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.

One day workshop: Artists working within Higher Education

Tags

Art, cities, cultural; creative economy; community; art; Birmingham; Manchester, Engagement, Festivals

Artists Working within Higher Education was an event I attended on 21 January 2015, held in a space in Manchester currently being used by Castlefield Gallery.

There is already an excellent and comprehensive overview of the day here written by PhD researcher Rachel Marsden, who took the photo above, but for the benefit of the Cultural Intermediation project, I have written my own overview of the day’s speakers and discussions, concentrating on some of things I found most interesting. Ways that individuals negotiate issues of structure and agency while engaging in university-based cultural production forms a big part of my own research, and this day also highlighted examples of this.

The event was part of Co-producing legacy: What is the role of artists within Connected Communities projects?

The legacy project runs from Feb 2014 to June 2015 at University of Sheffield, with partners in Manchester and Leeds, and explores the legacy of the AHRC/ESRC funded Connected Communities programme. The research already carried out in the Connected Communities programme has been strongly community focussed and much of it has been co-produced with local communities and groups of non-academic practitioners. The methods or modes of enquiry developed and employed have included some innovative artistic practices combined with social science methodologies. This particular part of the legacy project, which has the title Artists Working within Higher Education, has looked at 60 of the Connected Communities projects (out of a total of around 250) in which academics and artists have worked together to realise ideas in imaginative and participatory ways, and today’s event here was organised to disseminate some of the findings so far. Out of these 60 projects, in which artists have done things like run workshops, contribute to journal articles and book chapters and facilitate parts of projects and produce work that draw on their unique strengths and skills, 9 cases have been researched ‘in depth’ with the aim of understanding how existing and emerging ways of working across disciplines and in collaboration with non-HEI partners may be changing the research terrain.

The choice of space for this event reflected this ambition too, as it was not a University-managed space but the ’empty’ top floor of an eight storey former office building with a screen and projector, a kettle and lots of folding chairs. Federation House is a large building close to the Victoria Station in Manchester, on the corner of Federation St and Balloon Street. I have always liked the name Balloon Street, its name refers to the first balloon ascent made in Manchester by James Sadler in 1784! The street is also home to the headquarters of the Co-operative Bank, in fact the Co-operative Group (formerly the Co-operative Wholesale Society) have been based in this part of Manchester since the late 19^th century and Federation House is one of their unoccupied buildings currently being used by Castlefield Gallery as a ‘pop-up’ project space.

More than just a gallery, Castlefield Gallery has also been working as an art space development agency since 2006, brokering low cost project and gallery spaces for artists and creative practitioners in shopping centres and empty buildings in the North West of England, an initiative that goes under the heading New Art Spaces.

Castlefield Gallery’s director Kwong Lee gave a quick welcome in which he mentioned this initiative, then legacy project co-investigators Kate Pahl and Steve Pool introduced the day, beginning with an outline of the Connected Communities programme which seems to get more complicated every time I see someone attempt it! Kate went on to say that some of the individuals who have been involved in this legacy project describe themselves as artist/academic ‘hybrids’ and they recognise that their outputs will face different audiences. A slide in the introductory power point mentioned that amongst emerging issues in this project was the notion that as co-investigators, artists felt they have to ‘lose something’ in the process of collaboration, which provoked an immediate intervention from an audience member, an artist, who asked should that be ‘gain’ also? And another asked if artists felt that they lost something in collaboration with higher education, then what did academics ‘lose’? In this way a discursive tone for the day was set, as Kate, encouraged by the intervention, explained that as the day’s sessions would be recorded and these discussions would contribute to the research project.

The first speaker on the programme was Jeanie Scott, representing A-N Artists Information Company, which is now a membership organisation for visual artists dedicated to research, advocacy and support for the sector. The company used to produce Artist’s Newsletter magazine, a valuable guide to issues and developments in the arts scene. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a copy, but this trusty journal used to be a must-have subscription for arts developers and practitioners while I was working in the cultural sector. Concerned with what the employment options currently are in the visual arts sector, particularly for the 4,500 new graduates entering a workforce where long periods of unpaid labour are now the norm, the organisation has recently been involved in the Warwick Commission’s Cultural Value project (whose report came out yesterday).

