To take part collect a sticker from Contact, CUBE or ThePublicSpace. A project by Grennan and Sperandio. Written by Drew Hemment. Winner of the Futuresonic 2008 Art Award Commission, supported by Piccadilly Partnership. To take part collect a sticker from Contact, ThePublicSpace or CUBE, or click sticker icon below to download and make your own. More Info   Rubbing Shoulders is a social network you can join not on the internet, but by wearing specially designed stickers as you walk around the city, promoted on billboards by Grennan and Sperandio's ideosyncratic cartoons. When meeting across the city, members of the network are given a set of instructions on how to interact with people known and unknown: strangers in the network overcome social barriers with a secret handshake; those that know each other already give/receive back rubs; when meeting non-members, they play with keeping them out of their 'personal space bubble.' A truly citywide art project that aims to, "bring the people of Manchester closer together." Instructions: The medium is the massage Rubbing Shoulders is a project on safe hands-on social networking. On joining the Rubbing Shoulders social network, people are given a set of instructions on how to interact with people known and unknown: When meeting people NOT in the Rubbing Shoulders social network, participants are instructed not to let them enter their 'personal space bubble.' This causes playful scenes as people in queues and in crowds try to maintain a distance of 50cm between themselves and others around them. When meeting other people who ARE in the Rubbing Shoulders social network, people are able to greet each other with a secret handshake. This highly formal social interaction can be a discussion point on how different people usually greet each other. On meeting someone else in the social network they know very well, members ask each other if they have a stiff neck. If the answer is yes, and if they are invited, they give/receive back rubs as an antidote to online social networking and the back problems caused by hours hunching over the computer. Alka-Seltzer For A Moral Panic Rubbing Shoulders was a 'risky' artwork, as it addressed head-on concerns around safety and social networking, at a time when the headlines on paedophilia and social networking exploded on the front pages of UK newspapers. It was both a subtle provocation intended to lance the boil of a media panic, and an Alka-Seltzer remedy intended to sooth a fevered atmosphere by enabling kids to explore issues of safety and social networking. It was intended to be deliberately provocative, encouraging strangers in the network to give each other backrubs, to contrast this with the effortlessness of the "digital handshake" and the way we make friends online. Concerns about the safety of kids and social networking exploded on the front pages of UK newspapers on 2nd April 2008 with headlines such as "Millions of girls using Facebook, Bebo and Myspace 'at risk' from paedophiles and bullies" in the Daily Mail. This followed a UK Government Report - The Byron Review into Children and New Technology - itself measured, but which sparked a new bout of folk devil panic. After the headlines about paedophilia, it was reframed as a project on safe 'hands-on' social networking. "Following the Byron report, I worked with the artists to use the artwork as a riposte to the paranoia rippling through the red tops." - Drew Hemment We took the project into a Manchester school, to explore with the kids issues of safe social networking, both online and offline. Participants are encouraged to reflect on safe interaction with other people. The project thematises safe interaction and enables people to act out and play different roles during the day. These range from an awareness of their 'personal space bubble' and who they allow within it, to considering when and with who it would be appropriate to give a neck rub at the end of a long day. The starting point was the fact that most kids spend little time out on the streets playing. Our society is too fearful to allow them out with their mates. As a result they lack many of the social skills they will need for face-to-face interaction and spend their time online instead. Now the parents' fears are projected there also, leaving the kids nowhere to go. Rubbing Shoulders was presented across Manchester 1-5 May 2008 as a part of the Futuresonic festival, plus was taken into Hope High School in Salford with a Year 8 (12 - 13 yrs) art class. The school considered it very successful, and that it broke some boundaries, getting kids in different gangs working together for the first time, and enabling them to explore issues they dont usually confront about social networking, online and offline.