LEARNING FROM THE LEGACY

Our last post, inspired by other people's writings on the early days of community arts, prompted some nice conversations, including one with Stephen Pritchard.  As luck would have it he was just heading off to the Black-E's Community Arts? Learning from the Legacy of Artists' Social Initiatives conference - a perfect opportunity to wangle a follow-on piece. Stephen is a second year AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council) funded doctoral research student at Northumbria University, exploring socially engaged art as a means of supporting radical social change. His research investigates how social practice might enable creative expressions of social justice and truly democratic common living. He is a socially engaged practitioner, activist, art historian, critical theorist, curator, founder of dot to dot active arts collective, and initiator of EngagedArtNet. Somehow he also finds time to write for his own blog, Colouring in Culture, where this piece on the Black-E event first appeared.  Thanks Stephen for the re-blog.

 

Photo: Dotto, courtesy of The Black-E

 

 

 

Do we need to develop institutions to work with communities? Can’t artists work directly with and within communities?

I asked the two questions as an immediate response to a panel entitled ‘What kind of organisation do we need to develop to work with communities…?’ The problem seemed obvious; becoming increasingly apparent as the Community Arts? Learning from the Legacy of Artists’ Social Initiatives conference (part of Liverpool Biennial’s programming) progressed. Those ‘learning’ from artists should be organisations – who presumably had recently learned or were still learning the importance of working with people outside of our narrow arts world. This is, for me, a deeply problematic and unsettling narrative. Questions of appropriation sprang to mind.

Reflecting back, it was clear from the offset when (co-convenor) Sally Tallant said she preferred to ‘challenge institutions from the inside’ – a now rather hackneyed phrase within the arts. Fellow co-convenor Andrea Phillips presented a much more oppositional stance. She quickly highlighted the inherent ‘contradictions’ linked to the ‘institutionalisation of participation and engagement’ which could lead to the ‘banalisation of community’. She pointed to Community Arts’ deeply ‘political investment’ which had been dampened within a ‘misrecognition of intent’ and the Blairite shift from notions of ‘exclusion to inclusion’.

The founders of The Black-E and conference hosts, Bill and Wendy Harpe, presented a brief overview of their incredible archive of almost 50 years of community arts interventions and participatory exhibitions. Their commitment and passion was infectious. ‘Participation used to have one meaning – now we have 101’, said Bill. He later revealed that The Black-E were facing Arts Council cuts of 35% – the highest level of any NPO organisation in Liverpool. He was, as always, upbeat in his determination to keep going. For me, cuts to The Black-E with its long history of working as part of communities, represents an insidious and conscious decision by Arts Council England to replace great community art by artists and smaller organisations with glass bastions such as Home and The Factory (and many others around the country).

Frances Rifkin followed a fast-paced Jason Bowman with a more pointedly political reflection upon the field of practice. ‘We saw our work as political, transformative – not as do-gooders,’ she explained. She regretted the point in time when ‘the exclusive notion of excellence began to creep in’. She talked about battles, the importance of trade unionism and marginalisation - Issues I feel are all implicated within the creeping professionalisation and institutionalisation of our field. ‘The use of volunteers is one way of not funding artists,’ she added before going on to say that it is ‘disgraceful that there are no opportunities for young artists’ today. Frances revealed she was optimistic about a shift within the arts because, and I echo her thoughts, big arts organisations and funders such as Arts Council England are vulnerable after suffering from round after round of austerity.

Later Sophie Hope declared that Community Art could be seen as a form of ‘oppositional practice’ that rejected the marketisation and professionalisation endemic within the field today. Later still, Nato Thompson whistled through several of Creative Time’s ‘commissions’. His narrative was interesting. ‘We do public art,’ he said. He was immediately followed by Anna Colin of Open School East. She described the school as collective and self-organising with ‘a structure that’s quite light – self-reflexive and self-critical’. Yet, I was left wondering about the intentions of the founders: The Barbican Centre and CREATE London…

