Selected as the winner of the 2013 edition of the Create Art Award, Marcus Coates’s project The School of the Imagination took place in the Hollybush and Teesdale Community Centre, in Bethnal Green in east London. The artist invited local groups, individuals and community leaders to learn techniques to use their imagination as a powerful, personal and social tool for themselves and others around them.

Coates worked in and around the Community Centre, meeting local groups, individuals and community leaders to learn about their relationship with their local environment.

In exchange for people’s time and consideration, Coates offered an invitation to come together with a disparate group of individuals to form a ‘School of the Imagination’ and take part in a course in unique problem solving and creative thinking techniques.

During the sessions, Coates worked with the participants to expand their problem solving capabilities and encourage them to test their new skills by exploring ways of unlocking social and community problems in their communities in an inclusive way. Local schools have been invited to be part of the project through an accompanying series of workshops.

FILM AND BOOK RELEASE
Marcus Coates’ publication UR… A Practical Guide to Unconscious Reasoning has now launched and is available to from our online shop. Using a series of exercises and increasingly in depth ‘trips’, the publication sets out clear and concise steps to enable individuals and groups to access their imagination, using it to work for themselves and on behalf of others..

The School of the Imagination has been filmed and excerpts from the documentary were previewed at the Barbican on 4 November 2013.

UR… A Practical Guide to Unconscious Reasoning is co-published by Bookworks and Create. The project is co-produced by Nomad.

The Create Art Award is supported by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Marcus Coates (b. 1968) lives and works in London. He is represented by Kate MacGarry and Workplace Gallery. Recent solo exhibitions include: The Trip, The Serpentine Gallery, London (2011); Artist Studio, (London (2011); Implicit Sound, ESPAI 13/Fundació Joan Miró. Barcelona, Spain (2010); Psychopomp, Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes, (2010). Recent group exhibition include: ROTATE, Contemporary Art Society & Shortlist Media, London (2011); The Armory Show, New York, USA with Workplace Gallery (2011); Transformation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan (2010); Adaptation, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada (2010); THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, Sydney Biennale, Australia (2010); ALTERMODERN Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2009).