STARTING BLOCKS AND CORNERSTONES

by Tracy Shaw, Loca Creatives Director

The stage is set - invitations out by the hundreds, word of mouth travelling, lanterns ready for ceremonial lighting... As is always the way with outdoor events, all we need now is a decent turn-out and the weather on our side. Gusting winds and heavy downpours would not be conducive to family fun with pebble decorating and site surveying in the afternoon, nor to conjuring up night-time magic with atmospheric projections and ambient soundtracks and leaving residents enthused about the project that is starting right on their doorsteps.

This Saturday sees the launch of Cornerstones, a project commissioned by Contour Homes in and around a brand new housing development in St Mary's, Oldham. Or it's the public launch at least - from a project management point of view and for the artistic team (Adam Strickson, Lucy Bergman, Dan Jones) the project is already many weeks in. We've been doing what you do when setting foot in a new neighbourhood with a new project to offer, local knowledge to gather and relationships to build - talking to local organisations about how they could oil the project's wheels, link in with it and help you make connections; chatting to people about their lives and the place on doorsteps, round kitchen tables and in the street; making a nuisance of yourself with schools who'd love to have you but struggle to find time for planning and scheduling. Not to mention figuring out how the streets connect up, who lives where, where people go, what their perceptions of each other and the area are, and who's responsible for clearing up the dog poo on the land you're about to hold your event on.

But we're on the starting blocks. The project that felt so nebulous a few weeks ago now has an identity which seems to be catching on (why is finding the right name always the hardest bit?). The reception has been warm and the offers of help many. Adam's long-term connections in Oldham have given us some head starts, and the kindness of people who've never met us before and as yet have no reason to trust in what we're doing has already been felt several times over.

On Saturday we'll be diving right in and hoping that the community around our Poppy Road site will take a leap of faith or at least be curious enough to dive in with us. We're promising a seating area that creates a loved, shared, and well used space; explorations of maps, symbols, stories, heritage and journeys that will translate into designs, performance and film; fun activities; and the chance to learn new skills. More than that, we're offering opportunities to meet near neighbours, come together in new groupings and have exchanges with strangers, in ways that we hope will forge connections between newly arrived residents and long-standing ones. Saturday marks the official start of the Cornerstones project journey, but in a bigger sense it heralds the next leg of an ongoing journey that is about the transition of an old community into a new one. To be a small part of that is a huge privilege - thank you for having us, St Mary's, we hope you enjoy walking along with us during Cornerstones' few months in your midst as much as we're going to enjoy walking with you.

Follow the story here.

CAN YOU RIDE T'TANDEM?

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/

SUMMIT GOING ON

by Tracy Shaw, Loca Creatives Director


Photo: Dawn Robinson Photography, courtesy of Kirklees Communities and Leisure

 

What better way to kick the new year into top gear than an afternoon taking "an international, national and local view of how creative thinking, activity and problem solving have found innovative solutions to regeneration, community development and economic growth"? Well done Kirklees Communities and Leisure, for putting on a Creative Summit that offered "world renowned keynote speakers" and brought together dozens from the local creative sector. Those kinds of energising opportunities come round all too rarely.

So with "creativity is the cornerstone of innovation" as the hook for the afternoon, what spurs did we get to go forth, be creative and innovate?

We got some juicy facts and figures. Compelling figures - taken from recently published DCMS Creative Industries estimates - of the kind that make you feel grateful to be working in a booming sector rather than an ailing one (the 2.5 million people employed in the UK's creative economy account for one in twelve of all jobs; the creative workforce has been growing faster than other sectors; creative businesses' GVA accounts for 5.2% of the UK economy). And thought-provoking facts of the kind that make you wonder if current education policy isn't missing a trick - according to Wayne Hemingway's sources, truancy rates at Key Stage 4 are lower in Design than in all other school subjects, and highest in the STEM subjects (on which note you might like to take a look at STEM to STEAM).

We got music.  The Charlie Winston 'Boxes' song that Dr Rita Klapper used to get us thinking about breaking out of habitual thinking and behaviours was pure cheese, but as a device it seemed to work. Contributions from the floor suggested that plenty of people connected with the idea that we too easily get boxed into constraining roles and socially imposed identities when in fact we all have the possibility of being "a thousand me's" - doubtless a reassuring notion for anyone trying to jigsaw together a viable living from 'portfolio working'. The passing round of actual boxes into which unsuspecting audience members were invited to fit themselves perhaps laboured the point a little, but their solutions were all nicely creative and it provided some ice-breaking entertainment for the rest of us. Tellingly, no one came up with the response that Dr Rita was really looking for - refusing to even try.

