Negotiating the everyday sacred: Community and public engagement through visual and material practices

In this presentation I examine the different visual approaches to community and public engagement of my practice-based doctoral research, where I use photography and film to explore the relationship between food, faith and everyday material practices of different faith communities in the suburbs West London (a Synagogue, a Sri Lankan Hindu Temple, a mosque, a Sikh Gurdwara, an Anglican church, a multicultural Roman Catholic church and an ethnically diverse Pentecostal church). The main practice element of my research, Spiritual Flavours, is a collaborative arts project resulting in a 'multi-faith' short film and a photo cookbook. Additionally, I collaborated with the Hindu temple in the production of a site-specific photographic exhibition, and with the mosque for the production of a community photo book, both showcasing my visual research within these communities. Here, I discuss the processes of exchange and legitimisation of my visual practice within these communities, as well as the tensions between the artistic, academic and community interests/expectations at play in the production of visual arts artefacts for public engagement.