HOME: SOCIAL SCULPTURE RESEARCH UNIT

"Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives" Joseph Beuys

Welcome to the new platform for the Social Sculpture Research Unit (SSRU) and wider social sculpture network

Beuys, Transdisciplinarity and a Sustainable Future
The SSRU encourages and explores transdisciplinary creativity and vision towards the shaping of a humane and ecologically viable society.  It engages with Beuys thinking and work, as well as those before and after him - making available some of the insights, inquiries and explorations in this multidimensional field.

Connective Aesthetics and Agents of Change

Our work as agents of change includes a focus on connective practices, which explore the role of imagination and other modes of thought in transformative process.  Informed by an expanded conception of art, we are active both within and beyond the sphere of art.

Social Sculpture: 'Another world is possible'

Our territory and practices are wide and varied because social sculpture has to do with exploring new values, new forms of thinking and new ways of being in the world.

Connective Practice towards Social and Ecological Justice

Linking artists, activists, projects, members of the public and researchers from various practices, thought spaces, and regions of the world, the SSRU creates opportunities for dialogue processes, transdisciplinary research and connective practices that contribute to creative transformation, social and ecological justice and the shaping of a humane and non-exploitative world.

Participation and Dialogue

We hope you will participate in the dialogues about social sculpture and contribute to the field through the forums and opportunities on this site.

Transdisciplinary Research at Oxford Brookes University

The SSRU is a transdisciplinary research unit based in the Arts Department of the School of Arts and Humanities at Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, England. 

Its patrons are Caroline Tisdall and Johannes Stüttgen. 

It is coordinated by Shelley Sacks and an active core group that includes Walter Kugler, Hildegard Kurt, Steven King, Jane Rendell, Ulrich Rösch, Chris Seeley, Enno Schmidt, Graham van Wyk, Paul Whitty, Stephanie Fuller, Alex Arteaga, Volker Harlan and Wolfgang Zumdick.

It has close links with Oxford Brookes University's Institute for Cultural and Historical Research and the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development, as well as to Greenmuseum, und-Institute for Art, Culture and Sustainability, Exeter University's Geography Department, the Free International University (FIU Verlag), and through our postgraduate programmes - to the Bauhaus, Weimar.

Oxford Brookes is the first university to develop opportunities for international research and study programmes in Social Sculpture.