How to make art that pleases you too! by Samra Mayanja
A guide for early career artists and practitioners interested in socially engaged practice. Commissioned by VASW and university partners.
Hey!
You might like to use this guide over several weeks. Take your time with it. Each section corresponds to a different aspect within my practice. Contents below:
Week 1: PERFORMANCE OR SOCIALLY ENGAGED WHAT’S-IT’s
Week 2: HAVE A COFFEE WITH A STRANGER
Week 3: NORTH STAR
Week 4: FACILITATION
Week 5: A CULTURAL STRATEGY TOWARDS…
Week 6: MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN THAT PLEASES YOU TOO
Week 7: MONEY
Week 1: PERFORMANCE & SOCIALLY ENGAGED WHAT’S-IT’s
I make performances that are shown in various contexts and I teach mostly in art schools. I have been asked to write a resource focussed on socially engaged work which isn’t something that I would say that I do or have ever done really. Or perhaps I have?
Socially engaged work is performance. Both invite action, watching and two separate imaginative spaces; the world of the performer, and the world of the audience (or participant). Perhaps the reason that I am reluctant to wear the title of ‘socially engaged practitioner’ is because it seems like an unserious practice, like why don’t you just make your own work? But I’ve also had a similar hang up with performance up until recently.
The secret is out - socially engaged work always has been and still is a central part of what I make and how I make. Fine. Fab. I said it. More recently, I tend to think about performance as the loose choreography that is humanity. I bring people together meaningfully to learn about the voice and the unspeakable.
My first proper induction into socially engaged work was through a project that I organised in Hong Kong. I feel embarrassed to talk about it because I was very young and got a lot VERY wrong. I used weekly making sessions as a bridging tool between local and refugee families, who ordinarily had little to no contact. I took on too much and became quite unwell in the process. It was a steep learning curve, I effectively ran a small charity and organised a festival that brought musicians and artists from many communities together. I was proud of what we had achieved but I came back feeling quite ashamed. How could I think that I could change Hong Kong's extremely hostile conditions for refugees in an academic year? I now know, having offered support to people in various roles, that this was an over exertion. I was under-resourced and had a saviour complex. Ah! Scary.
At the same time I was so inspired by the artist-led archives, galleries and art spaces in Hong Kong. Particularly:
I was living there the year after the Umbrella Uprising and the cultural sector was under increased scrutiny from the Chinese government. I remember watching a screening of the film, Ten Years, a dystopian imagining of what Hong Kong would be like after the handover. The film, while impressive, wasn’t what has stayed with me. It was the way that a group of people erected an outdoor cinema in the street in Sham Shui Po in under 30 minutes and had practiced the ways that they would disperse if the authorities came. Which they did as the credits rolled.
When I returned to England, I had a renewed sense that the West is not the centre of the universe. As in, people are doing things differently everywhere right now. It’s such an obvious thought but I feel that we can sometimes be bogged down by the art world and art and England and it is LIT-ER-A-LLY not the centre of the world.
Please save up and go elsewhere (in the way that is available to you). Use these prompts to formulate a list of places that might be useful for you to go:
- A place you’re scared to go
- A place you know nothing about
- A place that your thinking about
- A place, family, friends, collaborators keep mentioning and you have no idea why
- A place that speaks your spirit.
My point is please leave where you are. Go to another town or city. But please please go.
Residencies may be an option. But do have a think about exactly what your practice needs and then start Googling, email past tutors, artist friends and artists that you like. Look at their CVs and search the places they’ve been. Does it sound like being there would support your practice? It might be scary but ask people to connect you with institutions. Ultimately, curiosity is currency and I think if you’re interested in what a person or place is doing most people are happy to at least have a coffee.
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Week 2: HAVE A COFFEE WITH A STRANGER
When I came back to York from Hong Kong I facilitated a six month process with classical musicians and poets. Through a series of exchanges they created a new piece of music together. The concert opened in a gorgeous (possibly Medieval) church in York. This project cemented my interest in interdisciplinary processes. It was called Resolution of Sound.
