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Legacies of community arts and culture as agency for social justice and transformation now A deliberation report Last October (2016), a legacy event took place over two-days to examine the power of community arts and culture for social transformation with seventy people hosted by the Institute for Lifecourse and Society at NUI Galway. All the workshops, talks and exchanges were lifted by the music, song and dance led by Brian Fle ming Florian Blanche, Catherine Young, Sean Millar and Sharon Murphy. Looking forward required a process of looking back too, to the legacy of community arts work. Since the legacies and collective memories of this field of practice are sketchy, dislocated and even forgotten, artist Fiona Woods created an online platform in which we developed a set of legacy papers. For the event she invited people to submit material for a temporary Archive Room. Eilish Kelly, who was the first Community Arts Development Worker (job share with Jude Bowles) brought some documents from that history. PhD researcher into community, David Teevan remarked: “This archive project is a very important initiative. So many rich and valuable documents exist in boxes and stores around the country that would be better gathered in one place, so that artists and academics with an interest in this story could access it and through this the history of this vibrant and important sector can be preserved.�
Photos: D. Sheehan and F. Woods
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While only a temporary initiative, people engaged with the materials and resources suggesting a desire to make it ‘permanent’ or at least visible online e.g. using the digital platform created for the event called The Legacy Papers Paula Geraghty took up the discussion about the purpose and value of digital platforms and asked us to consider whose interests are addressed in the aesthetics and validation of documentation in community arts and media?
Photos: P. Geraghty By exploring examples from community media she challenged us to consider: how do we share what we create; how can we hold the memories. For her, she sees a challenge to shift beyond the aesthetics of official media channels and to develop our own aesthetics of production and distribution. More importantly, she wanted us to explore how documentation can create deeper connections and not just act as a promo or communications to funders. Ann Lyons chaired a session that put the spotlight on art policy and to the position of community arts positioned as an artistic tradition within civil society. A panel of practitioners drawn from the cultural, community and equality fields examined through the lens of the local the sustainability of community arts traditions and the impetus for cultural democracy. The implementation of Culture 2025, and the Policy Framework for Local and Community Development were identified as important opportunities, but can community arts find its agency therein still remained a question. Art historian, Catherine Marshall looked at some precedents in the historical roots of community arts and whether it has some features of an art historical movement. A panel discussed from their own perspective the legacy of „policies‟, „histories‟ and „traditions‟ including, artist and Director of Create, Ailbhe Murphy, artist, Fiona Woods, as well as Niall Crowley from Claiming Our Future.
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Pauline Goggin chaired a session about how to create new channels for community culture to address human and cultural rights and solidarity? The institutionalisation of the field of practice previously described as community arts has, it is argued, regulated and disciplined the practice, shaping an outcomesbased mentality. This session involved case-studies of bottom- up networks and projects that offer noninstitutional approaches through practices that foreground the role of community, with artist, Deirdre O‟Mahony, the XPO Project; Ed Carroll, the Cabbage Field, Kaunas; as well sa Brian Fleming and Sean Millar, speaking about the Spectacle of Defiance and Hope. Group Work Deliberation: The Legacy event concluded with a group work deliberation focused on continuity and commitment to grow a synchronised network of living practices and left with a desire to make it happen even though we were not sure yet how best to do it. You can listen to our exchanges about how cultural work be supported to take forward some of the themes emerging from this event. Listen Question– How can cultural work be supported to take forward some of the things arising from this event? Group 1: We‟ve heard a set of reflections about community art as a historically valid activity that had a shared agendas for transformative change. There is much more beyond what we heard but we face the fact that today the legacy of that activity is overshadowed. Its capacity to achieve such transfor mative change, to make the connections, to build the cooperation has still to be realised. Group 2: Working as „art workers‟ in different ways around the country in a community setting we focused on how to keep the practitioner alive in a world of (i) nourishment and trauma; (ii) rules and fears aka health and safety, (iv) need to physically come together for contact and connection, (v) not to be afraid to be artists, (vi) keeping a sense of play (vii) gathering as a tool to bring different people from community together, (viii) the capacities and the opportunities of the arts to be disruptive and (ix) the importance of history and an intergenerational archive. This group put post- its on the body of the „art worker‟ to express its ideas. Group 3: Explored how to build a strategy from 2 vantage points: (i)
(i)
Support – Platform of resources and organisations (online and off) and opportunities to pool information and resources to meet the demands that are there already. Mentoring as a way to connect longer experience with fledgling experience; Dealing with failure as an outcome that can be fruitful and helpful for others. Finding non competitive opportunities for sharing; communities of practice coming together in for a Odyssey - To symbolically solve the Königsberg Bridge Problem which is how to build interconnectors. The solution: “open the channels allow the flow” It was felt there is traction on the Western Seaboard – a wild Atlantic cultural corridor. We need to keep move the narrative around to Limerick in 2017? To Activist Summer Camp in 2017, To Cork in ?? to Donegal pride of all in ?? Let‟s Make it easy though open the channels allow the flow… yeah man!
Group 4 developed a live sculpture which reflected on how things grow from the agency of a person who shows creativity and takes a lead. Over time their contribution has to move back to the ground in order for others to come in a take ownership and keeping the connections between people alive.
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Finally, it was noted that participation of communities affected by the issues embraced by community art is fundamental. Action can be required to create the conditions for this in building skills and knowledge as necessary. It would be valuable to establish spaces for people to share narratives and to reflect together on their situation and experience. This platform is a space to enable new ideas and new people. There are evident tensions in building agendas between those who are funded and those who are not; between those who get to speak and those who do not. Creativity and cultural action have a contribution to make in breaking down these barriers. What is important it mobilising communities to create their own conditions for people to get involved in empowering agendas. There is a challenge to change the common understanding of and support for what civil society is trying to achieve. Communication needs planning, clear messaging, and media work. Civil society needs to set up its own media. Individuals and organisations need to take off their own hat and build relationships and partnership approaches. Website: LegacyPapers