What happened to the community art?

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Art, Balsall Heath, Birmingham, cities, Creativity, Cultural Intermediation, Engagement, Participatory, Salford

Warwick University will be hosting an International Symposium on 17-18 September 2015 entitled ‘Amateur Creativity: Inter-disciplinary Perspectives’.

I’m presenting a paper at this event that emerges from the work with communities in Birmingham and Salford entitled:

‘A gallery of the gutter? What becomes of amateur art and artists?’

Here’s the abstract:

Over the last two decades, UK cultural policy has authorized an army of cultural intermediaries to work with ‘communities’. Amongst their many aims, they have sought to engage the ‘hard to reach’ as participants in the cultural ecology, both as consumers and potential producers. Thus, professionals have engaged communities to share in the production of creative projects and to develop their own voices and aesthetic responses to the world. As as a result of the nurturing of amateur skills and aesthetic ideas, community spaces boast exhibitions of the work of local people or their ideas and efforts adorn public places, evidence for instance of consultation processes as part of regeneration projects.

This presentation seeks to consider amateur production as part of cultural intermediation derived from research conducted as part of the AHRC-funded work in the inner cities of Birmingham and Salford. ‘Cultural intermediation & the creative economy’ has itself involved community members in co-production of research and, at the time of writing, in the commissioning of cultural work. In this latter process, community members are enlisted to form commissioning panels that produced organic cultural policy that might engage artists to develop work based on a remit formulated at grassroots level.

This paper reflects on these processes of intermediation, by both artist and social scientists. I ask: what are the dynamics of the relations of amateur and professional are articulated in such encounters? What ideas of culture, aesthetics, value and indeed engagement emerge? Above all, what happens to the work and indeed to the participants – the amateurs – engaged by such projects once they are completed?

The gestation of this particular paper and approach came in a tour of Salford I took a while ago in the company of Beth Perry of SURF. We came across a redevelopment site surrounded and partly concealed by the large white chipboards that are now de rigeur in such instances. This shield was also extensively decorated with reproductions of artworks produced by members of the local community. I think they conveyed ideas and desires for community improvements.

This site got us talking about such initiatives which are now quite familiar means of decorating urban disruptions which might represent, variously: a means of genuine engagement, distraction or concealment perhaps. My concern was, and is, with the question of what happens to the work solicited from and produced by community members and displayed in such public galleries? While galleries such as the one we encountered in Salford are made up of reproductions, the question applies to these examples as well as any originals.

Here are some images of a project I went to see today in Birmingham. In this instance, the work of school children has been commissioned by the construction company BAM and used to decorate one of its building sites.

My title here is not a judgment of the work itself but a result of suspicion is that it is often (although not always) discarded, so affirming the distinction of the amateur and professional. After all, the work of the professional gets preserved in the portfolio, exhibited in the official gallery or purchased by the collector.

In developing the paper, I thought I’d try to survey and capture as many instances of such public galleries as possible. In order to do this I could do with a little help in identifying examples and in getting hold of images and information about their dimensions. Readers of this blog might be able to help therefore by posting responses here or by emailing me materials directly at paul.long@bcu.ac.uk.

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Arts & Science Festival – 1960s Art & Architecture Tour

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Birmingham, Cultural Intermediation, Engagement, Festivals

The University of Birmingham Arts & Science festival, now in its second year, ran for a week from 16th – 23rd March 2014.

The festival was described as “a week-long celebration of ideas, research and collaboration across campus” and as my research looks at the cultural festival and how universities are engaging with it, I went along to a few of the events to see was happening.

The 1960s Art & Architecture walking tour of Edgbaston campus was part of the Arts & Science festival’s programme, presented in partnership with Ikon gallery’s Ikon 50 programme, a special series of events and exhibitions marking the gallery’s ‘milestone year’.

Last Saturday afternoon at 1pm, a group of around 25 people converged in the sunshine at Eduardo Paolozzi’s huge bronze Faraday sculpture at the edge of the campus. Claire Mullet, Deputy Curator of Research and Cultural Collections at University of Birmingham, and one of the collections’ other curators, Chloë Lund, met us there. Claire explained that the University’s Research and Cultural Collections contain around 1,500 objects and artworks, many of which have been commissioned by the University and many acclaimed artists have leant or donated important pieces. This collection is separate to the Barber Institute’s collection and much of it is exhibited in the departments and public spaces around campus.
So began a fun two hours or so of discovery within the campus boundaries!

Now, I am a veteran of many public walks and have a great enthusiasm for them, so it came as no surprise when within minutes the sunshine was replaced by a sudden hail storm – this seems to happen all the time. Claire was prepared and undeterred, and from under a frilly umbrella she described the circumstances in which the 1970 Barbara Hepworth sculpture Ancestor I (pictured right) was bequeathed to the University by the sculptor, following the award of her honorary degree in 1960.

