Arts, Culture and Community Development 9781447340522

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Rethinking Community Development

Arts, Culture and Community Development Edited by Rosie R. Meade and Mae Shaw

ARTS, CULTURE AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

ARTS, CULTURE AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Edited by Rosie R. Meade and Mae Shaw

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2021 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4473-4050-8 hardcover ISBN 978-1-4473-4051-5 paperback ISBN 978-1-4473-4053-9 ePub ISBN 978-1-4473-4052-2 ePdf The right of Rosie R. Meade and Mae Shaw to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editors and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Liam Roberts Front cover image: Ian Martin Bristol University Press and Policy Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed in Great Britain by CMP, Poole

To those who struggle for a more equal and democratic world through and for the arts. The authors of Chapter Four dedicate the chapter to their city.

Contents List of figures and tables Series editors’ preface Acknowledgements Notes on contributors One

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Arts, culture and community development: introductory essay Rosie R. Meade and Mae Shaw

1

PART 1 Making and sharing collective meanings Two Reflections on the decolonising dance praxis of Grupo Bayano 21 Antonia Darder and Sharon Cronin Three The power of song 41 Leon Rosselson Four ‘The people awoke awake’:​observations from Beirut’s 51 walls in the 17 October moment Arek Dakessian, Célia Hassani and Sarah Shmaitilly Five Muralism, disputes and imaginaries of community 73 resistance: case studies from settlements in Santiago de Chile and Rio de Janeiro Alexis Cortés, Palloma Menezes and Apoena Mano Six Contemporary expressions of arts and culture 89 as protest: consonance, dissonance, paradox and opportunities for community development? Daniel H. Mutibwa Seven Queering community development in DIY punk spaces 111 Kirsty Lohman and Ruth Pearce PART 2 Negotiating practice and policy Eight Access to communication as resistance and struggle in the 21st century Pradip Ninan Thomas Nine Unholy alliance or way of the future? The intertwinements of community development, cultural planning and cultural industries in municipal and regional cultural strategies in Finland Miikka Pyykkönen

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Ten

Frameworks for assessing and reconsidering empowerment in community arts Samson Kei Shun Wong Eleven Maintaining a critical approach to collaborative art and youth work practice in neoliberal times Fiona Whelan and Jim Lawlor Twelve The kinaesthetics of community: social circus, corporeal aesthetics and the balancing act of a development practice in (post-)neoliberal conditions Jennifer Beth Spiegel Thirteen Building peaceful communities: collaboration and co-​creation through theatre Nilanjana Premaratna

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Afterword Index

241 247

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List of figures and tables Figures 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 5.1 5.2 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 11.1

‘The civil war ended today’ (middle text) Ara’s ‘Beirut at my 17’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am … and who are you?’ ‘Sarah and Jad, Mama, we miss you and we love you’ ‘For Nael in France’ ‘In the soil of my country my mother sleeps’ ‘I miss my mother, come on and fall you system’ ‘I am not leaving’ ‘It’s called balad, not Solidere’ ‘Dams and quarries are public property’ Stencils of some of Lebanon’s political leaders ‘Who killed Mahdi Amel?’ ‘This time history decided not to repeat itself’ Mural in La Victoria Graffiti on the wall of UPP Santa Marta Participants instructed to paint background before details Erosion of home? (a) Erosion of home? (b) Free coloring if I were Fiona and Jim

55 56 58 59 60 62 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 79 83 182 184 184 186 195

The ladder of participation Adapted ladder of participation

179 180

Tables 10.1 10.2

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SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

Rethinking Community Development Communities are a continuing focus of public policy and citizen action worldwide. The purposes and functions of work with communities of place, interest and identity vary between and within contexts and change over time. Nevertheless, community development –​as both an occupation and as a democratic practice concerned with the demands and aspirations of people in communities –​has been extraordinarily enduring. This book series aims to provide a critical re-​evaluation of community development in theory and practice, in the light of new challenges posed by the complex interplay of emancipatory, democratic, self-​help and managerial imperatives in different parts of the world. Through a series of edited and authored volumes, Rethinking Community Development will draw together international, cross-​generational and cross-​disciplinary perspectives, using contextual specificity as a lens through which to explore the localised consequences of global processes. Each text in the series will: • promote critical thinking, through examining the contradictory position of community development, including the tensions between policy imperatives and the interests and demands of communities; • include a range of international examples, in order to explore the localised consequences of global processes; • include contributions from established and up-​and-​coming new voices, from a range of geographical contexts; • offer topical and timely perspectives, drawing on historical and theoretical resources in a generative and enlivening way; • inform and engage a new generation of practitioners, bringing new and established voices together to stimulate diverse and innovative perspectives on community development. If you have a broad or particular interest in community development that could be expanded into an authored or edited collection for this book series, contact: Mae Shaw Rosie Meade Sarah Banks [email protected]  [email protected]  [email protected]

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Acknowledgements We offer our sincere thanks to all of the contributors who have dedicated such creativity, energy and enthusiasm to this collaborative project. COVID-​19 has rendered these very uncertain and trying times and we want to acknowledge the particular generosity and resolve contributors have shown throughout the process. We are indebted to Ian Martin, who once again has offered his original artwork as a cover image for a book in this series. His paintings continue to enhance the distinctiveness and shared identity of the series as a whole. Sarah Banks has been a wise and inspiring colleague, who has played a tremendous part in the conceptualisation, development and consolidation of the Rethinking Community Development series. Additionally, huge thanks are due to Sarah Bird and Amelia Watts-​Jones for their patient and encouraging commitment to the series and to the smooth passage of this book into publication. Finally, we want to acknowledge the enormous contribution of the anonymous peer reviewers, the copy-​ editors, printers, Policy Press production and marketing teams, and the many friends and colleagues who have given their quiet but essential support to the publication of this book.

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Notes on contributors Alexis Cortés is Professor in the Department of Sociology and

Director of the Masters programme in Sociology at the University Alberto Hurtado, Chile. He earned his PhD in Sociology at the Instituto de Estudios Sociales y Políticos (IESP-​UERJ), The Institute of Social and Political Studies at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His research interests include: Latin American sociology, (urban) social movements and critical thinking. He currently directs the FONDECYT Project ‘Radiography of Latin American Critical Thinking: CLACSO Anthologies as an Approach to a Regional Canon.’ He is author of Favelados and Pobladores in the Social Sciences: the Theoretical Construction of a Social Movement (Published in Portugues, 2018, EdUERJ, Rio de Janeiro). Sharon Cronin is Professor of Early Childhood Education at Goddard

College and the Founder and Director of the Center for Cultural and Linguistic Democracy in Seattle, US. She has over 30 years of experience in bilingual and culturally relevant early childhood and elementary education. She co-​leads the Teaching Umoja Participatory Action Research 15-​Year Commitment, examining the ethnic identity, bicultural, cross-​cultural and tri-​literacy development of children of colour, along with a team of 40 co-​researchers from across the United States and Port Royal and Moore Town, Jamaica. Her writings include Soy Bilingue: Language, Culture, and Young Latino Children. Through the Soy Bilingue Network, she develops and promotes the Soy Bilingue Adult Dual Language Model for early childhood education. She is also co-​founder, leader and dancer with Grupo Bayano, a community-​based African Caribbean dance group that works with subaltern communities to support cultural values and traditions. Arek Dakessian is a research fellow at Queen Margaret University,

Edinburgh, Scotland. His research interests include cultural production, material culture, historical sociology and political alterity. Arek is also a founding member of LIVED, an Edinburgh-​based charity (www. livedprojects.org). ORCiD: 0000-​0001-​7792-​6862. Antonia Darder holds the Leavey Endowed Chair of Ethics and

Moral Leadership at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, US, and the post of Distinguished Visiting Faculty at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She is an American Educational Research

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Association Fellow and recipient of the AERA Scholars of Color Lifetime Contribution Award, and the Freire Social Justice Award. Her scholarship focuses on issues of racism, political economy, social justice and education. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Culture and Power in the Classroom (20th anniversary edition), Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love; A Dissident Voice: Essays on Culture, Pedagogy, and Power; Freire and Education, and The Student Guide to Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. She is also co-​author of After Race: Racism After Multiculturalism and co-​editor of The Critical Pedagogy Reader, Latinos and Education: A Critical Reader, and the International Critical Pedagogy Reader, which was awarded the 2015 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award. Célia Hassani is a doctoral researcher at Aix-​Marseille Université,

France, focusing on the role of cultural intermediaries in relation to cultural policy in Lebanon. Her professional experience extends to the cultural field in the MENA region, particularly in cultural policy as a consultant in cultural capacity building and the designing of activities for cultural actors in the region. She also has been a doctoral fellow at the Orient Institute, Beirut. Her research engagements include a forthcoming report entitled ‘Le financement public de la culture au Liban:Comprendre le système institutionnel et ses mécanismes’, in Insights into Cultural Policies in Lebanon, edited by Hanane Hajj Ali and Nadia von Maltzahn. Beirut: 2020, in addition to a book chapter, ‘Pratiques artistiques dans l’espace public urbain beyrouthin. Contexte et processus’ in Dispositive der Transformation Kulturelle Praktiken und künstlerische Prozesse, published by Hildesheimer Universitätsschriften, in 2019. Her previous research training includes social anthropological work on the modalities of inclusion of Palestinian artists in the Lebanese context, as a professional MSc student from Université de la Sorbonne-​ Nouvelle, France, in 2010, and as a Masters student in postgraduate research from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France, in 2012. Jim Lawlor was, until late 2020, manager of Rialto Youth Project,

Dublin, Ireland. He trained in Youth and Community Work at the Ulster Polytechnic, Northern Ireland, from 1973 to 1975. On completion of his studies, he worked in the Ferns Diocesan Youth Service as a field-​training officer, later working in Limerick Youth Service as a youth worker, with an integrated approach to youth and community work. In 1981, he moved to Rialto Youth Project at a time of transition and development in youth work and has remained

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in Rialto working for change since then. He has represented the community on a number of boards including the Canal Communities Partnership, Canal Communities Local Drugs Task Force and Canal Communities Regional Youth Service, as well as working on strategic groups in the Rialto area (FAST, Springboard, Dolphin House Community Development Association): www.rialtoyouthproject.net Kirsty Lohman is a Surrey Research Fellow with the ‘Sex, Gender

and Sexualities’ Research Group, in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK where she is conducting research on queer and feminist communities in London. Her work tackles issues of place, space and subculture, and she works historically as well as with the contemporary world. She writes and talks about musical and cultural participation (particularly through punk), gender, sexuality, feminism and community engagement. Her first book, an ethnography of the punk scene in the Netherlands entitled The Connected Lives of Dutch Punks: Contesting Subcultural Boundaries, is available from Palgrave Macmillan. For more details, see her website: www.kirstylohman.com. Apoena Mano is a Sociology PhD student at University of São Paulo,

Brazil, with the research project ‘Commodification of violence in Latin American cities: discourses, practices and representations between Rio de Janeiro and Medellín’. He is a researcher at the Collective of Studies on Violence and Sociability (Coletivo de Estudos sobre Violência e Sociabilidade/​CEVIS), and his previous research experience was a socio-​ethnographic investigation in favelas territories about urban governance and power dynamics between a community-​based tourism experience and a public security programme. Currently, is interested in debates related to urban sociology, new mobilities paradigm, tourism and Latin America. Rosie R. Meade is a lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies,

University College Cork, Ireland. With Sarah Banks and Mae Shaw she is one of the series editors of the Rethinking Community Development series for Policy Press. She and her colleague, Órla O’Donovan, are currently editors of the Community Development Journal, and she is also one of the editors of the Síreacht series for Cork University Press. Her research interests include the politics of protest, community development, community arts, social movements, cultural policy, and media representations of social class. Her research has been published in journals that include Race and Class, Antipode, Journalism, The Journal of Arts and Communities and Critical Social Policy.

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Palloma Menezes is a professor in the Department of Social Science at Fluminense Federal University (UFF) in Brazil. She earned her PhD in Sociology at the Institute of Social and Political Studies at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (IESP/​UERJ) and in Anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology da Vrije University Amsterdam (VU), The Netherlands. She is a researcher at the Collective of Studies on Violence and Sociability (Coletivo de Estudos sobre Violência e Sociabilidade/​CEVIS) and The ‘Marielle Franco’ Favela Dictionary (https://​wikifavelas.com.br) at The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz). Her research interests include urban sociology and violence. Daniel H. Mutibwa is an assistant professor in Creative Industries

and Digital Culture in the Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies, University of Nottingham, UK. Daniel researches and teaches in the areas of media and communication, creative industries, digital culture, arts and citizenship and transformations in communities and culture. He is the author of Cultural Protest in Journalism, Documentary Films and the Arts: Between Protest and Professionalisation, and co-​editor of Communities, Archives and New Collaborative Practices, published by Routledge in 2019 and Policy Press in 2020, respectively. Ruth Pearce is Research Coordinator at the Trans Learning Partnership,

and Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey, UK. Her research explores issues of inequality, marginalisation, power and political struggle from a trans feminist perspective. She has written on topics such as queer music scenes, trans temporalities, and the Athena SWAN gender equality scheme. Ruth is the author of Understanding Trans Health (Policy Press, 2018), plus co-​editor of The Emergence of Trans (Routledge, 2019) and TERF Wars (Sage, 2020). She plays bass in the DIY noise-​pop band wormboys, shouts a lot in queer punk trio Dispute Settlement Mechanism and blogs about her work at http://​ruthpearce.net. Nilanjana Premaratna is part of the Varieties of Peace research

team at the Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and a PhD in International Relations from the University of Queensland, Australia. Nilanjana’s research interests include the arts, peacebuilding and politics. She is the author of Theatre for Peacebuilding: The Role of Arts in Conflict Transformation in South Asia (2018).

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Miikka Pyykkönen is Professor of Cultural Policy at the University

of Jyväskylä, Finland, and Docent of Sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His current research interests include cultural policy, creative economy and entrepreneurship, civil society and government, and histories of governance of ethnic minorities. He has published over 70 scientific publications, including 28 peer-​reviewed articles and 12 monographs and co-​edited volumes including Globalization, Culture, and Development –​The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity (with Christiaan De Beukelaer and J.P. Singh) and A Panacea for all Seasons? Civil Society and Governance in Europe: Civil Society and Governance in Europe (with Mathias Freise and Egle Vaidelyte). At the moment he is co-​writing a book about cosmopolitanism and cultural policy, and translating Professor Erik Olin Wright’s book Envisioning Real Utopias into Finnish with the research team on utopian thinking. Leon Rosselson has been at the forefront of songwriting in England for

over 50 years. He has performed in every conceivable venue around the country, has written songs for Inter-​Action’s Doggs Troupe and the Fun Art Bus and for a stage production of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? His song ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ was taken into the pop charts by Billy Bragg and has been sung on numerous demonstrations in Britain and the US. He has also had 17 children’s books published, the first of which, Rosa’s Singing Grandfather, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 1991. Mae Shaw is Honorary Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK. She

has worked as a practitioner in a variety of settings, and published extensively on the politics and practice of community development. She is a longstanding member of the Editorial Board of the Community Development Journal, and co-​editor of Concept, the free online practice/​ theory journal (concept.lib.ed.ac.uk). Her publications include Politics, Power and Community Development (2016) (with Sarah Banks and Rosie Meade), Class, Inequality and Community Development (2016) (with Marj Mayo) and ‘Community engagement: cultivating critical awareness’ (2020) (with Jim Crowther) in Public Sociology as Educational Practice: Challenges, Dialogues and Counterpublics (Editor: Eurig Scandrett). Sarah Shmaitilly is a postgraduate researcher in migration studies. Her

MA dissertation, ‘Syrians in Beirut post-​2011: Class and Settlement’ focuses on how upper-​class Syrian migrants have utilised their economic, social and cultural capitals in the process of settling in Beirut, and how class stratification reinforces inequalities and exploitation

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and hinders the creation of communities built on solidarity and social cohesion. More widely, her interests include labour migration, class, formal and informal integration, diaspora formation, and migrants in the urban setting. She has worked on different research projects between Lebanon and Germany. Jennifer Beth Spiegel is a research fellow in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and previously taught theatre, performance and critical theory at McGill and Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Focusing on the intersection of artistic performance, community development and social activism, her work has previously appeared in numerous journals including TDR/​The Drama Review, Critical Inquiry, Art and Health, Community Development Journal, and Social Movement Studies among others. She is co-​editor of The Art of Collectivity: Social Circus and the Cultural Politics of a Post-​Neoliberal Vision, published by McGill-​Queen’s University Press in 2019. Pradip Ninan Thomas is at the School of Communications & Arts,

University of Queensland, Australia. He has written extensively on communications for social change, the political economy of communications and the media in India. His latest publications include Communications for Social Change: Context, Social Movements and the Digital (Sage) and Empire and Post-​Empire Telecommunications in India: A History (Oxford University Press). Fiona Whelan is a Dublin-​based artist, writer and lecturer at the

National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Ireland. Her art practice is committed to exploring and responding to systemic power relations, most specifically as they relate to class and gender inequality. Fiona has a strong commitment to long-​term cross-​sectoral collaborations. Since 2004 she has worked closely with Rialto Youth Project exploring lived experiences of systemic inequalities with young people and adults, co-​producing multiple public works including Natural History of Hope (with Brokentalkers, Project Arts Centre, 2016), Policing Dialogues (The LAB, 2010) and The Day in Question (IMMA, 2009), much of which is documented in her critical memoir TEN: Territory, Encounter & Negotiation (2014). Her writing focuses on the complex relationality, labour and ethical challenges of collaborative arts practice and includes co-​writing with sociologist Kevin Ryan, in a collective writing platform ‘Two Fuse’. See Freedom? (Cork University Press, 2018). As an educator, Fiona is committed to the professional development

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of artists with participatory and collaborative practices, teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level at NCAD. In 2019, Fiona received her PhD at the Centre for Socially Engaged Practice-​Based Research at TU Dublin. More information on her practice can be found at: www.fionawhelan.com Samson Kei Shun Wong is a practitioner, researcher and educator

of artist engagement in communities. Samson’s community/​socially engaged practice integrates his experience in music, theatre and the visual arts, enabling him to bring together artists of different media in participatory projects in Hong Kong, China and India. He has been the manager and now chairperson of Hong Kong community arts organisation Art for All. He studied Arts Management and Music History & Culture at the University of Toronto, Canada, and attained his PhD programme at the Department of Visual Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He has taught community arts theory and practice at various tertiary institutions. In the summer of 2020, he founded, and now heads, the Hong Kong Community Arts Archive Initiative. Samson currently resides in Toronto, Canada.

