Ian Nesbitt is a socially engaged artist, filmmaker, writer, and pedestrian based in Sheffield, UK. His work holds space for practicing togetherness, using modes of co-operation, conviviality and kinship to explore the question of what it means to live well with the unfolding consequences of a collapsing system.
Working alongside citizens, communities and the more-than-human to consider and create spaces for exchange that are beyond the everyday, his work seeks to further emerging readings of these shared and entangled territories. His work as a filmmaker focuses on exploring identity and community through making work collaboratively, often using chance interactions to open up personal and shared terrains.
Since graduating from Nottingham Trent School of Art and Design in 2004, he has been a founder member of a number of DIY arts and cultural organisations Annexinema, Out.Side.Film, Social Art Network, Radio Commons and Open Kitchen Social Club. He has delivered international events, commissions and exhibitions for Dancing On The Edge (Amsterdam), Relais Culture Europe (Paris), Amorph! Festival (Helsinki) and Radio Commons (Paris/Palermo/Berlin/Sheffield), and all over the UK for In Certain Places (Preston), Eastside Projects (Birmingham), Cube Microplex (Bristol), Bloc Projects (Sheffield), G39 (Cardiff), Nottingham Contemporary and Primary (Nottingham).
His films have been screened at Flatpack, Oberhausen, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Liverpool Biennial, Star and Shadow, Berwick Film and Media, Abandon Normal Devices, and Glastonbury festivals, among others.
He is currently working on a commission for Harris Museum, Preston (UK), in collaboration with Ruth Levene, and fundraising for phase 2 of his long-term project 'The Book Of Visions'.