David Parrish gave us a salutary reminder that creativity is not the sole domain of those who work in the arts sector but is in and around us all; and that Creativity + Innovation won't make a successful business unless you do the hard bit and get your business formula right too. He had wise things to say about the importance of knowing yourself and keeping a sharp eye on your competitive environment, the benefits of co-opetition, the marketing power of the freebie, protecting your creative and intellectual property, and the choices to be made between being a creative labourer and a creative entrepreneur (one makes you money while you sleep, the other doesn't). All good stuff, and all freely available to be dug into more deeply in the eminently readable T-Shirts and Suits - useful back-up for anyone present whose concentration was distracted by the whoooosh on every slide change.

From Wayne Hemingway we got great stories - ones that I imagine he's dined out on quite a bit over the years (while privately wishing he were at home with a bowl of cereal?) but they stand up to the re-telling. His own business start-up story, alongside partner Gerardine (now she sounds like a woman who refuses to be boxed in by fear of the unknown) is an inspirational tale of can-do entrepreneurship for which the phrase 'nothing ventured nothing gained' might have been coined. Fast forward 20 years to the Hemingways' collaboration with Wimpey Homes (Gerardine - "just because we've never designed houses before doesn't mean we shouldn't give it a go") and the start of their award-winning involvement in social housing design. This being an area of particular personal interest, and a direct link to the "bringing innovative solutions to regeneration and community development" bit of the Summit publicity which I'd found so enticing, I was sorry not to get more on this - but Mr H was respectful enough to recognise that more from him would cut the next speaker short. Would it have made a difference if he'd known she wasn't actually going to speak? Anyway, happy to do cereal at mine any time you fancy a further chat, Wayne.

More music - and more cheese, this time of the disco variety - from art lecturer, performer and self-confessed music and social media obsessive, Dr Rebekka Kill. It was late afternoon, the sugar surge from the cake-and-networking break had worn off and we'd been listening to speakers for 3+ hours - but suddenly a room full of heads nodding to the beats, hips shimmying gently in seats. Dr Kill rocked. History will probably never relate whether it was actually white wine in the bottle that she necked her way through, but it introduced an element of edginess into the proceedings. Glugging wine straight from the bottle?!  Before six  o'clock, on a Wednesday?!
 

This wasn't necessarily innovation (it seems djtheduchess has done this gig several times before) but it was a refreshingly novel twist - a whole keynote speaker slot completed with not a word spoken, not even a Q&A. The format meant that the concepts behind the 7" vinyl - conveyed in snappy one-liners via PowerPoint - were condensed almost to the point of oversimplification, but it made for a nicely pithy presentation with certainly enough content to be thought-provoking. Look - it is possible to be a successful hybrid of your various selves, rather than living out your academic days and your disc-spinning nights in different boxes. What will the new forms of social media look like - disco-esque Facebook, punky Twitter, the best bits of both, or neither of the above? I'm not sure that the overriding objective of the event was to leave the audience pondering the question 'So am I Disco or am I Punk?', but it was a great note to end on.

So, we got examples of creative thinking and good advice on being creatively entrepreneurial, in abundance. Did we get innovation, and the impetus to make more of it happen? We did each receive a dinky take-away sample of the hottest in printing technology, courtesy of the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre (check out the A Primer on 3D Printing TED Talk for an eye-opening introduction). But a skip round TED's Innovation category, Nesta's catalogue or Culture Label's publications on creative entrepreneurship (to name but three) might suggest that, at that particular moment in Huddersfield, we were some way away from the cutting edge.  And yet it's all relative, isn't it? I imagine every one of us will have taken away a lightbulb moment, some stimulus, a conversation, a concept or a connection that will prompt us to try something we've not tried before, take a leap in our business, form a new alliance, devise a new project or shake up a habitual way of doing something.

Innovations and creative sparks will emerge from the Summit on our terms and in our own contexts, then. Some will be small and some more significant, game-changing even. How about sharing yours with the rest of us in some way - disco, punk, or whatever works for you?