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ONE

Arts, culture and community development:​introductory essay Rosie R. Meade and Mae Shaw

Introduction In line with the aims of the Rethinking Community Development series, and in common with the other volumes published to date, this book reflects a commitment to theorising ‘issues and practices in a way that will encourage diverse audiences to rethink the potential of community development’. For us, the editors, this volume extends our longstanding interest in the potentially rich dialectical relationship between the arts, culture and community development (Meade and Shaw, 2007; 2011; Shaw and Meade, 2013; Meade, 2018a). Taking it as axiomatic that community development’s theory and practice are continuously reconstituted for different purposes and different contexts, this book draws attention to some of the diverse ways that groups of people collectively make sense of, re-​imagine or seek to change the personal, cultural, social, economic, political, or territorial conditions of their lives, while using the arts as their means and spaces of engagement. Across its chapters, the book explores the following broad themes and questions: • How can we conceptualise the relationship between community development and arts/​cultural practice? What diverse forms does this relationship take in contemporary contexts? How might democratic strategies and commitments overlap and nurture each other within this relationship? • How do communities of people engage with, utilise, make sense of and make sense through particular artforms and media? How can we understand the aesthetic and associated meanings of such engagements? • How are the power dynamics related to authorship, resources, public recognition and expectations of impact negotiated within community-​based arts processes?

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Arts, Culture and Community Development

• How do economistic and neoliberal rationalities shape arts processes and programmes in community contexts? To what extent are dominant rationalities being resisted and challenged through arts practices? In this introductory chapter, we consider some frameworks, debates and dilemmas that lie at the core of any encounter between community development and the arts. Following some brief reflections on the limits and potential of community development as a democratic praxis, we explore the disputed concepts that are ‘art’ and ‘culture’. This chapter also outlines how the relationship between community development and the arts has been constituted and problematised, and the diverse ways it is constructed in this collection. We consider the concept of cultural democracy, how it is variously engendered and extended through the arts, while also recognising how the arts risk being colonised by instrumental and neoliberal rationalities. The two-​ part structure of the book is explained, and this chapter closes with some reflections on the particular challenges of our shared historical moment, when the COVID-​19 pandemic continues to destabilise so many of our cultural, societal and economic norms.

Problematising community development Although reluctant to revisit well-​rehearsed debates about the contested politics and problematic histories of really existing community development, we should acknowledge our own qualified usage of the concept. As the previous books in this series have illustrated, community development has been, and continues to be, compromised by its (neo-​)colonialist and modernist assumptions, its association with governmental practices and professional power, its inability or unwillingness to confront structural oppression and intersecting inequalities, and by the hollowness of many of its democratic claims (see for example, Fung, 2016; Jha, 2016; also Meari, 2017). Writing from Nigeria, Oga Steve Abah (2007: 436) highlights the inversions that have characterised much community development practice internationally, including the failure to ensure a ‘democratic process’ that allows communities ‘to determine first and foremost what their own needs are and to be able to ensure that those needs are met by the systems charged with such responsibilities’. Too often it is the state, large NGOs, philanthropic institutions and, increasingly, private companies that make the ‘determinations’ while the ‘responsibilities’ are outsourced to communities.

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Introductory essay

Historically, community development claims to expand and deepen opportunities for participatory democracy. However, the intensification of neoliberal globalisation, such as characterises the early 21st century, raises new and urgent questions about the scope and form of democracy as it is conceived in existing community development paradigms. As Wendy Brown (2017: np) explains, the market has become the principle upon which the whole of society is modelled ‘casting markets and market conduct as appropriate for all human organisation’, thus robbing democracy of much of its historical potential for political contestation about the terms on which public life is organised. This occurs ‘not just through the mere application of market principles to nonmarket fields, but also through the conversion of political processes, subjects, categories, and principles to economic ones’ (Brown, 2015: 158, emphasis in original). It is becoming an all too familiar irony that, in local contexts across the globe, such marketised logics and relationships are increasingly legitimised by reference to traditional community development values such as ‘participation’ or ‘empowerment’; and mediated through, or facilitated by, community development processes and programmes (see Shaw, 2017; McCrea and Finnegan, 2019). In particular contexts, the democratic potential of community development may be further compromised by the emboldening of ‘a regressive, conservative, or reactionary type of populism that promotes or defends capitalism in the name of “the people” ’, a populism that, in its current hegemonic forms, appears also as ‘xenophobic, nationalist, racist, and/​or misogynistic’ (Borras, 2020: 5; see also Souza, 2020). Such far-​right populism, or indeed the various manifestations of communalism and religious fundamentalism to which it is so often wedded, disorientates the normative democratic claims made by any form of community development which crudely privileges ‘authentic’ community voices (Kenny et al, 2021). Nonetheless, we retain our conviction that ‘community development’, in its broadest sense can also embody alternative democratic possibilities. At its best, community development offers the potential for expressions of collective action which, in Gustavo Esteva’s (2014: i151) words, eschew both ‘globalization and localism’, assisting communities in ‘rooting and affirming themselves … in their own physical and cultural places, resisting the mortal wave of global forces, but at the same time opening their arms, minds and hearts to others like them, to create wide coalitions of the discontented’. Such forms of action may be instigated by communities of place or identity, social movements or professional practitioners. They may be ephemeral or long-​lasting, ranged outside of or against the state, or emerging from policy interventions. They may

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be linked with official programmes and philanthropic or government funding streams, or they might prize their own DIY and autonomous organisational approaches. Some forms build upon extant traditions of collective action –​solidarities that have been forged across a shared history –​or they may actively seek to create new forms of solidarity, in circumstances that are still unfolding. At the time of writing, the re-​energising of resistance and collective agency that has arisen in the wake of the murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis is exemplified in the dynamism of Black Lives Matter mobilisations. Highlighting the scale and perniciousness of racism and white supremacism in the US, the movement has inspired solidarity actions and allied struggles across the globe. At this historical moment there are vital social struggles in Lebanon, Brazil and Chile, some antecedents and dynamics of which are traced in chapters of this book (Chapter Four, Dakessian, Hassani and Shmaitilly; Chapter Five, Cortés, Menezes and Mano). These and other mobilisations remind us that, even in what might appear to be times of pessimism and defeat, a will for change and community through collective action can prevail. As Angela Davis (in Davis and Goodman, 2020: np) observes: one never knows when conditions may give rise to a conjuncture such as the current one that rapidly shifts popular consciousness and suddenly allows us to move in the direction of radical change. If one does not engage in the ongoing work, when such a moment arises we cannot take advantage of the opportunities to change.

Problematising arts and culture Both ‘culture’ and the ‘arts’ are notoriously imprecise and contested terms. ‘Culture’ incorporates both ‘ways of life’ or shared ‘meanings’ and ‘special processes of discovery and creativity’, including the arts (Williams, [1958] 1989: 4) but it also shades into other more fraught concepts such as ‘ethnicity’, ‘race’ or ‘civilisation’. A fully-​rounded discussion of culture and its attendant meanings is beyond the scope of this book, but it is worth dwelling a little on the colonialist associations between ‘culture’ and ‘civilisation’; how ‘civilisation’, the noun, has invoked hierarchies of cultures; how ‘civilise’, the verb, has unleashed impulses that have begotten, according to the poet and anti-​colonialist Aimé Césaire: ‘societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed,

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Introductory essay

extraordinary possibilities wiped out’ ([1950] 2000: 43). Civilisation in its colonialist guise misrecognises, displaces, negates or destroys existing forms of culture. The impulse to ‘civilise’ is targeted at those ‘others’ who are regarded as being without the ‘right kinds’ of behaviour, attitudes, norms or values. Over the course of its history, some forms of community development have reinforced a similar ‘will to civilise’ (Meade, 2018b: 226). In this regard, Paul Willis (1990: 5) warns against cultural interventions that start from the assumption of cultural deficit within communities –​‘why are their cultures not as we think they should be?’ –​urging instead a foundational respect for, and openness to, already existing cultural practices. At the very least, we must ensure that colonialist assumptions and practices are not legitimised and reanimated through community development’s articulations with culture. The attribution of the signifier ‘art’ to particular media or methods of communication and expression is no less controversial, given the dynamics of power, inclusion, exclusion, symbolic and material inequality involved (see for example, Bourdieu, 1986; Kester, 2004; Darder, 2012; Gaztambide-​Fernández, 2013). Contributors to this book explore and illustrate cultural processes and practices that encompass diverse aesthetic forms. These include music, song, muralism, theatre, dance, visual and circus arts and digital communication. Here culture is not simply reducible to the arts; rather, the volume focuses on how individuals, groups and institutions within community contexts deploy or integrate aesthetic forms in order to formulate, express and share multiple meanings. Although they do not attempt to define ‘art’ in any straightforward way, or make explicit judgements about the artistic quality of what is produced, contributors emphasise the centrality of the aesthetic form through which meaning is communicated. They present open and dynamic conceptions of those forms, thus echoing Rubén Gaztambide-​Fernández’s proposition that ‘artistic forms’ are ‘something that people do’ (2013: 226, emphasis in original). Chapters recognise that such arts and cultural practices evolve ‘within both symbolic and material conditions that constrain but do not predefine how people engage each other through such practices’ (Gaztambide-​Fernández, 2013: 226). The processes and practices explored in this book are also ‘intentional’, in that those involved make conscious choices regarding content, materials, form and narrative. For Francois Matarasso, it is these characteristics of intentionality and consciousness, along with the commitment to aesthetics, that differentiate ‘art’ from ‘culture’. Culture, while always meaningful, may be more habitual, as he explains: ‘People express their culture in everything they do, mostly without thinking about or questioning it. Art requires self-​awareness. The artistic

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act is a deliberate response to a felt need. Art is intentional’ (Matarasso, 2019: 40, emphasis in original). To highlight this intentionality, however, is not to promise that art should or can deliver specific effects. The arts should not be sold as a means through which humans are afforded predictable experiences, mobilised to act in socially desirable ways, or even recruited to community development. Instead, as is evident from the chapters assembled here, the arts are ongoing sites of pleasure, inquiry, struggle, experimentation, fun, community and human agency that are meaningful on their own terms. They are also unpredictable, in that the process of artistic creation may evolve in unanticipated ways or be subjected to unexpected reactions from both within and beyond the process (see Chapter Two, Darder and Cronin; Chapter Seven, Lohman and Pearce; Chapter Ten, Wong; Chapter Twelve, Spiegel).

Community development, collective action and the arts The term ‘community arts’ tends to be used in a generic way to signify arts or cultural practices undertaken in, with and by communities, and that utilise a range of media and artistic forms. However, a more discrete usage of ‘community arts’ signifies processes that are generated by and organised around particular communities in collaboration with artists; where community participation and ownership are emphasised at all stages of cultural production, distribution and consumption (Fegan, 2003; Whelan and Ryan, 2016; Matarasso, 2019). As Matarasso sees it: ‘Community art is the creation of art as a human right, by professional and non-​professional artists, co-​operating as equals, for purposes and to standards they set together, and whose processes, products and outcomes cannot be known in advance’ (2019: 51, emphasis added). From the perspective of artists, such collaborations may reflect their commitments to the creation of work that is socially engaged, participatory, situated and in dialogue with its environment. It may also involve the rejection of individual ‘authorship’, thus effecting a kind of immanent critique of value, purpose and autonomy as they pertain within the professional art world. The aesthetic and sociological significance of such commitments have been conceptualised, re-​ evaluated and robustly debated in the realm of art criticism and theory (see for example, Kester, 2004; 2017; Bishop, 2006; 2012; Duncombe, 2016; Bolt Rasmussen, 2017). At the centre of contestation is the legitimacy or otherwise of expectations imposed on the arts with respect to ‘active engagement’ or ‘empowerment’ of ‘marginalised

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communities’. A critical question is whether and how policy and politics limit or enable what is possible. For example, are such social commitments too ambitious or too modest? To what extent can engagement with the arts really challenge or upend systems of power and oppression? How deep should/​does community participation go? Is there an inevitable trade-​off between the social and the aesthetic, between the quality of the artworks and the process of engagement? Does that matter? And if so to whom? Do artists risk becoming consumed by their own beneficence as they engage in community development? Are they denying the singularity of their own artistic visions if they defer to an (imaginary) collective will? Such questions, and the tensions they reveal, are brought vividly to life in the pages of this book. Some chapters profile what are recognisably ‘community arts’, in the sense proposed by Matarasso (Chapter Two, Darder and Cronin; Chapter Eleven, Whelan and Lawlor; Chapter Twelve, Spiegel; Chapter Thirteen, Premaratna). Others might be more accurately described as ‘do-​it-​yourself ’ cultures (Chapter Seven, Lohman and Pearce), ‘socially engaged practice’ (Chapter Ten, Wong), ‘political or activist art’ (Chapter Three, Rosselson; Chapter Four, Dakessian, Hassani and Shmaitilly; Chapter Five, Cortés, Menezes and Mano), ‘protest cultures’ (Chapter Six, Mutibwa), ‘communication rights activism’ (Chapter Eight, Thomas) or ‘social and economic policy’ (Chapter Nine, Pyykkönen). The overall purpose, therefore, is not to present a hierarchy of such practices nor to celebrate the authenticity of some over others. Rather, it is to acknowledge that the relationship between community development, collective action and the arts is forged in multiple ways which are always, and intentionally, both social and aesthetic. This book profiles the sites and subjects of arts practices in different geographical contexts: they include Hong Kong and mainland China, India and Sri Lanka, Finland, Chile, Brazil, Lebanon, Mexico, the US, Germany, Canada, the UK and Ireland. Here, the arts are constructed as expressions of creativity and imagination that are not necessarily the preserve of designated artists or professionals in the ‘culture industry’. They are performed, enacted and displayed in spaces that include galleries, museums, schools, community or youth centres, existing or makeshift venues, streetscapes, the radio, the internet and a range of familial or community settings. In some cases, processes are initiated by artists and arts organisations (Chapter Six, Mutibwa; Chapter Ten, Wong; Chapter Twelve, Spiegel; Chapter Thirteen, Premaratna). In others, they are developed by self-​identifying groups or communities of people as autonomous expressions of their own needs, desires, or

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perspectives, either independent of, or with minimal intervention by, ‘outside’ facilitators (Chapter Four, Dakessian, Hassani and Shmaitilly; Chapter Five, Cortés, Menezes and Mano; Chapter Seven, Lohman and Pearce). In other instances, they reflect the efforts of a combination of actors –​from different standpoints, organisational or structural locations –​to articulate and reconcile their understandings of arts, culture and community development (Chapter Two, Darder and Cronin; Chapter Eight, Thomas; Chapter Eleven, Whelan and Lawlor).

Conceptualising cultural democracy We would suggest that the debates and analyses presented in this book help to ground and extend our understandings of what is often referred to as ‘cultural democracy’. In common usage, this concept implies the further democratising of access to established ‘Culture’ and ‘Art’ whereby public arts and cultural institutions ensure that their audiences and artworks more broadly reflect social diversity (see Gaztambide-​Fernández, 2013 for critical reflections). However important these developments may be, such concessions to cultural democracy should not assume that specific communities themselves are somehow lacking in aesthetics; that they are simply seeking approval and entry to established arenas of cultural validation. That assumption would mirror the neo-​colonialist ‘will to civilise’ discussed already. It is clearly essential that arts institutions confront their responsibility to remove structural, material and ideological barriers to access, and that they engage in a constant deconstruction of the basis for their selections of particular kinds of art. Nevertheless, we support a more extensive definition of ‘cultural democracy’ that includes a demand for ‘greater public recognition of and support for the diversity of expressive forms, aesthetic practices and spaces of production within society’ (Meade, 2018a: 210; see also Meade and Shaw, 2011; Darder, 2012; Gaztambide-​ Fernández, 2013; Matarasso, 2019). In other words, we would argue that ‘cultural democracy’ should be understood as performative in the sense that communities of people are getting on with the business of doing, making and sharing their arts, and thus actively creating and claiming an important democratic space. What may be significantly absent, however, are state funding regimes that allow such work to be supported, firm institutional commitments to the distribution of the work, or arts policies that acknowledge what Paul Willis (2005: 76) describes as the ‘sense-​full-​ness’ of people’s ‘lived aesthetics’. In her groundbreaking book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff registers the depth and scale of the market takeover and

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Introductory essay

colonisation of the digital world. Surveillance capitalism is represented as the currently hegemonic form of ‘information capitalism’ whereby we (the users of online platforms) become ‘the objects of an increasingly inescapable raw-​material extraction operation’ (Zuboff, 2019: 10). Illusions of the internet as a commons or as a terrain of inherently democratic citizenship have been displaced as it has been enclosed by unaccountable corporate interests, with users being ‘definitively cast as the means to other’s market ends’ (2019: 54). Nonetheless, Zuboff’s book also underlines our growing dependence on online spaces –​their sheer inescapability –​for communication, knowledge and connection. As the information and services that are essential for even the most basic practices of citizenship are increasingly shifted online, it is clear that the terrain of struggle for cultural democracy must include digital platforms and intellectual property rights. These are key concerns of Pradip Thomas’ chapter (Chapter Eight), which highlights attempts to democratise access to, and ownership of, media and telecommunications infrastructure in the face of corporate control. In this sense, demands for cultural democracy also challenge inequalities in the ownership of those means and technologies of communication or cultural distribution that link people to the voices of others, and provide public forums for their own voice. This demand is echoed in Leon Rosselson’s (Chapter Three) condemnation of the enclosure of song through the gatekeeping of the medium by ‘record companies, publishers, agents’ and other interested parties.1 In some instances arts processes critique the absence or limitations of democracy in its political sense, while also prefiguring democracy as an active, living praxis through the performance or staging of the arts. For example, Augusto Boal has explained the methodological approaches of ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ which, in both form and content, embodied resistance to the military dictatorship in Brazil: ‘The theatre of the oppressed has two fundamental principles: 1) To help the spectator become a protagonist of the dramatic action so that s/​he can 2) apply those actions s/​he has practiced in the theatre to real life’ (Boal and Epstein, 1990: 36). Thus, Theatre of the Oppressed reflects a double movement, whereby its critical, dialogical and participatory methods are oriented towards a democratisation of both theatre and of the wider political, economic and social context; in these terms theatre can become a ‘rehearsal of revolution’ (Boal, 2008: 119). Nilanjana Premaratna’s chapter (Chapter Thirteen) elaborates on some of the processes involved in Theatre of the Oppressed, and Forum Theatre specifically, as it describes how the political theatre group Jana Sanskriti collaborates with communities in West Bengal. This shared

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praxis is based upon and supports a symbiotic relationship between artistic and political engagement, so that communities are supported to name, imagine and act upon responses to the issues of structural violence that constrain their lives. Although located in a different context, and centring on the UK music scene rather than theatre, Kirsty Lohman and Ruth Pearce’s (Chapter Seven) exposition of the principle and practice of ‘prefiguration’ also has many resonances with Boal’s account. Crucially, however, their chapter makes the case for an articulation of democratic organisational forms –​reflecting a concern with the (e)quality of process –​with a distinctively intersectional, queer and punk praxis. Finally, several chapters point to the arts as a means of ‘political expression’ (Duncombe, 2016: 123), communicating demands, grievances and ideologies. Where they signify protest, resistance and collective identity, they can be recognised as a forum for democratic communication through which people make and share their aspirations for the societies in which they live (Chapter Four, Dakessian, Hassani and Shmaitilly; Chapter Five, Cortés, Menezes and Mano; Chapter Six, Mutibwa; Chapter Eleven, Whelan and Lawlor; Chapter Thirteen, Premaratna).

