Meeting Arts Council England about recognising our socially engaged/ ecologically engaged/ transitionary practice

We met with Arts Council England on Tuesday 16th December to discuss recognition of our work as a unique form of artistic practice.  Alison Clark-Jenkins, Director for ACE North and for Combined Arts, kindly agreed to meet us along with some of her working group looking at 'participatory' practice.  Stephen Pritchard attended the meeting in person, whilst Bridget McKenzie and Lucy Neal took part via video conference from ACE London and Ruth Ben-Tovim took part via Skype.  We were very positively received.  This blog post is an overview for our supporters and followers about the key points raised.

We talked about the broad scope of our practice and our various approches.  We explained that the field shared a focus on people, process, ethics, social justice, sometimes politics, place, communities, ecological concerns, etc.  We pointed out that we felt largely ignored and misunderstood by many within UK arts institutions.  We also pointed out that our practice was often suspicious of arts institutions and state intervention but that we frequently worked in interdisciplinary ways.  We explained that we tended towards independence and that our work was often self-organised.  ACE discussed our practice in terms of initiatives such as Creative People and Places and Paul Hamlyn Foundation's ArtWorks.  We pointed out that they, along with outreach and arts education, were focused on audience development, continued professional development and participation.  We explained that 'engaged arts' was always issue-based.  We also noted that these initiatives were not artist-led.  We were keen to also explain that our field of practice must be conceived of as an art form as valid as any other and that our work aimed at high experiential as well as high aesthetic values whilst aiming to address issues of social justice.

There were areas that ACE wanted to explore further and better understand.  They asked us if we would be willing to participate with them to develop these areas and to continue to seek to better define our field of practice.  The aim remains to recognise our work as a unique art form.  We will all play a part in this ongoing dialogue with Arts Council England but it was agreed that Ruth Ben-Tovim and Stephen Pritchard would be the initial points of contact with ACE.

We suggested that ACE might initially look at Culture Shift and their interesting 'Gablik test' as a starting point for understanding our practice.  We also recommended various US groups such as Creative Time, A Blade of Grass, Open Engagement, etc.

We have agreed to meet again in January and will soon be arranging this with ACE.  When we know the date, we will be contacting everyone to ask for comments and ideas about how to progress our discussions and call for recognition.

This is a very brief overview of what was a very positive meeting with Arts Council England.  We welcome any comments and ideas!

Warm festive wishes and more soon...

We are socially engaged (reblog)...

Posted on September 6, 2014September 6, 2014 by stephenpritchard72 

This is a reblog of a post I wrote for #culturalvalue initiative which was first published on 2nd September 2014.

 

This was Eleonora Belfiore’s introduction…

Our regular contributor Stephen Pritchard has kindly agreed to review for The #culturalvalue initiative ‘Evaluation Survey of Artists’, a recent report by ArtWorks, one of the Paul Hamlyn’s Foundation’s Special Initiatives. The Foundation clearly has great ambitions for this project, whose web page states boldly: ‘This Special Initiative is an important intervention that will cause a paradigm shift in the way participatory work is viewed’. The report, and indeed Stephen’s post are therefore focused on the value that is attributed (or, as the case might be is not) to artistic practice that is participatory in nature and focused on fostering personal and social change, and – consequently – on the value that is attached to those artists who focus on this type of work. Because of the legacy of New Labour’s focus on the arts as a means to help deliver on socio-economic agendas, the question of the value of participatory art work with communities is often charged with accusations of ‘instrumentalism’, and the fear (that Stephen shares) is then that the artists might become hired hands charged with the delivery of soft social engineering and the kind of faux-radical type of community engagement that ensures that the fabric of society and the relations of power that govern it remain unchanged. Yet, the most interesting fact to emerge from the data in the ArtsWork report is, in my view, the sense that it is not just policy makers and funders who might fail to appreciate the value participatory arts (a complaint that is almost as old as this form of creative practice itself), but that other creative professionals in other corners of the cultural ecosystem might share in that lack of recognition and appreciation for participatory arts: struggles over cultural value, status and recognition of professional practice clearly are not limited to the arena of the competition for resources but extend to struggles over cultural authority and value amongst creative practitioners themselves.

