Sharon Bennett
The Learning Project
Socially engaged participatory project
2010 onwards
Sharon Bennett is a socially engaged artist. Bennett’s collaborative practice opens up a space where participants can meet, play, and be generous or share in generosity.
In her ongoing participatory artwork The Learning Project, Bennett asks family and friends to teach her new skills. In doing so she encourages the sharing of knowledge from generation to generation and across peer groups, whilst exploring and enhancing the relationships with those closest to her.
Bennett is co-founder of The Women’s Art Activation System (WAAS) with Sarah Dixon. The WAAS make live art, performance and socially engaged artworks that question established structures that inhibit and marginalise people, particularly female-identified people and those experiencing pregnancy and mothering.
In 2021-22 The WAAS were commissioned by Axisweb, Social Art Network and Manchester Metropolitan University for Social Art for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (SAFEDI) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This commission led to the creation of The Milky Way, a game-activity for visitors to the National Gallery, London.
Other works include interactive performance A Visit by the Officials from the Bureau for the Validation of Art performed at the Grace Exhibition Space in New York via Zoom in 2020, Offbeat Festival 2021, Social Works?:LIVE in Manchester, and Art Licks London. In The Baby Makers: Making History, The WAAS collaborated with Museum in the Park, Stroud to create a collective artwork with local mothers that is now housed in the museum’s permanent collection.
Bennett is also one half of Bennett & McDermott with Dan McDermott. Together they produce contemporary art that promotes the values of conversation, generosity, community and creativity. Their work offers participants an opportunity to have surprising encounters and unexpected connections. In 2021-22 Arts Council England supported a UK tour of their participatory installation Twenty Years.