FROM MEXICO, WITH LOVE

We're lucky to have Anni Raw as a Loca Creatives associate, amongst many other things because it gives us access to generously shared blog material inspired by her recent post-doctoral research. Her thesis - investigating 'core practice' amongst artists who work in community and participatory arts - included an exploration of artists’ practice in the UK and Mexico. Thanks to the Centre for Medical Humanities at Durham University for allowing us to re-blog this piece from one of Anni's recent study visits - it originally appeared on CMH's own blog on 25 November 2013. See also her previous guest post for us.

 

Paisaje Social     Photo: Miho Hagino

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Witnessing human compassion, connection and resilience, fostered in a harsh landscape of brutal inequality, and noting the contribution and impact of research.

Mexico City is a world of parallel realities – perceived in the extreme by travelling on one of the main autopistas from grand, tree-lined avenues in the cultural centre, out to the fringes on the East, where marginal scavenger communities construct themselves – whole families living literally inside and underneath the city’s rubbish mountains. Or, from convivial cafes and cosy residential courtyards, concealing their palms and passionate bougainvillea behind high street-front doors, taking a short few strides to the brutal night world of the soliciting strip at Nuevo Leon corner, where pin-thin transvestite prostitutes manage impossible heels, bearing the winter chill almost naked to earn pennies inside the black saloons that crawl past. The contrasts in parallel life experiences here are stomach churning.

Within this place are many self-organised groups, passionately keen to touch and highlight the ever-present social injustices. Some use ingenuity and creative skills to make contact with people living beyond the visible city life, as discussed in a previous blog entry, In and Out of Focus, in which inmates in a youth prison here in Mexico City were encouraged to make a film of their incarcerated everyday lives. On this trip I have been in close contact with an organisation of artists – ‘Paisaje Social’, roughly social landscape in English – who are beginning to develop sustained partnerships with State-run social institutions such as networks of children’s homes and care homes for the elderly. Working so far without payment but using huge creativity and ingenuity with minimal resources, they run workshops in teams, to create simple new experiences with people, and transform atmospheres and spaces.

My experience attending two workshops, one in a children’s home and one in an elderly care home found artists bringing playful and open-hearted humanity into bleak, dark corners: making small art works, together with groups of up to 20 participants, that reflect back the imagination and creativity people in these institutions rarely have the chance to explore or express. I was intrigued to see such open and uninhibited, tender relationships blossoming, touch and eye contact, laughter and teasing characterising interactions between everybody in the workshops. It’s particularly fascinating to see the cross-cultural interactions at work here: the teams include artists from Japan as well as Mexico, and language functions on many non-verbal and paralinguistic levels, in order to work around missing words or difficult accents, especially important in connections with the older people with dementia. Even my own presence bringing an English accent and another different cultural perspective seemed to enrich rather than disrupt the workshops: curiosity and good will were strong enough to straddle the language confusions. Although the participants themselves, and their works which adorn the shared living areas of the institutions, remain behind the locked doors, Paisaje Social uses a sophisticated website and social media strategy via Facebook and twitter to enable what goes on in these workshops, as well as the participants and their achievements, to be visible and celebrated in the world beyond.

 

My connection with Paisaje Social began on my last visit here 6 months ago, when one of the three co-founders of the organisation, Miho Hagino, attended a seminar I ran here in Mexico City, to disseminate the findings from my doctoral research for a practitioner audience. Miho saw the seminar advertised by chance, and attended hoping to find useful perspectives on the practice of the Paisaje Social associate artists. She was very inspired by the resonances she felt with the messages from my research, and since then we have been in touch by email. The ensuing relationship is inspirational for both parties: Paisaje Social has taken on with huge enthusiasm my model for how socially engaged arts and arts/health practice can be articulated and theorised, disseminating the ideas, debating their own approaches, and even engaging in dialogues with me about evaluation strategies, and professional development based on my work. For me, to be in touch with an organisation so serious about reflective practice, and finding such useful application for my research is an inspiration and a privilege. It is exactly what any researcher can hope for – that what we commit our focus and efforts to with such intensity can then find a useful application in the real world of practice.