Jeanie talked us around this fascinating map of The Ecology of the Visual Arts produced by Emily Speed

This was commissioned by A-N in 2013, here the arts sector has been imagined as a city and its constituent groups are represented by buildings. Interesting how the word ecology seems to be replacing the word economy in documents dealing with cultural policy.

Next, Professor Vanessa Toulmin talked about University of Sheffield’s Festival of the Mind, a festival that fitted the criteria for my PhD research so well that I now wish I had been able to include it in my fieldwork last year. Taking notes during this personal summary was the next best thing, though, as Vanessa included a huge amount of self-reflexive commentary in her presentation, something I have been seeking in my interviews with festival organisers. She is an academic and a historian, specialising in early film, circuses and travelling and fairground entertainments. She is currently Director of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield and also worked for a number of years on heritage and regeneration projects with Blackpool Council. It was the idea of “city vibrancy” demonstrated by this work with Blackpool that she told us she had used as the argument to access £35,000 worth of free venue space from Sheffield’s local authority for the Festival of the Mind in 2014. Bus and train sponsorship followed, as the event took place in fresher’s week to offer newcomers to Sheffield “a curated way of knowing the city”.

She spoke at length about how further in kind contributions were leveraged and how she believes she gets things done by working strategically through all levels of the university and using the procedures already in place, but I’ll leave all that for my thesis and concentrate on the bits about the role of artists here. 30 new commissions were funded and through this, the festival’s public content was produced. Artworks and installations were made by artists working in collaboration with academics from the University of Sheffield, with many of the connections linking arts practices with scientific researchers. To start the ball rolling, a speed dating event took place on a specially hired bus, with tea and cake laid on for successful ‘matches’ to sit down and work out their ideas together. Vanessa modelled the way the commissions worked on her own experience of working with sculptor Anthony Bennett. With a background in entertainments rather than arts (an important distinction that is sometimes not clearly articulated, I think) she found that the artist’s ways of working were a “new world” to her, but it seems that she stayed at arm’s length and allowed the practices to evolve. She also believes these projects brought back “the joy of discovery” to scientists who it turned out were not at all reluctant to get involved and even built in funding for some of the projects into their own bids. Money for arts projects is “peanuts” compared to the sums they usually bid for, she explained, they were used to dealing in bigger amounts than the festival’s entire budget. As a result of this big drive for engagement in the run up to the 2014 festival (it’s third edition and it seems, was the biggest so far) it would appear that the entire science research programme now builds funding for engagement into all their bids and University of Sheffield is a Catalyst University for Public Engagement with Research. Sheffield doesn’t want to be “the university on the hill”, she said.

Next James Oliver from the Centre for Cultural Partnerships, University of Melbourne, led a short, discursive session before lunch that took as its starting point something a previous speaker had said: ‘everything is related’. He wanted us to think about how relations are frequently unequal, reading a line from a letter to Marx from Engels sent during his time spent in Manchester about ‘dialectical ideas’. Binaries are unhelpful, James said, like the way cultural and creative work becomes labelled as practice-based or theoretical in hierarchical relations within academic discourse. Practice was a way to think-through problems and creativity should not be thought of as simply innovation or as a way to ‘translate’ social science, but a “mode of imagination and improvisation, which is open to other ways of being”. Durning the discussion which followed, a comment from a practicing artist was interesting, as she had been artist-in-residence in an archive project within a University department which is one I have encountered as part of my fieldwork.

As an artist working with, or alongside, different groups in a university setting – including staff who weren’t academics and students – “your status is unclear” she said. And while it is common for art to disrupt the brief it has been set, she wondered how the artist’s role is constructed prior to the residency and suggested that if the artists don’t conform to expectations, where does that leave the commissioner? I understand the problem and I agree that the production of art is a disruptive process and one that often takes critique as its central project, but as institutions are not keen on being made to feel uncomfortable, there are limits to autonomy which are often experienced in self-reflexive, internalised ways.

