We've been keeping tabs on associate Anni Raw's doctorate research into artists' practice in community-based and participatory settings, listening with curiosity and envy to her tales of travel to Mexico as part of this research, and waiting eagerly to see it all published. Imagine our delight when she offered us a series of guest blogs drawing on some of her exploring, deep thinking and deep-reaching conversations with practitioners over the past three years. Here's the first.
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Imaginative life-size papier mache sculpture ('alebrije') in Mexico
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The process of constructing the set for the animated scene is fascinating. A large box is retrieved from a back room behind the school kitchen, and from it spill numerous oddments which to me look like the leftover remnants of an outdoor jumble sale: several large pieces of rough-cut cloth of different colours and textures, pieces of moss, twigs, a box of small animal figures, two half-formed miniature Pleistocene figures – one of a dog and one a person – and a cardboard model hut with dry mud glued to the roof. This rough paraphernalia contrasts sharply with the high-tech camera and professional lighting equipment being set up on tripods, focus trained on a small table, and at first I am confused: surely a set made from these materials will not be adequate to produce a film of high enough visual quality! Seeing the box, the team of five lads - involved in their customary chaotic behaviour and constantly confrontational interactions - suddenly abandon their hyperactivity to begin building the scene. Bryan helps two of the boys organise cloth, moss and twigs (crumpled cloth backdrop strewn with bits of outdoor woodland material, precariously balanced, and a tiny twig campfire constructed centrally, with what look like orange and red Pleistocene worms protruding through the twigs.) Meanwhile Kath is piecing together arms, legs, bodies and heads of the main character and his dog, with industrious input from the other three lads. They finally draw onto paper and cut out four small circles depicting different cartoon-style facial expressions: smiling, shocked, angry and asleep. The first of these (asleep) is roughly tacked to the head of the small figure, and some brushed sheep’s wool attached above (for hair). He is positioned reclining on a rock by the campfire, his dog nearby. Abdul is at the camera, and meticulously focuses the lens on the ramshackle scene, clicking one shot – meanwhile Imran darts a hand in and bends the Pleistocene fire worms very slightly. Another click. Imran darts in again, another slight tweak: another shot.
The stop-frame scene is unfolding before my eyes, these are the flames of a flickering campfire! The miniature world created by the group becomes more and more real within the pool of light. Yet stand back, and with a dissociated eye it looks like a jumble of rubbish. The earnestness with which the group creates a complete imaginary world from ad hoc bits and pieces here in this large, empty school dining hall is impressive. I am completely drawn in. We have to stop intermittently and laugh when main character Mr Martin’s arm keeps falling off, then his head, and people keep inventing surreal potential storylines to accommodate these minor catastrophes. But we all know they’re just messing about with ideas – each team member is holding the map of the agreed storyboard in their mind’s eye, waiting until the story can proceed. The shared humour feels very bonding. There is one highly surreal, spontaneous development to the plot when a plastic lion figure enters stage left on the inspiration of Imran, in response to which one of the other boys rapidly exchanges Mr Martin’s facial expression to ‘shocked’, and the dog falls over. This moment remains in the film – everyone satisfied that it adds something indefinable.
(Field notes from observation of stop-frame animation project, UK, 31/5/12, quoted from PhD thesis: ‘A model and theory of community-based arts and health practice’, Anni Raw, Durham University, 2013. Artists were Bryan Tweddle and Kath Shackleton; participants’ names are changed to protect their anonymity. The project was part of a family learning initiative by Artworks Creative Communities.)
During the past three and a half years I have had the opportunity and enormous privilege to undertake doctoral research, looking into the creative processes – both seen and unseen – which artists create, initiate, and guide when working with people during community-based participatory arts projects. Based with Durham University’s increasingly renowned ‘Centre for Medical Humanities’, this research was instigated as an element of the centre’s study of the contribution of the arts to public health and wellbeing – how, in fact, is it that artists work with their groups, in order to produce such often remarkable outcomes? The excerpt above is from my observation work, and is used in the thesis to point to the importance of placing the imagination centre-stage – giving time and license to the minute details which allow disorder to become a story. The artists in this work, when working well, support participants’ explorations of their own imaginations. If imagination is a muscle, artists are elite athletes. They train/stretch their own imaginations daily, and are able to model by example the importance of playing with the imagination, so that participants young or old can value their own imaginative capacity. In my study I highlight this as a key element of the way in which artists have a special and valuable contribution to make in enabling people to tap into their own resources for building resilience and making changes in their lives. By ‘working’ the imagination, and in some cases reconnecting people with their imagination when they have lost the ability to flex their imaginative muscles, arts practitioners empower their project participants to ‘dream up’ new perspectives, new outcomes, and new questions, which can shift life into a different gear. Artist Lou Sumray wrote to me recently: ‘I think that most people like to play - they just forget they don’t need permission to do so.’
Over the coming months, and beyond, I hope as a visiting contributor to this blog to share some magical moments from excellent project work. Other reflections on my research can be found on the CMH blog.