Thankfully, we were then lead us inside Staff House and into the warm. It is worth mentioning that the University boasts a huge amount of astonishing and extraordinary spaces within its buildings and the top floor of Staff House is definitely one of them. At the top of this building, almost hidden away in a corridor with an elegant roof that floods the space with natural light, is one of the most notable works of the tour, a framed blue abstract painting by Robert Groves. He was one of the Ikon’s founding group of artists and the man who gave the gallery its name in 1964. We had to take turns to see it, there is only room in front of it for a few people to stand.

There are many other wall-based art works on display in this building, one particularly notable one is a huge John Walker canvas called Anguish at an intersection in the stairwell.
While we stopped to admire it, Claire mentioned the artist’s connection to Birmingham and Chloë offered a more personal observation of how the piece visually fits with the space where it is presently hung.

Next we headed across an open space to the Finance office and clustered around a really unusual piece of public art, situated in a less airy stairwell.

The legend attached to Anguished Skein by Patrick Maher, a ‘punk orange’ painted metal squiggle, it is incredibly significant to the tour, as it turns out the piece was commissioned for the University’s former Finance Officer, Angus Skene, a ‘character’ who was also instrumental in setting up Ikon gallery. Angus was a collector of contemporary art, he and his partner donated a large amount of money to start the Ikon gallery and he urged the University to make funds available for commissioning and collecting work from this period and investing in public art around campus. It is likely that his story is pretty fundamental to the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections and one member of University staff I spoke to was certainly interested to hear the story behind a piece of sculpture she sees frequently. But soon we’re off again, this time to the Law building, to see Moonstrips Empire News (1967), a collection of up to 100 screen prints installed in the entrance lobby to the Law building and the stairs leading up to the Harding Law Library.

The recent refurbishment of this space combined a £4000 grant from the School of Law and Claire’s own vision for the space, she explained that the bold colour scheme was designed specifically with the work in mind. The investment in the space created a serendipitous opportunity to have the work that had already been adopted by Research and Cultural Collections properly framed and mounted so that it could be displayed publicly.

The combination of colourful elements sets up an excellent and very pop-arty juxtaposition between what was probably a neat but stuffy institutional lobby and the riotous colours, kitsch and logos of the 1960s prints. It is a complete surprise, it works and I love it!

As we left the Law School it was nice to see that the sun had come out again. Claire explained that it is not only 1960s art that the University could offer to Ikon on this tour, but examples of architecture too.
The Grade 2 listed Muirhead Tower could be seen from here, somewhat dominating the campus, and this is one example of these. It was built in 1963, although it was modernised with a £27 million refurbishment in 2007. Chloë adds that in the early 60s the university experienced a big expansion in student numbers. This must be the 1963 Robbins committee report on higher education that I have already read about, in which it was suggested that universities should become more democratic, with places available to all who attained the relevant qualification for them. The expansion led to a new phase of building and consequently a new style of architecture appeared on campus.
There are other examples of 1960s building directly next to the Muirhead Tower, but just before we set off towards them, I notice a poster for The Handsworth Scroll on a pillar next to where we are standing.

The Handsworth Scroll is an item from the CCCS archive that was on display earlier in the festival, in fact the festival guide listed that event alongside today’s walk.

Claire tells the group that the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) resided for many years at the Muirhead Tower. There is currently an AHRC funded project at the University to mark the 50th anniversary of that institution and the Arts & Science Festival presented John Akomfrah’s new film The Stuart Hall Project (read my review of the film here) this week too.

At this point, a member of the group mentions another 1960s related event taking place on the following Saturday at The Library of Birmingham which is also part of Ikon 50. Those Were The Decades is a day-long event with an Illustrated talk about the CCCS by Dr Kieran Connell, a panel discussion on Ikon in the 1960s with John Salt, the first artist to exhibit there, plus other events including film screenings of Motorcity Music Years: Second City Sinners (1992) and Medium Cool (1969) – this 2nd film is part of Flatpack Film Festival‘s programme.

This had become a truly fascinating walk, connecting so many of Birmingham’s cultural organisations and innovators to the times when these things were made and revealing some of the cultural developments that link them together. We still had a couple more places to see too, so we headed to the Arts building to look at one of the last major commissions by Cornish modern painter Peter Lanyon. His ‘Arts Faculty Mural‘ (1963) fills the whole of one wall inside the school’s lobby and extends up over the door. It was imagined as an abstract representation of elements of the campus that could be seen from either side of the lobby and it is reported to have cost £13.23 per foot. This expense had provoked some opposition at the time it was made, as quotes from Redbrick, the university’s own newspaper, confirmed. Claire had prepared many of these sorts of notes and had also printed out pictures to hand round, all of which added extra context to what we observed.

Next we were taken to see the prefab Modern Languages building, built using innovative methods for its time, with a surprising, elegant interior space and so much natural light!

