43. Sandra Hall, Friction Arts

Since 1992, Birmingham-based Friction Arts has been fostering an international reputation for making socially-engaging participatory arts, or "Art Where You Live".

The company's artistic director, Sandra Hall, is one of Birmingham's best-known community artists, previously half of the Funding Pending team.

Deinstitutionalising the process of creating and presenting art has brought Friction's work firmly in to the public domain, with an egalitarian and collaborative approach to produce quality, contemporary fine art, in a community setting.

Working with local people, Friction Arts listens to their stories, talks to them about their experiences, discusses meaningful ways in which their hopes, aspirations and ideas can be articulated and transform them in to pieces of art that are simultaneously true to those original voices and can be communicated to a wider audience.

Projects such as The Curio City Shop and Reality Estate have firmly established Friction as a leader in its field, and forbears of the city's growing reputation for large-scale participatory exhibitions and events.

Its two -year project, The Curio City Shop, demonstrated its ability to "get under the skin" of communities and to create projects which make a huge and lasting difference to the people with which they collaborate.
Sandra's work touches lives on a street level and her work is genuinely innovative.