Manifesto For Tomorrow at the Art Gallery of NSW


Manifesto For Tomorrow was an experimental youth engagement program that made participants the authors of their own declarations of beliefs, intentions and motifs. The program ran in the spring of 2017. I.C.E., the Art Gallery of New South Wales and an alliance of education partners developed and delivered a youth program of artistic research and interpretation, production and presentation that asserted individual and collective identities through the development of a two manifestos; one made by students from Auburn Girls High School and one by Granville Boys. Thereby, Manifesto for Tomorrow provided vulnerable and disenfranchised youth from Western Sydney access to resources to both study and produce alternative narratives of representation and identity.

The focus lay on Sydney Modern Project, the Gallery’s expansion project that will see the space transformed for art, live performance, film, learning, study and cultural experiences. Involved were Gallery staff and a select group of provocateurs from a range of disciplines to help students develop their own utopian vision for the future of the Gallery. The group was guided through a journey of investigation, idea generation and development. They were afforded unprecedented access to the building, and the plans for the Sydney Modern Project.

Significantly, Manifesto for Tomorrow simultaneously fostered constructive critique and engagement with the AGNSW. Using I.C.E.’s Mobile Digital Studio the program facilitated a comprehensive suite of creative development and production, skills development and training opportunities. At the completion of the program the groups’ manifestos were presented to high-ranking members of the gallery. In addition, both digital artifacts that were created as manifestos was presented to the board in January 2018.

The Process
The two-week program followed a three-step structure:

  • information and research (days 1 – 5),
  • exformation and data mapping (days 2 to 7), and
  • creating and collaborating (days 6-10)

This set-up is typical for design thinking, integrated into participatory storytelling or community arts overlay.

In short, the project exposed the students to four different examples of art manifestos of the 20th and 21st Century (Neen, Fluxus, Minnesota Declaration) as well as four different types of galleries (Maryland County Museum, Sammlung Boros, MoNA, and Sandham Memorial Chapel). Visiting two other galleries on day 3 gave students a physical introduction to a variety of museums, so that they could more critically compare their experience at the Art Gallery of new South Wales.

The students’ manifesto statements were collaboratively researched, mapped, focused and formulated with the help of my role as a Lead Provocateur, meaning that I’d help students learn to research like an anthropologist, critically questioning, using all their senses, and sense-making when bringing information together. Artist Educators from AGNSW joined us each day in order to facilitate the co-creation of the artifact that contained the students manifesto statements.

Read more – including student’s quotes – in pdf below.