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- Volume 6, Issue 2, 2014
Journal of Arts & Communities - Volume 6, Issue 2-3, 2014
Volume 6, Issue 2-3, 2014
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The benefits of being a bit of an asshole
More LessAbstractIn the United Kingdom, over the past decade, Socially Engaged practices have been variously employed to eradicate conflict and produce artworks that are diverse, multiple, all-welcoming and that smooth the turbulence of social tensions. Conflict, however, is an integral part of the social realm and to deny its presence is to deny the true functioning of a democratic realm. What, then, is the role of conflict within public and participatory artworks?
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Whose quality is it anyway? Inhabiting the creative tension between presentational and participatory music
More LessAbstractThe complexity of identifying what constitutes quality in the field of Participatory Music is increased by contrasting it with its counterpart Presentational Music. Resorting to dichotomous positions – e.g. process vs product; access vs excellence; technical vs ethical – only helps to partially understand this complexity. In this article, I argue that applying a dialogic perspective of ‘creative tension’ to the continuums of practice between Presentational Music, Participatory Music and more socially or ethically engaged practices enables us to talk about issues of musical quality in participatory settings in a more meaningful and consistent way. This dialogic approach may also help to resolve similar dichotomies in broader Participatory Arts practice.
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Why drawing, now?
Authors: Anne Douglas, Amanda Ravetz, Kate Genever and Johan SiebersAbstractThis article takes the question ‘why drawing, now?’ as a speculative way to enter the debate on the relationship of art to different understandings of community. Drawing offers a paradox around the place of art in society. Drawing can be thought about as a traditional medium that yields an individually focused interior exploration. It has also performed a social or ritual role historically, in different times and places. Imagine a public event to which participants are invited to draw. There is a large, single sheet of paper or drawing surface and the offer of different drawing implements. Participants respond by drawing with their own style and understanding of what drawing is. The accumulation of individual marks and imaginations make up a whole, in as far as the surface drawn upon is singular and brings these individual productions into one space. Imagine the same shared drawing surface, held up around the edges by a group of participants. A drawing emerges through the marks of an inked ball rolling across the flexible moving surface. In this scenario, the drawing traces – literally marks – the emergent relationship of one individual to another through the shared activity. Both scenarios are possibly very familiar activities in participatory art practices and each offers a different way of imagining community. In both, the act of drawing is pivotal to shared activity. The first assumes that community can be constructed by bringing a group of individuals into the same space and activity. Many of us are enculturated to think that it is individuals – singular units – that make up society. The second, however, suggests that community as already present can be made visible through the drawing activity. Our exploration draws on a period of a collaborative practice-led experimentation, in particular a three-day research workshop involving drawing and writing. The aim was not to focus on what the results ‘looked like’ as art products, an approach that arguably fails to reveal the knowledge underpinning art’s appearances. Instead we set out to create the conditions for experiencing community through drawing. We found that drawing, in its most intimate relationship between maker/viewer, surface and mark, evokes a world to come, a world in formation rather than pre-formed. This revealed the need for careful scrutiny of the ways in which community itself is imagined. Our offer to the practice of participatory arts is to question deeply held assumptions about what community is rather than to propose new forms of access or techniques that can be transferred from one situation to another.
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A model for the continuous quality improvement of the Sing With Us choir leaders
Authors: Jessica Ruth Morris and Rosie DowAbstractSing With Us is a network of fifteen research-led community choirs run weekly by the cancer charity Tenovus Cancer Care, as a form of support for people affected by cancer in Wales. This article discusses a model created by Tenovus Cancer Care to train and develop their team of eight community Choir Leaders (CLs). It explores the theoretical frameworks and methodology through which a system of continuous quality improvement has been developed for them, and looks specifically at the initial results of a first team assessment. This article will explore the idea that by professionalizing and valuing the roles of the CLs and the work they do, this will create a positive impact in the service that is provided. It will suggest that by implementing a process to ensure a quality leadership in a community choir setting, choristers will be more likely to have a richer experience on which they place high value and will be engaged for longer.
