Phil Wood describes himself as an urban therapist; a researcher, analyst, writer and deviser; an observer, motivator, connector and networker; a provocateur, catalyst and change agent. We also know him as inspirer, curious questioner and critical friend, and there's a fair few folk out there who can trace their successful project, initiative or even organisation back to seeds that were planted by and with Phil. What a treat, then, to have an 'exclusive' from him here about a recent transnational get-together of community artists, where the conversations and provocations dug deep into some of the very stuff that our own work is rooted in.
If there’s one thing that characterises good community artists the world over, it’s that they’ll be completely immersed in and devoted to the community they are working with. Usually teetering just the right side of burn-out, they’ll be multi-tasking on a myriad things, from sourcing those special materials for next week’s event, sweet-talking the funding body rep who keeps promising to show up but never does, worrying whether Kayleigh has really dropped out of the project because she can’t get a babysitter – or if it’s something more sinister, negotiating with the Zumba group to end their class 15 minutes early so the space will be free, and fretting about why Councillor Ackroyd keeps going off on one about “art is summat for the likes of them in the posh houses on the hill”.
And that’s as it should be, I guess, except that it doesn’t leave much time for anything else. Like a life for example. Or for thinking about the possibility of what other community artists are doing – in the next town, the next county or even… in another country. Which is why TANDEM Community & Participation was born.
TANDEM is a well-established idea created jointly by the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam and MitOst in Berlin. Up to now it has concentrated on putting together duets of artists from different countries across chasms of distance and culture, particularly connecting western Europeans with counterparts in Ukraine, Turkey, Moldova and the Arab world. The project allows them to visit each others’ worlds and to collaborate on a creative project. But for the first time TANDEM has turned away from the contemporary art world and opened up to those working in community and participative practice. They also invited me along for the ride, to inject some thinking on what we mean by community arts and on the similarities and differences between various national approaches, and to mentor participants.
A call went out to arts groups in Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands and Britain and there was a reasonable response, including eight from the UK. Eventually, a prospective group of 18 were invited along to a four-day session in Rotterdam last October. Described as a ‘partner forum’ it was in effect an exercise in speed-dating. The challenge was for everyone in the room to spend the next few days finding a partner with whom they would like to spend the next twelve month collaborating on a joint project.
I know, you’re already saying to yourself “I think I’ll stick with Kayleigh and Cllr Ackroyd – I don’t need any more pressure, thank you very much”. I grant you, it’s not an easy thing having to walk into a room of total strangers and to come out ‘hitched’, and it brings out all kinds of behaviours. Some throw themselves into the thick of it whilst others hang back and observe. Some have come with a shopping list of the attributes and artform-speciality of their ideal suitor, and will brook no alternative – they’re in for a shock. Some (amongst the more ‘mature’ of the group) have well-formed ideas of what does (and does not) constitute community arts, and eye some of the younger, flightier participants with circumspection.
To add to the mix I threw in some of my own theories about the different origins and lineages of community and socially-engaged art. I enjoyed myself researching this, digging backwards all the way to Marx and Engels, Ruskin, William Morris and Margaret Mead. I trawled through Boal and Friere, Beuys and Breton travelling from Welfare State to El Sistema, and all the time asking myself whether different traditions could be found between the four countries taking part. I enjoyed discovering the Belgian Pascal Gielen who, amongst other things, has evolved a nice way of positioning different kinds of community art, according to two axes which lie between the extremities of ‘art as subversion’ and ‘art as integration’; and between ‘art which serves the artist first’, and ‘art in which the artist disappears’.
Gielen, in his book Community Art: the Politics of Trespassing also poses the challenging question:
Does the new generation of committed artists really possess the same sincerity and naivety as the previous ones or are we now dealing with a smarter, more strategic but perhaps more opportunistic specimen?
which was much debated during the gathering.
In the end some people found a partner, some found none and, in a laudable bit of rule-bending, some found two to form ‘trandems’. You can find out more about the teams and what they are planning to do together here. But, in a nutshell, we have an old punk/new punk Anglo-Dutch pairing; a threesome working in youth theatre; another trio looking to develop a digital ‘memory box’ of people’s recollections in three deprived communities; and a pairing of a tiny town in Belgium with a rough-tough suburb of Amsterdam.
In December we moved on to Oberhausen in Germany to consummate the relationships with high-flying ideation and some nitty-gritty project-planning, all with a spot of indoor camping and group cooking in a converted industrial water tower.
