Archive

The Archive is my place to save and share some older collaborative and social arts projects

Northern Faculty of Social Arts Practice

2016-2020
The Northern Faculty of Social Arts Practice was the result of a number of parallel and overlapping conversations between 4 Arts Council Creative People and Places programmes, Heart of Glass (St. Helens), SuperSlowWay (Pennine Lancashire), Left Coast (Blackpool and Wyre) and Creative Scene (North Kirklees), with Chrissie Tiller, initiator and director the MA in Participatory and Community Arts at Goldsmiths for 12 years, and Kerry Morrison and William Titley from In Situ, a not-for profit arts organisation based in Pendle.

The pilot programme was made up of a series of 4 residential weekends with creative tasks, self-directed research and one-to-one mentoring taking place in the periods in between.  By the end of the first pilot, the model we were developing became more clearly defined and realised.  We were also even more confident there was real hunger for this kind of learning – and that it comes not only from artists but those who might more readily call themselves creative producers, curators, youth and community workers or social anthropologists.

In his handbook ‘An Education for Socially Engaged artists’ Pablo Helguera refers to the on-going collision in social arts practice between art making and disciplines such as sociology and politics within this practice, suggesting;

‘Socially engaged art functions by attaching itself to subjects and problems that normally belong to other disciplines, moving them temporarily into a space of ambiguity. It is this temporary snatching away of subjects into the realm of art-making that brings new insights to a particular problem or condition and in turn makes it visible to other disciplines.’

What the Faculty also sought to concern itself with is the effect on art of this growing inter-disciplinarity:  in the challenges and questioning it offered to the dominant aesthetic by linking it to the quality of the process, the collaboration, the exchange.

It is at this interface between the artist, art-making and other disciplines that the Faculty focused its learning: both in its methodology and its content.  In naming our four quadrants, Context, Techne (skills), Ethics/Politics and Discourse/Learning, we wanted to highlight the ways in which we felt the skills, knowledge, principles and methodologies from other disciplines contribute to social arts practice.  To create a learning model that was a metaphor for the work itself: inclusive, experiential, non-hierarchical and collaborative. 

It meant we spent much of our time together doing things and then finding ways to reflect on them, rather than listening to one of the ‘teachers’ delivering ‘knowledge’ or ‘theory’ in ways that might happen in a more formal learning framework.  That didn’t mean we didn’t want to understand all that had gone before us, in terms of the history of socially engaged or community arts, but it did mean we were always seeking to contextualise this in terms of the social, political and environmental conditions that coincide with it. 

Context,
It meant, for example, in exploring  context in getting to know the different post-industrial urban and rural settings in which the Faculty was taking place.  It meant physically mapping our own lives and examining the ways in which they intersect politically, socially and ecologically.  It involved creating our own timelines of the history, politics, music even fashion, including re-visiting the cultural legacy of the ‘60s and ‘70s in terms of feminism, race, ethnicity and class, that we feel have influenced what we understand by social arts practice today.  It also involved sharing the stories that brought this particular group of individuals to where we were now and the things that had impacted us on the way.

Techne
In Techne it meant starting to think not only about our artistic or creative skills, which are an important part of what we offer in any exchange, but those that come from being who we are and the lives we have led.  It meant beginning to recognise the different ‘identities’ – e.g. mother, theatre maker, sister, activist, synergist, cyclist – we have and how each of them brings something else into the space when we are working with a particular group of collaborators.  In undertaking to ‘teach’ one of those skills to someone else and deconstruct that ‘teaching’ it also meant exploring what we understand by tacit and explicit knowledge, looking at how we might build trust or create a space in which people feel able to take risks or look at difficult issues.  Or rehearsing how we might facilitate, or take part in, a meaningful ‘conversation’ in order to understand and engage with the groups and communities we are working with.

Ethic, Politics and Philosophy
Opening up the theme of Ethics, Politics and Philosophy led us to an intensive weekend of examining our work with different groups and communities in the neo-liberal, capitalist political context in which we find it situated.  It also meant touching upon some of the thinkers, writers and philosophers who have influenced our principles.  It felt important to contextualise the thinking before we began to work together so along with the framework for the weekend we created a suggested reading list. This included In-Situ’s statement on Ethical Art Practice, Environmental Ethics and Human Ethics, the chapter on ethics in the Participatory Arts Alphabet Chrissie had created for Calouste Gulbenkian and a piece on the ethics of care from Encyclopaedia Britannica suggested by William.