There was a perceivable heightening of tensions when Tate’s Director of Learning, Anna Cutler, began by asking the audience ‘Who would define your practice as educational or learning?’ Not many hands went up. She seemed ruffled. ‘I would like to see things changed,’ she said rather unconvincingly. She attempted and failed to describe ‘socially engaged practice’ as a ‘sliding scale’ in which she said she ‘liked to think I’m in the middle’. Safe and sound! Except, for me, Tate do not do socially engaged art – they do outreach and education programmes and participation. Oh, and let’s not forget their dodgy sponsors!! (#BPMustGo!) ‘As long as you’re transparent with participants, its ok,’ and, ‘It’s all about changing the processes, otherwise you’re just moaning from the outside,’ and ‘We’re an institution… change takes a long time,’ she added. Tensions rose further. Then, after several more references to change from Anna, I asked my question. The room ignited.

The rest of the day was notable for Sonia Boyce’s beautifully moving work, for some sort of democratic intervention that demanded more time for open comments (which were a little disjointed but really welcome) and a great summing up by Andrea Phillips. I listened intently to the various perspectives on Granby Four Streets but still felt somehow uncomfortable with the project and its potential to become an unwitting (perhaps even knowing) agent for gentrification. I remembered Andrea Phillips conclusion to Art and Housing: The Private Connection (2012):

The artist is a self-builder. The rich man is a self-builder. The yachts at Venice, with their open invitations for cocktails to socially engaged artists, facilitate the perfect and paradoxical nexus of new “social” housing. The poor can only stand and stare.

My lasting memories of this exceptionally interesting and revealing conference revolve around the notion of oppositions. Community Arts was an oppositional movement. Socially engaged art is based on the premise of anti-institutionalism, amongst other things. Institutions seem to feel that they can, given enough time and undoubtedly lots of money, change to take on the role of community artist. This move will come at the expense of the local, independent, autonomous interventions of many individual artists, collectives and smaller artist-led organisations working within communities. Community Arts is about trust and togetherness. Are large arts organisations really best placed to replace people (artists) who are driven to work in this way? Can they?

We must indeed learn from the legacy of Community Arts and STORM THE CITADELS as Owen Kelly suggested back in 1984!

THE SUN STILL RISES IN THE EAST

by Tracy Shaw, Loca Creatives Director

Photo: NASA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm in a reflective frame of mind as I think back to a year ago this week, when we'd just completed the 'Cornerstones' project in Oldham with the installation of a series of beautifully carved boulders and a rather lovely celebration event. At the time I blogged about feeling that the ending was really just the beginning, and I certainly remember wishing not that we could have our time with the residents of St Mary's over again (arguably we wouldn't have done anything very differently) but that we could have at least as much time again, to continue the process of relationship-building and community engagement that had begun. Thankfully others have picked up the baton, and we're able to look back on the project knowing that it helped set some valuable things in motion for residents and the people who continue to work with them.

It was in this reflective mode that I happened to be browsing Francois Matarasso's new blog, A Restless Art, where I picked up on his case study about Tyneside-based Amber Film and Photography Collective - artists who have committed to keeping their creative practice firmly rooted in place and community for the long term, not just for months or years but for decades. A few more clicks took me back to one of Francois's other writing projects, Parliament of Dreams, where a glance down his Free Downloads list led me to some of the good reads he's authored himself, books and texts by others about community arts history, and to Community Arts Unwrapped. This is a new blogging venture by Alison Jeffers and Gerri Moriarty, who are researching and writing on 'community arts, past, present and future', partly with the aim of documenting its history and partly to stimulate conversations about current and future practice.

I was struck - not for the first time - by a number of things. Firstly, the remarkable longevity and staying power of people like Francois, Alison, Gerri, Amber members and many others besides (I won't attempt a roll-call but they know who they are).  These are people who were inspirational, influential and well-respected practitioners in the community arts field across the UK when I first stepped into it nearly 30 years ago as an administrator working for a regional funding body, and who are still variously doing 'community arts' (albeit continuously challenging their own practice and stretching it in new directions), teaching it, taking stock of it and writing about it with the same insight, authenticity and deeply held commitment to its underpinning values and principles.  Respect to you all.