Paisaje Social is an organisation on the march, accumulating knowledge, experience and ambition in how to create new openings for good practice in community-based participatory arts initiatives – I will be in close contact with them, and hope they will become a Mexican outpost in our CMH arts and health network of colleagues and compañeros.

ENGAGING WITH COLOUR - Part 2

Last time Lesley Fallais made a heartfelt plea for an educated and informed approach in any situation where decisions about colour will have an impact on the public realm.  Three lovely project examples from her portfolio illustrate how exploring colour and teaching basic colour theory can be a great community engagement device and lead to well considered, locally distinctive design outcomes.

 

The aforementioned library incident and my work on other projects have convinced me of the importance and value of 'colour education' in any design or community involvement situation which impacts on the public realm or streetscape. And as I've got more interested in working with colour and colour theory in my design work with people, I've also discovered what a powerful focus they offer for inclusive, accessible community engagement and tenant involvement activities generally.

For Refresh Berry Brow (with Kirklees Council and Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing), Jane Revitt and I teamed up with Impossible Theatre and its amazing ChromaVan to work with residents on developing a colour scheme for the repainting of the external render on two tower blocks. It's a useful case study in how a well planned, imaginatively and accessibly delivered creative engagement process around colour choices can support tenant involvement objectives as well as good public realm design. As KNH's Estate Management Officer said several years on: "Refresh Berry Brow created an impetus in the local community and local services to continue the good work that was done.  This meant people wanting to be more involved in determining other projects for their community and deciding what these should be, how they should be created and how they should be managed."

Ravensthorpe in Colour (also for Kirklees Council) was a creative community engagement project which informed the design of a site-specific artwork by Jane and Andy Plant for a new Library, Information and Children’s Centre. It illustrates well how the idea of people exploring and recording colour can provide a really strong, fun engagement hook through which to connect with many local residents of all ages. In the words of a Library Service manager: "The simplicity and accessibility of the colour theme made it easy for people to take part. The project succeeded in creating a feeling of inclusion and shared involvement."

A third project brings the themes of public realm design, tenant involvement and informed decision making nicely together. On an estate undergoing a massive housing renewal programme where new homes were being built and five ‘retained' streets of old social housing were being refurbished, critical decisions on colour had to be made. Residents in the retained area had said they wanted to keep the existing grey render but this was clearly going to leave the old properties looking monotone and institutionalised against the adjacent new-build ones. I was pleased to be asked to work with Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing staff and other members of a creative project team to involve local people in the development of a colour scheme. As I introduced myself to residents I repeatedly heard “we don’t want it to look like Balamory” - people feared that using colour meant bright, vivid colours that would be totally inappropriate to the location. At the other extreme, I'd seen housing renewal areas where over-cautious choices had resulted in the whole estate being painted white and cream, re-creating the same overwhelming visual monotony and lack of character it had started with. For the retained streets we needed to find a path between the two extremes, create a scheme that was locally appropriate and distinctive, and carry people with us.

With our residents we set about recorded existing local colour, including the colours of the roof slates, local stone and in the surrounding natural environment - lots of rich possibilities for workshops and on-the-street activities there. We considered the layout of the streets and various site lines before mixing paint samples and testing them full scale, in daylight, on the side of some properties. Then we drew up a considered, street by street, block by block colour layout and presented it to the community. Having been through a creative, accessible engagement process residents were no longer fearful of using rich, saturated colours and they didn’t insist on their homes being painted cream. They could clearly see the rationale behind the selection of colours and very readily supported the proposed colour scheme. In this way we were able to challenge the preference for a 'safe', uniform look and visually link the retained properties with both the new housing and the surrounding natural woodland. The result was a striking, well considered and popular transformation of the five streets, and residents who understood, owned and supported the process we'd been through to get there.

I now regularly deliver colour based workshops and professional training, accessible to anyone of any age and useful to people who make decisions about colour in public spaces – architects, NHS professionals and public sector managers have been amongst recent participants. I'm currently developing a colour training package for Loca Creatives that can be tailored to community groups or professionals. I’d encourage everyone to talk a closer look at colour, its use in public spaces and its effects. Some basic colour knowledge goes a long way - in fact I'd say it’s a basic life skill, whether you're selecting a tie to go with your shirt or a cushion to give punch to your interior colour scheme, or are aiming to create the right mood and visual environment for a public space.