We ended our walk at the Metals and Metallurgy Building situated at the North of the campus, looking at a set of reflective grid paintings with geometric shapes painted onto mirrors by David Prentice, another of Ikon’s founders. This work, Pleides, was commissioned and designed especially for the building, which is built as a grid itself (below is a picture of the ceiling at the Metals and Metallurgy Building).
This tour was completely fascinating (and free, as was much of the Arts & Science festival programme!) Claire and Chloë provided ongoing, valuable contextual information, helping us to understand some of the hidden meanings in the buildings and art that we saw. Writing about it has also made me wistful for something else that I’d really like to see, but never will to be able to: Ikon’s first home, the glass-sided kiosk in the Bullring shopping centre.

Created to be mobile and ephemeral, a so-called ‘Gallery without walls’ – would it be have been called a ‘pop-up’ gallery, today, I wonder?

 

 

Cultivating Culture Symposium: Birmingham

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Art, Balsall Heath, Birmingham, cities, communities, conference, cultural; creative economy; community; art; Birmingham; Manchester, Intermediation, library of birmingham, Participatory, thsh

‘Cultivating Culture’ was the title of a symposium organised under the auspices of Birmingham City Council, which took place on Tuesday 18th March 2014 at the new Library of Birmingham.

The day was a chance to reflect on the provision of arts in Birmingham and in particular on Local Arts Forum (LAF) development in the city and its Arts Champion Scheme, both of which have relevance for our project and activities in Balsall Heath in particular. In addition, Phil Jones had been asked to make a presentation on our work on cultural intermediaries.

Birmingham’s LAFs were set up in each city district by BCC’s Culture Commissioning service between April 2011 and March 2012. The aim of the scheme is to bring together individual artists and local arts organisation, education providers and community groups with an initial brief to organise public meetings, audit cultural infrastructure and to build a contact database for cultural workers. The brief has developed over the last year in tandem with the Arts Champion Scheme.

Indicative of the straightened times, funding for these activities has been miniscule yet the very existence of such initiatives testifies to a continuing faith in cultural provision as well as a desire or need to support the well established cultural infrastructure of the city (see illustration in link below). Indeed Ginnie Wollaston, Culture Officer of BCC’s Culture Commissioning Service described many in the audience as ‘fed-up’ yet ‘brave’ for their perseverance in the face of current pressures and their dedication to the value of culture.

Arts Champion Scheme

Faith and the missionary zeal for the value of cultural projects and participation (as well as issues of ‘nourishment’ and well being), particularly amongst the economically disadvantaged were familiar refrains heard across the day. Indeed, it was a rich day for those of us from the project who were present (Jones, Saskia Warren, Dave O’Brien) for the occasional discussion of notions of ‘hard to reach’ communities. That such discussions took place between a sizable assembly of arts administrators, artists, community leaders and local policy makers allows for a sense of ethnographic observation regarding the dispositions of the very intermediaries whose work is the object of our study.

Derry: City of Culture 2013

The day was organised into a series of presentations for the first half followed by ‘break-out’ sessions later in the afternoon. The first keynote speaker of the day was Claire McDermott, Cultural Programmer for Derry’s UK City of Culture tenure of 2013.

Something of the potentially high stakes game of culture was conveyed in McDermott’s presentation – illuminating the economic hopes for such initiatives as well as the potential impact of policy on the lived culture of communities like Derry. Of course, what is at stakes is underlined by the fact that in instance a representative of the ‘winners’ was addressing those of a losing bid in the City of Culture round and points of comparison and practical instruction were a focal point.

As is often the case in such instances, we heard a lot about the many interesting things that had taken place – from running competitions to a massed choir of Orphan Annie – and the quantitative evaluation of Derry’s year of events. However, direct comparisons and lessons are hard to draw. For instance, Derry spent around £20m on its programmes compared with Brum’s positing of a headline £121m budget for culture and development (of which £100k is actually for for Culture & Commissioning, £45k for community arts for instance). Derry’s population of around 100k souls is barely that of one of Birmingham’s wards. Furthermore, cultural differences in Derry based on historical/religious traditions meant that the very use of UK in the project title of Capital of Culture was tendentious (Londonderry is of course the city’s official name, Derry the preference of nationalists ): in previous bids in his category Birmingham’s champions have advertised its cultural variety as a basis for its added value and attractions.

McDermott was candid and insightful regarding some of the challenges of Derry’s year, whether in the form of local cynicism to how some initial promises had failed to materialise – largely in terms of financial support for arts organisations. Of particular attention here was a digital history project that she identified as one initiative that had not been fully realised and which fed broader questions about the legacy of the kinds of cultural intermediation represented on the large-scale of the City of Culture. Likewise, and balancing the emphasis on ‘leadership’ manifest in so much of the discourse of intermediaries and policy makers evidenced early in the day, McDermott framed some important ideas about the democratic entitlement of communities. Positioned as consumers or co-creators of cultural work, a priority for Derry’s activity aimed to develop autonomy and empowerment amongst communities in terms of their participation in City of Culture developments. Such ideas were clearly manifest in some of BCC’s current small-scale endeavours and resulting projects and of course resonate with our research as it aims in the next work package of enabling arts commissioning in Balsall Heath and Ordsall by community members.