The Grant Kester quote through which we decided to frame the debate, ‘there is no arts practice that avoids all forms of co-option, compromise or complicity’[1] seemed particularly fitting.  Setting ourselves the task of exploring these demanding topics in one weekend was the first challenge.  Trying to do this while facing a need to regularly change spaces, as well as, subsequently, drop, move or curtail planned sessions added further pressures.  In terms of contextualising the work it has felt important to base each residential in one of the four CPP areas.  It has also meant experimenting with the impact this might have on the sense of being ‘on retreat’ as a group; living together in a space where conversations and discussions can continue into the evenings, take place over walks early in the morning or just happen on a corner of the stairs.  This was the first time we weren’t together in this way and it had an interesting effect on group dynamics.

The manifestos created on the final day, however, bore testament to the depth of thinking and debate the group had engaged with.  Many of them were powerful personal commitments to our participatory/collaborative practice as a way of life.  Inseparable from people’s core values.

Discourse and Reflection
The final residential, with its theme of Discourse and Reflection, was very much informed by a recognition that this was the time to draw our shared learning together.  Individual participants planned sessions on the ethics of working with vulnerable adults and questions around the environment and ecology.  We all came together to consider what we had gained on the journey and to touch on things we still felt we needed the shared space to reflect on.

• What we have learnt? What we have discovered? What we have put into practice/action?
• What do we want to revisit – perhaps in more depth?
• The gaps – what do we feel has not been covered? What do we still want to learn/teach/share/experience?
• Where/what next?

Drawing on the structure of Open Space Technology, we agreed to break down any sense of teachers and participants and abide by its one Law – the Law of Two Feet or Mobility – and its 5 Principles:

• Whoever comes are the right people
• Wherever it happens is the right place
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
• When it starts, is the right time
• When it’s over, it’s over

In taking this very practical approach to the pilot we wanted to acknowledge that while social arts practice remains very much connected to art-making or materiality on one hand it also relies very much on being able to draw on the understanding and skills that come from other disciplines – from anthropology, sociology, medicine, philosophy to pedagogy and the theory of learning. This meant taking Dewey’s thinking on experience and reflection in the context of learning, for example, and wondering how we might put this on its feet, test it out by ‘teaching’ someone something that matters to us: drawing on Brecht’s rehearsal processes for his actors and his notion of the ‘masterful copy’ in the process. It was about deconstructing the theories only after we had taken part in the action. Learning about the place of giving and gaining, mutual exchange, reciprocity and generosity through the process of undertaking to share our different knowledges.

Artists Educations from Kyiv to Bilbao 2015-2016

Kyiv December 2015
-21°C.  26th December and Christmas hasn’t even happened here yet.  The third time since setting up Seeding a Network in the ’90s I am back in Kyiv.  Over 20 years have passed between then and now:  the Orange Revolution, Maidan, the annexation of the Crimea.

My partner, Steve, and I have found ourselves propelled back to a city where three months ago we celebrated the wedding of our younger son.  Then there was sunshine, Georgian restaurants and ‘return to school’ ice-cream.  As well as the day we found ourselves among the smoke bombs and grenades of an anti-autonomy protest where three policemen where killed.

Now there is snow, Georgian restaurants and an uneasy peace.  We are in the old factory district.  In a club.  Which is also a rehearsal space. Working with a group of young theatre makers about to run a series of drama workshops with internally displaced women and children.  The workshops will take place alongside a bi-lingual (Russian and Ukrainian) production of Troilus and Cressida. Set seven years into the Trojan wars, the world of Shakespeare’s play is one worn down by the grim realities of warfare:  manipulation, deceit and corruption outweigh any sense of chivalry or patriotism.

The production is based on a performance the UK director did in Georgia; although here the Greeks will speak Russian, the Trojans Ukrainian.  But the actors are yet to be convinced of the significance of the two languages and the musical director has made it clear Georgian chants are not a Ukrainian tradition.