Secondly - and this is a really simplistic way of saying something that is complex and much-debated - I was struck by remembering how the work that these people pioneered in the seventies and eighties has proliferated and diversified to the extent that 'participatory art practice' is nowadays around us everywhere, yet most of it without the edginess, aesthetic riskiness and explicit socio-political motives which made the original work radical and gave it a sense of being 'a movement'. This is not judgement or criticism, just statement of fact. As Francois says in the intro to A Restless Art: "Whether you call it community art, participatory art or something else entirely, art work with people seems to be thriving....I don’t remember a time when so much was happening, despite the public spending cuts. More importantly, perhaps, I see artists working in a huge range of ways and with an equally diverse range of ideas and motives." His journey as he ponders the question 'What is participatory art and where is it going?' will be well worth watching.

And thirdly it struck me that with the permeation of community arts/participatory arts work into so many everyday settings over the past 20-30 years and with new generations of artists, funders and commissioners making it happen, it's all too easy to lose sight of its radical roots and marginal beginnings, and to forget all the passion, care, conviction and derring-do which laid the ground for what is now a field of commonplace and utterly indispensable artistic practice. Utterly indispensable? I think so. So does the person who posted a comment on Community Arts Unwrapped in reply to a question from Alison Jeffers: "Is Community Arts practice still relevant today?…..Does the sun still rise in the East?"

So with that in mind, I thought it would do no harm to flag up Francois's blogs (and the useful community arts history resources signposted there), and Alison's and Gerri's research project - I will follow and enjoy it, and you might like to too. I thought I'd add my own pointer to Amber Collective's astounding body of work, and urge you to take a look too at the former Welfare State International's website and the Jubilee Arts 1974-1994 Archive, which also has a good stash of history resources. If you're at all interested in tracing participatory arts in the UK back to its beginnings, these are good places to start.  And in a moment of serendipity, here's a shout-out for Community Arts? Learning from the Legacy of Artists' Social Initiatives, an event being hosted in Liverpool this Sunday by The Black-E, another highly respected and long-serving stalwart. 

There is, it seems, a lot of legacy to celebrate and a lot of talking and learning still to do.

A POEM ABOUT MEN SINGING

Our good friend Phil Russell recently stepped out of his CEO role with the very marvellous Hoot Creative Arts after 15 years at the forefront in the Arts & Mental Health field - work which over the last couple of years has extended into prison settings. Alongside cycling, gardening, music-making and grand-parenting he's taken to spending time in his attic exploring new and slower ways of being creative.  The man has clearly had poetry locked away inside him which is now finding the space to spill out, inspired by topics as diverse as Jeremy Corbyn and owls.  Always on the look-out for guest blog posts which connect with themes in our own work (do feel free to get in touch), we spotted Man Sing and felt a strong urge to share it.  Thanks Phil (presumably you would like it noted that enticing offers of freelance work will be considered with interest?).

 

Man Sing

We gathered up the men and took them skywards
In the hope that they would finally find their voice
We offered them the secrets of the universe
But found them quite unready to rejoice.
A slight celestial hum would turn to rhapsody
A harmony would prickle the neck hair
A tribal chant would unleash something primitive
But they were mostly interested in a chair
With wheels so they could wander the perimeter
Or spin around and run over your shoes
It seems that we had underestimated
The power of office furniture to amuse

Unsure if we should challenge or capitulate
We let the rugged bastards have their heads
And slow the lure of furniture subsided
Then they were free to play with us instead
They offered us a comprehensive repertoire
Of how to make damn sure things turn to shit
Aided and abetted by a system
That says one thing, but means it not one bit.
Pale faced, deathly, ragged, argumentative
Sulky, clever, stupid, comatose
A spectacular assembly of behaviours
Guaranteed to get right up your nose

I guess if no one ever looked really looked at you
Or sung a lullaby and held you tight
If no one made up tales to send you off to sleep
Or frightened off the demons in the night
And if that early fracturing went on and on
And the broken parts would never seem to mend
And bad things led to bad things like an avalanche
And you wished that you could die so it would end
You might struggle too, to make an offering
To be in here, to look me in the eye
To open up your gob and let the shit pour out
And to do it without really knowing why.

