Join the State of the Arts Flash Conference

The State of the Arts Flash Conference is an imaginative new project designed to create brief but electrifying bursts of thinking and conversation amidst the main State of the Arts conference programme, taking place on Thursday 10 February.

Harnessing the spontaneity and collective energy of a flash mob, we hope to bring people together to create a flood of brief but provocative and inspiring responses to a series of important questions about the state of the arts today.

• How can art of all kinds play a more meaningful role in mass protest and popular resistance?
• What makes a good home for art (and for artists), and how can we ensure there are more of them?
• In an environment in which success is too often only measured by perpetual growth, how do we ensure that small remains beautiful?
• (How) Can art make more people's lives better?

In the days leading up to the conference we'll be gathering responses to these questions from anyone and everyone. These will be presented in a series of short 'response bursts' at a number of points during the conference day, accompanied by a series of brief, pre-prepared speeches by a range of invited speakers. People can follow this developing conversation both at the conference itself via an installation of laptops and flatscreens, and online via Twitter where we'll be posting updates throughout day.

The hope is that through encouraging this dynamic gathering of ideas, blogs, tweets, statements, dreams, manifestos, miniature speeches and provocations we can spark a host of interesting and diverse thoughts and conversations to naturally emerge, both in the inbetween spaces of the conference itself and in the great virtual spaces of the internet beyond it.

The Flash Conference was conceived by Andy Field, Hannah Nicklin and Laura McDermott in partnership with Arts Council England and the RSA.

For more information and to take part, visit the State of the Arts Flash Conference website.