When the workshops begin there is already a palpable sense of tension. We, like the director, are also outsiders and not even sure of our role in the bigger picture of this Foreign Office funded project.

We spend the first day ‘getting to know each other’ through drama and theatre games – and battling to keep warm in a space that has been unheated for days.  In Kyiv the old factory spaces are slowly being reclaimed by artists and young entrepreneurs. Like the ‘pop up’ shops, cafes and galleries in the centre of town they are signs of a new energy, a passion to create, to collaborate, to work with others that runs alongside a sense of disillusionment and bewilderment post-Maidan.  Energetic activities like ‘Pass the Clap’ and ‘Yes Let’s!’ are constantly woven between working together to build a sense of trust and share something of ourselves and our stories: two true:one false, mapping our lives, trying to argue for something we totally disagree with.

By the end of the day we finally able to have a more open conversation about the work we might do together.  And touch on some of the issues surrounding the fact the workshops we are helping them to create will involve them working with people from the East of Ukraine. The notion of the people from the East having another ‘mentality’ comes up again and again.

Then, in the absence of any of us feeling totally secure with the text of Troilus and Cressida, we decide to improvise the story of Taras Bulba.  And discover on the way there might not, after all, be a ‘correct’ version – even of this most famous of tales – only the same story told from different perspectives.

We try it out and decide, with some refinements, we all like it: especially the possibility to move between points of view, capture different stories, touch on war and its effects on everyone.  The group decide, if anyone asks them if this is a workshop about Russia and the Ukraine they will say,  ‘No.  It’s about Greece and Troy.’  The discussion that follows about what language they will run the workshop in – some of them have Russian as their first language, others Ukrainian – bringing us quickly back to the complexity of even the most (seemingly) simple of decisions.

At one point in the day, because the theatre company are finding it hard to get the monologues – especially from the East – they have decided they want to run alongside the performance, the young actor whose parents come from Kharkiv offers to be ‘in role’ as someone from Donetsk or East Ukraine.  At the coffee break that follows his ‘hot seating’ it seems everyone wants to share their own stories.  A grandfather who has chosen to stay in Crimea despite his family having moved to Kyiv.  A father who no longer feels able to visit his parents.  The tensions involved in being a Russian speaker in a Ukrainian speaking school.

There is also a need for them to be with their neighbours, to make art with them, collaborate with them, share skills and ways of working.  Even to just to play together: create the ‘non-protest’ protest, the philosophical football match.  Most of all, to listen to and share stories.often sense we get tied up with definitions and ways to measure the ‘value’ and ‘impact’ of this kind of work because we have that luxury. In Kyiv it’s happening because it’s happening.  Artists want to make work that engages with the reality of their own lives and their neighbours.  To make sense of it. To give voice to its complexities.  Sometimes the role of the ‘outsider’ is simply to be there for them.

Across the Black Sea: Sinop in Turkey: January 2016

The artists and academics we meet tell us over one thousand intellectuals have signed a petition demanding the government lift the curfews on the Kurdish cities. Fourteen have been immediately placed in custody – for disseminating ‘terrorist propaganda’.

Arriving in Sinop itself it is easy to see why artists and culture operators have been attracted to working there. Situated at the end of a peninsula at the northernmost tip of Turkey it is surrounded almost completely by the Black Sea: connected but set apart from the rest of the country.  

It has a long and rich history, having been a trading port, shipbuilding and fortress since 8BC and a NATO base during the Cold War – and a highly contentious future, destined as it is to be the site of a, Japanese designed, $16 billion nuclear plant.  It has housed a prison where Turkish intellectuals and political prisoners were interned alongside local criminals: a prison that introduced carpet weaving, woodworking and jewellery making as well as theatre and cinema as part of its rehabilitation programme

The 2105 Breath of Sinop project captures both:  the glass-making skills of the former furnace workers providing a creative platform for the views of the people of Sinop on ecology, sustainability and local development.

It is the seeming absence of this sense of collectivity and collaboration in the approach of the external architects that sets down a marker.  In Collecting the Future , the 2011 Sinopale project, the complex and intricate relationship between the local community and its prison is at the centre of the art making.