This is my post…

 

Paul Hamlyn Foundation created the special initiative, ArtWorks: Developing Practice in Participatory Settings, in 2010 to ‘support the continuing professional development of artists’ (Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2014).  A ‘workforce scheme’, the project is funded and supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Creativity Culture & Education (supported by Arts Council England) and the Cultural Leadership Programme (ibid.).  In the words of PHF, this ‘important intervention’ is designed to ‘cause a paradigm shift in the way participatory work is viewed’, producing ‘enhanced quality and deeper understanding of what is required from artists in generating successful participatory projects’ (ibid).  There are five ArtWorks Pathfinders, each with a differently focused action research project.  The initiative ends in 2015.  In June 2014, the foundation published ArtWorks Evaluation Survey of Artists, the first of several reports emanating from their extensive ‘conversation’ with and about participatory arts.

 

This post looks at how elements of the report relate to both my socially engaged practice as well as my current doctoral research project.  I’ve followed the ArtWorks initiative with interest since it started.  I attended their Changing the Conversation conference in 2013, thanks to a bursary from them.  Several of their previous reports and provocations are referenced in my doctoral research literature review.  I’m presenting, PechaKucha-style, at the ArtWorks North East Conference entitled, Pilots to Practice – learning approaches for artists working in participatory settings at BALTIC in September 2014.  I took part in this research.  Why mention all this?  Well, I thought I should put my cards on the table.  The cards say: Be critical; take part.  Why am I critical?  The field of social practice/ community arts/ participatory arts/ etc. is a broad church.  Today, artists producing children’s workshops for major institutions form one node, radical activists another.  There are many nodes in the field.  For some people in the art world, much, if not all, of social practice is not art.  I like tension and dissensus.  Social practice offers plenty.  This is good.  I like DIY (or more precisely, Do It With Others); the commons; alternative forms of democratic society.  Some elements of social practice produce these things and more in abundance.  But much of the field is driven by instrumentalism, agendas designed to use ‘participatory art’ as a tool of soft state power and a means of obtaining increased government funding by ticking ‘engaging new audiences/ publics’ boxes – participatory art as a panacea for all life’s ills.  This is neoliberal social change – not social justice.  This is about maintaining, evening deepening, elitism and age-old institutional status quos within the arts – not a paradigm-shift.

 

Anyway, the report is detailed and interesting and has received a reasonable amount of attention in the arts media, so it’s worth digging into some of the discourse around the data.  Having read the report, four questions sprung to mind:

• How has the report been portrayed by PHF, the media and on social media?
• What does it actually say about artists working in participatory settings?
• What does this report mean for those working in the field of social practice?
• What’s missing?

The research was conducted over a short period early in 2014 and had a reasonably large core sample size of 868 respondents.  The questionnaire was thorough and the data is undoubtedly well presented.  I recommend that anyone interested in finding out more about the breadth of artists working in the field in the UK at present take a look at the report.  It makes for fascinating reading which, for a practitioner working in the field, like me, feels very familiar.  But what about my questions?

 

As I mentioned, there have been several responses to the report for other institutions.  For example arts in criminal justice settings organisation, Arts Alliance, focused on the report’s findings that socially engaged artists often felt their work was undervalued and misunderstood within the arts, often received informal training and worked in ways that, and with commissioners who, regularly ignored standards and codes of practice.  They pointed out that only one percent of socially engaged artists worked within criminal justice.  Arts Professional’s headline was that socially engaged art is undervalued, accompanied by the rather strange (given the data) that ‘Artists urge employers and commissioners to invest more in their professional development’.  Their report did not actually discuss the claim made in the strapline in particular detail, however.  Social media, especially Twitter, responded (in general) very positively to the publication of ArtWorks’ report.