Having interviewed the participants individually I know this is a big step for them all, both risky but tremendously exciting. Some of them have to justify to their colleagues back home that they’re not just on a jolly, but will bring back something nourishing and lasting to their locality. Others see it as a potential game-changer in the course of their practice and career. I’m particularly pleased to see the Brits so enthusiastically buying into this cross-Channel adventure given the current climate of little-Englanderism that pervades our scepter’d isle.
It all comes to fruition in the summer, and will hopefully be considered enough of a success to enable this pilot to be translated into an ongoing programme – so watch out for further calls to participate.
More information at http://tandemexchange.eu/
And that’s as it should be, I guess, except that it doesn’t leave much time for anything else. Like a life for example. Or for thinking about the possibility of what other community artists are doing – in the next town, the next county or even… in another country. Which is why TANDEM Community & Participation was born.
TANDEM is a well-established idea created jointly by the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam and MitOst in Berlin. Up to now it has concentrated on putting together duets of artists from different countries across chasms of distance and culture, particularly connecting western Europeans with counterparts in Ukraine, Turkey, Moldova and the Arab world. The project allows them to visit each others’ worlds and to collaborate on a creative project. But for the first time TANDEM has turned away from the contemporary art world and opened up to those working in community and participative practice. They also invited me along for the ride, to inject some thinking on what we mean by community arts and on the similarities and differences between various national approaches, and to mentor participants.
A call went out to arts groups in Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands and Britain and there was a reasonable response, including eight from the UK. Eventually, a prospective group of 18 were invited along to a four-day session in Rotterdam last October. Described as a ‘partner forum’ it was in effect an exercise in speed-dating. The challenge was for everyone in the room to spend the next few days finding a partner with whom they would like to spend the next twelve month collaborating on a joint project.
I know, you’re already saying to yourself “I think I’ll stick with Kayleigh and Cllr Ackroyd – I don’t need any more pressure, thank you very much”. I grant you, it’s not an easy thing having to walk into a room of total strangers and to come out ‘hitched’, and it brings out all kinds of behaviours. Some throw themselves into the thick of it whilst others hang back and observe. Some have come with a shopping list of the attributes and artform-speciality of their ideal suitor, and will brook no alternative – they’re in for a shock. Some (amongst the more ‘mature’ of the group) have well-formed ideas of what does (and does not) constitute community arts, and eye some of the younger, flightier participants with circumspection.
To add to the mix I threw in some of my own theories about the different origins and lineages of community and socially-engaged art. I enjoyed myself researching this, digging backwards all the way to Marx and Engels, Ruskin, William Morris and Margaret Mead. I trawled through Boal and Friere, Beuys and Breton travelling from Welfare State to El Sistema, and all the time asking myself whether different traditions could be found between the four countries taking part. I enjoyed discovering the Belgian Pascal Gielen who, amongst other things, has evolved a nice way of positioning different kinds of community art, according to two axes which lie between the extremities of ‘art as subversion’ and ‘art as integration’; and between ‘art which serves the artist first’, and ‘art in which the artist disappears’.
Gielen, in his book Community Art: the Politics of Trespassing also poses the challenging question:
Does the new generation of committed artists really possess the same sincerity and naivety as the previous ones or are we now dealing with a smarter, more strategic but perhaps more opportunistic specimen?
which was much debated during the gathering.
In the end some people found a partner, some found none and, in a laudable bit of rule-bending, some found two to form ‘trandems’. You can find out more about the teams and what they are planning to do together here. But, in a nutshell, we have an old punk/new punk Anglo-Dutch pairing; a threesome working in youth theatre; another trio looking to develop a digital ‘memory box’ of people’s recollections in three deprived communities; and a pairing of a tiny town in Belgium with a rough-tough suburb of Amsterdam.
In December we moved on to Oberhausen in Germany to consummate the relationships with high-flying ideation and some nitty-gritty project-planning, all with a spot of indoor camping and group cooking in a converted industrial water tower.
Having interviewed the participants individually I know this is a big step for them all, both risky but tremendously exciting. Some of them have to justify to their colleagues back home that they’re not just on a jolly, but will bring back something nourishing and lasting to their locality. Others see it as a potential game-changer in the course of their practice and career. I’m particularly pleased to see the Brits so enthusiastically buying into this cross-Channel adventure given the current climate of little-Englanderism that pervades our scepter’d isle.
It all comes to fruition in the summer, and will hopefully be considered enough of a success to enable this pilot to be translated into an ongoing programme – so watch out for further calls to participate.
More information at http://tandemexchange.eu/