The designs for the new cultural centre and museum that will replace it, however, seemed destined merely to ‘clean back’ the site to its Roman remains. As if, only in removing all traces of everything that has occurred between the present and ‘Ancient History’ are we able to reach a space of consensus.  A space where nothing is contested, nothing is difficult to speak about, nothing marks one place from another.

It prompts me to think about the way participatory practice is so often understood – especially in terms of ‘place-making’ and regeneration. About the seeming need for our practice to create cohesion, iron out conflicts and tensions, contain dissent within the aesthetics of our art form.  Rather than creating a space for the agonistic and the disruptive, participatory arts can so often be used as a tool to bring about consent and acceptance.   In this context, the cultural interventions made by the Bienniale feel important as a window onto the potential of participatory arts practice.  The model of exploring current issues within the framework of ‘artistic production based on sharing’ and ‘the collective historical memory’ leaves space for paradox and contradiction.

Previous Biennales have focused on these spaces. One wonders if the Ministry of Culture’s plans to museum-ise them will finally iron out this complex history and its ‘kinks’? In her book ‘Artificial Hells’ Claire Bishop suggests participatory arts practice emerges ‘most visibly at certain historical moments…(its) participants reimagined…from a crowd (1910s), to the masses (1920s), to the people (late 1960s/1970s), to the excluded (1980s), to community (1990s), to today’s volunteers whose participation is continuous with a culture of reality television and social networking.’  I agree there are moments in history when groups of artists have felt the need to engage more directly with their communities: mostly at times of political or social upheaval.  I also agree the recent complicity of neoliberalism can increasingly muddy the waters: collapsing what Bishop identifies as the tension between ‘artistic and social critiques.’

But, maybe because I come from a theatre background, I also find the dense body of ‘artistic’ and ‘social’ critique that surrounds the separation of the ‘gallery’ artist and the ‘community’ artist increasingly daunting.   Moving from the Ukraine, working with young artists who want to try to find ways to use their art to engage with their neighbours or people who find their lives turned upside down by recent events, to a small town in Turkey where artists are working together with local people to envision ‘a better social living space’ everything seems more simple – and complicated

Working collaboratively artists and the local community have worked together to create a space to explore not only the implications of the past but the ‘threats’ of the future.10 years later, despite still being in its ‘feasibility’ stage, the plan for the nuclear station continues to cast its shadow.  And as the sun sets behind the hill it is difficult to resists thoughts of Fukushima, Three Mile Island or even Chernobyl.  At the same time the conversation has palpably shifted: there is a powerful sense of an ongoing dialogue between the people of Sinop and the Biennale about a space that now seems to belong to all of them.

Having been initiated by Sinop born artist and academic Melih Görgün, the sustainability of the project is  increasingly guaranteed by the local young people who have grown up as part of it and now work as its curators, managers and emerging artists.  As well as the input of people like the woman running the ‘tea room’, who tells us she now holds an arts and traditional crafts afternoon alongside the reading group they set up last winter. Sinopale describes itself as a ‘work in progress’, a space to ‘discover what is right next to us’.  It is a space where the progress, like the exchange between its artists and the locals, feels mutual.

Bilbao: January 2016
Back to London for 2 days.  Enough time to be at the Launch of the Cultural Education Challenge at Oval House and be blown away by the work of their young spoken word artists: political, passionate and connected.

In terms of examining the role the arts might play in creating community as well as economic wealth it’s interesting to note, on the day I arrive, that the whole city is making its way not to its museum but the Athletic Bilbao football ground. A more powerful symbol of Basque identity?Yet in many ways the city does feel like a fitting end to these three weeks of thinking about arts and participation.  Working with colleagues from across Europe, including Turkey, to capture the ‘competences’ needed by an artist working with collaborative or participatory practice creates a new kind of distance.  

We are thinking specifically about the ‘competences’ to be included in a module in Participatory Practice that would not be already covered by those expected of anyone studying Arts at MA level.  This module will form the basis for something we are currently calling the European Academy of Participation.Like almost everyone engaged with or writing about this field of work, we are struggling to create a definition that covers the diversity of the practice:  without producing a critical history that moves from the Agon of Ancient Greece through Fluxus and Pop Art to Rancière, Bourdieu, Kester and Bishop. 