The discussion moved on to the subject of the project-based model in which most of the Connected Communities work has taken place, with many comments about low pay and precarious employment from artists and academics alike: “How are we affording the time to be here today?” and “We are talking to ourselves most of the time”. Vanessa made an interesting point, suggesting that “most academics don’t know how to pay artists”. She had been surprised by how much the artists in the Festival of the Mind project expected to get paid varied, which isn’t the case in the entertainment industry as it uses Equity pay levels as basis for a pay system.

The afternoon sessions seemed to take the works of art themselves as the focus for the talks, starting with artist and Professor in Creative Practice Steve Swindells’ talk, from the perspective of Huddersfield University, about what it means to be an ‘engaged artist’ working within an ‘engaged university’ in a town rather than a city. Creatively engaging individuals from the local community using dialogues that involve art practices and occupying spaces in the town is the idea behind the present ROTOЯ partnership which he has developed between Huddersfield Art Gallery and the University of Huddersfield. He describes it as a mutually beneficial relationship that showcases research by academic staff in the faculties of art, design and architecture. Steve mentioned a recommendation of the 2014 Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment, which was “Every town and city should have an urban room where people can go to understand and debate the past, present and future of that place.” Urban rooms, already popular in Japan and China, would help to bridge the gap between architects and the general public and are places where the history of and future plans for the area are displayed and discussed. In the ROTOЯ project, work was exhibited in Huddersfiled that had been made in the town, but had previously only been shown in national and international venues. The project outputs include this published collection of critical essays and we heard that the ICA in London are also now partners in the project.

Finally Sheffield-based artist Paul Evans talked about being the recipient of a grant from the Leverhulme Residency Programme which allowed him to develop new work with an academic partner. Paul is interested in exploring the cultural significance of animals, with a particular interest in whales, so the grant enabled him to make a series of artworks based on 10 months spent in the Cardiff Osteological Research Group’s bone room at Cardiff University. While this was an experience he had clearly enjoyed, it was interesting that he mentioned in this presentation that the Leverhulme Trust was established by William Hesketh Lever, the founder of Lever Brothers (now UniLever). “It’s important to know who you’re in bed with” he said.

Paul’s work in Cardiff was mentioned in the Osteological Research Group’s 2014 REF impact case study in which he is quoted as saying “My collaboration with Dr Mulville and Guerilla Archaeology has had a substantial impact on my professional practice”, which is something that is also important to the legacy project.

The arts practice and co-production methodologies discussed here have illustrated a range of ways of working, but what I am interested in is how an artist’s autonomy fits with and complements an institution’s own objectives. All of us want to practice according to our values, which leads inevitably to conflicts of interest, so who is it that changes their approach or ‘loses something’ and what is losing something worth? Chantal Mouffe has this to say on strategies for hegemonic resistance in the domain of art and culture, which is where subjectivities are constructed:

‘Critical artistic practices do not contribute to the counter-hegemonic struggle by deserting the institutional terrain but by engaging with it, with the aim of fostering dissent and creating a multiplicity of agonistic spaces where the dominant consensus is challenged and where new modes of identification are made available.’ (Mouffe, 2013, Artistic Strategies in Politics and Political Strategies in Art)

(James Oliver also made reference to Chantal Mouffe and agonistic pluralism in his talk)

In contemporary, post-fordist conditions, where according to Mouffe “forms of exploitation characteristic of the times when manual labor was dominant have been replaced by new ones”, the objective of critical artistic practices should be the production of new subjectivities that contribute to the development of better social relations. Her comments aren’t specifically directed at the context of artists working with universities, but it’s the spirit of the argument that seems to fit.

While understanding the reasons why some prefer to advocate complete withdrawal from the existing powerful and hegemonic institutions and concentrate their efforts in constructing alternative social forms, Mouffe’s strategy is one of engagement with institutions as part of resistance to them. Believing, like some of today’s speakers, that the institution can be changed from within, she says “hegemonic confrontation” takes place in “the multiplicity of places where hegemony is constructed” implying that critical artistic practices will encourage agonistic spaces to occur inside the very institutions which secure the dominant hegemony, in the hope they can transform the way they function. It’s a pluralistic perspective that I think emerges repeatedly in Connected Communities projects, and while not all participants in the 250 projects (and counting) are obviously in pursuit of radical political change, the project is finding ways to hold onto individual differences, articulate them, value them and find equivalence among them.