ENGAGING WITH COLOUR - Part 1

An understanding of colour is a useful life skill for everyone, and critical for anybody making decisions about the use of colour in public realm design, says our Core Team associate Lesley Fallais. Having worked as an artist and designer on many regeneration projects where enabling intelligent use of and informed choices about colour has been a key aspect of her role, she's used her own learning to develop professional training sessions and community engagement workshops. A training package for Loca Creatives is in the making so we asked Lesley for an appetiser. It was so good we've made it a two-parter - come back soon.

 

As a visual artist working primarily on projects within urban regeneration and with an enduring commitment to sustainable place-making, I've often been shocked at how decisions on something so fundamental as colour are often casually made.

Having found myself drawn into decision making about the use of colour many times, I've made it my mission to learn more about hue, chroma and saturation, and to encourage others to really consider the successful use of colour in community buildings such as libraries, hospitals and schools, in external public spaces, on tower blocks, and on rendered walls and street furniture. For me sustainable place-making and successful public realm design are rooted in the recognition and utilisation of local distinctiveness, leading to a true sense of place. I'm convinced that selecting and using colour in public spaces (along with other key design considerations) has to be set in the context of a unique, contemporary story which records existing local colour, vernacular architecture, landscape and the cultural heritage of a site.

I’ve been lucky to collaborate on a number of significant projects with design professionals who have a real understanding of the use of colour, including designer Jane Revitt who I have seen transform several schools and healthcare environments with an intelligent and considered use of colour. In these contexts colour was used creatively to create an effective healing or learning environment, and to aid navigation around previously bland and institutional looking corridors and spaces. There is also a lot to be learnt from the commercial developers and designers of retail outlets and cafes who give so much attention to how colour affects people and their use of public spaces. If it is important to encourage the public to use, linger and revisit a building or space, theirs is essential thinking.

A few years back, Jane and I collaborated on the design of a series of site-specific artworks for a new community library, with the aim of creatively engaging with local residents and ultimately giving the building some identity which would encourage local people to use and love it. By chance we found ourselves in a meeting which was also making decisions about the building's external colour scheme (not part of our brief). A senior manager, in a laudable effort to include his staff in the building's development, spread out a colour chart and asked his colleagues to ‘choose’ the colours for the exterior window frames, security shutters and doors. I had seen ‘Tenant Choice’ in action many times, where tenants are invited to choose their own colours and finishes for kitchens and bathrooms, and realised in that instant that a similar approach was being used here to make critical decisions about architecture and public space design. Offering Tenant Choice about people's private, domestic interior decor is one thing, but I'm a firm believer that no aspect of public realm design should be ‘chosen’ in a vacuum. 

A secondary but equally important concern for me is that genuine, inclusive, engagement with people should be something much more considered, creative and meaningful, always designed to maximise learning opportunities, develop skills and create ways for people to fully participate in the decision making process. Enabling people to make informed decisions seems fundamental, and surely to make informed decisions about colour in public spaces people - whether as professionals or as residents and users - need some knowledge and understanding of colour, light, local distinctiveness and the unique local context?

Back to the library staff... They were clearly not comfortable about being given responsibility for this ‘choice’: “how should I know what colour to paint the doors and windows?” said one. Sitting in that situation a realisation dawned – is this why so many public sector community buildings often look institutional, with poorly designed interior and external colour schemes (no joke if they then fail and close because people don’t want to use them)? We've all seen the navy blue and black security shutters on youth centres, health centres and libraries that when closed at night look like military bunkers and contribute nothing to the urban townscape. If only we could get away from the standard colour chart and from slavishly sticking to institutional brand designs, and make our colour selections site-specific.

In the library meeting, with some trepidation, I stuck my head above the parapet: “you can’t make decisions about colour like this!” Jane and I were immediately challenged to come up with a colour scheme, urgently needed by the contractor for the following Monday morning. As we are trained visual artists and knew the site well we were able to do this. The project team could clearly see the difference in our approach and we believe the results contributed quite significantly to making the building successful.

On a number of other projects I've had the chance to make exploring and learning about colour an integral part of the community engagement process, and have discovered what an empowering and inclusive - not to mention fun - tool it can be in that respect. A couple of my favourite examples follow next time.

SETTING THE SCENE: IMAGINATION

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.



Imaginative life-size papier mache sculpture ('alebrije') in Mexico



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.