Who's Doing the Washing Up?

  • Lara Dean

'Who's Doing the Washing Up?' is a report exploring what it could be like to practically re-imagine cultural institutions and public spaces. Focusing on the arts industry, organisations Bergen Kunsthall and Lighthouse Brighton aim to open up their conversations to voices and perspectives that have already started putting that reimagining into practice. These people are key cultural workers like educators, cleaners, operations workers. What does it mean to be open and accessible to everyone? How can you be open to create safe spaces for those that need it? These questions ran through the this project and continues to open up the conversation within the covid-19 pandemic. As we shift our priorities, who has the keys to these doors that need to be open and how can we create new ones for those that need it most.

Link to the Report
During my time documenting at Lighthouse, the artist in residence opened up the building using doorstops to physically explore what it means to be open. Over the course of the week curators, local business workers and young people were invited to broaden the discussion over a lunchtime talk.

Due to my involvement on the youth project, I was a guest panelist for one of communal lunches discussing how organisations can be more open for young people in the arts, cultural and creative sectors. Once the lunch events had subsided, I designed and culminated all of the research from the 18-month project into a magazine-style document.