For Artful Care and careful art
What if the work of a nurse, physio, or homecare worker was designated an art, so that the qualities of the experiences they create became understood as aesthetic qualities? What if the interactions created by artists, directors, dancers, or workshop facilitators were understood as works of care? Care Aesthetics is the first full-length book to explore these questions and examine the work of carer artists and artist carers to make the case for the importance of valuing and supporting aesthetically caring relations across multiple aspects of our lives.
James Thompson is Professor of Applied Theatre at the University of Manchester. He was the co-founder of the Theatre in Prisons and Probation Centre, the arts organisation, In Place of War, and has run arts projects in conflict zones internationally. He has written widely on applied theatre and the socially engaged arts.
Care Aesthetics is described as:
“…a vital, paradigm-shifting book for anyone engaged with socially engaged arts or social and health care practices on an academic or professional level.”
As James himself explains in a recent article “Care Aesthetics in Time of Covid-19” (full article available here)
“Of course, care aesthetics is making another claim. One that suggests that increasing the artistry that takes place between people in their communities makes healthier, potentially more equitable and joyful lives. Similarly deepening our capacities to care for each other – not as an idea but as an actual practice – can provide more sustainable, healthy neighbourhoods and more mutually enriching lives. Care aesthetics is descriptive in analysing and documenting the aesthetic experience of care in community, health and arts projects. But it is also normative – it is a proposal for change. It is suggesting that improving the aesthetic quality of care practices (whether a theatre project or a health practice) will enhance the likelihood of them offering life enhancing and transformative experiences. When the times we live in value the technical and managerial over the embodied and affective, it is a demand for a slower, more human-centred relational focus for acts of care. Similarly, it is making a demand that in a world of extremes of lack of care, and the ugliness of poverty, exclusion and discrimination, we need to improve the way we live together to ensure the damaging and unequal relations that dominate our worlds have a chance to be transformed. Care aesthetics is about the shape and feel of how we look after each other and how we look out for each other – it is about the art and craft of solidarity.”