Meaningful engagement in arts, culture and community development The chapters of this book explore various ways that communities of people manifest their engagement with ‘culture’ and the ‘arts’, why and how that engagement is meaningful to them, and why it should be seen as meaningful for community development (Chapter Ten, Wong; Chapter Thirteen, Premaratna). Authors highlight how ‘meaningfulness’ relates to the skill, imagination, or artistry with which the combined elements of content, medium and form communicate the nuance or complexity of people’s experiences and world-​views. We see how arts practices can assume an ‘activist’ character, moving into public realms and mobilising groups of people around issues that shape their lives. Daniel Mutibwa (Chapter Six) evokes the kinds of personal and organisational commitments and sacrifices that are made and often required in order to sustain such critical, cultural practice. We read about processes that consciously seek to build, memorialise, or practise community through aesthetic forms, and where there are constant re-​negotiations of the power dynamics between professional and non-​professional artists. Nonetheless, we are also mindful that, in any potential relationship between the arts or cultural practice and community development, the former are at risk of being subjugated to

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Introductory essay

the latter –​so that they become ‘instruments’ rather than ‘expressions’ of community development in these neoliberal times. Achille Mbembe (2017: 3), in his conceptualisation of neoliberalism, describes it as ‘the frenzied codification of social life according to norms, categories, and numbers; and various operations of abstraction that claim to rationalize the world on the basis of corporate logic’. It is in this sense that neoliberalism ‘rationalizes’ community development. The imposition of performance indicators, target cultures and competitive tendering has now become normalised within funded community and civil society organisations (Meade, 2018b; McCrea and Finnegan, 2019). State, private and philanthropic funders appear to assume that it is both possible and necessary to eliminate the ‘risks’ of unpredictable and ineffective practice. Similar tendencies are discernible within the funded arts, where programmes and projects are required to ‘evidence’ their expected impacts, often in advance of any commitment of resources. While funders have played a key role in imposing and institutionalising such expectations, artists, community groups and community workers may themselves adopt instrumental rationalities as they advocate for revenue streams for the arts, or seek to engage participants. The arts may thus be called upon first and foremost to ‘deliver’ social and economic impacts that can be predicted, evaluated, quantified and replicated. What is especially problematic and even counter-​productive about this approach is succinctly expressed by Eleonora Belfiore (2012: 107): with regards to the question of instrumentalism, the exquisitely ideological question of making the (political) case for the arts has been translated into the rather more technical (and therefore apparently neutral) issue of arts impact assessment, with the focus firmly on the methodological problems of evaluation rather than on thorny questions of cultural value, and the political problem of how to address the as of yet unresolved issue of widening access and participation to the publicly supported arts. Across the globe we encounter practice and policy contexts where the arts and culture are being constituted as instrumental means through which strategic policy objectives such as improved health and wellbeing, social cohesion, social capital, or economic growth can be realised. Miikka Pyykkönen’s chapter (Chapter Nine) elaborates and provides a useful analytical framework for assessing this tendency as it has emerged in Finland. There is general concern, however, that the

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focus on impact simultaneously reflects an impossible burden on, and a closing down of, the imaginative promise of the arts. Consequently, there is much academic debate about the ‘social impact of the arts’, whether it is measurable, practicable or desirable (see Matarasso, 1997; 2019; Merli, 2002; Belfiore, 2012; Bishop, 2012 for an illustration of how this debate has proceeded in the UK). Given the paucity of public resources available for more democratic forms of arts practice, particularly in ‘disadvantaged communities’, it is perhaps unsurprising that community artists and organisations may feel the need to fall into step with performativity measures. Although, as Stephen Ball and Antonio Olmedo (2013: 91) point out, while neoliberalised conceptions of performativity prioritise results ‘over processes, numbers over experiences, procedures over ideas’, within the contingent and dynamic real-​life contexts of community development such tendencies may themselves be re-​negotiated, resisted or even rejected. Beth Spiegel’s chapter (Chapter Twelve) shows how circus arts are being used to furnish young people with the skills and behaviours necessary for neoliberal survival, while also identifying opportunities for more critical and (potentially) transformative forms of kinaesthetic practice. Fiona Whelan and Jim Lawlor’s dialogue (Chapter Eleven) similarly evokes the profound dilemmas and tensions created by the infiltration of neoliberal tools and rationalities into the praxis of community-​based youth work.2 At the very least it is obvious that, as Rubén Gaztambide-​Fernández (2013: 213) warns, by tailoring arguments to contemporary policy discourses we may constrict ‘our ability to mobilize alternative ways of conceptualizing what we mean by the “arts” ’. We may also forego our responsibility to express what is distinctive and special about different art forms or, indeed, what ‘aesthetic’ might mean. There is also a more fundamental danger: that we end up settling for ‘small-​ scale adjustments’ (Bolt Rasmussen, 2017: np) to neoliberal capitalism as we know it, rather than daring to imagine a more transformative relationship between the arts and society.

Structure and organisation of the book As with the other books in the series, Arts, Culture and Community Development brings together contributors from a range of international contexts and disciplinary traditions. It is organised around two main parts: 1) Making and sharing collective meanings, and 2) Negotiating practice and policy. Together, its distinctive chapters encourage critical thinking about community development, cultural practices, and their

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Introductory essay

moments of mutual encounter, while also exploring the democratic possibilities associated with a range of art forms. They consider what may be distinctive about given arts disciplines and media, analysing their potential to support collaborative forms of cultural production, consumption and distribution. Against the individualisation and commodification that is promoted by the market, authors critically assess if and how arts practices might give expression to processes of solidarity, decolonisation, social justice, dialogue and representation. The six chapters that are grouped in Part 1: Making and sharing collective meanings, evoke some of the multiple layers of meaning that are made expressible through the arts, as they emerge from and enter into dialogue with lives in community. These chapters capture how collective hopes, fears, allegiances, frustrations and memories are sung, danced, played, etched on walls, or conveyed through puppets and theatre. Such art is opinionated and controversial, taking strong positions in relation to the contested histories, politics, identities and issues of the societies within which it is located. Its images, lyrics, chords, sequences, props, physical steps and moves are artfully chosen: if there are messages in these artworks, their media matter too. However, their meaningfulness resides not only in ‘what’ is being communicated, but also in ‘where’. Ostensibly mundane community surroundings or venues, ones that are unlikely to be mistaken for galleries or museums, are decolonised, reclaimed and reconstituted in the name of and through the power of aesthetics. Much of this art is transgressive; challenging conventions, articulating uncomfortable truths, rejecting norms and sometimes even crossing the bounds of ‘legality’. Together these chapters illustrate how community development is reflected in the power of what is said, done, made and created by people together. Part 2: Negotiating practice and policy contains six chapters that are particularly concerned with the conditions of possibility for community-​based arts and media. They critically interrogate the extent to which international and national legal and policy frameworks democratise access to and engagement with key means of expression in our contemporary world. They analyse the expectations that are grafted onto community-​based arts by funders and policy makers, if and how policy seeks to constitute the relationship between the arts, society and the economy. Contributors consider how community projects or programmes can become vulnerable to neoliberal and managerialist capture, or how they may reproduce existing forms of cultural subordination, but they also highlight ongoing attempts to push back against such tendencies. They consider what empowerment, collaboration, co-​creation and participation

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mean in the context of the arts; if and how those concepts can be agreed, evaluated and evidenced in the fluid and unpredictable environments of everyday cultural practice. They are mindful of the processes through which community arts initiatives come into being, the competing interests they are expected to serve, how funding and resources simultaneously open up and close down possibilities. Collectively, they explore how participants, artists, facilitators, community workers and activists conceptualise and negotiate cultural practices that are seeking to address the consequences of structural violence, inequality and oppression.

Finally –​a book from before and for after ‘the’ crisis As these book chapters were being finalised in spring 2020, the world seemed an especially defeated and pessimistic place, as the globalisation of COVID-​19 wreaked havoc on the social and cultural lives of communities. While the likely economic costs of the public health crisis have remained at the forefront of associated policy and political debates internationally, we are still struggling to secure comparable recognition for its other profound and uneven consequences. The constant refrain ‘we are all in this together’ might well be true ‘in some general existential sense’, but inequality and exclusion have unquestionably been ‘reproduced and heightened in this catastrophe’ (Shaw, 2020: 1; see also Wood, 2020). Across the globe community groups and movements are highlighting the severe implications for collective welfare and wellbeing; for those whose lives are already ravaged by inequality, racism, structural violence and patriarchal power; for notions of solidarity, publicness and conviviality; for our relationships with fragile ecosystems, non-​human animals and other living species; and for our imaginaries of what can become possible through collective action (Kenny, 2020; Kothari, 2020; Mbembe, 2020; Shaw, 2020; Wood, 2020). And, as COVID-​19 quite literally threatens the capacity of humans to breathe, we must remember too that, as Achille Mbembe (2020: np) cautions, ‘Before this virus, humanity was already threatened with suffocation’. The crisis has profoundly underlined the vulnerable yet vital place of the arts and culture in our lives. There have been mass cancellations of events, performances, religious gatherings, festivals and community celebrations of every kind. Musicians, actors and many others employed in the arts find themselves out of work and unsure of any return to ‘normality’. The COVID-​19 crisis thus exposes the precariousness of what Thomas Osborne (2003: 508) calls the global ‘creativity

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Introductory essay

explosion’. Exemplified in the idea of ‘the “creative economy” ’, it has become associated with the ‘boom in the values of intellectual property and the growth of “creative”, industries such as design, fashion, software production, video games, marketing, advertising, pop music, the performing arts, publishing, the arts market and R&D’ (Osborne, 2003: 508). This vision animates policy makers’ aspiration toward ‘Creative Cities’, populated by mobile and enterprising ‘creatives’ and enticing to international tourists and investors. Now that we occupy a global context where mobility is being recalibrated and with various stages of ‘lockdown’ operating within and between nation states, the futures of the tourism and cultural sectors, and crucially the workers within them, are impossible to predict. And yet, for so many of us, life in lockdown has been made more bearable, its restrictions even temporarily transcended, by our encounters with the arts and the aesthetic. There have been particular poems, songs, pieces of music, dance moves, videos and images that have brought people through moments of deep despair. Art forms and media have allowed us, individually and collectively, to share feelings and emotions that may not otherwise have been expressed. The chapters of this volume, conceived of in a ‘time before COVID-​19’, simultaneously reveal, and seek to move beyond, the already fragmented, unequal and oppressive conditions of life for so many communities. They illustrate why, rather than hankering back to the normalities that neoliberal capitalism privileges or merely tolerates, community development has a unique opportunity (and, perhaps, a responsibility) to aspire towards the imagination and prefiguration of better, more sustainable and life-​enhancing normalities. Or as Leon Rosselson (Chapter Three) puts it in his song about England’s 17th-​ century Diggers, they reflect an inexhaustible ambition, one that has been expressed across history and place, that: This earth divided We will make whole So it may be a common treasury for all. (Rosselson, 1981: np) Notes In Chapter Three, Leon Rosselson draws on activist songs and songs by activists to illustrate the power of song. The chapter uses endnotes, rather than a final list of references, to identify their sources and histories. 2 Chapter Eleven presents a dialogue between the authors. It uses endnotes to identify relevant literature and explain contextual issues in order to avoid interrupting the flow of the discussion. 1

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References Abah, O.S. (2007) ‘Vignettes of communities in action: an exploration of participatory methodologies in promoting community development in Nigeria’, Community Development Journal, 42(4): 435–​48. Ball, S. and Olmedo, A. (2013) ‘Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal governmentalities’, Critical Studies in Education, 54(1): 85–​96. Belfiore, E. (2012) ‘ “Defensive instrumentalism” and the legacy of New Labour’s cultural policies’, Cultural Trends, 21(2): 103–​11. Bishop, C. (2006) ‘The Social Turn –​collaboration and its discontents’, Artforum, Spring. Available at: https://​www.artforum.com/​print/​ 200602/​the-​social-​turn-​collaboration-​and-​its-​discontents-​10274 Bishop, C. (2012) Artificial Hells –​Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London: Verso. Boal, A. (2008) Theatre of the Oppressed, London: Pluto Press. Boal, A. and Epstein, S. (1990) ‘The cop in the head: three hypotheses’, The Drama Review, 34(3): 35–​42. Bolt Rasmussen, M. (2017) ‘A not on socially-​e ngaged art criticism’, Field, 6. Available at: http://​field-​journal.com/​issue-​6/​ a-​note-​on-​socially-​engaged-​art-​criticism Borras, S.M. Jr. (2020) ‘Agrarian social movements: the absurdly difficult but not impossible agenda of defeating right-​wing populism and exploring a socialist future’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 20: 3–​36. Available at: https://​onlinelibrary.wiley.com/​doi/​epdf/​10.1111/​ joac.12311 Bourdieu, P. (1986) ‘The forms of capital’, in J.G. Richardson (ed) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, New York, NY: Greenwood, pp 241–​58. Brown, W. (2015) Undoing the Demos, Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, Cambridge, MA: Zone Books. Brown, W. (2017) ‘Apocalyptic Populism’, Eurozine, 30 August. Available at: https://​www.eurozine.com/​apocalyptic-​populism/​?pdf Césaire, A. ([1950] 2000) Discourse on Colonialism (Translated by J. Pinkham), New York, NY: NYU Press/​Monthly Review Press. Darder, A. (2012) Culture and Power in the Classroom, Abingdon: Taylor and Francis. Davis, A. and Goodman, A. (2020) ‘Uprising & Abolition: Angela Davis on Movement Building, “Defund the Police” & Where We Go from Here’, Democracy Now! 12 June. Available at: https://​www. democracynow.org/​2020/​6/​12/​angela_​davis_​historic_​moment Duncombe, S. (2016) ‘Does it work?: The Æffect of Activist Art’, Social Research: An International Quarterly, 83(1): 115–​34.

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Esteva, G. (2014) ‘Commoning in the new society’, Community Development Journal, 49(Supplement_​1): i144–​59. Fegan, T. (2003) Learning and Community Arts, Leicester: NIACE. Fung, K-​K. (2016) ‘Community development and class in the context of an East-​Asian productivist welfare regime’, in M. Shaw and M. Mayo (eds) Class, Inequality and Community Development, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 205–​18. Gaztambide-​Fernández, R.A. (2013) ‘Why the arts don’t do anything: toward a new vision for cultural production in education’, Harvard Educational Review, 83(1): 211–​36. Jha, M. (2016) ‘Community organising and political agency’, in R.R. Meade, M. Shaw and S. Banks (eds) Politics, Power and Community Development, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 65–​84. Kenny, S. (2020) ‘Covid-​19 and community development’, Community Development Journal, 55(4): 699–703. Kenny, S., Ife, J. and Westoby, P. (eds) (2021) Populism, Democracy and Community Development, Bristol: Policy Press. Kester, G.H. (2004) Conversation Pieces, Community and Communication in Modern Art, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kester, G.H. (2017) ‘The limits of the exculpatory critique: a response to Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen’, Field, 6. Available at: http://​field-​journal. com/​issue-​6/​mikkel-​bolt-​rasmussen Kothari, A. (2020) ‘Corona can’t save the planet, but we can, if we learn from ordinary people’, Interface. Available at: https://​www. interfacejournal.net/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2020/​04/​Kothari.pdf Matarasso, F. (1997) Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts, London: Comedia. Matarasso, F. (2019) A Restless Art, London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Mbembe, A. (2017) A Critique of Black Reason, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mbembe, A. (2020) ‘The universal right to breathe’, Critical Inquiry –​ In the Moment, April. Available at: https://​critinq.wordpress.com/​ 2020/​04/​13/​the-​universal-​r ight-​to-​breathe/​ McCrea, N. and Finnegan, F. (eds) (2019) Funding, Power and Community Development, Bristol: Policy Press. Meade, R.R. (2018a) ‘Community arts, community development and the “impossibility” and “necessity” of cultural democracy’, in S. Kenny, B. McGrath and R. Phillips (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Community Development: Perspectives from Around the Globe, New York, NY: Routledge, pp 210–​26.

