Care Aesthetics and the Arts

What would happen if we were to understand arts projects through their capacity to care? Care Aesthetics and the Arts offers an exploration of care aesthetics applied to arts projects from diverse contexts. This collection examines the emerging field of care aesthetics applied to a range of arts practices and projects. Divided thematically into five sections, each chapter examines a range of arts practices or projects through the lens of care aesthetics, exploring how they can be understood and critiqued through this frame. This book surveys the foundations for an artistic exploration of care, discusses arts initiatives for sustaining, repairing, and holding space for everyday care, and expands conversations into the ambiguities and contradictions in both theory and practice. The volume includes contributions from diverse fields such as dance, literature, film, music, visual art, and theatre, alongside perspectives from non-conventional artistic settings such as protests, playgrounds, and hospitals, presenting a truly interdisciplinary study. Ideal for practitioners and students alike, this collection establishes the rich and evolving field of care aesthetics within the arts.

Kate Maguire-Rosier is Assistant Professor in Disability Arts at Maastricht University, Netherlands. Réka Polonyi is an artist and research fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. James Thompson is Professor of Applied Theatre at the University of Manchester and co-director of The Care Lab, UK.

Preface by Maurice Hamington Introduction Part 1 Starting points 1. Tentative temporalities: enacting and performing care in a site-responsive arts festival designed for public hospital healthcare workers 2. Reimagining Humanitarianism: Care Aesthetics, Relational Voice and the Global Politics of Theatre 3. An Ode to Playgrounds: play, unruliness and care in the art of playgroundology 4. Caring for Music, What Can We Find? Gentle methods for researching the aesthetics of care in later life settings Artistic Interlude Care Anaesthesia - Notes on care and love Part 2 Retelling 5. Look at him: A care ethics and aesthetics approach to stillbirth and late termination of pregnancy foetal abnormalities 6. 'Crossing the line': The precarious care aesthetics of access in Australian dance theatre work, Off The Record 7. This Stuff Matters: curating and caring for the histories and material culture of homelessness Artistic Interlude Care Index: Collaborative Movement Practices for Enacting Care Part 3 Maintaining 8. 'The joy, the laughter, the chaos': care aesthetics as foundational for communicating the work of community arts organisations 9. On the art of Khidmat: political afterlives of Muslim women's everyday care practices 10. The Careful Art of Mending (Public) Things: Reflections on the aesthetics of ordinary maintenance 11. The Aesthetics of Caring for Country Artistic Interlude The Rhythm of Our Lives: a poetic autoethnography on navigating queer motherhood in healthcare spaces Negotiating 12. Crafting Intimacy: Towards a collaborative practice of careful art in the stage and screen industries 13. Ambient Jam: multisensory improvisation, radical relationships and 'deep hanging out': tracing reciprocal care with a differently disabled/abled ensemble 14. Found Performance: Towards a Musical Methodology of Care 15. Care aesthetic lessons from an artist's residency in a Dutch academic research institute Troubling 16. The Facing Out project: A Case Study 17. Care Aesthetics and TimeSlips Storytelling in Dialogue: Facilitating More Equitable Sensory Artistry within a Dementia Unit 18. It matters that you're here Postscript: Letter to the editors from Fred and Sophie Dixon