Resolution of Sound, Carlos Zamora and Gaia Blandina
Fast forward a few months and I had finished my degree in Economics (lol) and started an Art Foundation. My first ever residency was with Grizedale Arts some months later.
There is a very long email somewhere that I sent to Grizedale’s Director, Adam Sutherland, in which I explained that I had finished my degree and I was looking to work with institutions that worked at the intersection of art and economics. I spoke about the kinds of socially engaged work I had initiated and what I was vaguely interested in. It was a very scatty email, but it was filled with my naive and honest connections to the work that he had seeded there. Possibly a week or so later he had invited me for my first residency.
While this isn’t the best example of ‘having a coffee with a stranger’ it carries the sentiment. Put yourself out there in a way that works for you. Send an email, have an online chat, send a DM, strike up a conversation at an opening, get your super chatty friend to strike up the conversation etc etc. In short, find a way to connect with the people who make the kinds of work that you want to be a student of.
Back to Grizedale! I was never particularly good at the curatorial tasks Adam would set or the manual tasks because I always wanted to chat or read. Unlike a typical residency each artist completes either the day-to-day tasks that form various parts of their programmes in the local community, art world or international programme. It has a monastic quality that I needed as an antidote to the confusing anarchist housing co-operative I had found myself in.
For whatever reason Adam kept inviting me back to Grizedale and I loved it. I returned several times over the course of 3 or 4 years working on various projects in different capacities (joyously and badly). The task that I was adept at and loved was writing.
This is the podcast that I produced for Grizedale on socially engaged practices. It sits within a series called Farmyard Radio, which featured contributions by White Pube, Ella Deacy and Juneau Projects.
Farmyard Radio (Grizedale Arts)
While making the podcast there were many people that I felt were speaking to me. I imagined the contents of each of these links as people(s) that I had conversations into the night with, back and forth and back. And I wanted to share these conversations with you.
Sweetwater Foundation, Chicago
Renzo Martens / Institute of Human Activities, Congo and Netherlands
BOOKS
Catching Hell and Doing Well, Diana Watt and Adele D Jones
Artificial Hells, Claire Bishop
Adding Complexity to Confusion, Grizedale Arts
On the Shores of Politics, Jacques Ranciere
The Invisible Citizens of Hong Kong, Sophia Suk-Mun Law
Strategies for Survival, Recipes for Resistance, Migrant Artist Mutual Aid
Utopian Dreams, Tobias Jones
LINKS
Toni Morrison - Guardian Talk 1986
Renzo Martens - Plantations and White Cubes
The Nature of Gothic, John Ruskin
Thatcherism - A New Stage? - Stuart Hall
María Galindo: Giving form to a local anarcho-feminism
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Week 3: NORTH STAR
I think some people will leave art school with a strong sense of what they want to make. Some of us didn’t ever go and some of us will need to keep pivoting to find our path.
One tool that I return to is ikigai, the Japanese philosophy that supports finding purpose. I prefer the term ‘North Star’. I have adapted the original ikigai framework to suit an art practice. I should also mention that the idea of the North Star is about finding what really motivates you, what compels you and what is truly yours. My North Star for example is ‘upturning the logics that encourage us to hide and reminding us how bright we truly truly are’. Across my writing, performance and teaching this North Star has helped me steer my life with greater trust in myself.
The word purpose can feel too big at times, whereas the little star feels affirming and guiding. Which do you prefer?
MAKE A DRAWING
Firstly, split the page into quadrants like this:
I’ll explain.
‘ART etc. I AM OBSESSED WITH’ is art, artists, curators, designers, festivals, films, fashion, events, concepts, comics etc that you can’t stop thinking about or always return to.
‘ARTISTS etc. THAT PUSH MY CRAFT AND INSPIRE MY PRACTICE’ refers to the makers of all descriptions that you turn to when you feel stuck with how to make your work. It could be how to arrange a particular lyric or design a workshop perhaps. It might also mean those artists who have a relationship to their practice that you admire.
‘ART etc THAT THE WORLD NEEDS’ is my favourite one. It might immediately seem like you need to think of a socio-political salve to all the world's ills. It could be this. However it can also be something more poetic like ‘more soft places to sit’.