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Meade, R.R. (2018b) ‘The re-​signification of state-​funded community development in Ireland: a problem of austerity and neoliberal government’, Critical Social Policy, 38(2): 222–​43. Meade, R.R. and Shaw, M. (2007) ‘Community development and arts: reviving the democratic imagination’, Community Development Journal, 42(4): 413–​21. Meade, R.R. and Shaw, M. (2011) ‘Community development and the arts: sustaining the democratic imagination in lean and mean times’, Journal of Arts and Communities, 2(1): 65–​80. Meari, L. (2017) ‘Colonial dispossession, developmental discourses and humanitarian solidarity in “Area C” ’, Community Development Journal, 52(3): 506–​23. Merli, P. (2002) ‘Evaluating the social impact of participation in arts activities’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 8(1): 107–​18. Osborne, T. (2003) ‘Against “creativity”: a philistine rant’, Economy and Society, 32(4): 507–​25. Rosselson, L. (1981) Digger’s Song [The World Turned Upside Down]. Available at: http://​www.fredsakademiet.dk/​abase/​sange/​greenham/​ song25.htm Shaw, M. (2017) ‘Community development: reviving critical agency in times of crisis’, in R. Phillips, S. Kenny and B. McGrath (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Community Development, London: Routledge. Shaw, M. (2020) ‘Editorial’, Concept, 11, Covid-​19 Supplementary Issue, 1–​3. Available at: http://​concept.lib.ed.ac.uk/​article/​view/​4364/​5954 Shaw, M. and Meade, R.R. (2013) ‘Community development and the arts: towards a more creative reciprocity’, in P. Mayo (ed) Learning with Arts –​A Reader, Rotterdam: Sense Publishing. Souza, M.L. de (2020) ‘The land of the past? Neo-​populism, neo-​ fascism and the failure of the left in Brazil’, Political Geography, 83(November, 102186): 1–​2. Whelan, F. and Ryan, K. (2016) ‘Beating the bounds of socially-​ engaged art?’, Field, 4(Spring). Available at: http://​field-​journal. com/​category/​issue-​4 Williams, R. ([1958] ​1989) Resources of Hope, London: Verso. Willis, P. (1990) Common Culture, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Willis, P. (2005) ‘Invisible aesthetics and the social work of commodity culture’, in D. Inglis and H. Hughson (eds) The Sociology of Art, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp 73–​86. Wood, L. (2020) ‘We are not all in this together’, Interface. Available at: https://​www.interfacejournal.net/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2020/​ 04/​Wood.pdf Zuboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, London: Profile Books.

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PART 1

Making and sharing collective meanings

TWO

Reflections on the decolonising dance praxis of Grupo Bayano Antonia Darder and Sharon Cronin

Introduction The earliest language was the body … if we only pay attention to or place value on spoken or written language, then we are ruling out a large area of human language. Paulo Freire and Antonio Faundez (1989: 37–​8) Human beings do not suddenly become oppressed, but rather are systematically initiated into a political economy of enslavement and cultural subordination from the moment they are born. This is consistent with histories of cultural disaffiliation, reinforced in schools and by colonising legacies of dehumanisation, which continue to impact both the individual and collective existence of oppressed populations worldwide. This process of colonisation –​although often shrouded or denied in the current educational context where multicultural representations and appropriations abound without social or material shifts in power or wealth –​is intensified and solidified when working-​ class children of colour enter schools. Within the experience of colonised learning, students are confronted with cultural deficit views. Here, the cultural sensibilities that students bring to the classroom are often negated or deemed worthless to their education, as they navigate unspoken expectations of class and cultural assimilation. This unfortunate process of negation is carried out by educational practices that repress and inhibit the emancipatory capacities of the body (Shapiro, 1999). We begin here, in that our work seeks to consider the ways in which cultural dances that have persisted within enslaved and colonising contexts, have often functioned as a political embodiment of emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual survival; the formation of distinct cultural identities; and communal empowerment, even when the dance practices of communities of colour have been systematically negated, rejected, exoticised, or commodified within the dominant society

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(Desmond, 1994; Cohen Bull, 1997; DeFrantz, 2004; Castaldi, 2006). As Freire suggests, the body constitutes the earliest language and, therefore, it is within its cultural and creative field that children first develop their capacity to express what they feel and share the stories that give meaning to their lives (Foster, 1986; Novack, 1990; Ness, 1992). From this vantage point, cultural dances, as moving stories of communal resistance, struggle and liberation, can assist educators to better engage the wisdom inherent in the emotional, physical and spiritual values of working-​class communities of colour. Yet, real difficulties can arise when teachers are oblivious to the knowledge of cultural ways of knowing –​knowledge that can potentially support children of colour in navigating conditions of hegemonic schooling. We seek to consider the ways in which a critical dance pedagogy in the education of young children can function as an important form of embodied literacy and decolonising epistemological foundation, opening a liberatory cultural space for reading the world (Freire and Macedo, 1987). In this way, a decolonising praxis functions as ‘a dialectical force for challenging colonial legacies upon the body, culture, and practices in and out of school’ (Cruz Banks, 2007: 18). Moreover, cultural dances, as an inherent expression of both communal and individual sensibilities, provide young children of colour a much-​ needed space to experience, unencumbered, the freedom to be. To this end, we reflect on a decolonising dance praxis and, more specifically, on the Seattle community-​based work of the Bomba dance group known as Grupo Bayano. The dance group evolved organically from the steady efforts of early childhood educators, artists and cultural workers of colour, who sought to create a pedagogical and cultural space for young children and their families, in order to build solidarity and a better understanding of the difficulties they navigate in their lives. As this chapter illustrates, a critical pedagogy of dance, with an emphasis on bicultural development emerged (see Darder, 1991; 2012), as they sought to nurture educational conditions for young children that would move beyond Eurocentrism and tokenistic applications of multicultural education (Cruz Banks, 2007; 2010). With all this in mind, we provide a few theoretical reflections that can enhance an understanding of Grupo Bayano’s decolonising dance praxis and some key pedagogical concerns that shape dance praxis.

Grupo Bayano as community Grupo Bayano has worked for nearly 40 decades as a community-​based cultural performing group in Seattle. The group’s members have grown

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up with the group as an extended family and community. The group has been present for their milestones, organising weekly Saturday dance and music play groups for the young children, teaching school-​age children the history and rhythms of their ancestors, helping them coordinate choreography for their classmates to perform at high school graduations, and supporting young parents who bring their babies to be introduced to the community by placing their little feet on the drum surface while it is being played. Grupo Bayano has performed at weddings, festivals, demonstrations and for the first Indigenous People’s day celebration in Seattle. Their oldest community member played Bomba drums at her 90th birthday party. When she passed on, the young drummers quickly arrived to play for her as her body was taken out of the house. In these ways, Grupo Bayano as cultural workers have employed a critical dance pedagogy that has allowed them to be pedagogically and politically available to their community in profound and irreplaceable ways. In the process, Grupo Bayano has birthed and supported many other cultural performing groups. The group has welcomed emerging artists from the African Diaspora of the Americas, as well as other Indigenous peoples. Some of the Panamanian co-​founders of this group went on decades later to form a stunning, unified and vibrant performing group presenting the folklore of Panamá. Mixteco members of Grupo Bayano also participate in another community group that studies the language, gardening and language of their people. Grupo Bayano has supported Trinidadian costume-​makers in dancing their wearable artwork in local and international carnivals. The group also hosts the annual Caribbean Sea Fest, featuring folkloric and popular dance groups and artists from diverse Caribbean origins. During the most trying months of the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, the cultural artists –​the Bomba drummers, the street theatre groups, the dancers, the artisan workers –​were the ones who organised relief efforts in Puerto Rico. They communicated with stranded communities, letting them know what was going on and where they could get help. They cooked. They fed the families and shared the scarce water supplies that they had. They helped with medical challenges. They listened. They travelled on damaged and unsafe roads to remote areas. They inspired hope. The artists brought out the drums and played for community members. They rose on their mokojumbe stilts and lifted spirits through theatre and performance. Grupo Bayano, and many other cultural dance and music groups in the United States, desperately waited for word from their loved ones and from the many communities of Puerto Rico. We heard from the capital San Juan after

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a few days; however, it took much longer to hear from other more remote parts of the island. Grupo Bayano helped organise a fundraiser at a local restaurant, Taste of the Caribbean, not only for Puerto Rico, but for the other Caribbean islands hit hard by the hurricane. They responded to many requests to perform at fundraisers in the Seattle area. Similar efforts took place in many major cities across the United States, where Bomba and other cultural dances were performed, fundraisers were organised and emergency supplies were gathered. These brief examples highlight the manner in which Grupo Bayano has worked over the years to retain a community-​based practice in the diaspora linked to the hearts of the people, as they struggle against the domestication so prevalent for working-​class communities of colour.

Challenging domestication Understanding the body as a terrain of both cultural expression and emancipatory struggle is essential to comprehending the colonising impact of domestication, which begins early in the formation of children, particularly those from working-​class communities. Freire spoke of the manner in which this domestication serves not only to limit educational opportunities and life choices, but also to constrain the movement of oppressed bodies in schools and society (Freire, 1983; Darder, 2014a). For example, the absence of opportunities for evolving artistic expression among working-​class communities of colour not only further confines the arts to the privileged realm of the elite, but also repudiates and excludes those cultural expressions –​ especially of the coloured body –​that fiercely counter mainstream cultural values. This points to an education that typically subordinates and represses brown and black bodies, in favour of more restrictive modes of physical expression, in line with the comfort level of Eurocentric sensibilities –​sensibilities historically grounded in an epistemology of conquest that negates and invisibilises the unassimilated bodily expressions of oppressed communities, unless these can be appropriated, commodified, or recreated according to the colonial gaze and the interests of capital. In addition, the absence of culturally responsive art programmes and the lack of embodied understanding of the individual and collective impact of cultural subordination on the lives of oppressed communities has led to a deep dissonance between the culture of schools and the cultural environment of children’s homes. Similarly, an absence of culturally democratic approaches to the arts in schools has resulted in the lack of meaningful interactions between the dominant society

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and racialised communities, despite multicultural efforts of the past. This assimilative historical phenomenon within education systems has consistently functioned to preserve an embedded colonising tradition of education and the arts. This is perpetuated by racialising and patriarchal practices of schooling that deem coloured bodies defective, deficient and disposable (Darder, 2011), as justification for their political, economic and social oppression within ostensibly free societies. It is true that for years multicultural books, activities and songs have been found within the early childhood classroom. Yet, many of these have become frozen and stagnant artefacts that have unfortunately become cultural curricular clichés checked off to infer multicultural compliance, rather than ongoing living examples of life within oppressed communities. Nowhere is this more evident than in teaching dance in early childhood education, where Eurocentric dance forms prevail, with the exception of the few commodified dances linked to multicultural curricula or national celebrations. Moreover, in perspectives generally held by teachers, seldom are the arts seen as a living and breathing cultural expression of community, where children are politically and pedagogically affirmed and confidence and pride in their cultural and gendered selves can unfold. And although, recorded music and packaged dance curricula can provide an efficient and convenient educational product for consumption, these generally become inert and inadvertently reinforce passivity, further separating the culture of the school from the lived experience and cultural vitality of communal participation in cultural practices. Accordingly, many cultural communities have historically developed a multiplicity of cultural forms derived from regional, class, racial and gendered traditions of collective survival, which remain missing from the early education curriculum. What is tragic is that a variety of vibrant and life-​affirming artistic expressions can soon become inaccessible, even to working-​class communities of colour themselves, given the colonising traditions that persist in schools and society. And, even when teachers do incorporate cultural dances, these are performed to pre-​recorded music, rather than venturing out and engaging musicians and dancers from the cultural communities in which their students reside. Moreover, a decolonising educational strategy would challenge the increasing public absence of the arts within contemporary neoliberal contexts of accountability, particularly within working-​class communities of colour, where grassroots art programmes are generally the first to be slashed whenever the exigencies of district budgets call for cutbacks (Cruz Banks, 2007). Further, as illustrated by Grupo Bayano’s work over the years, a decolonising dance praxis is needed

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to support children and their communities in questioning and resisting the cultural inequalities that persist.

A decolonising dance praxis A decolonising dance praxis, such as that of Grupo Bayano, can assist young children in discovering a place within the classroom where they can identify as historical and transformative subjects. It is precisely this sociopolitical concern for the empowerment of young children from racialised communities that distinguishes a decolonising dance praxis from mainstream uses of dance within schools, which are generally limited to special performances and lack the deliberate intent of dance as a practice of freedom. This distinction is important in that it is, more often than not, children of colour whose bodies are most surveilled and controlled within schools. For this reason, teachers must not lose sight of the fact that it is the body that retains the historical memories of collective trauma and it is the body that ultimately must act as the means for collective resistance and liberation (Eagleton, 2003). Also, useful here is to recall that historical memories of oppression are held in different parts of the body (that is, the back, shoulders, head and so on.) and the release of these stored tensions through the physicality of dance can fuel a process of emancipation that offers possibilities for transformation. As such, communal dances can function as cultural spaces that counter the colonising impact of physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual oppression, in ways that allow the body to release trauma through the experience of movement within community, which foster cultural solidarity and new ways of knowing the world. In the interest of political and pedagogical clarity, Cruz Banks (2007) posits a set of key principles that inform what we mean by a decolonising dance pedagogy: 1. colonisation is endemic to society; 2. dance is a form of distinct cultural knowledge and often a form of ‘subversive performance’ in opposition to subordination; 3. dance is a form of embodied literacy; 4. a decolonising praxis of the body counters legacies of oppression, in that it is a practice of voice and empowerment; 5. critical dance pedagogy mobilises engagement with identities and asserts freedom of expression and the human right of communities to practice their culture; and 6. communal dances can be employed as a tool for cultural production and promoting cultural diversity and social justice.

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In addition to these principles, a critical bicultural understanding of human development is also helpful in conceptualising a decolonising dance praxis. Critical biculturalism encompasses a lens that acknowledges foundationally the dynamics of culture and power and the resulting asymmetrical relations of power at work in processes of cultural subordination. With this in mind, critical biculturalism refers to the phenomenon whereby students from subordinate cultural communities must learn to survive and navigate their schooling in the midst of educational inequalities where social, political and economic injustices persist (Darder, 2012). This view acknowledges that working-​ class students of colour have to respond daily to colonising expressions of classism, racism, sexism and other forms of cultural invasion within schools and society. Accordingly, tensions associated with bicultural development are reinforced whenever the dominant society exerts increasing influence or pressure on working-​class children of colour to assimilate institutional values, language and practices that preserve the coloniality of power –​a dynamic where racism inextricably mixes with the longstanding aims of capitalist accumulation. It is often from the stress of this cultural and class misalignment that resistance develops, provoking intensified cultural conflict and disaffiliation among working-​class students from communities of colour. To counter this misalignment, a critical pedagogy anchored in an understanding of bicultural development can work to support students from communities of colour to become increasingly able to recognise the values of their primary culture, while learning to question inequalities and enact decolonising behaviours and strategies to contend with the tensions of the dominant society, in ways that reinforce the integrity of their cultural and linguistic rights to be. Critical bicultural development as part of a decolonising dance praxis conceptualises cultural dance forms as a complex and dynamic process that emerges through participation in embodied practices specifically tied to nurturing the connection of students of colour to their home cultures. Critical bicultural classroom practices –​and decolonising dance praxis, in particular –​seek to respond consciously to, as well as to resist, dynamics of cultural subordination and their impact on the lives of young children and their families. This is carried out by supporting their early political formation as empowered cultural subjects of the world. This is done through creating culturally democratic conditions in the classroom (that is, incorporating familiar languages, stories, music, movements, instruments and members of their communities) associated with the formation of social agency, voice, participation and community solidarity among young children. This speaks, in particular,

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to dance practices anchored to folk music, histories of survival and liberating experiences that acknowledge the complexities experienced by people of colour. With this in mind, a decolonising dance praxis supports ‘unique instances of self-​expression through which students affirm their own class, culture, racial, and gender identities … shaped by personal history and distinctive lived engagement with the surrounding culture’ (Giroux, 1988: 199). Similarly, decolonising practices of dance pedagogy bring together familiar cultural dance forms, in order to support a living and embodied cultural literacy among young children, where they can make themselves understood and listened to, and through which they begin to define themselves as empowered cultural and gendered beings. Daniels (2005: 269) reminds us that ‘dancing is a method of perceiving and understanding the human condition’. A decolonising dance praxis, therefore, can be said to emerge and evolve within an environment where children’s cultural practices are validated, trusted and welcomed. In summary, decolonising dance praxis encompass four distinct features. First, it is anchored in students’ histories, cultural knowledge, lived experiences and an understanding of their everyday world. Second, it breaks the silences that young working-​class children often experience in their schooling, by expanding communication in ways that legitimise their bodily expressions and world-​view. Third, it links the sociopolitical development of critical consciousness and social agency in ways that support young children to build cultural knowledge anchored to community life. And fourth, it nurtures empowerment through familiar expressions of identity, community and self-​determination that reinforce children’s evolving strengths and potential for (re)making their world.