Soap Box

The morning also featured several ‘Soap Box’ presentations including one from Sheila Arthurs of Active Arts of Birmingham’s Castle Vale area. Castle Vale is an interesting reference point for how cultural activity has played a part in local regeneration initiatives – in this case where the declining quality and reputation of a post-war estate have been overturned by community engagement. Arthurs offered an impassioned testimony of her own tenacity in engaging her fellow residents to get involved and to produce the kinds of cultural work that were on show across the event. Here, I think that Arthurs’ authenticity and connectivity to place and its lived culture carried a different weight to those who come from without of such geographies. Such presentations are heartfelt and whatever ways in which we approach questions of value and meaning in cultural intermediation, they are tangibly affective evidence of the passions such work capitalises on and is felt to evince in participants.

Cultural Pilots

The next session surveyed the pilot programmes of the LAF’s across the Birmingham areas of Castle Vale, Shard End and Balsall Heath. Our research team pinpointed the first two areas as the possible sites for case studies in the current work package investigating community responses to cultural intermediation. Of course, we have decided upon Balsall Heath for our investigations and it was both stimulating and challenging to consider the evidence before us. LAF work is well known to us, as is a wider variety of activity which underpins the manner in which Balsall Heath represents a site where a lot of policy and practice has been enacted.

An apparent challenge was presented for us in consideration of the fact that local company Merida Associates are conducting an evaluation of the impact of the variety of pilots. As Karen Garry of Merida revealed, the research will be published in May and will add to our variety of materials to consider ‘in the round’ of activities, some of which are emerging (or not) in our pilot interviews in the area as points of discussion. It would have been valuable to explore how our research diverges from that of Merida and the servicing of BCC expectations. Likewise, we might have explored the politics of our approach that mean that we are not seeking to repeat impact research or track individual projects within the lineaments of policy discourse and its rationalisation.

Whatever opportunity might have been missed on this occasion, the nature and integrity of academic research was outlined by Phil Jones as a conclusion to this session. In these circumstances this proved to be a useful means of attracting local attention for our project and inviting comment on themes that emerged on the day such as the nature of the ‘hard to reach’ and cultural value.

Certainly, the interest in our work was also couched in some comment from the floor on communications across the local cultural scene, between organisations and policy makers about their work and with audiences too.

Further points about communication and a familiar aspect of conceptual confusion was brought home by an impassioned request from one participant for more activity in the city based on Bollywood dancing. As a representative from one organisation pointed out not only is there regular programming of such dance across venues, there was actually a wealth of specialised activity organised last year – the centenary of Bollywood film. To my mind, these exchanges raised questions about the degree to which any one individual – whether a full-time cultural worker, or an audience member – is able to keep track of what is in effect a vibrant scene of cultural programming of some variety, some of which takes place in spite of a lack of funding. The digital world is one means of advertising the fact that so much takes place in a city the size of Birmingham that it would be a full time job to keep up with it. Whatever the complaints about what appears to be lacking, from one perspective such individuals sound like malcontents who might be failing to appreciate what it means to live in a modest utopia.

Break out

The afternoon saw several break out groups concerned with ‘Empowering individuals and groups – creative leadership opportunities’ (concerning the development of local leadership in the arts; ‘Branding Local Arts – finding the local appeal’ (challenging perception of arts activities in city wards where projects already exist); ‘Building partnerships and collaborations – local to global’ (concerning how to overcome a local lack of infrastructure in order to connect Arts Champion offers with the ambitions of residents). Then there were the two in which I participated: ‘Capturing the local – making it resonate’ which explored how venues connect with areas in which they are not based and ‘Responding to diverse communities and inclusive agendas’ which explored how to overcome ‘cultural barriers of perception’ in order to develop intergenerational and family audiences.

Each explored session themes via presentations from four arts organisations or their representatives. Time prevents an overly detailed outline of the many interesting accounts and personalities present but I was particularly interested in how the Town Hall and Symphony Hall (THSH) had developed a virtual project to explore memories of the legendary rock venue Mothers.

This project resonates with this researcher as the heritage aspects of popular music are an area of specialisation and I was intrigued to discover how the project had created little wooden artefacts in which to house and display MP3 players with some of the accrued testimony (pictured). I was not surprised to find that one or two of these artefacts had disappeared: if there is one thing worth knowing about the canonisation of pop culture as heritage it is that original, and reproduction artefacts are totemic and highly treasured.

Elsewhere, an account from Erdington Arts Café revealed how, in this Northern ward of the city, there were few venues where cultural events could be programmed although there was a wealth of amateur and ‘off the radar’ activity taking place. As someone with a keen interest in the amateur and informal aspects of cultural work this insight proved tantalising and I am eager for more data about the extent of this activity.

