The International Association of Art (IAA) Europe and a-n Symposium 2025: Artists Make Change
Friday 12 September, Bluecoat, Liverpool
Welcome to the IAA Symposium 2025
We’re delighted to have you with us in Liverpool, to explore how collectiveness, collaboration and new ways of working can shape a more equitable art world.
This year’s International Association of Art Europe (IAA Europe) symposium recognises that artist-led activism and advocacy is necessary to sustain a creative practice and create a fairer art world. Conversations will focus on three key areas:
- the essential role of artists in generating resources, reports and campaigns that advocate for structural change
- the power of collaboration to create visibility and equity in our sector
- the issues that demand our immediate attention today. How can we focus our collective energyto better advocate for artists’ rights?
Programme
09:30 – 10:30
Welcome and Registration
10:30 – 10:45
Introduction by a-n, IAA Europe and Liverpool Biennial
10:45 – 11:30
Keynote: ‘IF IT DON’T EXIST, BUILD IT’. Larry Achiampong
Working across film, sculpture, installation, sound, collage, music, performance and more Larry Achiampong’s practice experiments with form and medium, whilst responding to many of the most pressing social issues of our time. In this presentation, Larry will reflect on past projects to address key topics across the symposium including collaboration and peer exchange, advocacy and access to education.
11:30 – 12:45
Panel: The Work Around the Work
Artists are often at the forefront of change – creating resources, leading campaigns and championing a fairer, more sustainable world. This discussion brings together activist practices and artist-led campaigns to consider why the responsibility is often placed on artists to reimagine and improve the conditions needed to sustain their work.
Speakers: Jack Ky Tan, Soizig Carey, Tom Pope, Exodus Crooks
12:45 – 14:15
Lunch (view Liverpool Biennial exhibition at The Bluecoat)
14:15 – 15:30
Panel: The Power and Necessity of Collective Organising
Collaboration has long been central to how artists build community, create visibility and challenge inequity and exclusion in the art world. In this conversation, artists from both formal and informal collectives, working across generations, geographies and disciplines, share how working together builds mutual support, creates visibility and demonstrates alternative models for organisations and institutions in the arts sector.
Speakers: Marlene Smith, Alberta Whittle, Thomas Wells, Sufea Mohamad Noor
15:30 – 15:55 Session: What’s Next?
For the final session, we invite three artists to respond to the day’s discussions, distilling the ideas, challenges, and urgencies that have emerged. The artists will reflect on the insights shared in the earlier panels – on advocacy, sustainability, and collective action – and consider what feels most pressing for artists today.
15:55 – 16:00 Closing Words
Speakers
Larry Achiampong
Larry Achiampong is a British Ghanaian artist who works in film, sculpture, installation, sound, collage, music and performance. Achiampong is a recipient of the Stanley Picker Fellowship (2020), the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Award for Artists (2019) and he is a Jarman Award-nominated artist (2021 & 2024).
Jack Ky Tan (Artist)
Jack Ky Tan (b.Singapore) is a UK based interdisciplinary artist, working across, performance, sculpture, law and policy-making. His practice is an ongoing exploration of social justice that blurs the boundaries between, art, law, governance, and consultancy. By questioning how embedded societal structures form our laws and guide our behaviour, Tan’s work attempts to rethink our entanglement with the human and more-than-human world, and looks towards alternative ways of living and working.
Exodus Crooks (artist)
Exodus Crooks (They/He) is a British-Jamaican multidisciplinary artist and educator who was recently shortlisted as a 2025 Arts Foundation Future Awards artist. Exodus is interested in self-determination and how it is steered by religion and spirituality. Informed by a fractious domestic life, their practice is auto ethnographical and exists in the orbit of their educational role where they work to reimagine Western pedagogy.
Soizig Carey
Soizig Carey is a cultural producer, curator and maker based in Glasgow. Her curatorial interests include where art and craft intersect, collaborative practice, social equity, human relationships and social histories. Soizig previously worked in arts and cultural development at Scottish Refugee Council and currently is leading an oral history project with the Mental Health Foundation on the Art of Family Life within Glasgow’s refugee communities.
Marlene Smith
Marlene Smith is a British artist and curator, and one of the founding members of the BLK Art Group. She was director of The Public in West Bromwich and UK Research Manager for Black Artists and Modernism, a collaborative research project run by the University of the Arts London and Middlesex University. Smith’s solo show, Ah Sugar, opened at Cubitt Gallery, London (2024) and toured to Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art. She has recently exhibited as part of ‘Connecting Thin Black Lines’ at the ICA London and ‘Women in Revolt!’ at Tate Britain.
Tom Pope
Tom Pope is a multidisciplinary artist based in Hastings. Play is at the core of Pope’s practice; it is both subject matter for his works and also embedded in how he utilises photography and performance. Tom’s work is held in public and private collections and he has been commissioned to make films, photographs and performances internationally. Recent shows include Terminating Martin Parr at ArtHouse Jersey and Carreau at COLDENS, St Leonards.
Alberta Whittle
Alberta Whittle is an artist, researcher, and curator. Her creative practice is motivated by the desire to manifest self-compassion and collective care as key methods in battling anti-blackness. She choreographs interactive installations, using film, sculpture, and performance as site-specific artworks in public and private spaces. She was awarded a Turner Bursary, the Frieze Artist Award (2020), the Margaret Tait Award winner (2018/9), and represented Scotland at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022).
Sufea Mohamad Noor
Sufea Mohamad Noor is an artist, curator and fundraiser interested in social history and materiality. Her practice uses words, textiles and food to tell untold stories, explore personal memories and bring people together.
Thomas Wells
Thomas Wells (he/they) is an artist and curator based between the UK and Ireland. Thomas’ work centres on socially engaged practice often involving LGBTQIA+ history and experience. Documentary, events and performance are often employed to explore themes of domestic ritual and hospitality. Recent projects include ‘A Queer Dander’ a film project on the history of Belfast Pride, and ‘It’s Turned Out Nice Again’ an installation and performance series on the theme of biography and nostalgia. Thomas is a member of Array Collective who in 2021 won the Turner Prize.