Organised by Outside In, the symposium will be taking place at Fabrica on Thursday 18 January and at Brighton and Hove Museum of Creativity on Friday 19 January, 2024.

Key international art world figures participating in the event will include Frances Christie (formerly Sotheby’s), Madeleine Haddon (V&A East), Hans Looijen (Museum of the Mind, Amsterdam) and Thomas Roeske (Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg).

The event will be chaired by Outside In’s founder and director Marc Steene and will have two areas of focus, Supporting Artists and Changing the Art World for Good.

Supporting Artists will focus on how best to support artists in creating their work, developing their own style without undue influence and to find the means and techniques best suited to them. It will consider the skill and nuance needed when working with artists in need of support and how to avoid the pitfalls of defaulting to conventional methods and thinking as to what art is and how it is made. Panellists will include representatives from leading supported studios across the UK: Amanda Sutton (Venture Arts, Manchester), Martin Swan (Project Art Works), Sheryll Catto (ActionSpace), Laurence Ward (Community Art Project, Darlington) and Elizabeth Gibson (Project Ability, Glasgow).

Changing the Art World for Good will focus on how to create lasting change in the art world and exactly what needs to change, debating the language, terminology and methodology used in the art world and the problems this poses when working with artists outside the mainstream. It will also examine rethinking art world structures and hierarchy and coming up with new terms and systems that work for a wider community of creators and audiences. Panellists will include artist Dannielle Hodson, Madeleine Haddon, Hans Looijen and Thomas Roeske and be chaired by Frances Christie.

In addition to a day of interactive talks at Fabrica, the symposium will also include live performances by artists, the screening of a new film about collector Rose Knox-Peebles, and, on Friday 19 January, artist-led creative workshops and a curator-led tour of Outside In’s exhibition ‘Humanity’ at Hove Museum of Creativity, which includes work by 80 Outside In artists.