But finally they gathered round some fragments
And found some kind of flickering of hope
That let them open up their strangled throats again
And send into the air a tiny note
That grew and grew and faltered and then grew again
Still they found the courage to return
‘Til the tiny note became a lion’s roar
And in their hearts a fragile ember burned
Not much, perhaps, to get a bunch of blokes to sing
To hold the same refrain and be as one
But I tell you that this took a greater courage
Than all the villainous deeds that they had done

September 2015

FRAGMENTS OF HUMAN TRAGEDY

by Tracy Shaw, Loca Creatives Director


Mar negro (Black sea) detail

I've travelled out and back through Calais ferry port this month, past the new fence and the sprawling encampment, so a chance viewing of Mar negro at MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art) has been resonating strongly.  Part of the current Desires and Necessities exhibition,  Carlos Aires' huge multi-coloured artwork is sited on the floor of MACBA's vast white and glass atrium.  It's the first exhibit you encounter on entering the building, providing a striking and poignant welcome.

 

The work and accompanying film were made in 2012. MACBA's text reads:

"Mar negro by Carlos Aires has been made with fragments of wood from old boats and frail immigrants' vessels that have ended up in a ship graveyard in Cadiz. Constructed to resemble parquet in a herringbone pattern, although far from being a purely geometrical combination, this wooden 'floor' brings to mind the remains of illegal vessels bearing people from Africa who have tried, successfully or otherwise, to fulfil their dream of entering European territory. An accompanying video shows images of the wood being removed from the boats and the process of making the floor. Carlos Aires has recovered material remains of a great human tragedy that is now occurring in the Mediterranean in order to transform them into an object of great formal and conceptual effect."

 

Socially engaged art of a most contemporary kind.

THE PLEASURE OF GIFTING

by Tracy Shaw, Loca Creatives Director

The past few days have seen me beavering away on two entirely distinct tasks - the writing up of recent projects in four Wakefield primary schools carried out under the banner of the Council's 'Risk and Resilience' programme, and the making of a personalised wedding gift for friends. No prizes for guessing which has been most pleasurable, but you may well wonder why the latter even merits a mention, or what the connection between the two tasks could possibly be. I hadn't spotted it either, until it struck me while pondering my next task - how to construct a pithy July blog piece which would capture, without simply rattling off a list, the many positive results that have emerged from sifting through the mountain of data generated by the projects. (By way of context, the Risk and Resilience framework is competence-based, and the work we were commissioned to do with targeted groups of 'vulnerable' children was focused on achieving demonstrable outcomes in four specific areas of competency - Loving Myself, Expressing Myself, Living Together and Knowing Where I Am Going. It therefore followed that all the fantastic material collected from children, artists and school staff had to be carefully scrutinised through those four particular lenses in order to come up with the required evidence of impact. You take the money, you do the spadework...).

The connection is Gifting - or more specifically the pleasure of it. Now, this wasn't necessarily a theme we explicitly planned into the projects at the outset. What we planned, and delivered in abundance, were a set of intertwined focuses on developing 'Luggage for Life' skills that would equip children for transition from Year 6 to high school, and indeed life in general: positive self-identity, self-esteem and appreciation of own uniqueness; self-expression, ability to talk about feelings and worries, understanding the connection between feelings and behaviour; empathy, tolerance, and respect of difference; understanding (and practising) the ingredients of good friendship; contributing to and enjoying teamwork; ability to set goals, identify strategies for getting there and ask for help when needed; confidence, self-belief and aspiration. All essential ingredients - I'm sure I don't need to spell this out - for being 'resilient' and managing 'risk' in the context of journeying from the safe, nurturing environment of primary school into the unknown, daunting and more exposing environment of secondary school (and of course adolescence). In other words, the skills and qualities necessary for young people's thriving and flourishing.

