AISH: Research
Art is Still Honest has collaborated on a range of research projects in fields as diverse as law, music, digital art, and healthcare. With a focus on practice-based research, accessible frameworks, and co-design, AISH seeks to explore the fundamental relationship between art, community, and well-being.
Instrumenting(s)
A collaborative, transdisciplinary research project with Dr. Lucy Finchett-Maddock (Art/Law Network) and Dr. Anders Hultqvist (University of Gothenburg), Instrumenting(s) explores the relationship between geology, sound, and law.
Incorporating community art projects in North Wales, alongside explorations of English rave culture, the project anticipates how communities read ‘signals’ generated from and within their landscape, and how such signals later shape legislation.
Our research has been published in the Journal of the Society of Advanced Legal Studies, presented at the London Critical Legal Conference, as well as resulted in exhibitions in London and Bangor.
Find out more at the Instrumenting(s) website.
p_ART_icipate!
Led by Dr. Olive Gringrich (University of Greenwich), the AHRC-funded p_ART_icipate! explored the role of digital art in engendering social connectivity and well-being. Based around the construction of four digital artworks, the project invited a range of participants - including those with physical and cognitive differences, NHS health workers, and students - to explore online digital applications for fostering creativity and community.
The project resulted in the creation of a new set of guidelines for the production of digital participatory works, and our research was published by ACM Siggraph, EVA Berlin, and International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, amongst others.
Find out more about the project at the p_ART_icipate! website.
Post-Capitalist Cultures
Post-Capitalist Culture’s explores the social effects of the capitalist economies on artists and musicians’ well-being. Funded by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and engaging heavily with the grass-roots art & music scene, this ongoing research engages with creative practitioners often marginalised by the major platforms (such as Spotify or Ticketmaster) who dominate the creative industries. Asking questions about what it means to be a ‘professional’ artist when even successful practitioners earn less than a third of their income from their art, and how being a ‘failed’ artist (by capitalism’s terms) affects well-being, the project reimagines what sustainable, socially aware, and ecologically minded art might look like.
This research has been presented at Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Sonic Rebels symposium.
Sleep! A participatory boardgame exploring the homeless crisis
First shown at the Tate Exchange, SLEEP was devised by Art is Still Honest and University of Sussex Law students to explore many of the issues that face Brighton’s homeless community, in the hope of fostering discussion about the practical and legal challenges they face.
Incorporating legal case studies, discussions with representatives from the travelling community, and participatory art methodologies, the project sought to share the real-world experiences of those experiencing homelessness through an interactive and accessible game that drew upon the often counter-productive reality of current legislation.
Spaceport One: Communities under threat
Spaceport One was a practice-based research project that sought to document and share the plight of the residents of North Uist - an island in the Scottish Hebrides. Here, the community is threatened by the development of a commercial sub-orbital spaceport - a development that, if built, will hugely impede the already challenging lives of the island’s residents.
The research project incorporated some 300 photographs of the area, alongside sound recordings and site-specific performances. Together, these artefacts were edited into a book and CD album, later released on the Difficult Art and Music record label. Recordings from the project have been played on BBC Radio 3, NAISA radio, Radio Mercure, ERR Klassikaraadio, and others.
AISH: Impact
Art is Still Honest specialises in developing public-facing grassroots practice and research. Whether writing papers for academic journals, working with indie publishers to release experimental texts, or collaborating with DIY organisations to share their latest projects, AISH is committed to unusual and impactful methods of disseminating ideas.
Difficult Art and Music
Difficult Art and Music is a record label and small press dedicated to releasing public-facing artefacts from creative research projects. Working with academics, independent researchers, as well as grass-roots musicians, writers and artists, the label has curated a broad range of experimental practice. From the cerebral synthesis of J.Lynch (senior lecturer, popular music, Falmouth University), to the electro-acoustic compositions of Chelidon Frame (Asychronous Drone Orchestra, Italy), the label is home to a host of cutting-edge contemporary artists.
At the same time, DAAM focuses on experimental community art projects: the archival work of rave pioneers Polygone, the site-specific field-recordings of Scolpaig, supporting self-defined ‘outsider’ zine Neverwork, and curated compilations exploring everyday witchcraft and modern feminism. The label’s goal is not to compete with larger, better-resourced outlets, but to actively support cutting-edge, conceptually-weighted music and art that might otherwise not find a home.
MEANS community magazine
MEANS is a community-led project aimed at supporting grassroots art, music, and writing through the publication of a physical magazine. With each issue dedicated to a unique, socially minded theme—such as Power, Privilege, and Politics—the magazine explores real-world issues that affect grassroots artists while simultaneously serving as a vehicle by which to share and promote their work.