Across other discussions I was taken with a reflection from a representative of the Birmingham Rep theatre concerning how so many people within walking distance of the venue rarely attended. Some of the issues impacting on this locality – around the edge of the glittering Broad Street entertainment strip – are explained in part by high levels of deprivation. The nature of relations between institution and locality was further underlined and explored for him by Rep activities at a local hospital in search of families to recruit as audiences. Underwhelmed by the lack of response to the cultural institution amidst the rather vibrant regular business of the hospital this representative gained some kind of enlightenment from his colleagues in health when he discovered that a significant proportion of hospital users were non-English speakers, a fact that impacted on wider average measures of literacy amongst the recruits they sought to enlist. When it comes to definitions of ‘hard to reach’ and assumptions about the need for cultural participation, such factors barely touched upon the kinds of challenges faced by such organisations – for their outreach projects and indeed for their very conceptual basis and faith in the transmission of Culture.

Across these two break-out sessions there was much discussion of the audience and a challenge to the idea of ‘hard to reach’, of who and what this term was meant to describe and in fact whose responsibility it was for being ‘hard to reach’ at all. In tandem there was discussion of the distance described in such terms between those who ‘have’ culture and those who may be without it, which, as we explored (and as Raymond Williams noted) reduces the category to a formulae. Nonetheless, others reflected on the difficulties of cultural work with the ‘hard to reach’, of the cynicism, rejection and sometimes outright hostility to the kinds of projects with which they have sought to engage communities.

In turn, these sessions gave way to some final performances that made use of the Library of Birmingham’s elegant ‘rotunda’ space. These involved the choirs Ex Cathedra and So Vocal as well as poetry from Amera Saleh and Joe Cook of Beatfreeks as well as the current Poet Laureate of Birmingham Jo Skelt. A fittingly cultural turn at the end of day of reflections on cultural work.

Finally

As a veteran of such events it was a pleasant surprise to find that it was both focussed and marshalled evidence from participants in order to direct discussion in meaningful and provocative ways. While there was much for us as researchers to connect with in terms of project themes, there was a wealth of insight that inevitably escaped: many threads might have resulted in further productive discussion. For instance, an issue that emerged for anyone with a perspective on the day overall concerned the intense localism of cultural work in each of Birmingham’s wards and how a missionary zeal for meaningful activity and structure was the object of so much activity. There are particular reasons for this approach given the nature of ‘barriers to participation’ for so many in a city of the size of Birmingham and the logistics of its geography. On the other hand, such devolution poses familiar questions about the quality and ambition of cultural provision for a city like Birmingham and the possibilities of trompe l’oeil projects that look outward as well as inward in bringing together communities rather than running a risk of confirming their separateness – even at the level of the post code.

Birmingham Surrealist Laboratory

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Balsall Heath, Birmingham, Community, Creativity, Cultural Intermediation, Culture, Surrealism

Good news. Just before Christmas, I found out we had successfully been awarded a bid, titled ‘The Birmingham Surrealist Laboratory’ (with Dr Stephen Forcer, Modern Languages, University of Birmingham). Funded by the Communities and Culture Network+, the project builds out of our ongoing Cultural Intermediation work. It represents the first stage of a feasibility study for a heritage space dedicated to the Birmingham Surrealist Movement (1930s-1950s). The seed-funded experimental project aims to investigate the ways in which new digital facilities can help unlock complex issues of cultural heritage and cultural sensitivity in a diverse city. It was inspired by a recent Surrealist House competition staged as part of an art programme for residents in the area of Balsall Heath, south Birmingham (Balsall Heath Biennale 2013; http://www.balsallheathbiennale.com/decorate-your-house-competition).Of particular interest to the project is that Balsall Heath was home to the Birmingham Surrealist Group (Levy 2003; Sidey 2000; Remy 2000), and, indeed, the locale for British Surrealism nationally over the 1940s and 1950s, given Conroy Maddox’s role as a champion of ‘orthodox’ Surrealism (Levy 2003). The Birmingham Group comprised Maddox, Desmond Morris, John Melville and Emmy Bridgwater, and was at the centre of a community of alternative cultural figures including jazz musician George Melly, writers Stuart Gilbert and Henry Green, and poet Henry Reed.

Today, Balsall Heath has been identified as falling within the lowest 5% of neighbourhoods – referred to nationally as ‘Super Output Areas’ – for multiple deprivations (Census 2011). A low take-up from the established, predominantly Pakistani Muslim population in the Surrealist House competition offers productive ground for working through how digital technologies can be used to investigate multiple barriers to mainstream, and more subversive, manifestations of culture and heritage in the city. The project comprises two digital workshops in the Digital Heritage Hub, University of Birmingham, and a roundtable with surrealist experts and community leaders. It also neatly dovetails with the Cultural Intermediation research which will be focusing on communities and the creative economy in Balsall Heath this calendar year.