The idea of Gifting emerged in the later stages of two of the projects, and I have no doubt that it was able to do so because the building blocks (see above) had been so skilfully put in place by our Lead Artist, Mary Robson. It came initially through an activity designed to shift the focus of children's thinking from self (identity, feelings, behaviour, goals, aspirations...) to others and their positive qualities (empathy, respect, friendship...). It involved writing an Acrostic Poem to another person, with the first letter of each line being the letters of the person's name and the poem being an ode to the person's skills and positive qualities. The concept of Unconditional Positive Regard (or "The Golden Thread", as it became known by one group) was established as the starting point. The results were tear-jerking and heart-warming in equal measure. The children's delight at putting their poems into origami-folded cards and passing them on to the appreciative recipients was manifest - such excitement, pride and pleasure from something so simple. The reflective conversations which then followed - about how it had felt to be the giver, and how the making and giving of similar hand-made cards and booklets could be used in other situations to convey thanks, appreciations, messages of support etc. - were an important extension of the learning.

And from there it took off, for one of the groups in a big way. Putting decision-making into the children's hands, Mary invited the group to decide what they would like to focus on in their final couple of sessions - and thus the Unconditional Positive Regard Experiment was born. The group really went for it. They hatched a plan to 'spread the positivity' by writing 'UPR statements' for every other child in their Year 6 class, distribute them anonymously as folded notes (to be left on everyone's chairs during break for them to come back and find), and then question the bemused/surprised/delighted recipients about how it had felt to receive such a personalised, positive testimony out of the blue from a mystery giver. Then they came back together with Mary to reflect on the experience of their 'gifting activism' and research their findings. It was a great example in itself of the unexpected and powerful things that can happen when you let children get their hands on an idea. What happened next was even more so. Year 6 willingly took up the 'spreading the positivity' baton, eager to know how to make the folded notes - so our project group obliged, enjoying the opportunity to pass on the knowledge, and off went 'the chain reaction'. Year 6 passed on the UPR gift in notes to Year 5. Year 5 followed suit, on to Year 4, and so on, right down to Year 1. The last we heard, Year 1 was in the process of sending a collective letter of thanks back up to Year 2.  Who knows where it would have gone next, had it not been the end of term?

I chose to tell this story partly because I spotted a good hook for a piece of writing - I'm in the middle of making a gift the creation and giving of which will undoubtedly give me ten times the amount of pleasure derived by the recipients, something that was a huge Luggage for Life learning point for our children and one that we couldn't possibly have planned, certainly not with the same meaning. I chose to tell it partly because it's a good one - children in the driving seat, enthusiastically taking the lead in a way that unexpectedly touches the life of the whole school, and choosing to turn 'what can we take for transition?' into 'what can we give'? And I wanted to tell it because - with the grown-up world currently awash with policies, guidance, toolkits and training encouraging schools to give priority to wellbeing and mental health - it's perhaps worth remembering that wellbeing can come from the simplest of things, and be nurtured in the simplest of ways. You just need to lay the ground, and maybe till the soil a little too.

CELEBRATING CHANGE



Exploring light through collaborative mark-making - Batley Girls' High with Fabric Lenny



 

Delighted to announce the opening of Change 2015 - an exhibition of artwork inspired by science explorations and the theme of 'change' by young people from 12 Batley schools working with artists Fabric Lenny (Collaborative Mark-Making), Fiona Goodwin (Mixed Media) and Shelley Burgoyne (Printmaking).

Batley Art Gallery WF17 5DA until 5th September

See our April blog post and the project website for the full story.

It's pure magic, and we're proud to be part of it.

FROM KERALA TO STOKE

While away on her travels last year our Associate Lesley Fallais sent a couple of great guest posts from Norway and Denmark.  Having hopped continents for warmer climes over the winter - but still soaking up opportunities for invigorating cultural experiences - Lesley was inspired by a visit to the Art Biennale in Kochi to write a piece for her own blog (many more gorgeous photos to be seen there) and kindly shared it with us.
 

CSI Bungalow     Photo: Lesley Fallais



 

I arrived back from southern India in April, head filled with glorious images and experiences of a country which already had a special place in my heart, having travelled in India once before, 23 years ago. With that original trip as my reference point, my recent trip was full of comparisons and thoughts on transformation, culture, creativity, history and the changing face of modern India.

