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Hanyun Xue / Curating (2024-2025)[SEM2]

Tag: Woolclap

Blog 7 – Budget & Realisation｜Budget, Ethics, and Tools: Making It Real

By

On 13 April 2025

In ✨ Individual Curatorial Project: Fluid Curating

📚 Learning Applied: Budget as Critical Practice

From W4 and W11, I began to rethink budgeting not as an administrative task, but as a curatorial decision-making tool.

In W4, Gabi’s session on relational ethics challenged me to consider:

Who is being paid? Who is contributing without recognition? Who has the power to say no?

This directly shaped my approach to volunteer honoraria, where I included line items for cross-school collaborators and student assistants. Rather than assume goodwill, I translated co-labour into financial and material recognition.

From W11, I drew from our discussions on “scaling through tools” instead of scale through budget. I chose platforms like Woolclap not only because they were free, but because they aligned with the values of open authorship, anonymous contribution, and decentralised control.

The budgeting process became a way to embody my values:

  • Transparency over spectacle

  • Collaboration over outsourcing

  • Access over exclusivity

By the end, every cost wasn’t just a line item—it was a reflection of curatorial ethics in action.

I kept my budget strictly within £2000, guided by a resource-sharing ethos that prioritises low-threshold access, intra-school collaboration, and sustainability.

📊 Budget Strategy: Resource-Conscious, Ethically Aligned

Funding comes from three key sources:

  • 🏛 EUSA Development Fund (£500)

    “The Student Opportunities Fund supports students to deliver events, activities, and projects with community impact.”
    EUSA Funding

  • 🌍 Creative Scotland Open Fund for Individuals (£1300)

    “Supporting a wide range of activity initiated by artists, writers, producers and other creative practitioners in Scotland.”
    Creative Scotland Funding

  • 💡 Own Contribution (£200) — allocated toward zine printing, design materials, and micro-gifts.

Infrastructure, Not Decoration

The exhibition’s physical and interactive design was shaped around necessity:

  • The site—ECA Main Hall—is an open-access, in-kind supported venue.
  • TESOL & Inclusive Design students designed multilingual signage and accessibility prompts.
  • ECA Bookit resources (recorders, polling boards) and digital screens were integrated, avoiding extra rental costs.
  • CAP student works form the core of the exhibition content—no artist fees required.

Shared Tools, Shared Authorship

Interactive systems were built with open-source platforms like Woolclap, allowing anonymous input, multilingual co-writing, and slow-tech responses.
Equipment such as cameras, screens, and sound systems were borrowed within the school ecosystem.
The exhibition is digitally inclusive without becoming digitally exclusive.

Cross-School as Co-Labour

Collaboration was budgeted as co-authorship:

  • 5 cross-school units were supported (Design, TESOL, Education, Art History, CAT).
  • Volunteer honoraria and co-creation materials were included to ensure commitment was recognised.

Micro is Sustainable

Rather than scale through money, I scaled through imagination and alliances.
No hired install crew. No designer fees. Instead: a network of student collaborators and shared responsibility.

The budget became a curatorial medium—reflecting my ethics, values, and sense of what must be shared, and what can be let go.

Approx. £450 of this is in-kind support (space, equipment, co-curation labour).

24.3% of the budget reflects shared resources—not as a compromise, but as a commitment to an open, collaborative curatorial ecology.

(ECA Request Flow Diagram for ART/DESIGN/ESALA requests)

Selected Budget Breakdown

Category Description Cost (£)
🟡 Exhibition Design & Space Infrastructure materials: paths, sound corners, book walls, naming stickers, maps, feedback boards 300
Printing multilingual guides & signage (designed with TESOL/Inclusive Design students) 100
Sensory alternatives: carpets, cushions, tactile zones, quiet signage 100
🟡 Interactive & Co-Creation Tools Woolclap platform use (free) + setup costs: QR codes, stands 100
Polling wall, co-writing sticky notes, voice corner setup (recorder rental, feedback system) 100
🟡 Promotion & Design Social media visuals, copywriting, scheduling 50
Print guidebooks & resource kits (for Art Ed / TESOL school tours) 100
🟡 Post-Exhibition Outputs Curatorial Zine printing (co-written texts, audience quotes, 80 copies @ £2.5) 200
Data visualisation + Participation Trends Report 50
🟡 Personnel & Collaboration Support CAP student install/travel support 100
Cross-school volunteer honoraria (10 x £20) 200
Trained facilitators for blind/deaf visitors, water points, seating 100
🟡 Public Programme Public Talk Setup + Tea Reception (“On Shifting Curatorial Power”) 100
Materials for “co-curation” workshop + print souvenirs (e.g. postcards) 100
🔵 Contingency Emergency repairs, tech replacements, on-site staffing 150
💡 TOTAL £2000