Communal dance as decolonising praxis Communal dance in the practice of freedom is associated with the flow of communal love that only emerges from the cultural expression and collective interaction of drummers, dancers, singers and witnesses within a participatory dance form, such as Bomba. Bomba is one of the major dances utilised by Grupo Bayano in their work. The dance comprises the participation of drummers who carry the rhythms and beats of the dance, as well as the dancers in a circle, who in communion with the drummers enact a variety of dance steps or moves that correspond to the tempo of the drums. At particular moments, individual dancers are escorted out into the middle of the circle to express through the dance their responses to the drumming with the

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use of steps, arm movements and the movement of the Bomba skirt, which is essential to their expression. Meanwhile, the dancers on the outside of the circle continue communal steps in unison, supporting the dancer who is in the middle by holding the communal space. Bomba, therefore, is a dance that can only be enacted properly within a community, defying individual notions of dance performance. Through this practice, communal sensibilities extend cultural values, recover identity, defy stereotypes, embody politics and dissuade individual competitive expression with the power of life-​affirming human engagement. The dance becomes a shared spiritual space of cultural release and expression of one’s individual and collective being, which is understood as an important ongoing connection to the ancestors who have danced before and all those who will dance in the future. Knowledge that is embodied by and within decolonising dance praxis can also be understood as an embodied historical phenomenon that promotes the evolution of an emancipatory consciousness essential to the collective empowerment of communities of colour. In a decolonising praxis of dance, Cruz Banks (2007: 133) argues, the body is used as ‘dialogue for critical reflection, transformation, and public action imperative to social justice’. Decolonising dance pedagogy within communities of colour functions as important forms of both resistance against and healing from cultural oppression. Cruz Banks (2010: 21) draws here on the work of fellow researchers in the field (Browning, 1995; Aschenbrenner, 2002; Daniels, 2005; Ousmare, 2005; 2007) to highlight ‘the way dance has become a way of acting in opposition to dominant culture’ and to consider possibilities for countering legacies of racialised oppression, particularly where the dancing of coloured bodies has been historically deemed as primitive or stigmatised as savagery. More importantly, since diasporic cultural dance forms represent creative spaces where often silenced voices and identities are signalled (Desmond, 1994), it also serves as an important pedagogical space for young children to begin developing critical awareness with respect to self, community and the world. Inserting a decolonising dance praxis into the early childhood education curriculum of working-​class children of colour is essential to their evolving sense of belonging and self-​determination as cultural beings. Through the use of cultural community dances, children develop an organic and embodied comfort with their bodies. In contrast, when children of colour must negotiate alone the bicultural tensions they experience in response to assimilative classroom practices that restrict their bodies, they can become alienated or uncomfortable with their cultural traditions. This form of early resistance in students

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of colour can be best understood as the beginning of an internalised racism that can leave them culturally disassociated from their primary culture, given the overarching absence of their histories and cultural traditions within mainstream educational environments (Darder, 2009; Cruz, 2012; Banks, 2010). Within a decolonising dance praxis such alienated forms of resistance generally dissipate as students of colour become familiar with and open to the music, song and dances of their communities becoming part of their everyday experiences in the classroom. Through providing a cultural context where the movement of heads, feet, hips, arms and hands are brought into the dialectical expression of individual/​ communal relationship, young children experience freedom in not only moving their bodies but also being in the world. Moreover, when introducing young children of colour to decolonising dance practices early in their physical, cultural and intellectual formation, within the context of community, their bicultural development and capacities for critical formation are firmly supported and deeply enhanced (Darder, 2012), as they release internalised feelings of deficit that are so common to the experience of students who share a legacy of enslavement and colonisation. Here, the power of cultural healing, or la cultura cura, is enacted when ‘power, authority, community relationships are affected, rearranged and affirmed’ (Daniels, 2005: 55) in the interest of community strength and self-​determination. Worth repeating here is the manner in which a decolonising dance praxis, as a critical pedagogical force, encompasses a bicultural communal reading of the world (Darder, 1991: 2012) that affirms cultural life. Within this decolonising dance praxis, internalised asymmetrical relations of power are organically confronted in community, by the shared integral relationship of music, song and dance. By so doing, cultural dances function as a decolonising cultural form, when exercised in ways that 1) confront and challenge the corporal epistemicides (Paraskeva, 2011) –​or killing of body knowledge –​at work in the dominant classroom curriculum and 2) shatter the abyssal divide (Santos, 2007) that constantly negates and represses the cultural differences of children of colour and their communities, rendering cultural knowledge, indigenous wisdom and communal practices invisible and irrelevant to legitimate ways of teaching and learning. In contrast, communal dance as a decolonising praxis offers pedagogical space for both affective and kinesthetic development, by incorporating humanising interactions that enhance the possibilities for children of colour and their families to enact community self-​determination. A decolonising dance pedagogy nurtures here ‘a broader context of

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song, language, proverbs, and a connection to the people, aiming to cultivate a holistic view of the cultural knowledge’ (Cruz Banks, 2010).

The decolonising praxis of Grupo Bayano Key to Grupo Bayano’s decolonising praxis is the engagement of dance as a significant ‘repository of knowledge, history, and philosophy’ (Cruz Banks, 2010: 26). Attention is focused on the integration of music, songs and dances of the Afro-​Latino diaspora. As noted earlier, one of the key dances employed in their work is Bomba, derived predominantly from African roots, with Spanish and Indigenous cultural influences, as are found intermingled in the culture of Puerto Rico and other Caribbean nations. Through the style and sensibilities of Bomba, young children in Seattle are introduced to the culture and history of Bomba in ways that support a decolonising sensibility. By so doing, issues of racism and other forms of oppression are engaged as an embodied experience that enhances cultural solidarity across the communities where children reside. What is also valued in Grupo Bayano are creative spaces and places in which children improvise and communicate with their bodies, through traditional forms of community expression that allow them to continue their participation in the legacy of dance as an act of freedom and social empowerment. Cultural predispositions are activated and reinforced by children’s interactions with adults within the circle of the dance. Cultural knowledge is scaffolded in the teaching of dance, as children see, hear and feel the power of the dance within their bodies and through their participation with others. This approach to a decolonising dance praxis speaks to an organic process of cultural modelling, where young children are hearing and being in community, as teachers and community members co-​dance with children the steps and move to the language of the dance. The rest of this section discusses some of the most significant dimensions of Grupo Bayano’s praxis. The classroom space There is a need to dedicate or create classroom space, indoor and outdoor, for children to dance together freely. A space that is culturally inviting, that encourages dance, and where the drums have a home within the classroom, become a part of the children’s everyday life. This includes the presence of cultural images or murals of people dancing together, a sound system for music to be played live, clothes and fabric in dramatic play areas where children can don dance clothes

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or use instruments for community dance expressions. These spaces provide young children places to use their bodies as significant forms of communication. In this context, teachers must work out relationships between people who share space in a building with respect to the sound of the music, given that the drums and other instruments are integral to this dance pedagogy and bring an authentically embodied cultural feel to the environment. It is important to note here that Grupo Bayano also combines the arts, so children experience the movement of their bodies, the auditory stimulation of the instruments and visual representations of dress and cultural artefacts to promote an integral and multidimensional feel in the decolonising praxis of Bomba. Introduction of the children As this is a communal space, parents and younger children are always welcomed. Babies experience music and rhythm from the time they are in the womb. Within the cultural community of Bomba, teachers place the babies’ feet on the drum as an introduction and presentation to the spirit of the drum, allowing very young children to begin experiencing the feel of the drum with their bodies. In this way, girls and boys experience the wholeness of the cultural community through the dance, which allows the children to feel and know they belong in this community, as they move their bodies and discover the gendered expressions that speak to their being. The community holds this space for the introduction of the children, as a reference point for their cultural evolution. This is also a proud moment for parents, in that the baby interacts with the drummer and is officially brought into the communal dance as a member of the community. Within the circle of Bomba, drums (along with other small instruments) are also provided for young children to begin to experience and distinguish the major rhythms of the dance; but also, they begin to learn how to care for the drum as a living being of the community, not just an object to be pounded. As such, the children develop a relationship with the drum, recognising it as an instrument that is born from the communion of human beings with the resources in the world –​in this instance the wood is formed into a drum through the spirit of the drum maker and evolves later through the spirit of the drummer, who employs it within the community of the dance. The cultural emphasis here is placed upon teaching young children about the inextricable relationship of human beings to nature.

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Dance as a form of cultural play Grupo Bayano encompasses the philosophy that dance serves as an important sphere for cultural play for children and adults. Dance as a form of cultural play provides a spontaneous, joyful, loving and playful field of movement, which opens young children of colour to the experience of communal participation as an embodied practice. Through their participation in the communal dance, they learn to emanate the warmth and interconnection of communal expression and collective participation, as they experience the vibrations of the songs and drums and their dance steps come together to generate a sense of emotional and spiritual solidarity. Bomba music and dance lends itself to this process because of its improvisational nature. Born in the context of slavery and colonisation, Bomba is a cultural expression where music and dance combine to provide a decolonising or counternarrative in reading the world, which is brought together in the reinventing of that world. This is quite different to forms of dance instruction within the hegemonic culture of schooling shaped primarily by a conquest sensibility that defies a decolonising intent. The drum as a cultural being The drum, therefore, is considered a cultural being, a living extension of the person who makes it; as is the Bomba skirt, which is an extension of the person who sews it. The instruments are made from living plant beings. The drums are built from old wooden barrels and animal skins, which are recovered and renewed, turned into living and sustainable artisanal beings that continue to nurture the community. Through the process of the communal dance, the drum is infused with life through the repeated sounding (playing) of the drum, which seasons its existence and endears its place in the community. The cultural literacy that emerges from the drum demarcates an ontological and epistemological world-​view, which is generally undermined, ignored or denied within Western epistemologies, where cultural values reinforce control and mastery of the natural world. This contrasts with the relational epistemology of the South (Santos, 2007) that conceives of human labour and its production as a relationship where the production and its creator are one. Songs, as living historical texts, teach history, cultural values, world-​view and the cosmology of the community from which they originate. By learning the songs, the children learn and preserve their language and connect with the cultural expressive forms of their regional communities. Often folksongs and

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cultural dances speak of places that situate their origin and cultural significance, as well as historical moments of resistance, struggle, liberation, or celebration of life. The Bombazo According to Milteri Tucker, the New York-​based artistic director of the Bombazo Dance Company, Bombazo refers to the communal dance context of a Bomba, ‘where the community gathers to celebrate life through its rhythms, song and dance’, (cited in Maldonado, 2015). This is a multi-​age community space where Grupo Bayano works with babies, preschool children, school-​age children, youth, as well as multi-​age adults. In this communal dance space, children also find a space to participate in different cultural activities together. Multiple instruments are provided, and boys and girls are encouraged to learn all the parts of the dance, fostering a more open gender expression among the children. Always, there is a creative tension between the practice with the children and the community, given the US context has often functioned to segregate and separate the community life of children from that of adults. With the Bomba community, the pedagogy inherent in this communal process of inclusion supports the development of shared and collaborative spaces, where adults and children, females and males, interact and relish equally the beauty and power of the Bombazo. This expectation –​of adults and children labouring in the dance together –​signals another important epistemological shift and powerful cultural and gendered moment, which asserts and centres a pedagogy of shared communal life, as the cultural and gendered self of dancers discovers its true expression. As would be expected, this supports an open and evolutionary curriculum, which in turn supports a cultural and feminist pedagogical space where the actual needs of all participants, whatever their age, are integrated into the communal practice of Bomba. Building a cultural nest The work of Grupo Bayano, with members from different parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, emerged from social dances within family and community. Over the years, dancers from different parts would join the group and teach members more about the history and roots of their cultural dances, and this led the group towards working with live musicians to learn from them and to evolve in the practice

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Reflections on the decolonising dance praxis of Grupo Bayano

of communal dances. Community elders were integrated to support the group’s development. Since many of the participants work with young children, Grupo Bayano brings Bomba into community settings, usually on Saturdays for young children, parents and community elders to participate in dance together. Time and space are made for the children and adults to develop a sense of intimacy and belonging within the dance community. Similarly, it is important to include within classrooms the cultural instruments and the music of communities of colour, as points of cultural reference, engagement and relationship for young children, in that these generally contrast the Eurocentric and assimilative curriculum of the traditional preschool environment. This is key in that many children of colour and their communities have become alienated from their cultural history and practices due to racism and economic inequalities. Similar to the practice of Kohnaga Reo or language nests (Grenoble and Whaley, 2005: 54), as conceptualised by Maori early childhood educators Jean Puketapu and Dame Iritana Tawhiwhirangi (Thomson, 2015), Grupo Bayano has worked with community elders, parents and community members to build a cultural nest for young children through dance, creating pedagogical opportunities for children to actually experience, in embodied ways, those cultural practices that –​ through reclaiming them –​provide a means for reading the world as empowered cultural subjects of history. Critical praxis of teachers In applying a decolonising dance praxis, Grupo Bayano insist that teachers of young children consider their own dance traditions and the embodiment of cultural practices within their communities. That is, teachers must engage with their own cultural sensibilities with respect to their bodies, their personal relationship to dance and music, and their experiences dancing with musicians and live instruments. Teachers must begin this work within their own cultural sensibilities, just as they do with young children. They then are invited to enter wherever the process of the communal dance feels most familiar, slowly learning from the instruments their meaning. Teachers are encouraged to establish and develop relationships with community members and cultural artists over time, in order to nourish trust and faith in one another. In this way, teachers learn from community artists and artists learn from teachers. Teachers are expected to engage the traditional cultural dimensions of Bomba in respectful ways –​in ways that are in sync with the everyday life of the cultural communities of their students.

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Grupo Bayano also uses Bomba as an important entryway for helping young children link to the cultural dances of other cultural communities, within the classroom. One effective way that teachers can carry out this decolonising dance praxis is to encourage children to ask their mothers, fathers and grandparents about the cultural dances from their countries of origin and then invite them to teach these dances to students in the classroom. This practice is similar to one used by the Bombazo Dance Company when working with school-​age children. In the process, young children come together to share their dances as a collective expression of their cultural and gendered humanity. But what this activity also does, according to Maldonado (2015), is not only support children’s identity development, but also preserve the stories and traditions of their elders –​a practice that fosters community solidarity and self-​determination.

Synergy, solidarity and the power of community The power of Bomba, as a communal dance experience, comes directly from the collective collaboration and cooperation that is central to its community practice. A critical relationship informs then the ongoing dialogue between the dancer and drummer who together create the space for creative and spiritual expressions in ways that break racialised or gendered polarities. Unmarked step activity during the communal process helps to demonstrate the alignment of movement between dancer and drummer, which creates the space for empowerment of both female and male participants and leads to liberating cultural and gendered expressions of self and community. This is understood as historical and, thus, a cumulative process that evolves as part of the lived historical experience of the community itself. There is a necessary synergy and solidarity in Bomba that unfolds through participation in the dance, in that shared human relationships are essential to the dance itself. This requires a communal awareness of the needs of all participants –​dancers, drummers, singers and those holding or witnessing the space. When a community of dancers joins a learning community, they bring their collective strength and energies, which create an axis point or a flow between the dancers and the participants. This is done through the process of a cultural and gendered dialogue that is both spoken and danced, depending on the needs of the community. This cultural sensibility to the power of dance to heal and unite opens the space for different languages and ways of being that provide validation and affirmation for other individuals in the group who may come from different regional traditions of

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communal dance to awaken to their own traditions. This has been an important dimension in introducing Bomba to young children. Often, older students from Puerto Rico, speak about the absence of their primary culture within their experiences in schools. Hence, it is not surprising for students of colour to seldom see their culture reflected in their educational experience in the US, which, more often than not, supports an assimilative culture of forgetting (Darder, 2014b). Grupo Bayano’s decolonising dance praxis stands in direct resistance and opposition, by embracing a culture of reclaiming and remembering, through the embodied experience of communal dance. Over the last three decades, affirming the community power of different cultural traditions within the work of Grupo Bayano has strengthened the Seattle communities in which the group members work. In addition, their decolonising dance praxis has opened new possibilities for the expression of communal dance practices within other communities of colour –​communal dance practices that until recently remained hidden and unacknowledged. Most importantly, through their decolonising dance practices with young children of colour and their communities, Grupo Bayano has not only created a historical space for cultural expression and affirmation, but also a powerful political vision for self-​determination. References Aschenbrenner, J. (2002) Katherine Dunham: Dancing a Life, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Browning, B. (1995) Samba: Resistance in Motion, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Castaldi, F. (2006) Choreographies of African identities: Négritude, Dance, and the National Ballet of Senegal, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Cohen Bull, C.J. (1997) ‘Sense, meaning, and perception in three dance cultures’, in J. Desmond (ed) Meaning in Motion, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp 269–​88. Cruz Banks, O. (2007) Decolonizing the Body: An International Perspective on Dance Pedagogy from Uganda to the United States, unpublished dissertation. University of Arizona. Cruz Banks, O. (2010) ‘Critical postcolonial dance pedagogy: the relevance of West African dance education in the United States’, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 4(1): 18–​34. Daniels, Y. (2005) Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomble, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

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Darder, A. (1991) Culture & Power in the Classroom, Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Darder, A. (2009) ‘Decolonizing the flesh: the body, pedagogy, and inequality’ in R. Santos Colinos (ed), The Postcolonial Challenge of Education, New York, NY: Routledge, pp 217–​32. Darder, A. (2011) A Dissident Voice: Essays on Culture Pedagogy, & Power, New York, NY: Peter Lang. Darder, A. (2012) Culture & Power in the Classroom, Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Darder, A. (2014a) Freire and Education, New York, NY: Routledge. Darder, A. (2014b) ‘Cultural hegemony, language, and the culture of forgetting: interrogating restrictive language policies’, in P. Orelus (ed) Affirming Language Diversity in Schools and Society: Beyond Linguistic Apartheid, New York, NY: Routledge, pp 35–​53. DeFrantz, F. (2004) ‘The black beat made visible: hip hop dance and body power’, in A. Lepecki (ed) Of Presence of Body, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, pp 64–​80. Desmond, J. (1994) ‘Embodying difference: issues in dance and cultural studies’, Cultural Critique, 26: 33–​63. Eagleton, T. (2003) After Theory, New York, NY: Basic Books. Foster, S. (1986) Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Freire, P. (1971) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York, NY: Seabury Press. Freire, P. (1983) Education for Critical Consciousness, New York, NY: Seabury Press. Freire, P. and Faundez, A. (1989) Learning to Question: A Pedagogy of Liberation, New York, NY: Continuum. Freire, P. and Macedo, D. (1987) Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Giroux, H. (1988) Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Grenoble, L.A. and Whaley, L.J. (2005) Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maldonado, G.J. (2015) ‘ “Let’s make that drum talk!”: interview with the Bombazo Company’s Milteri Tucker’, La Respuesta. Available at: https://r​ epeatingislands.com/​2015/​07/1​ 2/l​ ets-m ​ ake-t​ hat-d​ rum-​ talk-​interview-w ​ ith-t​ he-b​ ombazo-d​ ance-​companys-​milteri-​tucker/​ Ness, S.A. (1992) Body Movement and Culture: Kinesthetic and Visual Symbolism in a Philippine Community, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. Novack, C. (1990) Sharing in the Dance, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

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Ousmare, H. (2005) ‘Global hip hop and African diaspora: in black cultural traffic: crossroads,’ in H.J. Elam and K.A. Jackson (eds) Global Performance and Popular Culture, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp 266–​88. Ousmare, H. (2007) The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-​Hop: Power Moves, New York, NY: Macmillan. Paraskeva, J. (2011) Conflicts in Curriculum Theory, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Santos, B. de Sousa (2007) Another World is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies, London: Verso. Shapiro, S.B. (1999) Pedagogy and the Politics of the Body: A Critical Praxis, New York, NY: Garland. Thomson, R. (2015) ‘Celebrating New Zealand’s first kohanga reo –​150 years of news’, The Dominion Post. Available at: http://​ www.stuff.co.nz/​ d ominion-​ p ost/​ n ews/​hutt-​valley/​7 3945639/​ celebrating-​new-​zealands-​first-​kohanga-​reo-​-​150-​years-​of-​news