 

PHF in their July 2014 Briefing reported many of the headline statistics from their report and included a comment by ArtWorks Project Director, Dr Susanne Burns.  In her comment, Burns pointed out that almost half of the survey respondents earned more than half their income from socially engaged practice, describing the practice as ‘a significant area of work generating major economic value for artists’.  Much of her commentary centred on the need for better training, CPD, space for reflection, investment, etc.  Her conclusion is worth quoting at length:

Work in participatory settings is valid practice in its own right. It constitutes a major element of many artists’ portfolios and affects the lives of many people across many areas of life. The status of the work must be raised. We must work together to ensure that its economic contribution, as well as its social value, is recognised and that the artists who undertake this work are supported to be the best they can be at all stages of their careers.

There is little to argue with here.  Social practice is a major part of many artists’ creative activities and, increasingly, an essential way of earning a living whilst not getting paid anything/ enough when exhibiting their work.  This is an area I believe that A-N’s #PayingArtists campaign needs to urgently address.  The motives for some artists currently working within ‘participatory settings’ and the intentions behind instrumentalist projects such as Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places may, perhaps, be suspect on occasions – this is, however, another discussion for another day.  The data quite clearly shows that socially engaged artists feel undervalued.  This is unsurprising, given that the field is often belittled by many in the elite arts establishment.  The data illustrates how artists feel that they are not understood by commissioners, nor given enough time to plan properly, nor listened to/ involved enough.  For me, this relates to many personal experiences in which commissioners do not really know what you do, why you are doing it or what they really want to achieve from the commission.  They are more interested in targets, outcomes, numbers, boxes ticked and nice photographs for their websites.  This is not their fault.  This is symptomatic of an evaluation-based culture seeking to provide instrumental results rather than participant experience.

 

The question of developing courses and degrees and career development opportunities for future socially engaged artists and CPD, standards of practice and formal qualifications for existing practitioners is, for me, something I’m rather sceptical of.  I believe that constantly reflective and reflexive individual practice, married with ‘being the right type of person’ to work in the field, and a person-centred, organic, non-expert approach to learning from people is essential.  I don’t believe this can be taught.  Nonetheless, I fully understand why initiatives such as this and FE providers are keen to exploit the field as a potential source of new earnings and funding.  Attempts to standardise or certify socially engaged artists or to produce ‘toolkits’ will, for me, always be likely to fail; always represent creeping instrumentalism.

 

So, my overall feeling about ArtWorks Evaluation Survey of Artists is that it contains excellent data that doesn’t indicate a great demand for the field to be formalised or institutionalised but rather stimulates further debate about examining and mapping the field in much greater detail and exposing the multitude of individual practices both working with and against the state in its insidious drive to promote ‘participation for all’.  At present, socially engaged art is not recognised by Arts Council England or many other major institutions.  It has a long history and is often inherently interdisciplinary – not ‘just art’.  Many artists work in the field; many collectives, cooperatives, even constituted organisations, exist for socially engaged art; even (‘non-artist’) activists make socially engaged art.  My feeling is that social practice should be recognised as a valid, varied and independent mode of art-making that should be recognised by ACE and others as separate from other art forms – not classified as part of a generic ‘Cross-art form’ category.  This does not mean the field should be institutionalised or professionalised.  Much of it already is…

 

Postscript…

 

This book offers a much more progressive approach to thinking about and learning about social practice…

What's in a name #2? Kay Steven and 'intimate participation'

This is Kay's very personal response to the question posted by Genevieve Rudd asking how practitioners describe their work.  It was originally submitted to our google group.

 

 

How do I define my work  /practice

 

This is an interesting question for me. I began to develop an art practice late in my life – initially as a private pursuit – primarily using textiles.  I am currently exploring ways to develop my art practice and thinking about how it connects to other work I have done and continue to do.