Blog 6 – Ethics & Inclusion | Whose Voices Count?

By

On 13 April 2025

In ✨ Individual Curatorial Project: Fluid Curating

W4 (Curatorial Ethics), W9 (Methods), W10 (Publics)

I started with a question:
Whose voices do we trust enough to let them shape the exhibition?

Consent, Not Contribution

In participatory curation, asking for input isn’t enough. We need to ask: how is that input used, attributed, stored, reshaped?

Visitors to Fluid Curating can share interpretations through the Woolclap platform, leave voice notes at the sound wall, or write directly onto the co-authored curatorial wall. But before any of these are made public—whether projected, printed, or posted—I offer clear options for anonymity, attribution, and withdrawal.
No voice enters the archive without its owner’s choice.

This principle draws on Gevers’ idea of “curating as context” (2013), where creating interpretive space includes creating consent space. It’s not about gathering stories for effect—it’s about constructing frameworks where stories can live with dignity and on their own terms.

Inclusion Isn’t Atmosphere—It’s Infrastructure

Too often, exhibitions proclaim inclusivity as a tone.
I wanted mine to reflect it in the structure.

Following the lessons of Fletcher and Pierce’s Paraeducation Department (2010), I’ve looked at Fluid Curating as a platform where knowledge doesn’t flow in one direction. Working with students in TESOL, Inclusive Design, and Art Education, we’ve translated key exhibition content into multiple languages, created tactile signage, and provided verbal cue cards for blind or low-vision participants.

We also installed “quiet time”—pathways with minimal audio and movement, to allow neurodivergent visitors more time and space. Participation isn’t timed by the exhibition’s speed; it unfolds at the visitor’s own rhythm. As DisplayCult (2016) argue, affective experience is a form of labour. So this exhibition makes space for rest, silence, and slower modes of meaning-making.

Home [www.victoriesnautism.com]

( Example of multilingual verbal cue cards)

Publics Are Not Pre-Defined

Simon Sheikh (2010) reminds us that exhibitions don’t merely reflect publics—they produce them. This idea reframed how I saw my responsibility.

Rather than trying to imagine one singular “ideal audience,” I thought about what it means to hold space for unplanned publics: the passerby, the hesitant, the first-timer, the child, the migrant visitor.

Each contribution is a potential act of authorship—not simply commentary. And that shifts the ethics. If we honour those inputs, we also honour the role of the curator as listener, not just organiser. That’s why I built Woolclap around anonymous entries and multilingual response portals. These aren’t decoration. They are architecture.

Why This Matters

Martinon (2013) describes the role of curators as those who refuse to totalise meaning. That’s the ethics I’m drawn to—not just inclusion as presence, but inclusion as epistemic permission.

So in Fluid Curating, every ethical decision—whether it’s signage design or story ownership—emerges from one belief:
No voice should have to ask for permission to be part of the conversation.

Citations

  • Beech, Dave. 2010. “Weberian Lessons: Art, Pedagogy and Managerialism.” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 47–60. London: Open Editions / Amsterdam: De Appel.

  • DisplayCult (Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher). 2016. “Curating the City: Collectioneering and the Affects of Display.” In The Artist as Curator, edited by Celina Jeffery, 151–68. Bristol: Intellect.

  • Fletcher, Annie, and Sarah Pierce. 2010. “Introduction to The Paraeducation Department.” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 198–99. London: Open Editions / Amsterdam: De Appel.

  • Gevers, Ine. 2013. “Curating: The Art of Creating Contexts.” In The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating, edited by Jean-Paul Martinon, 217–26. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

  • Jeffery, Celina. 2016. “Introduction: The Artist as Curator.” In The Artist as Curator, edited by Celina Jeffery, 1–20. Bristol: Intellect.

  • Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2013. “Becoming-Curator.” In The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating, edited by Jean-Paul Martinon, 69–81. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

  • O’Neill, Paul, and Mick Wilson, eds. 2015. Curating and the Educational Turn. London: Black Dog Publishing.

  • Sheikh, Simon. 2010. “Letter to Jane (Investigation of a Function).” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 70–71. London: Open Editions / Amsterdam: De Appel.

Blog 4 – Exhibition Format & Structure Cross-School as Co-Structure: Designing a Rewritable & Institutionalised Exhibition

By

On 12 April 2025

In ✨ Individual Curatorial Project: Fluid Curating

The Exhibition as a System, Not a Site

If traditional exhibitions lead the audience along a prescribed path, my curatorial model throws out the map.

When I first walked into the ECA Main Building Lobby, it felt like an in-between space—a transitory zone of coffee, conversation, passing glances. But in that looseness, I saw possibility: an open matrix for curatorial action. This wasn’t a white cube; it was a commons. A site already filled with movement, energy, and student voices. And that mattered, because decentralised curating isn’t just about who speaks—it’s about where voices collide.

Choosing this space was a pivot moment. I moved from abstract ideas of online platforms and speculative architecture (like my earlier imagined version at FACT Liverpool), to something grounded, temporal, and alive. The lobby would host a rewritable exhibition, one that changes form, shape, and meaning through constant interaction.

Fluidity in Physical Form: Rhizomatic Design

Traditional exhibitions follow a path: entrance, sequence, exit. But Fluid Curating is built differently. I wanted to resist linearity and build an environment that feels more like a network—messy, rhizomatic, open-ended.

So I designed a spatial system where the layout is responsive, where visitors shape not only what they see but how they move.

Inspired by Utopia Station (Venice Biennale, 2003), I began thinking of the exhibition not as a container but as a field: polyvocal, unscripted, soft-edged. The layout of Fluid Curating reflects this. Colour-coded tapes allow visitors to map their own trails. Corners become naming zones. A sound corner becomes a communal listening post.

Using low-cost signage, mirrors, floor text, and Woolclap-enabled QR codes, visitors can name spaces, remix routes, and co-author interpretations. The space becomes a map in motion.

Rather than fix meaning in place, this design allows it to shift with presence. Every three days, a soft rehang is conducted based on audience interaction data, comments, and collective votes. This ensures the exhibition evolves not just structurally but conceptually—staying fluid, alive.

Below is a selection of images from the exhibition Utopia Station (Venice Biennale 2003), showing typical features of its “rhizomatic exhibition layout”

50th Venice Biennale 2003

Rather than assigning movement, I invite navigation. This aligns with ideas explored in Week 7 (Site Visit) and Week 8 (Systems Curation): space isn’t a backdrop, it’s a co-author.

System as Sensory Engine: What Visitors Touch, Say, Change

Visitors activate:

  • A sound-sharing corner to record voice reflections (Woolclap-based)
  • A co-curation wall that projects daily audience annotations
  • A motion-tracked zone where artworks respond to proximity

These elements are low-tech but high-agency. They embody Rudolf Frieling’s assertion in The Art of Participation (2008) that interactivity isn’t a feature—it’s a political design choice.

The Lobby as a Living Platform: Why This Space Works

The ECA lobby already has precedent: previous CAP pop-ups and student shows. It is accessible, non-intimidating, and constantly used. I didn’t need to manufacture a public—I needed to listen to the one already there. This learning came from Week 7, where we were encouraged to consider affective and temporal qualities of space.

What I changed: I dropped the screen-heavy modular setup. I replaced complex algorithms with analogue trails. I learned that if I wanted people to leave a trace, I had to leave room for them to enter.

Cross-School as Co-Structure: Institutionalising Decentralisation

But decentralisation isn’t only about audience freedom—it’s also about institutional permeability.

That’s why Fluid Curating integrates a “Cross-ECA Co-Curation Strategy.” Rather than curating in isolation, I’ve invited students and staff across disciplines to build the infrastructure with me:

This idea inspired by Week 8’s emphasis on systems thinking and Week 9’s discussion of publishing as a collaborative act, I asked myself:
What if curating became a campus-wide conversation?

