SCAN Decades

DECADES was a programme of free conversational events marking SCAN’s first ten years of activity by looking to the next ten years. Matching friends, collaborators and alumni in Scotland with the thinkers, activists and organisers who inspire them, each 90-minute event centred an issue prescient to the lives of artists, art workers and the wider public.

The past few years have seen our contemporary art community work harder than ever in navigating the compound challenges of COVID-19, Brexit and an unfolding cost of living crisis. DECADES was a conscientious pivot for SCAN, making a space away from the present tense to envisage futures with expertise summoned from across disciplines, experiences and borders.

DECADES was an invitation to think laterally about the world we want to build and what tools we’ll need to do so. With topics including the future of arts education, artists and the housing crisis, new visions for civic space and institutional power, each event asked what conditions are needed to make a liveable world for all and a thriving environment for contemporary art in Scotland.

DECADES took place over six sessions, online and in venues across Scotland:

‘Visioning Possibilities, Incubating Change’ with Imandeep Kaur and Adele Patrick
5 Florence Street, Glasgow, Thursday 9 February
‘I love you, you pay my rent’ with Dont Rhine, Kirsten Lloyd and Emma Saunders
Glasgow Women’s Library, Thursday 23 February
‘Instituting Disobedience’ with Laura Raicovich and Sarah Munro
Online, Tuesday 28 February
‘Orienting Ourselves Towards Hope’ with Myriam Mouflih and Amahra Spence
The Deep End, Glasgow, Tuesday 25 April
‘The Soil Beneath Our Feet’ with Vron Ware and Cicely Farrer
McManus Art Gallery and Museum, Dundee, Thursday 18 May
‘Stepping into the Carrying Stream’ with Mairi McFadyen and Ainslie Roddick
Online, Tuesday 13 June