures, and from crip theory and other practices that offer more expansive ideas of access, care, interdependence and the self.

We understand that every artist, project and context requires something different. Rather than applying a fixed model, we draw on a wide range of observations and practices to suggest the right scaffolding and conditions for the work. This might result in an access rider, a team strategy, a different approach to budgets and resource distribution, or new ways of engaging with the public.