R.M. Sánchez-Camus is Founder and Director of Applied Live Art Studio (ALAS), an action-research studio working across public art, social practice and exhibition to design projects with communities and institutions. ALAS prototypes creative systems through methods that combine co-authoring, creative health, storytelling and place making, so that partners can commission culture that is both imaginative and operationally sound. The studio’s mission foregrounds cultural democracy and participatory governance while remaining focused on delivery, legacy and sector learning.
Recent projects include “Stars of Westgate” (Gloucester Cathedral Quarter Cultural Programme), a community takeover culminating in a large textile constellation of hundreds of resident-designed stars—paired with digital projection inside the Cathedral and an oral-history strand (Westgate Stories). “Pop-Up Art Studio,” created with Whitechapel Gallery and Portugal Prints for A Century of the Artist’s Studio, distilled supported-studio wisdom into an interactive public resource on wellbeing and artistic care. The studio also convenes long-form initiatives such as 100 Stars in the Sky (a self-mentoring deck for socially engaged practice) and commissions/edits through Social Art Publications.
ALAS sustains a public voice through Press & Interviews—from UAL’s Creativity, Care and the City to The Creative Independent’s conversation on network-building—and a values-led governance model supported by an advisory board. Awards and recognition attached to the studio’s work include The Pineapples (Community Engagement, 2022) and the Museums + Heritage Exhibition of the Year shortlist (2021), alongside the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award (2024–27) for research on co-creation in museums.
Sánchez-Camus’ dual vantage point—as a creative practitioner and a sector consultant—allows ALAS to move fluidly between creative authorship and institutional design: the same project can deliver a public artwork, a community method, and an evaluative framework that organisations can adopt and repeat.
To find out more about Marcelo’s solo practice and work, please visit his website.
To seek out a collaboration as a sector consultant please visit sanchez-camus.work