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Towards a shared responsibility for quality in the participatory arts: Key insights into conditions underpinning quality
More LessAbstractThe ArtWorks programme has succeeded in generating deeper insights into the realities of participatory arts practice in the United Kingdom, in particular the conditions needed to achieve quality and the extent to which these are enabled. In parallel with ArtWorks research, in 2014 Creative Scotland commissioned a detailed analysis of the extant ‘body of knowledge’ concerning quality, which uncovered a number of generic concepts of quality held in the commercial world, which are of profound relevance to the participatory arts and the questions currently being explored by the sector. When such ‘global’ perspectives – about the inherent nature of quality, how to ‘build it in’ to a product and how to manage quality outputs – are considered alongside evidence and testimony from the sector captured by ArtWorks, several important learning points emerge: One, that quality does not reside just in the art or work undertaken with participants ‘on the day’ but stems from a holistic process consisting of several preceding phases including conception, design and planning, each of which contain quality components. Two: quality in the participatory arts is not solely determined by the artist and what they deliver ‘in the room’, but is directly affected by a range of key decision makers some of whom may be far removed from the project itself, but who nonetheless influence whether the experience of the participants is a quality one. Three: there are recognizable essential preconditions for quality that appear to be common across participatory arts practice. Many of these are outside the artist’s direct control and are often missing from projects, undermining the chances of quality experiences for participants. The seminal theory of US researchers Seidel et al. constructing the interconnectedness of decision makers provides vital context for appreciating the roles and responsibilities of a wider group of stakeholders (including commissioners, employers and funders) in the achievement of quality experiences for participants. These observations lead to important recommendations for greater stakeholder engagement and responsibility; again gaining especial pertinence in light of evidence generated by ArtWorks. This article outlines each of these points in detail, reconstructing the logical development of key insights contained in the Creative Scotland report, which was researched and written by this author. The core components of an optimum quality system are proposed and represented as features of a holistic framework.
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(Dys)functional art
Authors: Sabine Priglinger, Hande Sever and Ben SchmechelAbstractThis article aims to explore the binary of art as a functional cultural tool and as a dysfunctional sociopolitical catalyst. The authors, Hande Sever, Sabine Priglinger and Ben Schmechel, will propose dysfunctional art as a generator of an emancipatory, intentional space of enquiry, a valuable alternative to the more functional notions of art. They will stress that dysfunctional works of art span a range of artistic production and reception as they occur in both commercial gallery and community or public space. Instances that embody elements of the functional and the dysfunctional approach will be marked out through an interrogation of artworks, arranged in an atemporal, ahistorical constellation.
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Maximizing empowerment in applied theatre with refugees and migrants in the United Kingdom: Facilitation shaped by an ethic of care
By Anne SmithAbstractThis article argues for the value of fostering an ethic of care within an arts project, which emphasizes the importance of facilitating a culture of agency rather than dependency for participants. Drawing on the work of Virginia Held and Tove Pettersen, it highlights the necessity for all participants to be able to give as well as receive care and the impact of this upon achieving a sense of belonging. The professional skill of the artist is fundamental to the success of community arts practice. However, if a sense of dependency on professional skill remains, the longterm impact of the project is limited. In applied theatre practice with refugees and migrants who may already be disempowered by language, immigration status and poverty, a sense of agency is crucial. Using evidence from practice-based research in Creative English, a drama-based English language programme for adult refugees, asylum seekers and migrants and a family learning project for parents and toddlers, this article shows how the ethic of care disrupts the uneven balance of power between the artist and participant/altruist and recipient and thus impacts more widely on individuals’ actions beyond the workshop sessions, increasing the long-term impact of a time-bound arts project on individuals and their community.
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‘We’re all on the path ourselves’: The ‘reflective practitioner’ in participatory arts with older people
More LessAbstractThis article explores the role of the ‘reflective practitioner’ in participatory arts projects with older people, as articulated by creative practitioners themselves. Research into participatory arts activity with older people, which focuses on the process rather than the outcome of such activity remains sparse, as does scholarship that engages closely with artist-practitioners themselves as a rich source of knowledge and insight in this field. Supported by theory concerning the development and utility of reflective praxis, the article foregrounds the perspectives of a range of experienced artist-practitioners, as obtained through interviews and the findings of a ‘reflective learning group’ practitioner CPD programme. Research found that the creative practitioners consulted had developed a range of diverse reflective practices in order to engage and nurture the older participants they worked with, including: highly flexible and dialogic approaches; seeking ‘kinaesthetic empathy’ with participants; applying a form of ‘micro-responsiveness’ to participants; and fostering strong reflective practices among participants themselves. These findings hold important implications as to how we understand the processes by which practitioners enhance participant experience in the participatory arts, how creative practitioners are best supported in their work, and for the design, management and evaluation of participatory arts projects.
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Why drawing, now?
Authors: Anne Douglas, Amanda Ravetz, Kate Genever and Johan Siebers
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