First! That is the triumphant brag for this year's Turner Prize shortlist, which is the first to be made up solely by collectives.

The first piece created outside of a gallery setting. This is the first time the show has been hosted in the Midlands, and it represents every country in the United Kingdom; undoubtedly the first collection of "pocket utopias" and "community initiatives."

Although there are five collectives engaged, anyone who is half awake may deduce a sixth — none other than the jury itself. For its members, a major idea was to pick only groups working for the greater good, rather than artists working for the sake of art (or, God forbid, by themselves).

This may seem like a moral duty in a pandemic year, with so few modern exhibitions and so much national misery, but the question is whose welfare it serves.

You're not alone if you've never heard of any of these bands, with the exception of Cooking Sections, who have shown at Tate Britain. Neither had the show's lead curator. Indeed, several of the nominated candidates have gone so far as to state in courteous wall panels that they are ministers, youth workers, civil rights leaders, and conflict resolution trainers, rather than artists.

One group even released a rebuttal to the notion of being "exploited" by Turner for the sake of diversity. In this case, they have my vote.

Gentle/Radical is a Cardiff-based band. They're more like local group therapy than an art collaborative.

One man remembers his Palestinian grandmother on a split screen, while another meditates and a third walks in the sun. Singing groups, self-care groups, and inspirational adages are all available.

G/R have never exhibited before, and they are not doing it now with great respect. What they produce as a group can scarcely be presented in a gallery.

The Array Collective in Belfast has created a faux tavern that sits midway between the past and the future, with an empty Ian Paisley suit stuffed with straw nursing a drink. “This Person Supports a Ban on Conversion Therapy,” states the slogan on the bar mirror.

When you look up, you'll see banners that read, "Get Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries." A large screen displays excerpts from carnivalesque revues in which Britannia takes off her armor and a gay comic tells the story of the fairies' mythological victory over the Christians.

The pub's rules demand that you laugh.

Perhaps you had to be present to understand the final worth – social, let alone hilarious – of Array's activities. (The seemingly weak T-shirt slogan "Eire Says Relax" might gain strength in context.) BOSS, aka the queer, trans, and non-binary BPOC Black Obsidian Sound System, is no exception.

With live performances and the delivery of its systems to communities for low rentals or free, BOSS continues the legacy of early sound system culture - DJs and MCs playing reggae on stacks of homemade speakers. A totem pole of speakers lies at the center of an installation of screens and thrumming boxes, with film of club nights intercut with oral histories.

I can't believe the addition of black vinyl draperies and at least one barely audible speaker serves BOSS's achievements so effectively. They have every right to complain about being wanted but "quickly dispensable" by the Tate, and about the inconsistency of shortlisting collectives while failing to meet the collective requirements of Tate employees.

Another installment of Cooking Sections' son-and-lumière campaign against factory-farmed salmon has been released. It's lovely enough: eight ever-changing projections of water farms on the floor, accompanied by a narrative about fish as activists attempting to flee the nets of man's inhumanity.

If Skye restaurants are to be judged for their social efficacy, the collective has managed to persuade some of them to remove farmed salmon off their menus.

But, regardless of how morally involved the jury or its shortlist is, that is a red herring in the end. Nobody is here solely for the sake of activism. The most captivating section in the exhibition is packed with stunning paintings and drawings that have nothing to do with social practice other than the fact that they were created in Hastings' Project Art Works facilities.

Neville Jermyn's wonderful whale, gleaming like a ghost in graphite. The swarming target abstractions of Siddharth Gadiyar.

Sharif Persaud's powerful self-portrait is as decisive in its shaping as an Arshile Gorky portrait. As canvases await the arrival of PAW artists who will visit during the show, there are hundreds of photos and more to come.

However, the reason they are included is as patronizing as it is certainly well-intentioned: PAW exists to support neurodiversity artists.

It would be unethical to favor one group over another, which would go against the spirit of this year's selection. There can be no winner since nothing can be compared - neither the work, the medium, the ideals, or the societal significance.

It would be nice to see the Turner Prize finally implode after its long and tumultuous history, with its ludicrous anomalies and blatant conflicts of interest. But there is still money to be given out, and this year it will have to be shared among all of these deserving groups: £60,000 spread among (by my count) more than a hundred persons; the atomic particle splitting.

Yinka Shonibare's friendly smile is the first thing you see in a slightly hagiographic image of Siddharth Gadiyar, who also featured in this year's delayed Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, produced by Siddharth Gadiyar. Others include Yayoi Kusama and Sonia Boyce knitted memorials, Gillian Wearing's melancholy self-portrait of Gwen John, and three unique homages to Captain Sir Tom Moore (including one in stolid bronze).

Shonibare, on the other hand, has picked a diverse group of black artists, beginning with the stunning pictographic drawings of former slave Bill Traylor. There are sardonic sculptures by Beninese artist Romuald Hazoumè, a haunting map of Africa by African American artist Ellen Gallagher that appears to transform into an elephant's head, and a massive table-top traffic jam involving hundreds of toy cars, with black dolls attempting to clamber over them to freedom.

Exodus is the succinct title of a piece by British-Trinidadian artist Zak Ové.

There's a tinge of joy running through it, not least because there's so much more art to see. Quilts, embroideries, collages of flattened cans, rope, wool, beads, and sequins sculptures, African batik figures (and not just by Shonibare himself).

It speaks over the quieter prints, lifting some of the more etiolated watercolour landscapes.

So, with about 1,400 displays, this pro-am fixture is way too huge; and still, trying to enjoy small works skied towards the ceiling, or refocus between delicate monochrome and blazing color, is an eye test. The higher Royal Academicians continue to submit the same old works (this year's magniloquent historical painting by Anselm Kiefer includes a whole 3D axe stuck into its surface).

Shonibare's edition, on the other hand, exhibits signs of long-overdue regeneration in all of its diversity, range, and equality, which even the immovable scenes of Venice cannot suppress.

Thanks to Laura Cumming at The Guardian whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.