A Collective Manifesto (?)

dialogue + installation, 11/2025-02/2026

A Collective Manifesto (?) is part of the Create Cambridge & Metal Culture UK ‘Artists to Artists’ Commissions, along with Sarah Wood and Idit Nathan.

^{A Collective Manifesto (?), © Zhuozhang Li, 2026
(in conversation with Anna Brownsted, CattyTales, Geraldine Cox, Infusion Physical Theatre, Issam Kourbaj, Jemily Rime, Justa Knight, Margrave, & a craft artist from Makespace)}

This project brings together a series of one-to-one conversations with nine local artists/creatives in Cambridge. It documents the lived experiences of artists across different forms and at different stages of their practice. Emerging from the reflections on the conditions, exclusions, resources, and assumptions that shape the city, A Collective Manifesto (?) does not propose an ideal vision of Cambridge; rather, it reveals and articulates a shared urgency around what has happened, what is happening, and what should be happening in the city.

‘We demand that art and artists in this city
be seen as equal to all other citizens.

We, the artists, ask the city to open up.
We ask for connection, not isolated excellence.
Because “every form of excellence is built on exclusion”.

World-class university ≠ World-class city

This is a young city, a teenage city.
One we should care for; one we should allow to grow.
The nutrition for the city should be not only for the muscles
but for the soul.

We want a city that embraces risk, imperfection, and experimentation.
No one expects a science lab to succeed on day one.
Why should art be different?
We ask for art to be less safe, to test ideas, to fail, to be braver.
Art is not a product, it is a process, a way of thinking.

We ask for cultural life not to be presented in bubbles.
posters on fences, invitation in emails.
Not a village. This is a city.

We ask for a city with imagination, and for art that reflects it, shapes it.
Because art does not decorate a city.
Art transforms it.

We demand a more mature civic and urban infrastructure for art and culture.
Spaces of connection. Spaces of encounter.

Let the city be open.’

^{Created for Metal as part of the Create Cambridge Cultural Plan.}

zhuozhang li

A Collective Manifesto (?)