Emma Curd

Background

About Emma Curd

Over the past decade working in galleries, libraries, museums and higher education sectors, I have developed a life-long love for learning and collaborating with communities, students, children and young people; using art to start issue-based conversations, projects and actions. I am passionate about facilitating creative spaces for communities - young people especially - to speak their minds and use their individual and collective voices in public. As a queer young person - who didn’t ever feel like they fitted in - art changed my life, gave me a community, confidence in who I am and what I can do and drive to affect change in the future. My drive is to share the power of art to change lives with others. Due to my background in research, I have developed a unique, interdisiplinary toolkit to bring to the fore underrepresented stories and voices. These approaches have been especially useful when researching monolithic institutions such as galleries, museums and universities and to create spaces for unheard voices. This is demonstrated by my doctoral research project titled 'The People's Glossary', which used action-research to look at the varied and complex ways we use language when we talk about art and affect change from the ground up, with local people as the focus. Action research is a mainstay of this practice to explore power and knowledge production to uncover the ethical dimensions of collaborative practices.