Between February 2024 and March 2025, artist Georgia Gendall and creative producers Field Notes brought together staff, students and artists at the University of Exeter's Cornwall Penryn campus, to curate and develop a programme of creative activity exploring a sense of belonging to place.

Discover more about how the commission unfolded in a short documentary film below. You can also scroll through the entire project page to see and hear artworks relating to the project and find out more about each part of the commission.

Watch the short documentary

About the Project

The original title of the commission was 'Civic Joy'. At the start of the commission Cat and Georgia spent time in trying to unravel what that might mean and began to think about what it means to have a sense of belonging within a place, a sense of ownership over it and a sense of responsibility for it. Their first (and very broad) conclusion is that many layers of connection are needed to create this. You can watch a short extract from the documentary film below to understand more about how Cat and Georgia took the brief forward in thsoe early stages.

Poster Artwork Campaign

Developed at the start of the commission, these artworks, which took the form of posters, were designed by Georgia Gendall and put up throughout the Penryn campus including the library, sport facilities, Student Union and teaching spaces. They instructed passers by enact a simple act e.g. 'lie down', 'lean' or 'walk on the grass' as a way to get people to think about and interact with their environment in a different way. Cat and Georgia share more about them in the below video.

Instruct a Tender Act

During the first half of the project, the Tender Acts teams invited staff and students on the campus to create their own set of instructions, for someone else to interpret and enact. The forms were available to fill in online or in paper across the campus and offered staff and students the opportunity to connect and share a different way of looking at things, on occasions drawing attention to something on campus, or to disrupting every day ways of looking at things.

We began our commission by inviting and instigating a series of ‘Tender Acts’: acts which invite curious exploration of the campus and ideas and acts which invite exchange between people who might not otherwise meet.

This came together in two ways. Firstly the invitation to submit a set of instructions for someone else to interpret and enact, and to take instructions in return with the commitment to follow through on the exchange, sharing the results with your anonymous co-conspirators and possibly with us too.

Secondly, they asked a variety of artists to instigate a series of ‘Collective Actions’ – opportunities to do something intriguing, in company and without the aim of producing a fixed outcome.

Collective Actions

Taking place around the Penryn campus, these 'collective actions' were led by a series of Cornwall based artists and brought the campus community together to take part in playful and intriguing creative activities.

About the Arts Commissions

Arts and Culture's annual Arts Commissions offer support for artists, working in any medium, to take inspiration from the university and develop new work.