One memorable highlight was the Kochi-Muziris International Art Biennale in Fort Kochi, Kerala, which opened in December 2014 and had its closing ceremony in March 2015. This creative project ticked all my boxes - contemporary art, a local narrative, community involvement, diversity, education - but what made it really engaging for me, and a model that I feel has unique appeal, is that this wide ranging creative programme was set within several redundant, culturally significant and historic spaces. Temporary and improvised exhibition spaces had been created to present site-specific, locally thematic work. There was a clear synergy between the architecture and the artwork which reinforced the story of each element in the mix. Thus inspired, I bought the programme and the stylishly folded route map to all of the stunning, sometimes crumbling, venues and started walking.

‘Whorled Explorations’ - the theme of this second Kochi-Muziris Biennale, to which the artists made personal responses - is rooted in the notion of ‘Genius Loci’ (roughly translated as the spirit or atmosphere of place). Kochi was a protagonist in the emerging global narrative in the 1500’s, at the same time that the Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics was making ground-breaking suggestions about where humans were located in the cosmos. The 85km area of present-day Kochi is home to fifty-four diverse communities and thirteen different languages. Once, nearly five hundred years ago, this diversity was compressed within the 5km Fort Kochi area, "a magnet for mendacious spice traders, sailors, soldiers of fortune, savants, scholars, carpetbaggers, mendicants and priests from the farthest corners of the world: Portugal, Holland, England, China and Rome. Echoes of their presence remain in everyday life around Kochi - in its architecture, its food, its monuments and culture. Myths, memory, history, fact, factoid, past and present continually collide." 

Kochi was a deliberate, considered choice as a site for the Biennale.  According to an article by Sunil Mehra for the Biennale magazine, from which the text above and below in quotation marks is directly lifted, Kochi provided the opportunity to "place ‘cosmopolitanism’ in the terrain of history" and "the chance to examine the ‘poetics of human imprint’ on nature, history, ecology and world politics through the prism of the Kochi experience”.

The Biennale was co-founded by Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu, and the Artistic Director for 2014-15 was Jitish Kallat. It involved 94 artist from 30 countries exhibiting for 108 days across 8 locations including Aspinwall House, Vasco da Gama Square, Pepper House, Durbar Hall and CSI Bungalow, each loaded with memory, meaning, metaphor and history.

“The 315-year-old residency of the Dutch Army Commander, today known as the CSI Bungalow, is just off the southern tip of the Parade Ground. Its acreage overrun by bramble and weeds, towering trees and flowering bushes, it exudes a melancholic air of rundown gentility. The 20-foot ceiling, imposing entrance doors and stately windows bear mute testimony to a grander, more spacious time. A Sylvia Plath line plays like a drumbeat in my head….empty, I echo to the last footfall…”.

The programme included: the Students Biennale (35 institutions, 120 young artists, 15 young curators); an Artists Cinema; a Children’s Biennale; a History Now talks and seminars programme; a cultural programme featuring traditional artforms of Kerala and including contemporary theatre events, movement arts performances and music concerts; Arts and Medicine projects; the Pepper House Residency programme - an international residency opportunity for artists from all disciplines to work and collaborate within a studio space; and Collateral - an exhibition programme involving international contemporary artists, young emerging Indian artists and the public.

Seeing the Kochi-Muziris Biennale reminded me of feelings evoked by a visit to the British Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent in 2013. I had loved seeing contemporary ceramics displayed amongst the often ruined spaces of the redundant Spode Factory. Architectural salvage had become part of the exhibitions, old doors were used as display tables, artists had responding to the surroundings and created new work including temporary installations inspired by the history of the industry and the historic fabric of the buildings.

The Spode pottery once employed over 1000 workers. The first Biennial in 2009 was apparently the first time that many workers had returned to the site since its closure the previous year. The project is forward thinking - £10,000 is awarded to a participating artist to develop their contemporary practice. The 2013 programme included: the ‘Award’ Exhibition of Contemporary British Ceramics; ‘Fresh’, showing the work of recent graduates; a community engagement programme creating opportunities for visitors to explore and experience clay; a Film Room; and Exploring Spode, a series of site-specific commissions/ installations and a related residency programme.

Both of these inspiring and exciting projects, one in India and one in the UK, are closely connected in my mind and noteworthy for me as they both celebrate and draw on cultural heritage while using this as a catalyst for new, innovative work which in turn is amplified by being shown in an historic setting.