Find out more:

Co-producing Legacy is led by Kate Pahl (School of Education, University of Sheffield), Helen Graham (School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds) Steve Pool (Artist) and Amanda Ravetz (Manchester School of Art)

Interview with Kwong Lee on New Art Spaces

ROTOЯ partnership

Cultivating Culture Symposium: Birmingham

Tags

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.

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.

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!

The Big Tent Activate Summit, Delhi, India

Tags

Art, cities, communities, Creative economies, Delhi, digital, google, guardian, India, Intermediation, internet

Organised by Google, The Guardian and MediaGuru. 21 March 2013.

In March 2013, I was invited by United Kingdom Trade & Investment to attend a summit on the future of digital and media in India as an expert on the creative economy. The Big Tent Activate Summit, held at the Taj Palace Hotel, Delhi, was financially underwritten by Google along with The Guardian and MediaGuru, an Indian media services company. A short statement from the organisers explained the agenda was to “discuss and debate the impact of the Internet on the Indian economy, politics, media and culture.” Marking the first Summit to be held in India, Eric Schimdt (CEO of Google) and Alan Rusbridger (Editor of The Guardian) talked alongside politicians, media specialists, economists, academics, digital entrepreneurs and, to a lesser extent, marginalised groups and individuals. Weaving a somewhat problematic path through commercial gains to be made by big business and digital as a force for challenging inequalities in India, the summit nevertheless raised some interesting issues.

There are 150 million internet users in India. However, despite appearing huge in comparison to UK metrics, this figure only represents 12% of the Indian population. Of this 12%, the majority are on narrowband with just 1% estimated to have broadband. By point of comparison, the US has 80% penetration and UK 73% penetration (in market-speak). The internet effects how we work, govern, bank, learn and entertain. Furthermore, it has the capabilities to transform how we communicate with each other. As Kapil Sibal, Minister for Communication and Information Technology, told delegates the internet ‘allows communities to talk to each other’. Yet Section 66 was widely discussed by panellists as a curtailment of the democratic freedom of expression with divergent opinions on whether this was justified to prevent violent protests and killings in the most extreme of cases. Despite low usage, Ministers Omar Abdullah and Shashi Tharoor did agree that social media, and Twitter especially, was increasingly taken seriously in politics due to their power to influence as well as amplify volatile subjects.

In regards to equality, Sibal and Schimdt urged the Indian state to ensure wireless networks and fibre optics were installed so that everyday people can reach information. Further, devices must also be affordable, in particular smart mobile phones. Interestingly, 3/4^th of the growth in internet usage has been through mobile and tablet therefore web publishers targeting Indian markets need to consider small screen experience with low text, in contrast to the big screen computer experience we were first introduced to in the UK.

Innovative battery-operated education labs used in rural villages were showcased, which took ZAYA, a mobile and digital learning experience, to areas that lack text books and sometimes electricity. A breakout session at lunch by Radar also showed how technology could support marginalised groups through the usage of simple text messaging as a means of citizen reporting in politically, socially and geographically isolated areas. Dalat women were amongst those who shared their stories with Rusbridger, eventually getting past hotel security only with help from the organisers, demonstrating the caste system still shapes everyday experiences in India.

During my 5 day visit I also had the chance to pay a visit to Sarai which is part of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies located in north Delhi. Sarai in an interdisciplinary research centre which runs the Media City Research project and Cybermoholla. These are digital labs located in neighbourhoods in Delhi aimed at connecting with diverse socio-economic groups and young people; echoing some of our community engagement priorities in Birmingham and Manchester on the Cultural Intermediation project. Also Sarai’s environment is itself a case study of a cultural intermediary, connecting creative practice, theory and political action from its position within a megacity in the global south. I was very impressed by my brief visit to Sarai and hope to start a conversation with the academics and practitioners based there on our shared interests going forward…

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).

Cultural Intermediation’s photostream

Tags

Art, Birmingham, cities, communities, Creative economies, The Drum

Cultural Intermediation’s photostream on Flickr.

Here’s some images of the activities and exhibitions written about on our project blog!