FACT provides spaces for people, art, and technology to meet, and offers a range of participatory programmes for young people and adults in the Liverpool City Region.
FACT believe that making art together is an opportunity to discuss the possibilities of what society can be.
FACT’s learning programme is diverse and imaginative, engaging multiple communities with creative tools and practice. In partnership with Open Eye Gallery, National Museums Liverpool and their Happy Older People’s network, for example, they recently delivered the multi-year programme ‘Young at Art’ to share skills and stories among a new cultural network of people over 60.
The more detailed work that we do through the learning and participatory programme, I think inevitably has quite a deep impact on people's lives.
-Arts provider working with FACT
Augmented empathy
Commissioned by FACT, Augmented Empathy (2020) was a programme exploring people’s relationship with the natural world, led by artists’ collective Keiken. Merging the physical with the digital, Keiken build online worlds and augmented realities for people to experience, often through face filters hosted on Instagram.
During lockdown, social media became the main space that many young people used to present themselves. Recognising this, Keiken developed a programme based solely on online platform engagement that aimed to encourage participants to rethink how they identify and connect with themselves, each other, animals, and the Earth.
It was really important to communicate to people. In lots of ways it was light-hearted and in other ways it was trying to get people to think a bit deeper about certain things, but it was just really important that we could speak to people in an accessible way.
-Tanya Cruz, Keiken
Covid-19 and beyond
Augmented Empathy was initially designed as a participant-led commission where Keiken would work with a small group of young people.
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, FACT decided to shift the original design of the project and take the opportunity to trial a learning project based mainly delivered through online platform engagement. When the easing of restrictions allowed, Keiken also collaborated with dance artist Sakeema Crook to deliver two socially-distanced live performances at Mann Island.
Back to: Department of English