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THREE

The power of song Leon Rosselson

Of all the art forms, song would seem to be the most democratic, the most accessible. Anybody can sing. You don’t need money, you don’t need expertise, you don’t need permission, you don’t need sophisticated technology or skilled guidance or expensive instrumentation. There is nothing to prevent you, in your bath or doing the washing-​up or stuck in a traffic jam, from opening your mouth and pouring out your soul in song. But for the most part you don’t. You switch on the radio, press the CD play button, plug your iPod into your ears, tune in to Spotify. And you consume. The illusion is that song is freely available. It belongs to everybody. Song is everywhere, blasting through the loudspeakers, filtering through the walls, hovering over your restaurant table, accompanying your pub conversations, jingling around in your head even when you don’t want it to. The reality is that song is the private property of business organisations, and by ‘song’ I mean not only individual songs but the whole song idiom; the idiom in which you might find your own voice has been appropriated by the market. Internet platforms, YouTube, self-​financed recordings have made it easier for groups wanting to express themselves in song to put their music into the public arena. But the power structure of the music business is largely unchanged, and without the backing of record companies, publishers, agents, the media, they will find it difficult to survive. And with that backing, the connections to the communities they were rooted in is inevitable severed. In the West Coast of the United States in the 1960s, there was an eruption of popular music which sprang from the student-​hippie community of the Bay Area. It was the alternative culture, it was peace and love. It was community control and the battle for People’s Park in Berkeley. It was opposition to the US war in Vietnam and the commercial values of straight Amerika. It was rejection of the institution of marriage and the work ethic. It was sex and drugs as a voyage of self-​discovery. The music, fusing rock and folk, was, at the outset, created within the community and controlled by the musicians

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themselves. The songs, many overtly political, were not so much a commercial product or an entertainment package as an expression of the values of that community. Yet within a year or two, the alternative culture was big business, the musicians were bought into stardom by lucrative record contracts, the message ‘liberate your minds’ turned out to be eminently saleable and the psychedelic trappings had become an industry. The guerrillas had been incorporated into the regular army of the enemy. And this has been the recurring pattern in popular music from ragtime to rock ’n’ roll, from skiffle in the 1950s to folk protest in the 1960s to punk in the 1970s and 1980s to grime in the early 2000s. The music industry has never had any problem in absorbing rebel music, grassroots music, and repackaging it for mass consumption. Music that springs from the life of a community, however that is defined, –​ghetto Blacks, white hillbillies, disaffected youth –​is sucked in by the machine, watered down, sweetened up and processed to make it fit for consumption. From being organic, it becomes decorative. Song can entertain, soothe, excite, dull the brain, massage the emotions. In the US, President Hoover, at his wits’ end for an economic policy during the Great Depression of the early 1930s, is said to have offered Rudi Vallée, radio’s star crooner, a medal if he could sing songs that would make people forget their troubles. It’s not surprising then that the musical airwaves in those years were filled with rainbows and roses and blue skies just around the corner. But because song, as any football fan knows, makes us feel less alone, it also has the power to energise and give heart and hope to the powerless; to engender a sense of solidarity and shared purpose; to challenge what is and imagine what might be. Bernice Reagon (best known as the founder of the Black singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock but at that time part of the Freedom Singers) explained what effect songs and singing had in bringing people together during the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement in the States:1 After a song, differences between us would not be as great. Making a song required an expression of that which was common to us all. It was like holding a tool in your hand … I saw that to define music as something you listen to, something that pleases you is very different from defining it as an instrument with which you drive home a point. In both instances, you can have the same song. But using it as an instrument makes it a different kind of song.2

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Not song as performance then but song as a shared experience. Making a community of the converted. Singing as an antidote to despair. When Brecht was in exile in Denmark in the 1930s, the bleakest time of his life, he wrote this poem: In den finsteren Zeiten Wird da auch gesungen werden? Da wird auch gesungen werden. Von den finsteren Zeiten. (From the Svendborg Poems, published in 1939) [In the days of darkness Will there be singing then too? There will be singing then too. About the days of darkness. (Translation by Sheila Taylor)] Song has that power to give hope in the darkest of times. On 24 October 2019, seven Catholic peace activists were convicted of destruction of property on a naval station, depredation of US government property, trespass and conspiracy. In April 2018 they had broken into the Kings Bay nuclear weapons base in St. Mary’s, Georgia and symbolically protested against nuclear weapons by damaging and defacing what they called the various monuments to Trident nuclear missiles. They could face more than 20 years in prison. A supporter of the protesters describes what happened when the court adjourned and they were released to await sentencing: the overflow room erupted in song. Rejoice, rejoice, again I say rejoice –​. It was one voice and then two, and by the end of the first stanza, half a dozen. As we filed into the hall we were met by people coming from the main courtroom who took up the song. We lined the hallways and the sound grew in volume and tempo. Rejoice, rejoice, again I say rejoice. The defendants emerged to hugs and began to sing along. (Kings Bay Plowshares Report, Day 4, by Ralph Hutchison) For those at the bottom, for those with nothing much else but their own voices (and, it would appear, nothing much to sing about) song has always been important. As an example of how song can empower a community, consider the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World, anarcho-​syndicalists who believed in the one big union and the one big strike that would break the power of the bosses for ever. For 20 years at the beginning of the 20th century, they were a singing crusade on behalf of the poorest, most exploited workers in the

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US: loggers, railroad mechanics, copper miners, hop-​pickers, textile workers, the unskilled ‘working stiffs’ despised by the craft unions of the American Federation of Labor, immigrants many of them, ill-​educated and ill-​organised. Songs transformed them, elevated them, organised them, enthused them with hope and courage. They took popular songs and ‘Starvation Army’ hymns and turned the words inside out, sharpening them with a subversive irony. They rolled the language, humour and experience of life at the bottom into something exuberant and immensely singable –​not poetry perhaps but to the point: Praise boss when morning workbells chime Praise him for bits of overtime Praise him whose wars we love to fight Praise him fat leech and parasite. With no mass media, no technology, no money, nothing but their own voices, their own energy and imagination and the Little Red Songbook3 to ‘fan the flames of discontent’, they spread the songs from Spokane, where they triumphed in the fight for free speech, down to the copper mines of Bisbee, Arizona, and across to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where they won the famous Bread and Roses strike of textile workers in 1912.4 They sang in meeting halls and soup kitchens; they sang on freight trains and at the funeral of Joe Hill5 in Chicago; they sang on street demonstrations and in prison cells. ‘ “Sing!” ’ the famous union organiser Mother Jones told the women in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, when they’d been put in prison for demonstrating during a miners’ strike. ‘ “Sing the whole night long and don’t stop for anyone … Just you all sing and sing.” ’ And so they did, driving the sheriff to distraction until he released them.6 ‘It is the first strike I ever saw that sang’, wrote Ray Stannard Baker7 in The American Magazine of the Bread and Roses strike: I shall not soon forget the curious lift, the strange sudden fire of the mingled nationalities at the strike meetings when they broke into the international language of song. And not only in the meetings did they sing but in the soup houses and in the streets. All revolutions, all movements for social change have their songs –​the Chartists, the Suffragettes, anti-​nuclear protesters, Greenham Common women, anti-​apartheid demonstrators, Civil Rights activists. Surely the Digger community on St George’s Hill8 sang to keep up their spirits as they faced attack from the soldiers:

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Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now, Your houses they pull down, stand up now. Your houses they pull down to fright poor men in town But the gentry must come down and the poor shall wear the crown Stand up now, Diggers all. And listening to the fiercely joyous song of the French Revolution, ‘La Carmagnole’, it’s not difficult to understand how it would have strengthened the resolve of the ‘sans-​culottes’ to bring down the monarchy and the aristocracy: Dansons la Carmagnole Vive le son, vive le son Dansons la Carmagnole Vive le son Du canon. In the summer of 1976, around four hundred women went on strike for equal pay at Trico, the windscreen wiper factory in West London. The men were getting up to £6.40 for doing the same work as the women –​not illegal under UK laws at the time. The strikers mounted a 24-​hour picket, rejected arbitration, compromise, the hostile pressure from most of the male workers, and after 21 weeks the management conceded. The strike was won. This was one of the few strikes in Britain in recent times that generated its own songs: The Trico women workers are picketing the gate There’s no pay for this shift though we’re on from eight to eight We’ve been out for sixteen weeks now and we’re quite prepared to wait Till we get equal pay. Equal pay for women workers Equal pay for women workers Equal pay for women workers We want equal pay. Sung to a well-​known tune (‘John Brown’s Body’), with a chorus that’s easy to learn and sing, and lyrics that made the women’s case in straightforward language with a touch of humour –​

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They called for a tribunal which is meeting with the bosses And it’s Lord Sir this and Chief High that with hoity-​ toity voices I’m sure they’ve had a lovely time complaining of their losses But we still want equal pay. –​it would undoubtedly have raised their spirits and their hopes over the long weeks and strengthened their determination to keep the strike going until they won. Who wrote their songs? No one claimed ownership. Was it one talented individual or were they composed communally over cups of tea in the kitchen? Who decided on the ‘John Brown’s Body’ tune and then slightly tweaked the melody on the second line of the verse? None of that is important. The songs were not aimed at making anybody famous or wealthy. In a sense, the whole community of women strikers created the songs since they were accepted as an authentic representation of their thoughts and feelings about the unfairness of their situation. The Wobblies had their songwriters, notably Joe Hill and Ralph Chaplin. But many of the songs they sang had no names attached to them or were labelled ‘traditional’. That the Digger, Gerrard Winstanley, wrote ‘You Noble Diggers All’, and Ben Boucher, a collier by trade, wrote the Chartist anthem, and John Brunner, science fiction writer, wrote ‘H-​Bombs Thunder’ may be worth recording but is of less importance than the fact that they were embedded in the communities that sang their songs and felt uplifted by them. Many songs written on behalf of Britain’s working classes in the 19th and early 20th centuries are by well-​known literary gents and ladies, like William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Edith Nesbit. Songs for Socialists, published in 1912 by the Fabian Society, contains a number of these labour anthems. Ye sturdy sons of labour, they exhort. Awake! Arise! Bear the flag unfurled and the banner aloft! March forward side by side to battle like a mighty river for Liberty, Brotherhood, Justice, the Cause. Composed from the outside, they never caught on with the communities on whose behalf they were written. The subject matter is too abstract and the language too lofty; though technically competent, they are stodgy, humourless and virtually unsingable. The working classes preferred something less worthy, more earthy and more rooted in real life. This, for instance, by Tommy Armstrong, the Durham pitman poet: The miners of South Medomsley they’re gannin’ te mak some stew They’re gannin’ to boil fat Postick and his dorty candy crew

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The maistors should have nowt but soup as long as they’re alive In memory of their dorty tricks in eighteen eight five. (The South Medomsley Strike) Nowadays, protests and demonstrations have often been accompanied by chants and slogans but rarely, if ever, by singing despite the encouragement of street choirs. The problem is that there isn’t a pool of singable shared songs to draw on when spirits need refreshing. I remember that at the mass pickets outside Grunwick during the summer of 1977 there was much speechifying and sloganising but no singing. And when Hackney Music Workshop brought banjos and guitars and voices and songsheets to encourage the assembled thousands to sing, there was polite attention and applause. But no singing. At the same time as those voiceless mass pickets, TV newsreels were showing women and children in Soweto singing as they were being shot down by the police, singing as they defied the bullets. It’s as if we have lost touch with our own voices, as if the mass media and the marketplace have annexed song, divided people into performers and consumers, turned the song idiom into a package to be purchased for leisure consumption. And yet the growing popularity of choirs in recent years, community choirs, street choirs, political choirs, church choirs, shows how much enthusiasm there is for the uplifting experience of singing together, even if what is sung remains largely at the discretion of the choir leaders. And, of course, songs are still being made by protest groups, particularly, in the last few years, among the anti-​fracking communities in Preston New Road, Lancashire, and elsewhere around the country: Fracking, fracking, what an insane idea Lethal toxins filling our hearts with fear. To those who make a profit This is our land, get off it. With drills and spills, your poison kills And the countryside disappears. (To the tune of ‘Daisy, Daisy’) When such groups do make songs, they rarely base them on whatever the current idiom is in the commercial music world, preferring something akin to the folk tradition or else an English music hall style of song. One problem with this is that it tends to exclude immigrant communities whose identity is rooted in their own music and who would find the English folk tradition alienating.

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A project aimed at bringing two different communities together was initiated in January 2019 by a charity called Music in Detention, in conjunction with musicians from Music for Change. Patients in the secure psychiatric unit of Langley Hospital and detainees in the nearby Brook House immigration detention centre, in the grounds of Gatwick Airport, came together to share experiences, stories, emotions, ideas and ‘something that unites us all: music’. In the process, they made together an album of songs. The music sessions improved their wellbeing –​‘it’s what made me better’, observed one ex-​patient of Langley Hospital –​and gave them hope. The power of song. ‘We Shall Overcome’, ‘Which Side Are You On?’, ‘Solidarity Forever’, ‘El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido’, ‘You Can’t Kill the Spirit’, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, ‘Oh God Our Help in Ages Past’ (the Ulster battle hymn) –​all these anthems have played their part in emboldening different political and social groups. The Vietcong carried songsheets into battle with them. Civil Rights demonstrators in the States sang as they were being attacked by Alsatian dogs, fire hoses and billy clubs because it made them feel less alone, less afraid. The importance of the new song movement in Chile can be gauged by the lengths the junta went to destroy it. Socialist folksingers and songwriters like Violeta Parra, Quilapayún and Inti-​Illimani, who rose to prominence during the presidency of the socialist politician Salvador Allende, fled into exile after the coup that brought General Pinochet to power, in order to escape the fate of Víctor Jara, Chile’s most famous songwriter, who was tortured and murdered by the dictatorship. Colonising powers have always attempted to root out indigenous music and culture. A defeated people does not sing. Notes The Freedom Singers were formed in 1962 by four African American students at Albany College, Georgia: Rutha Mae Harris, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Cordell Reagon and Charles Neblett. Their aim was to spread the civil rights message on behalf of the SNCC (Student Non-​Violent Coordinating Committee) and to challenge segregation and violence against Black people in the Southern States. They travelled the country adapting spirituals, hymns, gospel and soul to protest against racism and to educate audiences about civil rights. They sang at the March on Washington in 1963, disbanded in that year but re-​formed with a different line-​up to perform for President Barack Obama in 2010 as part of the Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement. 2 From the liner notes to Bernice Johnson Reagon’s LP Give Your Hands to Struggle, released by Paredon Records in 1975. 3 First published in 1909 under the title Songs of the Workers, on the Road, in the Jungles and in the Shops –​Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent by the Spokane, 1

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The power of song Washington, branch of the IWW. It was a compilation of protest songs aimed at creating solidarity, lifting the spirits of the working class and spreading the message of the One Big Union. Thirty-​six editions, incorporating different songs, were published between 1909 and 1995. 4 The strike started on 12 January 1912 when workers in the American Woolen Company Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts walked out. They were protesting against a cut in their wages and the speeding up of the production line. Most of the workers were immigrants from many different ethnic backgrounds, many of them women, some of them children. The main Union, the American Federation of Labor, which represented the mostly white, English-​speaking skilled workers, opposed the strike but the IWW gave it their full support. They sent Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn to Lawrence to organise the strikers and set up relief committees to provide food, medical care and clothing during the cold winter months. Despite their meetings and protest marches being met by violence, arrests and imprisonment from the management, the city officials and the state militia, the strikers were defiant and maintained their solidarity. The negative publicity for the management helped bring the strike to an end and on 12 March 1912, the management agreed to the strikers’ demands for a 15 per cent pay rise, double pay for overtime and an amnesty for strikers. The strike became known as the Bread and Roses strike when a group of women workers started carrying a banner proclaiming: ‘We want bread and roses too’. They were drawing on the words of the women’s rights campaigner, Helen Todd, who, in a speech to the Chicago Women’s Club in June 1910, demanded, “Bread for all, and Roses too.” This inspired James Oppenheim’s poem ‘Bread and Roses’ which was published in The American Magazine in December 1911. The poem reflected the prominent role played by women in the strike and because of that has been inextricably linked to it: As we go marching, unnumbered women dead Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread. Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses, too. Many singers and songwriters have set Oppenheim’s poem to music. Joe Hill (Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, also known as Joseph Hillström) was born in 1879 into a poor family in Gävle, Sweden. He emigrated to America in 1902, travelled from New York westwards, hopping freight trains, finding work where he could, joined the IWW, became a Wobbly organiser, a cartoonist and one of its most celebrated songwriters, penning such classics as ‘The Preacher and the Slave’, ‘The Rebel Girl’ and ‘There is Power in a Union’. At the end of 1913, he was in Utah, working at the Silver King mine near Salt Lake City. In January 1914, John Morrison, a grocer and ex-​policeman, and his son, were shot in their Salt Lake City Store. On the same evening, Hill went to a doctor for treatment for a wound. He said he had been shot by a fellow Swede in an argument over a woman. Although there was no evidence linking him to the murders and he had no motive for committing them, Hill was arrested and charged. There were other more credible suspects but Hill was an immigrant worker, a hobo and a union activist and, in the Red-​baiting atmosphere of the times, that made him an easy target. Hill refused to name the woman who had been the cause of the argument or to give an alibi and after a trial, deemed to be grossly unfair, was found guilty.

