We invited the course leader from each course, a student who had carried out a work placement on that course and a representative from an arts organisation that had hosted a placement student doing the course. We were also joined by the course leader of the MA Arts Administration and Cultural Policy, Goldsmiths. Each of the participants was offered payment for attending the workshop and contributing their expertise to the research.

The workshop involved mapping the different practical approaches to credited placements used by the case studies in terms of current provision, duration, method of assessment and co-ordination. We divided the group into students, host organisations and course leaders and each group spent time reflecting on their experiences, identifying challenges and barriers and how these are overcome, before, during and after the placement. We then shared and discussed these experiences and made notes towards an ethical contract.

Sophie Hope is a practice based researcher in the Film, Media and Cultural Studies Department at Birkbeck, University of London. She has worked as an independent curator and evaluator of public and socially engaged art and developed a number of practical projects through which to research cultural policy, labour conditions and community art histories. Her PhD (completed in 2011), entitled: ‘Participating in the Wrong Way? Practice Based Research into Cultural Democracy and the Commissioning of Art to Effect Change’ explored the limits and possibilities of criticality in the context of an artists’ contract.