Friction Arts: Past, Present and Future

Since 1992, Birmingham based Friction Arts have been fostering an international reputation for making socially engaging participatory arts, or “Art Where You Live”.
Deinstitutionalising the process of creating and presenting art has brought Friction’s work firmly in to the public domain, with an egalitarian and collaborative approach to produce quality, contemporary fine art, in a community setting.

Working with local people, Friction Arts listen to their stories, talk to them about their experiences, discuss meaningful ways in which their hopes, aspirations and ideas can be articulated and transform them in to pieces of art that are simultaneously true to those original voices and can be communicated to a wider audience.

Projects such as ‘The Curio City Shop’ and ‘Reality Estate’ have firmly established Friction as leaders in their field, and forbears of the city’s growing reputation for large-scale participatory exhibitions and events. Their two -year project, ‘The Curio City Shop’ demonstrated their ability to ’get under the skin’ of communities and to create projects which make a huge and lasting difference to the people with which they collaborate.