The magazine is first and foremost a ‘means’ of fostering community, well-being, and social inclusion. With a recent study showing that 73% of independent musicians suffer from mental ill-health - a number that rises exponentially for those in poverty or with a disability - a supportive community for grassroots artists is more vital than ever. The role of MEANS is to foster meaningful connections between an often disparate array of global grassroots artists, offering a non-hierarchical, economical, and community-led means of sharing their practice.
MEANS has covered topics as broad as the Ukrainian musical underground’s response to war, the effect of sanctions on Iranian composers, philosophical discussions on composition and spirituality, alongside interviews with contemporary artists, label profiles, photography and artworks from the UK, USA, Europe and beyond.
Brexshitting: the portmanteau of tautological research
Funded by the Sussex Learning Network, Brexshitting worked with HE and FE students from an inner-city college to explore the language used by the media and politicians during the EU withdrawal negotiations.
Merging Musique-Concrete, technological decay, and rigorous academic socio-political research, the project juxtaposed the degradation and latent noise of the political sphere with the caustic timbres and limited fidelity of the lathe-record press. Exploring what linguist Michael Halliday terms the ‘functional grammar’ of the Brexit debate – its tone, timbre, rhythm, and frequency - participants constructed new compositions based upon such linguistic research, which was later presented as a custom record player and lathe set, and exhibited at SOAS gallery.
Cronework: A compilation of spells by self-identified women and gender-diverse artists
Cronework is a feminist curated compilation where every song is a spell, celebrating the unique cultural contributions of self-identified women and gender-diverse artists.
Engaging with both traditional folklore and modern interpretations of esoteric magical practice, Cronework invited practitioners across music and visual art to provide materials for an album and accompanying spell book. Based around a series of community workshops funded and led by Magnetic Ideals, the project sought to give a voice and a sense of community to marginalised groups through the still stigmatised practice of political magics, a practice Sylvia Federici described as ‘re-enchanting the world’.
I Don’t Know Where We’re Going But It Sure Sounds Nice
A radical rethinking of approaches by which to disseminate practice-based research, I Don’t Know Where… consisted of over 30 guerrilla participatory performances across Brighton city centre. Involving impromptu choirs of drunk revellers, children’s nursery readings outside corporate offices, all-night concerts in empty churches, street performances in bank lobbies, and interactive pop-up exhibitions, the project sought to take artistic engagement directly to the social spaces that we all share and inhabit.
More concerned with real-world engagement than abstract data metrics, the project located creativity in the day-to-day lives of ordinary passersby, encouraging them - through open-ended prompts, ethical propositions, and humour - to respond in ways far beyond the ideas and pre-conceptions of the artists vision.
AISH: Support
Art is Still Honest has supported a range of projects to reach their creative potential. With a focus on dialogue and collaboration, AISH supports charities, small businesses and grassroots artists to present their work in a manner that support their ethos and ideals.
Supporting grassroots artists
Having grown up in the grassroots music and art scene, AISH shares a passion for the often neglected work of upcoming practitioners working tirelessly to build community through their art. AISH has supported new and established bands like Be Kind Cadaver and Yumi and the Weather to shoot music videos, designed album art for indie labels like Cruel Nature and DAAM, produced albums for upcoming musicians, and curated exhibitions and shows for experimental visual and performance artists.
Working directly with venues, radio shows, blogs and labels, AISH strives to build meaningful and long-lasting community within the grassroots scene.
Project design and support
Art is Still Honest has worked with a range of partners to produce photographs, videos, installations and exhibitions that showcase the unique character of their work. Whether you need to document your existing practice or create new visual or sonic pieces to support your work, AISH can help.
Our support services cover audio, video, design and project management.
Prior projects include enlivening the archives of the Surrey History Centre by producing virtual tours of their texts, developing interactive sonic-sculptures for the inclusive Rocket Artists as part of their Work In Progress exhibition, producing accessible guidelines for digital art projects, and designing bespoke visuals and physical artefacts for artists to support their practice.
Curating experimental practice
AISH believes that experimentalism is key to developing art as a form of social well-being. Trying new things out, having a go, taking risks, defying expectations… these are the sorts of creative gestures that enable communities to learn from one another and to develop new ways of being.
Whether it’s providing generative audio-visuals for established avant-garde choreographers, developing art-films for up-and-coming photographers, or co-designing participatory installations, AISH strives to locate experimental practice in the everyday, an accessible form of creativity that prioritises curiosity above the virtuosic.
Ecology, education, sustainability
A commitment to grassroots practice is by definition a commitment to sustainable practice. As such, AISH is particularly supportive of projects that engage with ecological and pedagogical narratives - projects that seek to make the world a better place for everyone.
With this in mind, Art is Still Honest has worked with forest schools to deliver video modules, run field-recording workshops in the South Downs, and developed guerrilla sculpture trails along Brighton Seafront.
Contact us
Interested in finding out how our research experience might support your project? Get in touch!