‘WHAT I CAN MAKE MONEY DOING THAT SUSTAINS MY PRACTICE IN MANY WAYS’ is important but the one that often makes people almost sick during workshops. By this I mean work that does not solely pay the bills but offers time, skills, resources, networks, education and / or insights that directly sustain and nourish your practice. I have encountered so many people working jobs that totally drain them, don’t offer anything to their practice and therefore deplete the energy they might have to make, learn, conceptualise and share their work.
After doing this task a few times and leaving space for reflection you might land on a `North Star. If not you might like to ask yourself what you notice about what you have written. Speak to friends about it, carry it with you, leave it and pick it up again. Where do you land with this?
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Week 4: FACILITATION
Facilitation is an essential skill that has enabled me to bring people together, curate, make films, improvise, join bands, engage in discussion, make decisions and work through conflict. Facilitation I think is about the ability to sit within and outside yourself. I think it’s about bringing attention to what is happening in the room and holding people as they notice. It’s listening.
The answers to these questions might bring your attention to how you like to host and how you like to be held:
- How do you like to be hosted and how do you want to host others?
- Who supports you and how do they do this?
Facilitation is tricky, but essential to how we come together. At Amy Jones' opening of Partial Versions, a gallery in her front room in Cambridge, a group of us spoke about the film on display. In it, the artist Tiphanie Kim Mall had restaged a part of an endless meeting held by an art collective she’s part of. We spoke about how these conversations can quite easily be dominated without good facilitation. What we meant is someone who is listening, holding space for others, but who might not be able then to hold space for themselves. In that case, where can you go to seek support? In social services, mediation and therapeutic services practitioners have clinical supervisors who effectively hold the holders.
Partial Versions, a project space based in Cambridge.
Endless Spiral of Misunderstandings, Samra Mayanja
But also when I think about facilitation I am often guided by films, particularly documentary films in which the position of the ‘leader’ is totally undermined and/or the veneer of normalcy is pierced. The following films I think are essential:
Bamboozled, Spike Lee
I Am Not a Witch, Rungano Nyonyi
Symbiopsycotaxiplasm 1&2, William Greaves
Enjoy Poverty, Renzo Martens
Without You I’m Nothing, Sandra Bernhard
Poverty Vampires, Luis Opina
Ausslander Aus, Mike Figgis (Christoff Schlingenseif)
Storytelling, Todd Solondz
Watermelon Woman, Cheryl Dunye
African Desperate, Martine Syms
Synecdoche New York, Charlie Kauffman
The Opening, John Cassavettes
Punishment Park, Peter Watkins
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Week 5: A CULTURAL STRATEGY
Almost ten years after I interned at the Video Art Archive (Videotage) in Hong Kong, I now have a residency at Live Art Development Agency (LADA) which is very similar to Videotage. LADA is an incredible archive that houses a collection of live art documentation, publications, performance ephemera and more.
LADA Director Mary Osborn introduced me to the definition of Live Art as ‘a cultural strategy’. What happens when we think about our work as a cultural strategy, rather than solely socially engaged? To understand our work through the ‘live art’ lens you might ask:
- What or who is this work propelling me towards?
- What or who is this work propelling us towards?
Within my own practice I’ve started to think about a cultural strategy as dancing with our cringiest selves. There is so much of our bodies, cultures, families, lives, tastes and interests that at times it seems we are encouraged to feel ashamed of or less than as a result of. No thanks! With this in mind my work is propelling us towards failure, with conviction and flamboyance. It propels us towards failure because why on earth would we want to succeed when the standards are so janky anyways. To dance with my cringiest self I simply mean that part that is tender and that I have been taught to hide.