My background is in community development and I trained as social worker. In community development the focus was involving and engaging with people through activities. The activities provided in-roads to conversations and exchanges that went beyond words. I got interested in independent advocacy with people with mental health needs and dementia.  The focus was very much about representation – as far as possible representing people whether you agreed with what they said or not. Advocating with and for people with dementia is fraught with ethical dilemmas but perhaps dementia advocacy practice and what I learnt from that part of my life is what influences how I work and want to work as an artist.

 

Communication with people with a dementia is tricky and has to go beyond words – with time and an appeal to all the senses it is possible to find out what is important to that person or a group of people to and find a way to express it- even if it is fragmented and requires time to take shape. Where a person doesn’t have a dementia there are still times when they face moments where it is difficult to express or engage with concepts or ideas.  Facilitating conversations and exchanges through a range of art interventions can yield nuggets from the mind and imagination that would have been impossible to see and comprehend without a sensitive investment of time and processes. I think these practices can be described as socially engaged and participatory – not simply because they are about working with people in groups or as individuals but because it is about more than producing a piece of art. The art and the conversations and participation are inter-related.

 

I have had the pleasure of participating in a project called Visible Mending. Carol Parker conceived of the idea after her shed was broken into. Carol invited artist to send repaired postcards to be shown in an exhibition in the shed. Since the exhibition the show has gone on tour. I hosted the show in a number of small intimate spaces. On a few occasions I hosted the exhibition in an individual's home in their lounge and held 1:1 conversations with older women who for various reasons were quite isolated or had to spend a lot of time in their own homes. I so enjoyed sharing an exhibition which arrived in an envelope and prompted memories, thoughts and ideas. The conversations held as the art was shared were - intimate, meaningful and energizing. The practice is one I want to repeat and build on. So, how do I define my work and practice – intimate participation??

 

You can read more about Visible Mending at Carol Parker's blog http://theshed1.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/visible-mending-exhibition-tour/  or at my own blog http://changingconversations.wordpress.com/

Guest bloggers wanted...

Hi.

We're looking for guest bloggers who want to write about anything at all about our field of work, their own projects or experiences, the state of the UK arts in general, funding, cultural value, well-being, etc.

If you'd like to blog here, please use our forum link on the right side of this blog to contact us with ideas or to send blog posts for publication.

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New forum for better discussion & to post on this blog

Hello everyone,

We've created a google group that's open to anyone to post comments, chat, submit blog posts that we'll post on the blog, ask to become a member of the blog, anything really...

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Please note that by posting on this group, we may post some of your comments on our blog, so, if you don't want this, please write NO POST at the start of the text; if you want to post on the blog, write POST at the start.

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This is not a love song – lessons the arts might learn from football

This is a blog first posted by Stephen Pritchard on June 22, 2014.

It's about how the arts could perhaps learn a little from grassroots football.  Comments please...

I’m going over to the other side
I’m happy to have and not to have not
Big business is very wise
I’m inside free enterprise

This is not a love song
This is not a love song
This is not a love song
This is not a love song
This is not a love song
This is not a love song
Not a love song

I’m adaptable, I’m adaptable
I’m adaptable and I like my new role
I’m getting better and better
And I have a new goal
I’m changing my ways where money applies

(This is not a love song, Public Image Limited, 1983)

What can the arts learn from football? A lot about developing a connected culture in which children, amateurs and professionals see clear links and participate/ spectate on every level, Nina Simon wrote recently. The world of football is similar to the arts in many ways: taking part, audiences, celebrity and anonymity, economic and intrinsic benefits/ values, large costly buildings and jumpers for goal posts, health and wellbeing, and more. Oh, and let’s not forget finance: public subsidy and big business sponsorship. There’s also, at the ‘top level’, The World Cup and Venice Biennial. Lots of similarities, then. Not all good.

