Goldsmiths, University of London
Supervised by Heather Sturdy, Head of National Partnerships, Tate Liverpool; Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain, Tate Britain; Dr Nina Wakeford, Professor and Director of Research, Goldsmiths; Dr Michael Guggenheim, Senior Research Fellow, Goldsmiths; Dr Edgar Schmitz, Director of MPhil/PhD Programme, Goldsmiths.
October 2025–
Display of access information and public programme for the Turner Prize 2025 at Cartwright Hall, Bradford.
© Weile Zou 2025
Every other year since 2011 the Turner Prize has been hosted by a venue other than Tate Britain and outside of London. As part of this initiative, City of Culture locations are given first refusal to host Turner Prize within their programming for the year. The partnership and activity are overseen by Tate’s National Partnerships team. These host years often welcome more visitors than when at Tate Britain and interest in hosting the prize is consistently high.
This project will explore the impact that national initiatives and exhibitions like the Turner Prize or equivalent have when they land in a town or city for a select period of time. Similar initiatives like British Art Show or Hayward Touring have their own dynamics and it is the consequence of taking them outside of London that is the focus. What networks are formed or changed in the geographical area? How are the impact of such network relations experienced and expressed by locals? How can a sociologically driven enquiry develop new concepts in an investigation of such networks, relations and impact?
An empirical project based on new primary qualitative data from individuals and organisations in a sample of locations in the UK will use an ‘emic’ perspective to produce outputs which both contribute to current sociological research on networking in the creative industries and to stimulate discussions about evolving partnership practices in the creative sector.
About Weile Zou
Weile Zou is a researcher and curator currently undertaking an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD with Goldsmiths, University of London and Tate. Weile holds an MScR in Collections and Curating Practices from Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Edinburgh where her research compared artist residencies in the UK and China. Her work combines policy analysis, field interviews and curatorial case studies to investigate how collaboration operates across institutional and regional contexts.