Today, like Henry Reed in his post-war poem, we are undertaking the ‘naming of parts’: struggling to differentiate between knowledge, skills and attitudes.  I am wondering if an attitude is something that can be taught – or measured?  But also thinking as we add empathy, self reflection and openness to our list these are definitely things I would want artists working with others to be able to draw on.

The younger artists I meet want to engage with their city and this context on a very different level to the ‘cultural education’ classes offered by the Guggenheim.  For them ‘art is a weapon of citizenship’:  and they are determined to work within the paradoxes this juxtaposition offers.Thinking back to Kyiv and Sinop I am trying to decide what knowledge, skills and attitudes would be needed by artists wanting to work in either of these contexts.  A desire, even passion, to understand the context would probably be number one: along with the capacity to be curious, ask questions and want to listen to the answers.  Then understanding the potential for art/the arts to be a catalyst, a provocation, a celebration, a language, a metaphor – or become little more than a tool for bringing about the prevailing neo-liberal agenda.  I would want them to understand the political, social, cultural hegemonies they find themselves working in:  to know what’s gone before but not to be afraid of cutting their own path.  I would want them to be interested in mutual exchange but not be afraid to challenge or accept dissent.  Most of all I think I would want them to be authentic.   In their art and in their relationships with the communities/groups of people they are making it with.

12 years ago I initiated and then ran the MA in Participatory and Community Arts at Goldsmiths.  I think we managed to create a space where artists could develop the skills to reflect on their practice:  finding a good balance between rigour of thinking and doing the work.  As I look forward to setting up the Northern Faculty of Social Practice and deciding the content for the Academy of Participation I am excited to both take that learning forward and discover new things.

---

Ist May 2015: Participation on Trial

Participation on Trial was a creative critique of participation in the arts taking the form of a live participatory performance : a (Dadesque) mock trial. It brought together artists, arts organisations, curators, producers, funders and participants to take part in a playful, yet serious, analysis of ‘participation’. Videoed, streamed and ‘recorded’ by the court artists and participants through art-making and Twitter debates, the day ended with a participatory Choir of Complaint. 

Lead artist/creative curator: Chrissie Tiller.  

Creative Team: artists from Participatory Arts Lab (formerly MA Participatory Arts, Goldsmiths).

Research began with an open conversation as part of the Paul Hamlyn Artworks 100 Conversations. Title ‘The Mirage of Participation’. The participants from this helped us create a Wordle of key questions, which we used as a basis for our Facebook site and our Twitter investigation of issues. The invitation we created was shared widely and we gained followers across arts, culture and academia.

At the same time as we set up our Eventbrite, we started a post-it note campaign to capture people’s thoughts ‘Participation is..’ This was again shared successfully on Twitter and Facebook. These definitions formed the chorus for our Choir of Complaint’s piece: the creation of which was a further participatory process. 

By the time people arrived at the event most of them had already engaged creatively in the debate in one form or another. We also used the feedback from the Twitter debate to refine the nature of the crime and identify the defendants:

These conversations also informed our decision to represent the defendants with shop model dummies so that no one person would have to take on the criticism of their part of the field. This meant we could ask a real judge to run the court and our ‘experts’ to be ‘Witnesses’ for the Defence or Prosecution. We then ran workshops to create appropriate costumes/hats, based on Edward de Bono’s 6 Hats, and started to create costumes for the court officials; including a series of knitted wigs.

On the day of the Trial all participants arrived to receive a ‘goody bag’ identifying them as Defence or Prosecution: meaning many found themselves arguing an opposing point of view. In the bag, along with pencils, crayons and paper to record the event was a Dada-esque newspaper programme, which folded up to offer Guilty or Not Guilty when the time for the verdict arrived.

Our ‘official jury’ was elected on the day, as part of the meet and greet process. We had 120 participants plus those who were taking on roles (160 in the space). This was a good cross-section of artists, academics, curators and funders.    Although we had encouraged people to bring project participants only a few organisations did: those who came enriched the debate, and we would like more on another occasion. Hundreds of others watched the livestream.