What football does well is undoubtedly present a cultural phenomenon that is accessible at every level. A sport where even the premiership elite are, well, not really that elitist. A game where kids playing in a back lane or park and blokes with hangovers kicking each other as much as the ball are respected. Professionals regularly going into schools for training sessions and awards presentations as well as helping smaller clubs and amateurs fund raise. Football can also be ‘viewed’ live in world class stadiums or patchy local pitches and watched on TV at home or down the pub. Yes, costs of attending a premiership game are prohibitively high for many people; as is a subscription to Sky Sports. But anyone can take part and you don’t hear accusations of amateurism or that’s ‘not football’. Some may say, ‘football is different from art’. Of course, on one level, this is true; yet, on another level, the two activities are similar, essential aspects of our lives.

Like football, the arts are engrained into our daily existence – whether ‘high’ or ‘low’ arts. They both have tiered, hierarchical structures too. The problem is that elitism in the arts means that people taking part in the arts at different levels are perceived of very differently – from billionaire art buyers to attendees of exclusive theatre to student art shows to people sitting watching Corrie. Artistic excellence is paramount at almost every level for many in the arts. It is the winning, not the taking part, that matters. There is little space for amateurism, volunteering (except as ways to keep wage bills down), or even socially engaged arts practice. These are the realms of ‘not arts’ to many within the arts elites (for they are plural, legion). Yet, ‘amateur’ art, art in schools, community art, voluntary art, social practice, etc. offer great experiences and pleasure to many people. The problem is that there is little option for progression (for many) and derision lurks everywhere.

It is therefore essential that we remember that the arts too were once much more connected to life; less elitist than is the case in our present cultural milieu. Artisans were performers and producers, an integral part of everyday life. Festivals were commonplace and many people who may now feel disenfranchised by much of ‘the arts’ today took part. They were key events in the yearly calendar for everyone in communities – they had special meanings and marked special times. Streets and markets were often venues for free theatre and, even when theatre buildings opened, the ‘groundlings’ still formed a substantial sector of the audience of many Elizabethan plays. Sports, like rugby and football, were also integral to the lives of many people. Our neoliberal consumer society today often forgets its past. So too does much of our contemporary arts world. But sports, like football, tend to hold closer ties to their histories as integral to their on-going narratives.

The darker side of the arts and football (and many other areas of our contemporary lives) is undoubtedly philanthropy and sponsorship. This is not to say that all giving is bad. It is just a warning of the dangers of ‘tagging-on’ brands to activities for purely commercial gain or, worse still, to deliver marketing messages that directly conflict with the activity being ‘supported’. This will be a topic for another post so, for now, let’s just consider BP’s financial support for Tate and The British Museum or tobacco sponsorship of artist residencies in the Caribbean or investment bank and 2008 financial crash ‘Titan’ Merrill Lynch’s project with Tate aimed at regenerating local areas and making places safer. This type of activity is all about ‘realising corporate responsibility outcomes’ – something Arts and Business are promoting heavily as a means to increase philanthropic giving to the arts at the moment – but it mires the arts in corporate complicity. This is different from professional football’s out-and-out clear marketing-for-money deals, not to mention the often essential small-scale sponsorship of local amateur teams by local small businesses who are happy to support their team in return for a little extra local exposure. However, football sponsorship can be dangerously unethical too. Think about the World Cup 2014 with big corporate sponsors including Budweiser, Coca Cola and MacDonalds. The message: play or watch football – drink alcohol and fizzy drinks and eat unhealthy food. Or Wonga and their shirt sponsorship of Newcastle United – buy your season ticket and pay for it with a thousands of percent loan you might end up never repaying! The danger for the arts is that, not only will the ethical and moral concerns about current big arts sponsors affect the independence and critical essence of the arts, but the drive for philanthropic giving may lead to Wonga sponsoring participatory art projects in ‘disadvantaged’ communities, etc.