Reflections on the ECE 6th Conference, University of Toronto, and Artscapes, University of Kent

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Art, Birmingham, cities, communities, conference, connected, Creative economies, geography, Intermediation, Policy, Richard Florida, Toronto

At the end of summer term the academic calendar segues into conference season. First was the ECE 6^th Conference at the Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI), University of Toronto from 18-21^st June. A highly stimulating yet exhausting programme ran from 8.30am till we had finished up to 7 courses of our dinners (around 9.30pm, depending on stamina). The conference was designed as a way to bring early career academics together from around the world in a process of field-rebuilding on the creative economy.  Generosity of funding by MPI enabled early career academics with limited or non-existent research budgets to attend – although Canadian immigration prevented two of the speakers joining us in person (Ammar Palik, Pakistan, and Andrés Goméz-Liévano, Colombia).

Richard Florida gave his time to meet one-on-one with each of the participants as part of a game in academic speed-dating. He also led a discussion on revisiting the creative class where he rightfully noted that 100s of trillions is invested in urban spending and urban practice therefore focus needs to be concentrated on how spending is translated into pragmatic strategy. Casinos, stadiums and bike lanes are not, of course, the simple solution. Issues of inequality and disadvantaged communities in urban space were discussed in the session and throughout the conference, with common agreement that the pay and conditions for the service sector were unacceptable. A set of fascinating papers ensued. In particular I was impressed by the potential of Dr Xingiian Liu’s data visualisations which showed how creative cities are networked in terms of level of workers and interdependence.

The next week it was onto a very different but interesting conference Artscapes: Urban Art and the Public at the University of Kent, 27-28th June. As an example of where site-specificity falls down, Dr Rob Knifton discussed David Mach’s Polaris (1983) which was set on fire by a protester on Southbank who suffered fatal burns. The paper recalled the type of intense public participation, and ‘radical decommissioning’, that artist Simon Pope articulates in the burning of Raymond Mason’s Forward in Birmingham City Centre in 2003 (see my artist talk with Simon here). Of particular note was an excellent keynote talk by Dr Jonathan Vickery which read Jochen Gerz’s 2-3 Strassen in relation to creative cities literature.  Vickery’s consideration of how culture in public space has to map itself onto broad objectives of governance and government usefully brought together the strands of thinking from both conferences which feed into our governance work. Exploring culture as a function of policy is one of our lines of thinking, and, taking a multi-level approach, in the next academic year we will be working with communities to learn more about how they connect into cultural and creative practice. More on this soon.

Theory, practice and dilemmas

Tags

Birmingham, conference, Creative economies, Culture, Festivals, Salford

The other day I was at a symposium at Leeds Metropolitan University called ‘Protests as events/Events as protests’, listening to the dilemmas of some academics who are or have been activists and how they consolidate these different identities in their jobs and research.

The opening address was a conversation between Dr Ian Lamond of Leeds Met and Dave Webb, Chair of UK CND and they discussed how they first became politicised, how this had affected their careers, up to the point of where they were today. Dave offered a useful insight from his many years of experience at CND: “Sometimes there’s a mis-match between what the public perceive you’re doing and what you think you’re doing” he said, “and you don’t know how much your organisation has achieved because you’re too close to it”.

Over the last few weeks I have also discovered that reading for my PhD is actually more productive when I’m on a train. I’m putting this down to the possibility that when I’m among strangers and in strange places, perhaps I feel more in the world so that I can think about it from the point of view of others. All of this, I hope, will be helpful!

I also recently presented at my first ever conference. I made a Pecha Kucha entitled ‘The Role of the University in the Cultural Economy’ and presented it in Salford at the SPARC post-graduate conference on the subject of Theory, Practice, Impact. I found that the ’20 slides, 20 seconds each’ format was a great way to condense academic waffle into a fast paced and fun performance (I even won a prize for it!)

Starting off with my current sticking point – ‘what is the cultural economy?’ and presenting to a non-specialist audience, I crammed in some basic ideas about whether culture means high art and civilisation or popular culture and commercial products, how the value of cultural goods can change over time and happens within an economy or eco-sytem that combines a mix of cultural and social exchanges with the production and consumption of goods, some of which have intangible and non-market values.

I went on to talk about how an economic system combining state-funded activities with commercial production and international business attracts plenty of debate around value for money and justifying public investment. Then I connected that subject of enquiry up with my other big topic – the role of universities in the cultural sector (and the coming of the REF), before suggesting film screenings as ways to acheive public engagement. 

There was just enough time to mention bringing together different groups of people from on and off campus to exchange knowledge, ideas, culture and experience, and how presenting a series of film screenings could work to generate impact in my own research before my slides ran out!

So with public screenings in mind, I’m still looking around at what’s new in the world of film and I was really chuffed to finally get along to one of the leading documentary festivals Sheffield Doc Fest this year – a festival that has such close links with the Sheffield Hallam University that they run an MA programme together. Two standout films for me were the new documentary about Stuart Hall by John Akomfrah (2013) and From The Land to the Sea Beyond (2012 – a repeat of one of last year’s favourite events). This surprisingly moving film was made mainly from BFI archive clips of the British seaside and coastal industries, directed by Penny Woolcock, produced by Sheffield Doc/Fest and Crossover Labs and screened with a live score by British Sea Power.

