The Alternative School of Economics – Talk and workshop

This  in-person event at Castlefield Gallery is for Associates only.

Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck will introduce their socially engaged collaboration, The Alternative School of Economics, through a short artists’ talk about their current and ongoing projects. They will then lead a workshop exploring the idea of the neoliberal imagination – looking at how the economic system of neoliberalism reaches into many facets of life, from the everyday to our aspirations and ability to imagine alternatives.

It will draw on research Amy and Ruth have been conducting with union members in Manchester, including sound, mapping and experimental writing, part of a commission for The Whitworth’s summer exhibition Economics the Blockbuster: It’s not Business as Usual (30 June – 22 October 2023).

The Alternative School of Economics is a collaboration between artists Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck, formed in 2012. They make art that challenges economic doctrine and knowledge hierarchies. Working and collaborating with communities, they explore global political issues in relation to the complexity of lived experience. Using feminist and alternative economics and pedagogies as forms of resistance, they produce film, graphics, photography, texts and clothing, as forms of activation, dissemination and reflection, shared to publics in art and non-art contexts. Recent projects include Artists’ Economies, UKS, Oslo, The End of the Present, Arts Catalyst, London & Sheffield, and True Currency: About Feminist Economics, Gasworks, London. They are currently working on Tree Time, a new commission with TACO!, London, their on-going project Rabbits Road Institute Library.

Image: The Alternative School of Economics, The Neoliberal Imagination, 2023, screenprint on The Telegraph newspaper, made with UCU Union members during strike action, commissioned by The Whitworth, University of Manchester