Nonetheless, forgetting the similar drives for both the arts and football to become increasingly commercialised (at least at their ‘top’ levels), there are, perhaps, lessons the arts might glean from football. It has retained its grassroots up appeal and ethos. Think of (local Toon legends) Gazza, Peter Beardsley, etc. They, like many other people who managed to become professional footballers, had difficult upbringings but became famous (not always just for footballing achievements). They started out playing at school; they were encouraged by sports teachers and (sometimes) parents. They were developed in volunteer-ran ‘boys clubs’ with little funding but loads of commitment to the young lads having a chance in (footballing) life. Professional clubs went there to find ‘new talent’. The professionals paid their dues, coming back to help raise money for the clubs and to help train new generations of possible future pros. Even those who ‘didn’t make it’ still found new friendships and enjoyment in taking part and trying; some stayed to volunteer to help keep the clubs running. If only the same thing could be said about much (not all) of the fractured ‘arts world’ in the UK right now. As Nina Simon pointed out, until fifty years ago soccer was derided in the US – now it is a sport that is increasingly becoming an important national game. It built itself up through grassroots engagement and commitment to accessibility for all. Perhaps we in the UK now need to think seriously about rebuilding the arts from the roots up?

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“What can co-produced research accomplish for social justice?” | Web OfConnection

Link: “What can co-produced research accomplish for social justice?” | Web Of Connection

This link (and the link to the ‘paper that was not a paper’) is a great example of the delicacies of participatory action research and is also valuable to artist practitioners too.

Thanks to Jean McEwan (@jeanmcewan) and Lisa Cumming (@LisaDialogue) for sharing this via twitter!

"This paper proposes a process for writing a paper which investigates why the proposed paper was not written”

Fin invited me to the In Battalions meeting last week to champion theidea that we ask ACE to ring-fence some Lottery money to supportCommunity Residencies, e.g. playwrights, actors, puppeteers, spokenword artists etc to work part-time in a school, hospital, socialservices dept, community centre etc. This is what I said....

This post is by Jonathan Petherbridge, Creative Director at London Bubble.  Jonathan is looking for feedback and ideas for a really interesting idea for future small-scale Community Theatre Residencies.

londonbubble.org.uk

twitter.com/LBubble

I suspected that this would be the least popular of the 3 conversations going on this morning, as the other rooms are offering more dramatic debates either about recent NPO funding decisions, or the fallout from past NPO decisions. But let the few of us here console ourselves with the realisation that while they debate the world as it is, we are debating the world as it might be in the future. Well, to be more accurate if the Theatre Ecology is likened to a garden they are talking about trimming a hedge or moving a shrub, while we are talking about planting some genuinely new seeds.

The majority of tax payers do not attend the theatre. If they think about theatre they think of a building - A Theatre - probably with a stage, on which actors speak another person’s words, while people sit in the dark and listen. But that is not Theatre - what it is, is one way of delivering one type of theatre. But Theatre is in essence, something that is created between people, in many places and spaces, in many forms and for many reasons.

The real enjoyable thing about theatre, and I may be divulging a secret here, is the making of it. As well know, from the time we are children, the empowering, heady and collaborative act of theatre making is addictively exciting. And underpinning this proposal is the idea that perhaps more people would support theatre if more people were involved in making it.

So the idea I am championing is that ACE is asked to ring-fence some Lottery money to support Community Residencies. To allow theatre makers to work in settings over a period of time, to encourage and support people to make theatre.

I did some research on Artists in Residents, and it was interesting to compare Playwrights residencies to other art forms. Googling, I found Resident Playwrights at the Lyric Hammersmith, with Paines Plough and at the Soho Poly - all the Residencies seemed to be with theatre buildings or existing theatre companies. Poets on the other hand have been resident in a Church, at Glastonbuury Festival, on the Great North Run and at Bristol University. Googling artists you find (and these are all taken from the first page), an Artist in Residence at Claridges, another Artists at a shopping centre, and then there’s MI6. Yes, artists James Hart Dyke spent at year painting and drawing the goings on at MI6.

