The Crit Collective

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The Crit Collective is an artist-led initiative exploring critique as a form of shared attention. Developed in Gloucestershire, it brings artists together through structured conversations centred on the work itself.

Beginning as an open critique programme in Cheltenham, the initiative has evolved into an ongoing platform for artistic exchange, critical dialogue, and community building. Its approach shifts the focus away from evaluation and towards interpretation, asking not what the work needs, but what it is doing.

 

Sessions prioritise active listening, collective reading, and sustained looking, creating space for artists to engage deeply with each other's practices. Alongside this, a series of experimental critique formats have been developed, testing alternative ways of encountering, discussing, and understanding contemporary work.

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Today, projects such as 87a CRITS sit within this wider framework, contributing to a growing ecology of artist-led learning, conversation, and support across the region.