🛠️ Preparation Process: Step-by-Step

1. Observing institutional blind spots
While reviewing feedback from CAP students, I noticed that many of them, especially those working with participatory media, struggled to collect consistent audience responses. At the same time, my own curatorial proposal faced challenges: limited tech budget, the need for inclusive accessibility, and the pressure to show peer collaboration. That’s when it clicked—what if my exhibition could help solve their problems, while they solved mine?

2. Mapping the school’s potential collaborators
I began by mapping existing departments and MA programs across ECA and identifying their practical strengths:

Music & Sonic Arts for spatial audio design

Art History & Visual Culture for exhibition annotation

Design for participatory mapping and signage

TESOL and Inclusive Education for multilingual accessibility

Art Education for school-focused workshop delivery

CAT and Art History again for Zine editing and curatorial discourse

This wasn’t about token inclusion. It was about building functional, mutual dependencies—where each group contributed something they were already practicing, but within a new curatorial framework.

3. Designing co-owned modules
Rather than just inviting contributors after the fact, I restructured my Programme Notes to create built-in modules of collaboration:

A Sound Corner with music students composing daily responses

A Reading Wall curated by art historians

A DIY Map Lab developed by designers

A Multilingual Access Point for TESOL students to prototype language supports

A Zine station for CAT peers to help me rethink curatorial authorship

Each of these became more than exhibition features—they were opportunities for knowledge-sharing and horizontal authorship.

（Cross-ECA Co-Curation Strategy: Activity Table）

4. Framing the collaboration as part of the exhibition’s logic
To maintain coherence, I ensured each collaborative element aligned with my curatorial ethics: fluidity, co-authorship, and responsiveness. That meant:

Avoiding fixed panels—replacing them with writable, reconfigurable surfaces

Offering open tools for annotation, rather than locked-down text

Visualising visitor contributions and collaborators’ inputs with equal weight

This process taught me that decentralised curation isn’t about removing structure—it’s about multiplying access points. By integrating cross-school collaboration into the curatorial core, Fluid Curating doesn’t stretch beyond itself—it stretches into relevance.

Each department I invited didn’t dilute the vision; they deepened it. They helped the project breathe through different vocabularies, senses, and pedagogies.

In doing so, the exhibition becomes more than a showcase—it becomes an organism co-constructed by the rhythms of a knowledge community.

Week 10(2) | Expanding the Concept of “Fluid Curating” 

By

On 30 March 2025

In ✨ Individual Curatorial Project: Fluid Curating

🌊 My Exhibition Is Not a “Finished Product,” But a Flowing Relationship

This week, I finally gathered the courage to sort through the curatorial ideas that had been drifting in my head for a long time.
From questioning whether curators should hold total control, to writing down the full framework for my project “Fluid Curating,” I feel like I’ve found a direction that is both gentle and powerful.

This exhibition doesn’t present an outcome. Instead, it invites everyone to co-create the process itself.

📍Project Title: Fluid Curating

Subtitle: A Decentralised Ecosystem of Co-Creation

Keywords: Decentralisation, Co-Creation, Participatory Curation, Audience Agency, Interactive Installation, Non-linear Space, Dynamic Display, Collective Text-Making, Art + Data Feedback

📌 Venue: Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) Main Building Lobby

  • Online Open Curatorial Platform (for voting and text interaction)

The online and offline components will be fully integrated. The exhibition is no longer limited to one location, but becomes a continually evolving space of shared creation.

🧭 Curatorial concept: How to embody “decentralization”?

1.🎨 Artists / Artworks

  • Participatory works by ECA CAP students
  • Community-sourced participatory artworks

All works require audience interaction to be completed. Here, the audience is not just a viewer, but a co-creator.

2.🗓 Duration

  • On-site exhibition: 7 days (updated daily based on audience contributions)
  • Online platform: Open for 14 days (for ongoing discussion, artwork submission, text gathering, feedback, and data collection)

We hope this mechanism of “daily change” encourages ongoing participation and allows the exhibition to breathe and grow.