The morning took the form of a ‘structured’ trial, albeit with audience participation.  Our three official court artists were collecting people’s thoughts and feedback on five specially created pincushion dolls, handing out ‘prizes’ to participants and drawing portraits. 

We also had a number of participants who captured the event – from photography to creative writing to pen and pencil drawing. 

The court was ‘kept in line’ through the judge’s wonderful blend of formality and humour and the court typists’ acerbic asides. Our ‘eccentric tea-lady’, Boal expert Tereza Araujo, refused to let anyone off the hook if she felt what they said needed challenging. 

The Soapbox/Juries
After lunch the court officials removed their wigs, the witnesses became participants, and freedom to take over the ‘soapbox’ was offered: the debate deepened and developed by passionate speeches from the floor. People who had taken on roles in the morning were also able to speak from the heart as themselves.

Our two young ‘assistant counsel’ took this into an open space style debate before the Jury/ies retired. Alongside our official jury, other participants were asked to find their way into jury-sized groups. Each of the juries shared their verdicts: two hung jury, three Guilty verdicts, and one Schrodiger’s Cat. 

The judge’s final summing up in response to the juries’ feedback this was followed by all participants being invited to join in a chorus for the Choir of Complaint.

The whole event was filmed and a Twitter-feed shared highlights of the debate, and the event itself. The debate continued passionately on Twitter and other social media for two weeks afterwards, the hashtag is still going and people are already asking when the ‘re-trial’ will be.

Speeches For the Defence
Can be found here:
https://batterseaartscentre.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/participation-on-trial-statement-for-the-defence/
and from Sophie Hope – below:

Today I am wearing my academic hat as a witness to defend the role of academia from the accusation that we are misrepresenting participation in the arts.

What is academia? For me it is a place for critical thinking. Breathing space. A site for learning and unlearning, for testing out ideas with others. For research and enquiry, for questioning assumptions and digging deeper into concepts through theory and practice in a supportive, safe environment. Academia is a chance to step back and rethink ideas such as participation in the arts, not represent or advocate for them.  It is not, I argue, a space to demonstrate how amazing the arts are, or how participation is defacto a good thing.

I base my witness statement on my own experience of higher education – In my practice-based PhD I explored notions of cultural democracy in relation to the commissioning of art to effect social change. This decision to frame my practice through the PhD came at a time when I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with my work as a paid external evaluator of publicly funded socially engaged art projects. In this context, I felt the possibility to be critical was limited, sometimes censored and essentially a marketing exercise for the project I was evaluating. I wanted to find a place for deep, critical reflection and analysis which wasn’t co-opted as advocacy – I found that place in academia.Since finishing my PhD in 2010 I have developed practice based research with one foot in academia and one foot out-with the university, developing ideas and practice around the emotional labour of socially engaged art, an ethical toolkit for credited work placements, physical relationships to immaterial work through my project with Jenny Richards – Manual Labours, and histories of community art and cultural policy, for example through my 1984 Dinners project which brings together people who were active artistically and politically in the year 1984. If I have received external funding for a project, it has been redistributed to pay people for their time.

My experience of academia has also been through teaching – for example, one of the classes I teach is called Understanding Audiences for final year BA Dance and Arts Management students in which we read and discuss texts to explore questions of participation, such as Ben Warmsley’s critique of co-creation, Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation, Bernadette Lynch’s Whose Cake is it Anyway and Shannon Jackson’s Social Works. The course attempts to unpick our assumptions of participation in the arts rather than re-enforce them. We are constantly referring theoretical ideas to practice and exploring the relations between these. This is a space students rarely have in the pace of their working/family lives. In my own experience, academia can provide a space to explore different forms of pedagogy and research that stretch and challenge accepted methods – my activism and practice is embedded in my research and teaching, for example. I try to take a feminist, critical approach to teaching and researching, bringing real world problems and struggles into the classroom rather than treating it as a bubble. The boundaries are fluid as we bring our experience into the classroom and our research, rather than assuming an objective, ivory-tower position from which to preach.

