Big Questions, No Answers.

by Ruth Barker, 22 Jan 2011

Hello,

Hope you’re all well. I didn’t post last week, although I did write an article, and then decided not to hit SAVE. I’ve been mulling it over all week, and then thought I’d just tell you about it instead.

The thing is, I went to a brilliant event last week, so thanks to Creative Scotland’s Andrew Leitch for inviting me to attend an Inspiring Communities Peer Learning event in Glasgow.
You can learn more about the Inspire fund here, and I have to say that all of the projects represented on the day seemed really exciting. We heard some great presentations by a fantastic bunch of motivated, enthusiastic, sensitive, and engaged people – all of whose projects are at different stages of development. Because none of the projects are complete, I really admired the candour and generosity that everyone showed in sharing their experiences with the group.

I left the day feeling really optimistic about the projects that are taking place in Scotland at the moment, and the people who are making them happen. From the community leaders to the arts professionals (and everyone else in between) currently involved in the Inspire projects, I got a huge sense of commitment, energy, and integrity. I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing how the projects grow, and hopefully we’ll be able to cover some of them on PAR+RS.

Afterwards, I started thinking about questions of responsibility, which is what I tried to write my blog post about, but it came out all wrong, so I’m glad I didn’t post it. I’m going to try again though. But I’d like to make clear that these questions were not triggered by any of the Inspire projects I heard about. It’s more a train of thought that I’ve been mulling over for a while, and this seemed a timely moment to voice it.

I’m going to try and put my thoughts into questions, rather than answers, because that’s how I’m feeling about it all.

1. Are community-led, participatory projects important?
(yes, I think they are. I’m not going to answer all of my own questions, but this is one that I’m fairly clear about!)

2. Is art a useful tool with which to work through complex social situations and challenges, in order to bring benefit to people?

3. Do those benefits include things like reductions in anti-social behaviour, increases in participants’ skills or employability, improvements in an area’s infrastructure or appearance in order to attract other investment, or psychological benefits like an increase in self esteem?

4. Are arts professionals the best informed, educated and / or supported to make decisions about or deliver social benefits?

5. Should other services be taking the lead in funding, employing, or supporting arts professionals to provide these services, if it is felt that this model (of community led participatory arts projects) is in fact the best way to deliver these benefits?

6. Is this likely ‘in the current economic climate’?

I suppose I worry that we, as arts professionals, might not always have the skills needed to work in this way. After all, if you do take a look at the studies that sociologists and psychologists have done into the questions of deprivation for example, or self esteem, you quickly find that this is a complicated and sophisticated area. I’m certainly no expert in any of this, and I’m concerned that often we (I include myself in this) look to ‘common sense’ rather than any evidence, to choose what decision to make or which route to follow. More worryingly, we as arts professionals might decide to engage with a project based on its merits as art, rather than by understanding its merits (or challenges) as ‘social action’.

I say ‘more worryingly’ but is that worrying? After all, art is our specialism – it’s what we value and know about and believe in. You see my quandary here. Really I’m talking about priorities. About who makes decisions, and how they know whether they’re doing the right thing. And which scale of ‘right things’ they’re looking at (- is this the right art decision, or the right social decision? Because they may not always be the same).

I sometimes also worry that in working with such integrity and goodwill, artists might be making themselves vulnerable sometimes. Social workers and others learn about maintaining professional distance when they engage with challenging situation. I don’t think that artists get the same kind of support. Would they want it?

Maybe I’ve got this all wrong and that really we should be celebrating a ‘portfolio approach’ (Yuk! Awful phrase) where different professionals from the fields of healthcare, crime prevention, education, and the arts, can each contribute to improving our social environment. I suppose partly it comes down to the role we think of art as having in our society. What is art for, after all? And that’s perhaps the biggest question of all.

Yours thoughtfully,

R.

Can of Worms!