5

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Arts, Culture and Community Development The case became an international cause célèbre and generated protests and demands for clemency including from President Woodrow Wilson himself. Joe Hill was executed by firing squad in November 1915. In his last letter to the IWW leader Bill Haywood, he asked for his body to be taken over the state line because ‘I don’t want to be found dead in Utah’ and famously demanded: ‘Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize.’ Joe Hill’s life and death have been memorialised in a number of books and songs, notably ‘I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night’ by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson, made famous by Paul Robeson. 6 Mother Jones was born Mary Harris, in Cork, Ireland in 1837. When she was ten, the potato famine forced the family to emigrate to Toronto, Canada, where she learned dressmaking. From there she moved to Chicago and then Memphis, Tennessee, where she married George Jones, a skilled foundry worker and Union member. In 1867 her husband and their four children died in an outbreak of yellow fever. She returned to Chicago and set up a dressmaking business but in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 her shop burned down. She joined the volunteers who helped rebuild the city, became an organiser for the Knights of Labor and then for the United Mine Workers. Towards the end of the century, dressed in old-​fashioned black clothes and claiming she was older than she was, she reinvented herself as Mother Jones, a political activist on behalf of the poor, the oppressed and the exploited. She was a founder member of the IWW and travelled the country, organising workers, joining strikers on the picket line, campaigning against low pay, 12-​hour days, child labour and dangerous working conditions. She was a fiery speaker and earned a reputation as ‘the most dangerous woman in America’. She was a passionate campaigner for the coal miners and their union, the United Mine Workers. In 1910, when she was 73, she went to Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, to support the strike there. Many of the miners’ wives had been arrested and jailed, with their babies and small children, for harassing strikebreakers. At Mother Jones’s urging, the women sang all night for five nights preventing the sheriff and many of the townspeople in Greensburg from sleeping. After the sheriff released them, the incident was celebrated as ‘the women who sang their way out of jail’. 7 Ray Stannard Baker was a well-​known journalist and author who supported progressive causes and helped found The American Magazine in 1907. 8 On 1 April 1649, a group of poor men and women, led by the pamphleteer Gerrard Winstanley, began to dig and sow vegetables on the wasteland of St George’s Hill in the parish of Walton-​on-​Thames, in Surrey. They invited others to join them, inspired by the words of Winstanley that ‘the earth must be set free from intanglements of Lords and Landlords, and that it shall become a common Treasury to all’. They became known as the Diggers and, despite attacks by Cromwell’s soldiers, the gentry and the local clergy, their community survived for a year until in April 1650, it was finally destroyed. The Diggers were driven off and threatened with death if they ever returned. In April 1999, the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Digger commune was celebrated with a conference and a concert in Walton and a rally on St George’s Hill itself, now a golf course surrounded by an exclusive private estate of multi-​ million-​pound mock Elizabethan mansions.

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FOUR

‘The people awoke awake’:​ observations from Beirut’s walls in the 17 October moment Arek Dakessian, Célia Hassani and Sarah Shmaitilly

Introduction I am of that intergeneration who has survived a civil war only to witness all their references, associations, distant memories, and their short-​lived youth-​hood turn into the otherwise unsayable. As a grown man I live in an ill society saturated with infirmities and its occurrences visibly manifested in our present collective mental state. Even for the toughest amongst us that would be too much, yet here I am. My formation stems from the urgency of staying alive versus living. That urgency is my single ‘medium’ manifested in multitudes of presentations. As a remonstration against that memory, I hold pieces of black charcoal in my palms and wash my hands in a bowl of clear water to wash the ever hard dark residue from that stinking war. So here … one more drawing for this instant, one more for the trail, one more for the witness series, one more for my testimony, one more for that which should never happen again. I paint on stretched canvases and put them through the mail unprotected as I was in my youth, to have them travel as far away from me as possible alone on their own. These paintings have become my emissaries to scream their eyes out; ‘Handle (me/​you) with care’ to convey the disorders they/​I survived. (Ara, 2014: np) The title of this chapter translates a phrase from Lebanese rapper El Rass’ (2019) track Shuf (see, in Arabic), released in reference to the unprecedented scale of protests that started on 17 October 2019 in

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Lebanon. The opening quote, meanwhile, is the reflections of Lebanese artist Ara Azad (2014: np) on the 25th anniversary of his mailed paintings series –​posted to various museums, galleries and art collectors around the world. The two productions were born 25 years apart, yet the experiences to which they speak resonate with each other. They express in poetry our situated experience of everyday being in Lebanon. We had initially planned for this chapter to reflect on street art more generally in Beirut. But as we were in the initial phases of formulating our thoughts 17 October happened, and the subsequent emergence of public conversations suddenly became too loud to be ignored. This was the evening the country was overcome with unprecedented protests over decades of corruption and a bankrupt economy (see, for instance, Dib, 2020; Fjeld and Abdunnur, 2020; Fregonese, 2020). We therefore decided to rewrite this chapter with a focus on the ‘October Revolution’,1 not with the intention of defining, analysing, diagnosing or indeed attempting to give it a coherent shape, rather with the aim of shedding light on some of the conversations that were previously unsayable but that were thinkable and that have since escaped the confines of safe and intimate privacies onto public Lebanese walls in the form of street art. In the following pages, we pick out one such topic of conversation among those that resonate most with us –​sometimes as authors and sometimes as Lebanese, and so directly implicated. But goings-​on in Lebanon are evolving and not static. The conversations we have picked out are not definitive, nor will they necessarily be continuing when this is printed. Our interest in them for this chapter is simply because of just how public they are. Indeed, the aim is not to diagnose the 17 October moment, rather to shed light on some of its nuances and intimacies. Everyday developments, documented, mobilised and disseminated through social and mass media render this revolutionary moment still too dynamic for distant and coherent reflection on its entirety. The photos we present in this chapter were taken mostly between October 2019 and January 2020. We cannot claim to know when these murals and inscriptions were authored, but we can say that they caught our own imagination from early on. They revolve almost inevitably around the civil war, but also around everyday ills. We pick these out precisely because they –​in our view –​say in public what was only thinkable and whisper-​able in private. In this way, we argue, graffiti pieces and random anonymous scribbles on Beirut’s walls testify (Fraenkel, 2007) a political moment opposed to the prevailing sectarian consociational order. This is important because the sociology of art tells us that the interaction between aesthetic objects (in this case murals

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and scribbles) and their viewers is generative or ‘world-​building’, to borrow Acord and DeNora’s (2008: 227) characterisation (see also Gomart and Hennion, 1999; Born, 2010; Griswold et al, 2013; and on graffiti specifically see Brighenti, 2010).

The civil war The spate of (counter)public artistic expressions emanating from recent events in Lebanon –​manifesting themselves in Lebanese cities and villages big and small –​often voice conversations around the Lebanese civil war. This is normally a taboo, a narrative vacuum in the Lebanese imaginary and official national discourse (Salibi, 1977; cf Corm, 2012; Seidman, 2012). The Lebanese history curriculum, for instance, moves away from the country’s own recent history and engages instead with regional developments (Gilbert-​Sleiman, 2010; Verdeil, 2017: 21). Pupils in Lebanese schools know more about the formation and eventual dissolution of the United Arab Republic between 1961 and 1971 than about their own country’s contestations in that period and beyond. As our own history teachers told us in school, the Lebanese are unable to agree on a narration of the civil war which satisfies the requirements and heroisms of the country’s 18 officially recognised sects: ‘Christians and Muslims should have an equal number of martyrs, but they don’t’. Absent therefore is an ‘official’ history of exactly what happened during the civil war. Instead, most of what we know comes from the oral histories of traumatised family members. Our own families spoke of aunts and uncles who put their hands to their heads upon hearing a nearby bomb drop, only for their palms to descend with clumps of fallen hair. Our fathers, when speaking of their teenage years during the civil war, told us of their hobbies: collecting empty bullet shells from the streets. Their stories of teenage mischief, in fact, often include moments when our grandparents, their parents, searched for them among bodies lying dead on the bridges that connect Beirut to its suburbs. When being told such stories, we also feel the relief our grandparents felt when their children eventually returned home, after having to wait out the bombardments and skirmishes on the other side of town. Khatib (2008), for instance, argues that much of Lebanese post-​war cinema was concerned with processing these traumas of the civil war; while Hayek (2014, especially pp 94–​128; see also Lang, 2016) charts these manifestations in post-​war literature. Josef Fares’ Zozo (2005), Zeina El Khalil’s Beirut I Love You (2009) and Fouad El Khoury’s Be … Longing (2011) provide some of the cinematic, literary and photographic aestheticisations of these histories respectively.

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Growing up in post-​war Beirut, there is the figure of the ‘crazy’ neighbour who everyone recognises. These are people who frantically patrol their balconies every day, or who scream in anguish at random times. ‘It’s the war’, our parents responded when we asked them why these people were ‘like that’. There are, too, the zaiims, those hard men who became famous during the war for ‘protecting’ their neighbourhoods (at a cost, no less). In times of relative peace, stories abound of zaiims struggling with their reintegration into the social body. These stories, recounted in the safety of private and intimate spaces, include zaiims putting guns to people’s heads for parking in a particular spot while they wait to pick up their sisters, brothers, friends, or partners in their cars. Often, when Lebanese citizens call the emergency services number (112), it is the Internal Security Forces who pick up the phone, but it is not always they who arrive at the scene; rather the political parties –​the same protagonists of the civil war –​who preside over each area. These are everyday instantiations of what Fregonese and Ramadan (2017) call Lebanon’s ‘hybrid sovereignties’ in what constitutes a nuanced distantiation from traditional and simplistic notions of ‘weak’ or ‘failed’ states. Fawaz et al (2012; see also Fawaz, 2009), meanwhile, describe the situated everyday experience of a ‘fragmented’ city. The country is currently run by the very same protagonists of the stories recounted earlier, and it is their infrastructures of power that furnish the hybridity of Lebanon’s sovereignties (see Salibi, 2003; Mermier and Mervin, 2012; Vloeberghs, 2016). The current Lebanese president, for instance, fled to France in 1990 to escape a lifelong prison sentence for his role in the civil war. He returned in 2005, when Syrian peacekeeping forces were kicked out of the country. The leader of the largest Christian opposition party, meanwhile, was also sentenced to prison for life (see Aubin-​Boltanski 2012 especially para 1; para 14). He, too, was released in 2005. The current Speaker of the House, who has occupied the same position since the end of the civil war 30 years ago, meanwhile, was famed for tying prisoners’ legs to two separate cars and then driving them in opposite directions. In the midst of such subtle, yet public, performances of power and security both past and present in Beirut (but also across Lebanon), it is not surprising that oral histories of the civil war are normally relegated to the private and intimate spheres of conversation. And, against this backdrop, some of the street-​level interlocutions, both artist-​and-​citizen authored, that emerged from 17 October –​such as Figure 4.1, which opines that ‘the civil war ended today’ –​bear even greater culturally significant and resistive meaning.

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‘The people awoke awake’ Figure 4.1: ‘The civil war ended today’ (middle text)

Source: Authors’ own

But how does the Beiruti or Lebanese self-​process and make sense of such multiply layered contestations? Seidman (2012: 10) captures its consequences beautifully: In the circulatory flow of the streets, an urban topography gives shape to a lean, minimally unencumbered self. This self, as she navigates the streets, is not a self whose thick past is in play. Instead, this self imagines suspending time in order to live intensely in the here and now. This is also not a self whose inner life is to be revealed. Hamra’s streets may be a space of desire, but in a street culture bent to flows and speed they do not encourage intimate sharing. To the contrary, this street savvy, lean self stays close to the body, to the surfaces and desires that bind the self to the immediate sensual excitements of the street. This is a self that flourishes in the drama of the discrete gesture; a self who enters and exits, stops and goes, greets and departs, spends and moves on; a self that doesn’t linger too long anywhere, with anyone or anything.

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In the absence of an official reconciliatory narrative of the civil war, sense-​makings of this ‘thick past’ find expression in art instead. In 2008, Lebanese artist Nada Sehnaoui installed 600 toilets in downtown Beirut, under the title ‘Haven’t 15 years of hiding in the toilets been enough?’ The image of hiding in toilets and bathrooms is an apt one. Sehnaoui chose toilets because these were the rooms where there were no glass windows that could shatter in the event of an explosion. These are also, however, the rooms that are most especially ‘hidden’ from the public eye (cf Dutton et al, 2002). Sehnaoui’s public juxtaposition of these intimate objects in a field in downtown Beirut, therefore, was also a comment on the very private, intimate and lived consequences of a public vacuum. These express the ‘disorders’ that the Lebanese self ‘survives’ to this day and that are expressed by artists such as Sehnaoui (2008) and Ara (2017) –​as in the opening quote of this chapter and in the relationship between the serene yellow and fire red that colour the following painting, by Ara at the age of 17 (during the final days of the civil war). Indeed, the figure of the Lebanese artist is one who does the work of documenting and meditating upon the country’s intentionally Figure 4.2: Ara’s ‘Beirut at my 17’

Source: Ara, A. (2017) Beirut at my 17. Acrylic and charcoal on canvas. 150 cm x 190 cm. Artist’s collection. Beirut: Lebanon.

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opaque recent past. ‘The complexity of unresolved internal and regional problems, as well as its social closenesses’, Bellan (2007: para 7, own translation) writes of Lebanon, ‘generate a powerful interaction between political reality and everyone’s everyday life. This explains, at least in part, the preoccupation of numerous artists with reality and (archival) documents’. The author here is talking about certain visual artists2 whose work revolves around archival documents of the past. More broadly, Rogers (2007: para 6) reflects on the possibilities of rethinking the Lebanese artist as a critical historian. She writes of a generation of post-​war artists, ‘whose work shares a common critical interest with the civil war, its histories and memories’. Wright (2002: 14), meanwhile, writes of this very same generation of artists’ posture of ‘elusive implication’ that cultivates a ‘reflexive presence/​ absence’ in ‘sift[ing] through the contemporary dilemmas of living together’ in post-​war Lebanon. In this way, we understand the contemporary post-​war Lebanese artist as furnishing reconciliation, reconstruction, collective memory and public space (Wright, 2002; Bellan, 2007; Puig and Mermier, 2007; Chabrol, 2010).3

Everyday survivings Yet the ‘survival’ that artists like Sehnaoui and Ara speak of is a process, an ongoing negotiation for the Beirutis (and Lebanese). ‘Kin, village, sect, patriarch and patron, gender code and social class encircle the self in a seamless web of rules, customs, and rituals’, Seidman (2012: 10) argues. ‘Survival’ is therefore the continued, everyday negotiation of being through, with and against these layers of meaning and their (oral) histories; the suppression –​in order to survive –​of unthinkable, un-​askable and un-​answerable questions. It is carrying, privately, the weight of all 600 toilets, window-​less rooms, vases, serenities of the foreground against the raging fires of the background, that the aforementioned works of art express. Yet in the popular reassertion of public ownership that Beirut and Lebanon more widely have recently been witnessing in the context of the ongoing Revolution, there is also a release mediated by art. We start with two bulls, cows, or donkeys (Figure 4.3) who announced themselves on a metal wall that cordons off an empty plot of land in downtown Beirut. This is next to the Grand Theatre, a cultural landmark that –​like ‘the Egg’, a peculiar building in downtown Beirut that emerged in 1965 and has never been fully constructed –​bears the scars of the civil war to this day because of administrative and political gridlock over its future. The land

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Arts, Culture and Community Development Figure 4.3: ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am … and who are you?’

Source: Authors’ own

is something of an outlier to Solidere’s programme of post-​war privatisation and reconstruction of downtown Beirut (Karl reMarks, 2011; Springer, 2013). The two bulls, featuring in one of a series of paste-​u ps that bear them as their main protagonists, are in conversation: ‘Who are you?’ one asks. ‘I am … and who are you?’ the other responds, inviting the public to fill out a series of empty speech bubbles in public dialogue. ‘I am the victim of religion [sect] and society’, one response says, signed ‘citizen’. As if lamenting the lamentable past that led to the eruption of these protests, another speech bubble gives rueful advice: ‘An eye for an eye leads to a world led by the blind’. Outside the speech bubbles and on the seams of the paste-​up, are the words: ‘I am the refugee who built new meaning to belonging’, signed –​‘female Palestinian refugee’. On the other side, an assertion without even anonymous signature: ‘We want a civil state’. As these anonymous citizens engage in conversation, saying who they are and learning who the other might be, a commentator encourages: ‘More than any other time, now is your time’. We observe, here, the processes of becoming, or the formation of certain citizen subjectivities. The aforementioned conversations give expression to that which the continuous, everyday process of ‘surviving’

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is negotiated against. The world led by the blind is Lebanon: ‘whereas a heightened sectarianism shapes a disposition of fear and barely contained loathing towards the sectarian other’. Seidman (2012: 12) writes, ‘an urban culture oriented to circulation cultivates a disciplined insularity, as if nothing is owed to others beyond benign indifference’. As a victim of sectarian society, the Lebanese self is confined to the disciplined insularity of its social structures. To want a civil state is to want the fall of imposed disciplined insularity. It is to want to be able to construct a life with an ‘other’, to relate to a civic, not sectarian, other. In reclaimed public space, the dialogue previously confined to the intimate private is made present and thus continues. Perhaps these speech bubbles give expression to a reflexive citizen, one who has done the thinking work, perhaps even in interaction with the two speaking bulls, and emplaced on these particular speeches a thought-​ out, generalised and public political claim. The (public) wall becomes political territory (Brighenti, 2010). Figure 4.4: ‘Sarah and Jad, Mama, we miss you and we love you’

Source: Authors’ own

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Arts, Culture and Community Development Figure 4.5: ‘For Nael in France’

Source: Authors’ own

Other scribbles, though still on public walls, retain the intimacy of their previous spaces. These transport private thoughts, private wants, into the public. ‘Sarah and Jad, Mama, we miss you and we love you’, one mother writes to her two children who have emigrated. She has written this in everyday liner pen, the type of pen thick enough to be read if written with on walls. Under one of the stencils, ‘Lebanon revolts’ has been written, through which these dialogues have become public. ‘You milked us’, ‘you hungered us’, ‘you suffocated us’, are among the others, speaking and cohering a collective oppressed ‘us’ against a collective oppressor ‘you’. As if taking their orders from the mother, close to this particular wall we see the children of similar mothers empathising with the other mothers of the collective ‘us’. They write ‘For Nael in France’, (Figure 4.5) and ‘For Karl in Nigeria’. Dedicating these political moments to those abroad signals, perhaps, a recognition of a shared experience, a shared subjecthood in sectarian difference. They engrave on walls in Beirut the inescapable reality of a Lebanese diaspora, a sense that ‘I relate to people who are also abroad’ and that ‘people abroad inevitably also relate to Lebanon’. They render Lebanon not only the geographic Lebanon, but so too its far-​reaching diaspora. The attribution of this political moment to