3.🧭 Layout Without a Map

The exhibition will take place in the ECA main building lobby. We’ll abandon linear routes and create a rhizomatic layout—

Everyone navigates based on their own steps and emotions.

Coloured lines will be arranged on the floor. Audiences can name areas and pathways: some might call it the “Hallway of Tenderness,” while others rename it the “Unfinished Memory.”

Every name changes daily. Every line might mean something new tomorrow.

4.🎧 Sound as Resonance, Not Just Ambience

I imagined a corner called the “Sound Bazaar.”
You can put on headphones and hear stories left by others,
or press a button and record your feelings about a piece.

You can stay anonymous, or speak your name. It’s not a statement. It’s a connection.

These recordings will rotate daily, like a slowly growing radio programme,
curated by all of us, together.

5.🖋 Curatorial Text, Written by Everyone

There are no fixed labels or curator-written statements. Instead, each artwork will be paired with a QR code. Audience members can scan and use Woolclap, a free platform, to write their interpretation.

These words will be projected onto the wall in real-time, forming a flowing audience-generated language wall.

Some write stories, others memories, some just leave a single word.
All of it becomes the curatorial text—not the explanation, but the emotion.

6.🌀 The Audience as Installer and Meaning-Maker

  • Every three days, we’ll rearrange displays based on audience votes
  • Visitors can vote, comment, name sections, and actively participate in the works
  • The whole exhibition is a living system that evolves with interaction

I want to show that an exhibition is not a fixed space, but a network of ongoing relationships.

7.🧭 Curatorial Ethics

  • All audience contributions (voice/text) can be submitted anonymously or with credit
  • All content will go through moderation to avoid bias or harm
  • Data is used only for analysis and remains open-access, not for commercial use

While we decentralise curatorial power, we also build gentle and trustworthy boundaries.

🎤 Public Lecture: Who Gets to Define Curatorial Discourse?

We’ll host an open conversation titled “The Shift of Curatorial Power”, inviting lecturers, students, and visitors to join.

Our aim is to show:
Curatorial discourse can be redistributed. Audiences, participants, and creators all have the right to be producers of meaning.

♿Accessibility

  • Audio guides and bilingual (Chinese/English) interface
  • Quiet hours and low-sensory zones
  • Navigation and access co-designed with ECA students with disabilities
  • Multi-sensory experiences (sound and touch as alternatives to visuals)

We want everyone to enter the exhibition in their own way.

💹 Post-Exhibition Outputs

  • A collaboratively written Zine featuring audience-created curatorial texts, sold as a takeaway souvenir
  • A “Decentralised Art Market Trend Report” summarising voting results, feedback, and interaction data—offered as insight for artists and local institutions

Every vote, every comment, every interaction will be recorded, respected, and allowed to shine beyond the exhibition.

🗺 Timeline

Week Activity
W1–W2 Concept development, artist open call, communication with CAP students and venue coordination
W3–W4 Platform building, tool testing, material preparation
W5 Installation and soft launch testing audience flow
W6 Full exhibition launch: daily interactions + data collection + co-creation processes
W7 Final wrap-up, Zine editing, and trend report compilation

💰 Budget

Item Amount
Multimedia equipment £400
Exhibition materials (fabric, lighting, etc.) £300
Promotional materials £150
Zine printing £300
Artist transport + volunteer support £200
Contingency fund £200

📌 Tutorial Feedback & Next Steps

During this week’s tutorial, I received clear and constructive feedback from my tutor:

  • The venue has officially changed from FACT Liverpool to the ECA Main Building Lobby, which suits the participatory nature of my project better.
  • I need to list the names of participating artists, especially those from the CAP course.
  • Given the production demands and artist involvement, it was suggested that I slightly increase the budget to allow for artist fees and support.
  • My public programme should be expanded, with more detailed planning around outcomes and visitor experience.
  • I was also reminded to further develop the section on EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) and Ethics, especially considering audience co-creation and content moderation.
  • And finally, I must ensure that everything clearly aligns with the Learning Outcomes of the course.

These reminders helped me see the gaps in my current plan. I’m now revisiting the structure of my public events, adding clearer frameworks for things like the sound radio rotation, collaborative zine editing, and how the audience’s voice will be projected and documented across the space.

In the next blog, I’ll begin filling in those details—step by step～

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