Building community through creativity and conversation

About Us

Social Scaffolding is an art collective of three Fine Artists - Alyson Minkley, Juliet Duckworth and Lou Baker. We have all recently graduated from Bath Spa University and are all associated with Emerge, BSU’s Graduate residency programme. Please visit About us for more information about the collective and us as individual artists.

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Social Scaffolding Tour 2023

Following two successful pilot exhibitions in Taunton and Bath, we were thrilled to be awarded substantial Project funding by Arts Council England for a 6-venue exhibition tour in 2023 in the West/Southwest of England. Our innovative immersive and interactive exhibition ran from April-November 2023, touring to empty shops in busy town and city centres, attracting a range of visitors and especially those who might not normally be interested in art. The focus of our exhibition was on connection, conversation, community, creativity, collaboration and care and we were delighted that over our 8-month tour we had more than 8,000 visitors.

We are very grateful and proud to have had the opportunity to facilitate such a vibrant, heartwarming and, frankly, astonishing project. For full details and documentation of the tour, please look at our Social Scaffolding 2023 Tour Review eBook and visit Story So Far for more.

What Next?

We are now taking some time to reflect, recover and to begin to research new work, individually and as a collective. We hope to be back touring new or developed work as Social Scaffolding in 2025/26.

We are very interested in discussing opportunities for Social Scaffolding’s next iteration, so please contact us if you have a proposed venue or idea.

To find out about our future projects please sign up to our mailing list here and follow the collective on Instagram @social.scaffolding.artists for regular updates. For more detail of our individual research and development, follow us on Instagram: @alysonminkley @julietduckworth9631 @loubakerartist.

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who visited the exhibitions and to those who talked with us and joined in with the participatory activities. It wouldn’t have been what it became without you. A big thank you to Arts Council England, to our partners, interns, volunteers, our families and friends, and to all those who supported us in this aspirational project. We couldn’t have done it without you.

We’re excited to see what the future holds for Social Scaffolding.