The Staurt Hall Project film is brand new, was backed by BFI Film Fund (which is also run in conjunction with Sheff Doc Fest) and is meant to be coming out on general release in September, which will be especially significant for those at Birmingham University I expect. 

Before that, however, for those of you in Birmingham there’s a great opportunity coming up this month to see the classic Murnau silent black and white film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) presented by Flatpack Film Festival outdoors at mac arts!

In this film you can really feel the tension in American and European society at the time, perfectly summed up by a single tram ride that crashes two fairy tale worlds into each other – the luxurious, shiny depravity of urban modernity and a sweet, gentle agrarian home. It also had the best action sequences Hollywood could produce at that time, winning an award at the first ever Oscars for unique and artistic production, and I am assured that the screening will go ahead whatever the weather!

6th Annual Experience the Creative Economy Conference, University of Toronto

Tags

Birmingham, cities, Creative economies, Culture, Intermediation, Richard Florida, Toronto

18-21st June 2013

I received some good news recently. I’ve been selected to take part in a highly selective forum for early career scholars who are engaged in research related to the creative economy. The conference hosted by the Martin Prosperity Institute, University of Toronto, brings together 25 individuals from around the world to share and discuss their research. During the four day programme we’ll be looking at opportunities to develop methods and collaborate, as well as exploring the creative scenes and neighbourhoods of Toronto.

For the conference I’ll be presenting a paper entitled:

Local governance, community commissioning and intermediation in the creative economy

Here is my abstract which provides some more detail on the topic:

“Birmingham is at cross-roads in its governance of the creative economy. The second largest city in the UK, Birmingham has high levels of unemployment and inequality, the youngest population in Europe and its ethnic profile is projected to be majority minority by 2020. Contradictions in its cultural policy strategy include ambitions to develop a global city for culture and creativity, with simultaneous cuts in investment from local government and regional arts bodies resulting in a downward trend of arts provision in educational and community spaces.

Tracing processes of cultural intermediation (Bourdieu 1979; Woo 2012), this paper investigates the methods of connecting communities in the creative economy through self-organizing neighborhood arts groups. Balsall Heath, one of Birmingham City Council’s Priority Neighborhoods with multiple social deprivations, is a testing ground for new community-led budgeting and community culture commissioning pilots. Emerging arts infrastructure include Ort, a commercially run café, music and arts space with an ethos of community engagement, and Balsall Heath Biennale, a local partnership, who investigate what the role of artists can be in the 21st century through neighborhood practice.

Policy associated with the ‘Big Society’ (Cameron 2010), with emphasis on localized and distributed forms of governance alongside reductions on public spending, is transforming the role of the state and cultural organizations. Using the case studies of Ort and Balsall Heath Biennale, this paper investigates the increased expectation placed on community-driven initiatives and a climate of major cuts to public services to conceptualize the future of intermediation in the creative economy.”

Once the programme is finalised by Dr Melanie Fasche of University of Toronto I’ll post it here to give further information on discussants et al.

Laura’s travel diary

Tags

Birmingham, cities, connected, Creative economies, Festivals, Manchester, Salford

The last few weeks have been an exciting, stimulating and educational time for me as I have embarked on the early stages of my PhD journey, quite literally!

The first adventure was at the FutureEverything Summit in Manchester. Over two days of presentations in the rather impersonal Piccadilly 4 building, followed by an illuminated mass choreography down at Salford Quays, I experienced at close hand some pioneering work in the complementary fields of digital art, urbanism and technology. I even got to stand for several minutes in the dark inside the University of Salford’s own sound-proofed anechoic chamber in the Newton building, close to the SURF centre, listening to a processed audio installation, all part of the annual FutureEverything festival experience.

A theme running through many of the conference presentations was that of people re-appropriating frameworks and processes in order to ‘hack’ existing systems of urban living and develop smart and sustainable solutions to some of the problems created by cities. These interventions start with individuals using a combination of social media and public spaces to connect active citizens into responsive communities, where innovative and co-created practices can generate action. “In terms of organising and deciding” said Dan Hill in his keynote speech “the government now has competition”. Stirring stuff indeed.

The next day it was onwards to Birmingham, in search of more ideas and evidence to help inform the shape of my thesis, which currently looks at the role of universities as intermediaries in the festival economy. With visits to Bristol, Brighton and Bradford planned too, I was excited about having the opportunity to visit these great British cities and explore their civic architecture.

Last week in Brighton at the Beyond the Campus 2nd Workshop, Dr Paul Benneworth said “as social and spatial forms, buildings reflect their use”. He was talking specifically here about universities (with reference to Liverpool Hope University’s Cornerstone creative campus located in Everton) but it brought to my mind the words of walking urban historian Ben Waddington, who had revealed the psycho-geography of hidden architecture in Birmingham on his Invisible Architecture tour at the start of Flatpack film festival 3 weeks earlier.