Slight detour. There is a lineage within Western contemporary art that I like to think about. It’s an intervention in the gallery, the street or locale. It centres making at speed, intuitively, and with a sense of rigorous play. The work is often made with others, but most importantly; the work is done in a way that brings audiences into the studio, it demystifies the making process, and cuts out the middle man (curator). Instead the curator and audience are totally implicated and the separation between audiences and makers / watching and making are all dissolved. These works include:
Claes Oldenburg’s - THE STORE
Andy Warhol - THE FACTORY
Martin Kippenburger - THE OFFICE
Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas - THE SHOP
Theaster Gates - SOUL MANUFACTURING CORPORATION
Grizedale Arts - HONEST SHOP
Samra Mayanja - THE CALL CENTRE
THE CALL CENTRE – A Presentation for Freelands Foundation (skip to 20m44)
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Week 6: MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN THAT PLEASES YOU TOO
Often in art schools there is a lack of critical attention and rigour around writing and performance. So you may have to turn to the literary world, film, tv, dance, theatre, music, liveness generally to get the critical support that you need.
SKILLS AUDIT
- What do you love about your work?
- What do you think needs attention for your work to move closer to your visions / dreams
- Where can you acquire these skills? Who could you contact irl or online for a coffee? Go for it!
What if it doesn’t exist, or it’s too expensive, or the vibe isn’t right, or you’re excluded somehow? Then what? Then you and your pals, or perhaps just you, simply make your own. This moves the work away from the saviour work I was embroiled in to something more like extending the edges of your front room. As in, inviting people into a cosy space where you feel comfortable to be challenged. I love performance, relational practices, socially engaged whats-its because there is something that is needed. The need peaks curiosity, heals, or pleases; and then we come together with ourselves and our attention to see what emerges. It’s kinda brilliant really. A few projects I would love for you to know about:
Mmm Gotta Try a Little Harder It Could be Sweet, Harold Offeh
Nyege Nyege Festival and Nyege Nyege Tapes, Kampala, Uganda
Supernormal Festival, Braziers Park, Oxfordshire
Bombu Mininu, Mindelo, Cape Verde
Festival of Alternative Art Education
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Week 7: MONEY
At a meeting run by the Amsterdam-based Hacktivist Cooperative, one of the participants spoke about how collective practice is often formed out of precarity and may also reproduce precarious social structures. I have experienced first hand the ways that precarity and scarcity cause harm within a community. I would like to support students and organisations in creating financial support structures for themselves and each other. I don’t believe in the starving artist as something to aspire to. I think this image is particularly damaging to students without familial safety nets and inherited wealth. It pushes people to make risky decisions with their housing, money, and safety nets in the name of some kind of artistic martyrdom. I am forever encouraging students and the artists I work with to put money aside each month for future projects because if you have a year of application rejections and very few commissions, it’s still important to make your work.
Centrally, I am interested in how increased financial education and literacy might contribute towards more sustainable practices given the very shaky public funding landscape. How might collective financial structures and experiments support us all to thrive? Here’s a few examples of co-operative financing, financial literacy and fiscal intervention within art that I love.
not-nowhere (a film co-operative)
The Disastrous Relation Between Art and Property: John Berger, ‘A Moral’
Afro Housing Self Build Scheme
Your Juno - Financial Literacy App
C is for consciousness raising!
Ok well, that’s all from me. I would LOVE to hear your thoughts. Please reach out if you fancy a chat or a coffee.
Samra Mayanja is an artist working across performance, installation, film and writing. Her practice considers the illegibility of the body and the absurdist impulse to seek what is irretrievably lost. A continuously hopeful but seemingly futile act of searching runs through her work and manifests in performances that blend improvisation, slapstick, poetic monologues and tender vocalisations.
Samra Mayanja lives and works in London. Recent projects include Dead Dad Death Cult, Transmediale, Berlin (2025); Touch Me, Serf, Leeds (2024); All Islands Connect Underwater, CCA Glasgow (2023); The Living and the Stale, The Tetley, Leeds (2023); Bone Deep Deliverance (SCREAM II), LIVE Biennale, Western Front, Vancouver; scripted for a wayward narrator, London Short Film Festival (2022); and SWEAT, Somerset House, London (2021).
Her pamphlet My Will and Testament (Never My Last) was recently published with If a Leaf Falls Press (2025). Mayanja is the founder of Black Cinema Project and THE CALL CENTRE.
This guide is commissioned in partnership by Arts University Bournemouth, Arts University Plymouth, Falmouth University and VASW.