But what do they do ? Well, the Bristol University Poet, a man called Andrew Jamieson, runs student workshops from 4.30 to 7 on Wednesday, offers consultations between 4.15 and 6.15 on Fridays, gives Public Readings of his work and organises showcases for other poets to present their poetry.

Could this work for Theatre Makers ? Could a theatre makers run workshops, offer consultations, show their work and arrange sharings of other work ? Well I think we have the workforce - the writers guild/theatre writers union has 2,500 members. Equity has 36,000 members and emerging from the 204 drama courses in the country are at least 1,000 graduates a year who are going to try to make theatre, somewhere. And of course there are places - 146 prisons, 223 Hospices, 3,000 libraries, 33,000 schools - and then of course there’s MI6. I came across some visionary people who are involved in running sheltered housing schemes and care homes for the elderly and who are calling for an Artist in every setting - deploying art to make meaning of life and to nurture the wellbeing of both patients and staff. That door is ajar and waiting for us to push on it.

So what are the gains ? Well employment for artists obviously, but also the long term political effect - a good news narrative for politicians to deliver and a direct connection to people who might never otherwise encounter theatre. But also, and this is what interests me most, the opportunity to create new theatre, with new theatre makers with a new aesthetic.

And what might be the blocks ? There is a training and support requirement, but the knowledge and experience is already within the sector. Then there’s money obviously - and this shouldn’t only be for ACE to solve - I think ACE should require those who are interested in partnering with a resident artist to pay a small proportion of the costs - say 10%, to demonstrate their commitment. But this could be a low cost quick win for ACE - 700 residencies at 10k each, would cost £7 million. The Grants for the Arts budget is currently £70 million a year. Think of the impact of 700 residencies. Even half that would change perceptions.

But the other block is the sector itself - are we willing to give up our secret, are we willing to suspend quibbling and whispers of “it’s not art” ? Are we able to consider - no, to allow, other - non building, non script based forms of theatre ?

This proposal invites us to broad-cast some new seeds in the garden. Some will of course die, some will be eaten by slugs. But some will flourish.

Jonathan Petherbridge, Creative Director, London Bubble.

PS Please respond with questions, challenges and/or support for this idea. Fin and I are planning to meet with ACE in September.

5 Ways Arts Projects Can Improve Struggling Communities

Link: 5 Ways Arts Projects Can Improve Struggling Communities

American case studies, but all the same relevant for UK practice. Demonstrates the varied ways arts connect/transform communities

Interesting US perspectives from Genevieve Rudd.

What's in a name?

Great to see a such a fundamental first question for our new blog from Genevieve Rudd.  So many ways to attempt to describe our practice.  Perhaps it’s important?  Perhaps it doesn’t matter?

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the title of our practice - participatory, socially-engaged, collaborative, community arts… ? Is there an actual tangible difference in the work depending on the name, or do each describe the same process?

I personally use ‘community artist’ to describe my job role, because I work in the community and do art. For me, it’s a simple and accessible phrase, even if it is a phrase that is less commonly used.

What do you call yourselves?

Look forward to connecting with others working in the field on this new platform!
Genevieve, @gruddphoto

Socially Engaged & Participatory Arts Network FACEBOOK PAGE

Link: Socially Engaged & Participatory Arts Network FACEBOOK PAGE

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The latest from socially engaged net (@EngagedArtNet). New space for socially engaged & participatory artists, collectives & orgs. A commons. Support, share, develop. Calling for recognition of our field of practice. Anywhere

Welcome...

A new space for socially engaged and participatory artists, collectives and organisations.  A commons.  Everyone welcome.

A place where socially engaged and participatory art can be discussed as a group with the primary aims of being supportive of each other, sharing experiences and opportunities, and developing our practices together.

We share a wish for our practice to be recognised as an unique, interdisciplinary and process-based art form.

Beyond this, we often work in different ways and accept that we will not always agree on everything…