Unfortunately, our universities are changing. I work at Birkbeck where the students are still mainly working in the day and studying in the evening. It has its roots in working class education and yet with the debt of education being passed from the state to the individual, participation in arts and humanities education is becoming more and more difficult for those who do not have the financial means or willingness to risk that debt.

So what does it mean to defend higher education institutions today? Personally I am not ready to jump ship – I still believe in the notion of education as a public good, that we should share the burden of that cost rather than financially penalise those who choose to enter into further study. The fight to defend academia as a space from which to challenge dominant assumptions is more important today than ever before.

Speeches: For the Prosecution:

https://davidaslater.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/an-act-of-treachery/

https://colouringinculture.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/my-prosecution-witness-statement-from-todays-artsontrial-participationontrial/

A Later Reflection:
https://colouringinculture.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/participation-on-trial-not-the-end-a-new-spirit-of-openness/

Participation on Trial: the Movie

---

Oct 2014. Osaka Arts Festival: Memory, Democracy and Identity

This Artist in Residence project was the culmination of three years’ participatory arts and community workshops in partnership with Osaka University. After two years spent creating our core team of participants and practitioners and developing and sharing our skills, and approaches to participatory and collaborative working we felt ready to take on a community project as part of this year’s arts festival.

Workshops

The themes of that year’s Festival were: Memory, Democracy and Identity.  Invited to work with the community who had slowly been rehoused from what were Osaka University staff homes, the Ishibashi Residencies, we decided to bring together local artist, activists and members of the old community to create a shared response to the impending demolition of the buildings through these three themes: beginning by exploring our notions of Home and Community we set out to:

• capture and re-create some of the memories of the lives of those who had lived in and known the buildings and their surrounding communal space
• consult the wider local community about creative ways in which the space might be used before re-building began
• configuring a farewell ceremony that would capture and honour the very special identity of the houses, their ghosts and the dreams that live on in them.

In many ways this estate of post-war concrete prefabricated houses shared a history with the post-war council estate I had grown up on in Leeds. Walking into one of those 1950s homes to be greeted by a group of elderly Osaka women in their hats, I was confronted by emotional memories of my Mum. Equally affective was the joy I felt in returning to my role as theatre-maker.

Community

Over the next few days, amidst a good deal of laughter and a growing sense of rebellion against what they realised was the erasure of their lives and stories, these women, my translator and collaborator Haruna Kondo, and I created a piece of immersive theatre that used memory as a form of resistance. The final performance began in the deserted rooms of one of the houses we had collectively redecorated with plants and flowers from the now overgrown gardens. As the artists and activists who were part of the project shared the memories they had collected from the women, I felt there was no need for me to have the Japanese words translated. I already understood their stories.

Memory

The day ended with a candlelit procession to re-inhabit the local lake with symbolic memories of the white swans that had been such a potent symbol of the community these women had once been part of. As the large origami white swan we had created togethertook its final journey across the lake, there was a deep silence. Then, as the candles on which the women had written their wishes for the future were lit and sent to follow the swan on its journey, the women burst out in loud chatter, the artists applauded them, and the music students who had joined us in the procession began to play an old Osaka song.

Celebration

The intergenerational nature of the project and the resharing of stories from these women’s lives was a choice I had made as a feminist and activist as well as an artist. The later reflection on the project with the artists and activists reminded me how women’s voices and stories remain marginalised in so many cultures and how important it is for socially engaged art practitioners to listen to, respect and share those memories as part of the process of co-creating new narratives.

Critical pedagogy and practice overlapped as I shared the Osaka experience with my Goldsmiths’ students who were planning workshops they had offered to run with a local women’s group facing eviction from their high street office. The dialogical and reciprocal nature of these exchanges was a powerful reminder of my original determination when I set up my MA to challenge the institution by creating alternative pedagogical strategies in order to ensure invisible lived experiences were heard and valued. Working, as each of us was, in solidarity with our communities, with activists and others, meant the spaces between art and life felt even further dissolved.

Our final day of activities, from team building to sharing the stories, from community consultation to farewell procession through the old houses and the lake that had been so important to so many of the residents is captured, here, in a film made by Portuguese artist João Garcia. ……