communiqué #2 What public good are the Arts?
What good are community arts?
Niall Crowley recalled a discussion at We Are Family showcase event in Limerick in 2011. a showcase event of Family Centres in Limerick and Clare. He recalled: “Arts and culture were seen as ‘high-falutin’. The term was rejected as excluding and as having little to offer the realities faced by most participants. In one telling exchange the RTE arts programme ‘The View’ was criticised as highbrow and out of touch with ordinary people, whereas RTE’s Nationwide was celebrated as being the best arts programme.”
Blue Drum attended the Rustbelt to Artist Belt Conference in St. Louis in April 2012. During that conference, American cultural theorist, Arlene Goldbard, defined cultural inclusion as a form of community-artist collaboration in order to explore concerns and express identity in ways that build the capacity of local communities and lead to positive social change.
Witness statements to the 2012 Dáil Committee on Arts and Disadvantage also raise questions. Mary Nash, of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, commented: “There are people who are almost proud to say they have nothing to do with the arts.” Liz Meaney, of the Cork City Council Arts Office, suggested: “Large swathes of our society do not engage because they do not believe that they have a right to the State’s resources.” Orlaith McBride, Director of the Arts Council, reported: “Significant groups of people remain excluded from arts and cultural life.” During the same public session, Senator Fiach Mac Conghail, from The National Theatre questioned the Arts Council about one of its recommendations for social inclusion to encompass the arts. He asked: Is that really its position? Is it really something it should be doing?
Blue Drum’s work is solely focused on the role of community art in family support. In Framework for Family Support (2011), the Family Support Agency highlights the importance of developmental outcomes for vulnerable families. Kieran McKeown argues, ‘What is good for children can also be good for families and parents’. Family Resource Centres annual input to SPEAK (Strategic Planning and Self-evaluation System) reported (2011) that community arts groups are tactically unsurpassed as ways to engage and work with vulnerable families, especially hard-to-reach ones. The benefit of community art and its duration in time is valuable at many levels and enables the rest of society to hear an otherwise unarticulated voice. By translating national and international research and practices, Blue Drum has tried to create a framework to map out community arts pathways for vulnerable parents.