Gentle Gestures

‘Gentle Gestures’ is an invitation to inquire into submerged, fugitive practices of gentle change within pedagogical environments and approaches, beyond the now increasingly strained ideas of practices of care. Researching across creative practices, practice-based research and critical theory, Gentle Gestures aims – through a loosely held collective of people thinking alongside one another – to explore the ways knowledge production is embodied, pleasurable, multiple, empowered, navigated, inflicted and shared. This special issue seeks to offer an expansive container for researchers working in kinship or proximity to these interests and approaches.

Following an initial meeting in 2022 at the London Conference of Critical Thought, the core group of Gentle Gestures – artistic researcher Anouk Hoogendoorn, artist and convenor Sophie Mak-Schram, artistic researcher and lecturer Roshana Rubin Mayhew and artist, lecturer and curator Paul Alexander Stewart – have been exploring the notion of the invite in relation to their collaborative and collective working practice. This has led to the development of three symposia streams, a research group of over thirty members (initially convened as part of the Society for Artistic Research (SAR) Artist Pedagogy Special Interest Group), and a book chapter investigating Gentle Gestures as a curatorial approach.