No More Dog Dirt: an artist protests with children | Peter Liversidge | TEDxCourtauldInstitute

Inspired by ideas of demonstration and protest, Peter Liversidge went to a primary school in East London and asked students to respond to the idea of 'rules.' What rules did they like, what rules did they want to change or implement, how did they feel about the strictures around them?

In this candid and irreverent talk, Peter explains his project 'Notes on Protesting' and the process of writing apolitical songs and placards with children. Together, they created art that expressed their views from 'no more dog dirt' to 'I don't like cooked tomatoes.' Art, he shows, can give a voice to the voiceless and empower communities.

Many thanks to Borough Market Choir for performing Peter and the children's song 'I Don't Like Cooked Tomatoes' and surprising the audience at TEDxCourtauldInstitute!'

Peter Liversidge is an artist working and living in London. As TEDxCourtauldInstitute's Artist in Residence for 2016, he created a series of apolitical sign paintings with 30 student volunteers that formed the backdrop of the event.

Over the course of the last 18 years, Peter has created proposals for exhibitions and projects that range from the simple to the impossible. All proposals start at the same way, as a typed A4 piece of paper.

Liversidge says of his proposals that: ".. it's important that some of the proposals are actually realised, but no more so that the others that remain only as typed text on a piece of A4 paper.”

He experiments with the idea of what is possible, as an individual and within a group, often realised as objects, performances, happenings or simple interventions.

Peter has worked with institutions all over the world, including the Whitechapel Gallery, The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art.