Flatpack is an ambitious new festival in Birmingham that this year spanned 11 days in March. I went for the first weekend, my first event being the city walk. It was snowing heavily and freezing cold, but a crowd of 20 or so gathered at the Film Bug Hub, a vacant shop taken over by the festival team to house logistics in the Colmore Business District (one of the festival partners) to set out on the 90 minute tour.

Other partner venues I visited included Birmingham cathedral, in which I saw a screening of the silent Dreyer classic The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) with piano score, a local café screening free short films in its basement and the recently restored Electric cinema by the station.

On Sunday I caught a bus over to the University of Birmingham’s Bramall Music Building to see the oldest surviving animated feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) with live percussive accompaniment. This last event was a collaboration with the university’s new Arts and Science Festival, a public programme of exhibitions, talks, performances, workshops and screenings organised by the Cultural Engagement team which, in the words of Ian Grosvenor, Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement “celebrates the University’s identity and makes available the first class research generated by one of the UKs leading higher education institutions”.

Back to Leeds to catch up on some sleep, but literally the next day I was off again, to Paintworks in Bristol this time, to hear brief updates from the latest developments coming out of the major AHRC community based research projects across the country, including news from the four AHRC research hubs, one of which is ‘home’ to the FutureEverything festival director Drew Hemment. Literally hundreds of organisations are currently enrolled in AHRC-backed research projects, in areas ranging from heritage archives to niche food producers, fashion SMEs to animation film makers. I can send more information about individual projects to anyone who wants to know more, but what is really good is that there are some recurring themes and individuals in these early stages of evidence-gathering that will help as I establish my research questions for the next phase.

I’ll need a few days at home to really think about what these are going to be, but with the Bradford Film Festival underway this week, that’s not quite happened yet!

Big Story Interviews

Tags

Art, Birmingham, cities, communities, Creative economies, Culture, Engagement, Intermediation

One of the things I’ve been working on alongside Natasha are films of Big Story interviews with key ‘movers and shakers’ from Birmingham’s creative and cultural economy. The aim of the interviews has been to develop a common understanding of the site-specific and broader contextual stories around the development of the creative and cultural economy in each place. These narratives bridge the historical research by Ian and Natasha and governance research by Beth, Karen and I. Filming in Birmingham has already been done with: Roger Shannon, Film Producer; Derek Bishton, creator of photography magazine Ten.8; Anita Bhalla, Chair of Creative Cities Partnership and Head of Public Space Broadcasting, BBC; and Lara Ratnarajah, digital and business expert.  Overlapping with the Manchester work, Natasha and I also travelled down to London to interview Ben Kelly, the designer of The Hacienda nightclub. The rest of the Manchester Big Story interviews will be conducted by Natasha, Beth and Karen using walking techniques and photographs in an aural and visual mapping of the stories.  We’re hoping to facilitate focus groups in both Manchester and Birmingham at the end to share and refine the stories, building a picture of the distinctiveness of each place. Using the concept of ‘stories’, the Big Story methodology we’ve developed will develop urban narratives about change, transformation and the reconfiguration of places in dialogue with existing creative cities discourse.

 I’ve attached a short 6 minute clip of the first interview which features Roger Shannon, shot by film-makers Aman Alimshand and Karishma Popat from Birmingham City University. Enjoy!

New beginnings

Tags

Art, Birmingham, cities, Creative economies, Hello Culture, Manchester

We travelled to SURF at Salford University on Friday 30^th November to meet with Beth and Karen on the Governance workpackage.  This part of the project will include looking at governance through the role of the state, the rise of cities (so multi-level governance), institutions and knowledge networks. We also discussed the importance of capturing the creative practices of those organisations which are not usually categorised as part of the creative economy, such as the NHS employing video-makers or creating exhibitions. Big Story explorative walking interviews with key creative intermediaries from Greater Manchester and Greater Birmingham will connect the work being done on the Historical workpackage by Natasha and Ian with the mapping of contemporaneous practice by the Manchester and Birmingham researchers (Karen and Saskia).

In other news, Paul Long chaired a workshop on Transforming Cross Innovations as part of the Hello Culture conference on digital technologies, with Steve Harding of Birmingham City University talking on Cross-Innovations and me talking about this project (Custard Factory, 23 November 2012). Beyond a fruitful discussion with delegates on their potential role in the research and the projected outputs of the two projects, I met some interesting practitioners, including Deirdre Figueiredo from Craftspace and Alex Corkindale from mac who I’m following up with.

Thank you to those who have given their time already to be interviewed. In the past fortnight I’ve spoken with:  Debbie Kermode (IKON); Josephine Reichert (Ort); Noel Dunne (Creative Alliance); Dorothy Wilson (mac); Mike Tweddle (BE Festival); Steve Ball (Birmingham REP); Henrietta Lockhart and Adam Jaffer (BMAG).