Relational Art and Managing Emotions

In Sweden today, it is customary for visual artists to perform artistic and creative projects in work places. The artists are supposed to bring thoughts, ideas and activities that are not otherwise common in to the work place to strengthen social relations, to influence employees to reflect on their work situation and to promote creativity and well-being. The projects can also at best help artists to establish themselves in new fields in the labor market and to further their development as artists and their artistic methods. The aim of the study is to examine visual artists’ new role as creative inspirers at workplaces in perspective of a changed view of the artist as a participant in and a resource for society, rather than art as an internal artistic affair that takes shape based on primarily subjective artistic motivations. This changed view exists in the cultural policy as well as in the art field itself. Focus is on how artistic creativity and activity empirically and theoretically can be described and understood. The results show that the projects can benefit organizations and to some extent benefit the artist, but that the possibilities to actually perform as artists also can be limited.