Dr Cecilia Wee fRSA

Cecilia's work examines issues of power, equity and precarity. She aims to develop strategies and build inclusive infrastructures for learning and dreaming. She works with other artists, designers and collaborators from historically marginalised backgrounds, especially people from Global Ethnic Majority, d/Deaf, disabled, neurodivergent, working class and LGBTQIA+ communities.

The 2008 global financial crisis as a contemporary flashpoint underpins her research and creative interventions, which explore financial systems; alternative economics and complementary currencies; community organising, radical philanthropy and resourcing; our relationships with labour, land and technology; their stories of marginalisation; narratives of decolonising and the embracing of undervalued knowledge.

Cecilia's research work is two-fold. As an organisational consultant and equalities activist, she has conducted sector reviews and written reports on equitable practice, access, inclusion and infrastructures for artists. This includes equality reviews, strategies and policies within arts organisations and higher education.

Cecilia's personal work uses and explores participatory methods, (auto)ethnography and action research, creative pedagogies and community-informed design, as part of a research-based collaborative creative practice. While she engages with conventional forms of research publishing and their relationship to knowledge generation, her research activity is oriented to inform creative practice and making.

Cecilia has also written on the role of cultural leadership in decolonising community wealth.

Cecilia's research-based creative practice utilises conversation, illustration, printmaking, radical creative pedagogies, sound, performance and text. It resonates with others, layering, weaving and creating experimental strategies for dialogue, resistance and flourishing.

Her work explores bonds created through formal and informal learning spaces, such as cultural institutions, and legacies of trade union and community organising.

She has edited books, curated exhibitions, workshops and symposia and presented artist work with organisations including Artwork Exeter, Heart of Glass, Stanley Picker Gallery, Tate Modern and Whitechapel Gallery.

Cecilia is one half of (CWxWC), a collaborative artist project with artist, educator and activist William Crosby that investigates re-tuning the politics of listening within multiple cultural, social, economic and environmental crises.

She is currently working on two long-term practice projects. Our Community Inheritance is a practice-based participatory action research project exploring more equitable resource circulation, made with local communities. Collaborations include NHS Grenfell Health and Wellbeing Service and Grenfell impacted communities.

Wayang Sayang (working title) is a multidisciplinary collaborative work exploring the work of women and non-binary people from East and South East Asia in decolonising movements.

Selected publications

Wee, C. (2025 forthcoming). ‘Sounding and Listening in Place - four events in the Nottingdale community after the Grenfell Tower fire’, in M. Lewis & M. Massalha, eds., Plurisonics. Routledge.

Wee, C. (2023). ‘The role of cultural leadership in decolonising community wealth’, Clore Leadership and Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Wee, C. (2023). 'Passing It On - Lessons learnt from the CVAN Fair and Equitable programme pilot year', Contemporary Visual Arts Network England.

Wee, C. (2022). ‘Fostering Equity in the Visual Arts Sector – Fair and Equitable research report’, Contemporary Visual Arts Network England.

Wee, C (2022). ‘Making Our Community Inheritance’, Holistic Carbon Reporting, Carbon Emissions Plan for Sunlight Doesn’t Need A Pipeline commissioned by Dani Admiss

Wee, C (2021). Co-lead author, ‘Live Art Sector Research - A Report Mapping the UK Live Art Sector’ Live Art UK, Live Art Development Agency and Arts Council England

Wee, C (2021). Contributor, Infrastructuring: Four Conversations on Cultural Infrastructure, edited by Susannah Haslam, Theatrum Mundi editions

Wee, C (2021). Co-author, ‘Exercises in Exorcism – Ways of Healing (Through) Art Education’. In Capitalism's Deadly Threat - transform! yearbook 2021, Merlin Press

Wee, C (2020). ‘How do we have a conversation about where wealth comes from?’ in Vanishing Points, Live Art Development Agency & Diverse Actions