reframing value

reframing value

reframing value – a process by which the social construction of value is made visible. Once we see it, we can think about transforming it.

value as material

Relationships between people in groups and organizations are part of the material to which we respond as artists. Alongside our painting, drawing and sculpture practices we facilitate enquiry into value through our sister organisation, learning studio.

We see all art as an enquiry into value. It’s an exploration, an exposition of what matters. By some understandings of value, one cannot have a work of art without some value. The work of the artist in producing the work is the value. By some other understandings, it is the authenticity of the work – its provenance, and the fact that it has an identified, widely recognised author, that constitutes its value. (Think how little we value anything we think of as a forgery or a copy). By yet other understandings, art is an asset class. Its owners accrue prestige through possessing it, and manipulate the rest of the world into a desired response through collecting and dealing – even hoarding the work out of view.

In fact all value is socially constructed, by particular people, in a particular context; by us, here and now. We jointly agree on what matters – or we behave as if we do. So, the value of art is created in the relationships between people and things, and time. All value systems are political, ie power-based, systems based on the now you see it now you don’t puppet show of what is visible and what is hidden. 

revaluation process

We help groups of people enquire into the value created in their social system in order to make it visible. Where have they travelled from in their social constructed value system; and where will their future value come from? In a variant on Joseph Beuy’s concept of social sculpture, we see communal remembering through story, through time. First there was the story, then came the law: if you want to reform the law, re-member through story.

We work with a wide range of organizations nationally and internationally, seeking to make visible value that is hidden by traditional evaluation processes. Each project is a reframing exercise, looking at the set up of the framing narratives that construct that particular group’s way of relating. This involves looking at what the prevailing frames are in a particular context, how power, meaning and value are currently distributed. Through this process, between all of us in the enquiry group, we bring something new into being.

In any revaluation process:

  • we establish a context for safe enquiry
  • ideas materialize in response to stories of relational experience – what matters?
  • we try out multiple exchanges of experience, listening to and re-telling each others’ stories
  • through trial, revision, repetition & amplification, new meanings evolve
  • the prevailing frame is made visible and can be reviewed and reimagined

This process builds on our practice in the learning studio, where we help people see differently, in order to develop new perspectives on complex situations. Do get in touch by clicking on the email envelope icon at the bottom of this page if you want to work together on value.