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Nael being in France allows us, then, to understand the ‘October Revolution’ as being emplaced in Lebanon but one that extends its reach transnationally beyond Lebanon. Everyday WhatsApp calls or social media interactions between Lebanese in Lebanon and abroad thus move out of the sphere of the banal yet intimate and into the public; consequently the political. The rendering into public of such private intimacies speaks, too, of a more axiomatic relationship between home and exile, reminiscent of Said’s (1984: 52) description of exile as carrying with it ‘a touch of solitude and spirituality’. There seems to be a recognition by Nael’s friends that Nael might not have wanted to leave. At the very least, there is a recognition of rupture. Indeed, while parents in Lebanon miss their children and their friends miss their friends, so too do those who have gone to other countries miss them in return. There was a protest sign we repeatedly came across but could not photograph, which said: ‘This is for every tear that has ever been shed at the Beirut Airport’. Over the New Year period and over summer, diasporans flock back home, and in these periods the everyday life of the country shifts. It is a full-​ time job, many of us say, to be back home, again among family, again among friends, to share the short period of ‘jouissance’ (Hage, 2018) back home afforded by working lives abroad. These, too, are played out on Beirut’s walls. ‘In the soil of my country my mother sleeps’, writes Afaf (Figure 4.6) as if from her exile, similar to the anonymous ‘I miss my mother, come on and fall you system’. Some of those who inhere to the collective ‘us’ want to come back. ‘I want to be able to give my children an education. I want to give them healthcare. I want a pension’, writes a parent of the collective ‘us’ worried –​like all of us –​about the probable departure of their children. Yet the slightly older children, those very same people whose reclamations of public space after 17 October made such public dialogue possible, respond to their parents and friends. With defiance and firm rootedness, but also with a little bit of inner fear and vulnerability, they write on the margins of travel offices. ‘I am not leaving’, in amateur calligraphic Arabic that almost lays claim to the firmness of our older and less controversial histories (Figure 4.8). There is a kind of confident resoluteness in the way ‘I am not leaving’ is enunciated here. It is emplaced at the bottom corner of the window display of the travel office; it is small, as if the speaker felt no need to shout the assertion. Why would they? At the bottom left-​hand corner they simply wrote a truth, an uncontestable fact: ‘I am not leaving’, as if putting the other in front of a fait accompli –​‘do with my refusal to leave what you will’. This kind of certainty imposes a certain

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Arts, Culture and Community Development Figure 4.6: ‘In the soil of my country my mother sleeps’

Source: Authors’ own

Figure 4.7: ‘I miss my mother, come on and fall you system’

Source: Authors’ own

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‘The people awoke awake’ Figure 4.8: ‘I am not leaving’

Source: Authors’ own

embodied truth on the generalised other against whom Lebanon’s protests erupted, but they stop short of making explicit demands of the other. They can be thought of as position-​takings, definitions of where the collective ‘us’ stands in relation to the ‘you’. Visa rejections, for instance, often understood by the Lebanese as a fear of the first world that once we enter it we will choose to stay there, have always been a source of real confusion: ‘We never wanted to leave in the first place, let alone wanting to leave and staying there’, is often the response to such rejections. It is a feeling shared by those abroad and those back home, one of those constitutive elements of the emergent collective ‘us’. Indeed, of exile. But on other Beiruti walls, this steely disposition begins also to flesh out some of the politics that emerge out of a will to stay: someone who is staying, but also imposing redefinitions. ‘It’s called balad, not Solidere’, (Figure 4.9) is one such assertion on a wall not far from where the decision to stay has been announced. This is one instantiation of the political consequences that ‘staying’ might entail: it might mean that downtown Beirut is no longer referred to as ‘Solidere’, the name of the company that led downtown Beirut’s post-​war reconstruction and privatised public space in so doing –​but is known by the name most Lebanese already refer to it: ‘balad’. Verdeil (2017: 76, own translation) contrasts pre-​ and post-​war downtown Beirut beautifully: pre-​ war as ‘the beating heart of the … capital, a symbol of social and communitarian mixing’, post-​war as a place ‘marked by exclusive

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Arts, Culture and Community Development Figure 4.9: ‘It’s called balad, not Solidere’

Source: Authors’ own

urbanity’ and ‘social filtrations’ that produce it as ‘an enclave of luxury’. Calling it balad instead of Solidere thus renders public the problematisation of this post-​war and exclusionary rendering private of a public space. Next to this is another such assertion: ‘dams and quarries are public property’ (Figure 4.10). These refer to the myriad illegal quarries constructed on the mount-​Lebanon and anti-​Lebanon mountain chains. These quarries have been built without environmental impact assessments and have often provided the raw stone material for downtown Beirut’s plush but empty high-​r ises. The collective ‘us’ has, over the years, witnessed the shrinking of these mountains and the degradation of the country’s wildlife as a result. Most recently, plans to build a dam in the Bisri Forest, one of Lebanon’s few remaining nature reserves, have been met with protesters from the collective ‘us’ camping in the forest in order to prevent lorries from carrying out its destruction. The protestors succeeded. In all of these examples, there is an emerging sense of explicit public accountability. ‘Don’t sleep on silk’, one mural asks of the collective us –​as if to advise viewers that while the path ahead is a long and arduous one, it is worth taking. ‘Collective therapy of the civil war, for

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‘The people awoke awake’ Figure 4.10: ‘Dams and quarries are public property’

Source: Authors’ own

the first time since the civil war’, another reminds, contextualising the current moment in its wider historical frame. And so, too, these public artworks identify and make explicit the figureheads of the collective other. This is no longer the sectarian other that Seidman (2012) speaks of; rather those very same zaiims and political leaders of the civil war era who still run the country today. ‘[Walid, Samir, and Samy think I’m stupid, they think I’ve forgotten] The people have woken awake’, El Rass’ (2019) ‘Shouf ’ asserts. ‘All of them means all of them’, is another ubiquitous slogan atomising this ‘other’. Stencils of their faces abound, with a variety of captions such as are featured in the following figures. They remind us pictorially just who these people are: Lebanon’s most notable politicians (Figure 4.11). Each caption, in turn, is designed to ridicule the politician it frames.

Who killed Mahdi Amel? A few months before 17 October, the beginning of the revolution, stencils of a man appeared on the walls of Beirut with ‘Read Mahdi Amel’ written under his iconic portrait. They went unnoticed by many; they were just another addition to Beirut’s loud walls. The

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Arts, Culture and Community Development Figure 4.11: Stencils of some of Lebanon’s political leaders

Source: Authors’ own

only people who would notice them would have been those who knew his face, who had studied him thoroughly. Soon after people took to the streets in mid-​October, Mahdi Amel was sprayed on tens of walls. Friends asked each other, ‘Who is this person?’ Some had answers, others Googled him. Mahdi Amel is Hasan Hamdan’s pseudonym. He was a professor of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the Lebanese University, a poet and a senior member of the Lebanese Communist Party. Amel attempted to adapt Marxist conceptions to Arab contexts. He was ‘silenced’. In May 1987, during the civil war; he was assassinated while on his way to teach a class. A Shiite himself, the Shiite clergy refused to hold a funeral and prayers for him in his hometown, Harouf, in South Lebanon, because he was a communist. A funeral was instead held at a Sunni mosque in Beirut’s Tariq el Jdideh. It is said that Syria’s long-​time head of intelligence and security apparatus, Ghazi Kanaan, attended the funeral and asked the Lebanese Communist Party’s (LCP) (Al-​Rasheed, 2014) leadership, ‘Was this a necessary price to pay?’ Three months prior to the assassination of Amel, the communist thinker, journalist and literary critic Hussein Mroueh was also killed; and before them, LCP member and journalist, Khalil Naous. More preceded, more followed. Before the liquidation and abortion of the Lebanese National Resistance Front, a series of intimidations against communists in the South Lebanon, assaults, fearmongering and forced displacements took place (see, for instance, Muñoz, 2019). It was an attempt to silence the communists, push them out of the South and monopolise the resistance against Israel. Why is Mahdi Amel’s face on the walls of Beirut decades later? Where from, this newly public interest in his Marxist, Althusserian scholarship? Is there a relevance, usefulness, or timeliness to it, some 40 years on? Is this a campaign to underline the monopolisation of resistance by Lebanese politics and to shed light on some of the ‘civil wars’ within the civil war (see, for instance, Traboulsi, 2007: part III)?

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‘The people awoke awake’ Figure 4.12: ‘Who killed Mahdi Amel?’

Source: Authors’ own

Under the Ring bridge, which the revolutionaries often occupy, one of his quotes is sprayed across the wall: ‘How can the revolution be clean when it has come out of the bowels of the present; dirtied by it?’. Since the beginning of the revolution, protesters have been readily called ‘thugs’ when they have defaced banks, ‘embassy-​funded’ when they have provided free food for each other, ‘collaborators’ when they have cursed corrupt politicians, to name a few. Revolutions can never be peaceful, seems to be the protesters’ response; especially in light of the impotence of peaceful means on those in power. The present is still ‘dirty’, and so the revolution cannot be ‘clean’. Mahdi Amel’s stencil is everywhere; from the different walls in downtown Beirut where most protests take place, to the walls of Beirut’s Hamra to the west, and even posher Ashrafieh to the east, with the ‘balad’ in between. The walls interpel ‘Who killed Mahdi Amel?’ (Figure 4.12); ‘Read Mahdi Amel’; ‘We know who killed Mahdi Amel’. Most notable is this: ‘You are not defeated as long as you are resisting’. Indeed, in this rendering public of questions that were previously private, such figures, politics and intellectuals re-​emerge as orators representative of all the opaque ‘disappearances’ of Lebanon’s civil wars. To this day, over 17,000 people remain ‘disappeared’ (see Comaty, 2019) and,

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much like the oral histories of the civil war that the collective ‘us’ shares, so too do ‘we’ have disappeared friends and relatives whose stories remain untold.

Public becomings: awoke awakenings So, in the signalling of unresolved questions, in the making visible –​ and public –​of previously intimate and private reflections as in the aforementioned ‘I am not leaving’ or, for instance, ‘quarries and dams are public property’, we see a process of becoming. In this chapter, we have attempted to show how this becoming is punctuated and mediated by art. This is a process whereby art metaphorically ushers or pushes the unarticulated, private and intimate thoughts or words of its interlocutors into the public; a process whereby missing one’s children is no longer a private matter, rather a shared public problem (cf Mills, 2000), where these now-​public problems enter into dialogue –​indeed even empathetic relation –​with each other. We might also say that, levered by art, this is a process of becoming citizens or of renegotiating the terms of citizenship by those interlocutors –​sometimes anonymous and sometimes named –​on Beirut’s walls. Indeed, it is when problems Figure 4.13: ‘This time history decided not to repeat itself’

Source: Authors’ own

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are signalled, when a collectivity –​in the form of a collective ‘us’ –​is expressed, where this collectivity makes itself visible and speaks, where these diffuse voices enter into public debate among speaking citizens just as they become citizens, that space emerges as a discursive and critical public sphere in the Habermasian (1991) sense. It is mediated by none other than those two bulls who ask, ‘Who are you?’; who frame: ‘This is group therapy of the civil war, for the first time since the civil war’; and who remind: ‘Don’t sleep on silk’ having documented, critiqued and historicised the continuous, and still continuing, everyday Lebanese survivals. These im/​mediate those voicings that ‘this time, history decided not to repeat itself ’ (Figure 4.13). Notes We choose to use the term ‘revolution’ here because, despite much debate, the Arabic word ‘thawra’ has been most commonly used in reference to this moment. Other popular descriptions include Intifada and Hirak (movement). 2 Bellan here is referring to the work of Rabih Mroue, Walid Raad, Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige, Lamia Joreige and Akram Zaatari. 3 It is worth noting that it is not only in Lebanon that artists have played this critical historical role, though. Dussollier (2019: np) argues that this was a regional phenomenon of the 1990s, when artists started to create ‘hubs of reflection and [critical] engagement’. 1

References Acord, S.K. and DeNora, T. (2008) ‘Cultura and the arts: from art worlds to arts-​in-​action’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 619: 223–​37. Al-​Rasheed, A.R. (2014) ‘Finally … after thirty years? Al-​Sharq al-​Awsat’. Available at: https://​aawsat.com/​home/​article/​19246 Ara, A. (2014) Ara Azad, Beirut: Artist Book. Ara, A. (2017) Beirut at my 17. Acrylic and charcoal on canvas. 150 cm x 190 cm. Artist’s collection, Beirut: Lebanon. Aubin-​Boltanski, E. (2012) ‘Samir Geagea: le guerrier, le martyr et le za’îm’, in F. Mermier and S. Mervin (eds) Leaders et partisans au Liban, Paris: Karthala/​Beirut: IFPO, pp 57–80, doi: 10.3917/​kart. mermi.2012.01.005 Bellan, M. (2007) ‘Des représentations de l’histoire et de la mémoire dans l’art contemporain au Liban’, in N. Puig and F. Mermier (eds) Itinéraires esthétiques et scènes culturelles au Proche-​Orient, Beirut: IFPO. Born, G. (2010) ‘The social and the aesthetic: for a post-​Bourdieusian theory of cultural production’, Cultural Sociology, 4(2): 171–​208. Brighenti, A.M. (2010) ‘At the wall: graffiti writers, urban territoriality, and the public domain’, Space and Culture, 13(3): 315–​32.

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Chabrol, A. (2010) ‘La fabrique artistique de la mémoire: effet de génération et entreprises artistiques dans le Liban contemporain’, in F. Mermier and C. Varin (eds) Mémoires de guerres au Liban (1975–​ 1990), Arles: Sindbad/​Actes Sud/​IFPO, pp 485–​509. Comaty, L. (2019) Post Conflict Transition in Lebanon: The Disappeared of the Civil War, London: Routledge. Corm, G. (2012) Pour une lecture profane des conflits: sur le ‘retour du religieux’ dans les conflits contemporains du Moyen-​Orient, Paris: La Découverte. Dib, K. (2020) ‘Predator neoliberalism: Lebanon on the brink of disaster’, Contemporary Arab Affairs, 13(1): 3–​22, https://​doi.org/​ 10.1525/​caa.2020.13.1.3 Dussollier, C. (2019) L’art dans la cité: irruption de l’art dans l’espace public au sud de la Méditerranée. Méditerranée Moyen-​Orient: Questions de sociétés, sociétés en question, Paris, 6 April 2019, iReMMO. Available at: https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=teJgQHuJFlc Dutton, M., Seth, S. and Gandhi, L. (2002) ‘Plumbing the depths: toilets, transparency and modernity’, Postcolonial Studies, 5(2): 137–​142, https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​1368879022000021047 El Khalil, Z. (2009) Beirut, I Love You: A Memoir, Beirut: Saqi Books. El Khoury, F. (2011) Be … Longing, Göttingen: Steidl. El Rass (2019) ‫فوش‬. Beirut: El Rass. Available at: https://​soundcloud. com/​el-​rass-​the-​head/​46e13u8djxka Fares, J. (2005) Zozo, Memfis Film, Film i Väst, Sigma Films. Fawaz, M. (2009) ‘Neoliberal urbanity and the right to the city: a view from Beirut’s periphery’, Development and Change, 40(5): 827–​52, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1467-​7660.2009.01585.x Fawaz, M., Harb, M. and Gharbieh, A. (2012) ‘Living Beirut’s security zones: an investigation of the modalities and practice of urban security’, City & Society, 24(2): 173–​95, https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​ j.1548-​744X.2012.01074.x Fjeld, T. and Abdunnur, S. (2020) ‘Lebanon in revolt: interview with Sharif Abdunnur’, Inscriptions, 3(1): Article 57. Fraenkel, B. (2007) ‘Actes d’ecriture: quant érire c’est faire’, Langage et Socièté, 3–​4(121–​2): 101–​12. Fregonese, S. (2012) ‘Beyond the “weak state”: hybrid sovereignties in Beirut’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(4): 655–​74, https://​doi.org/​10.1068/​d11410 Fregonese, S. (2020) ‘Elements of contestation: sectarianism as extractive violence and Lebanon’s revolution’, in Nagle, F., McManus, C., Rønn, A.K., Mabon, S., Garabelli, G., Fregonese, S., Ruished, A., Jeremiah, A.H. and Kumarasamy, A.M. (2020) Urban Spaces and Sectarian Contestation, Lancaster: Lancaster University, pp 33-9.

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Fregonese, S. and Ramadan, A. (2017) ‘Hybrid sovereignty and the state of exception in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 107(4): 949–​63. Gilbert-​Sleiman, B. (2010) Unifier l’enseignement de l’histoire dans le Liban d’après-​guerre: conditions et limites de l’élaboration de la nouvelle politique publique du manuel scolaire d’histoire: 1989–​2001 (thesis). Available at: http://​www.theses.fr.Aix-​Marseille 3 Gomart, E. and Hennion, A. (1999) ‘A sociology of attachment: music amateurs, drug users’, The Sociological Review, 41(S1): 220–​47. Griswold, W., Mangione, E. and McDonnel, T.E. (2013) ‘Objects, words, and bodies in space: bringing materiality into cultural analysis’, Qualitative Sociology, 36(4): 343–​64. Habermas, J. (1991) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hage, G. (2018) ‘Inside and outside the law: negotiated being and urban jouissance in the streets of Beirut’, Social Analysis, 62(3): 88–​108, http://​dx.doi.org/​10.3167/​sa.2018.620305 Hayek, G. (2014) Imagining Beirut: Space and Place in Lebanese Literature, London: IB Tauris. Karl reMarks. (2011) ‘What’s Happening to Beirut’s Grand Theatre?’ Karlremarks.com, 27 July. Available at: http://​www.karlremarks.com/​ 2011/​07/​whats-​happening-​to-​beiruts-​g rand.html Khatib, L. (2008) Lebanese Cinema: Imagining the Civil War and Beyond, London: I.B.Tauris. Lang, F. (2016) The Lebanese Post-​Civil War Novel: Memory, Trauma, and Capital, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Mermier, F. and Mervin, S. (eds) (2012) Leaders et partisans au Liban, Paris: Karthala/​Beirut: IFPO. Mills, C.W. (2000) The Sociological Imagination, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Muñoz, R.V. (2019) ‘The Lebanese communist party’, in L. Feliu and F. Izquierdo-​Brichs (eds) Communist Parties in the Middle East: 100 Years of History, Abingdon: Routledge, pp 90–​108. Puig, N. and Mermier, F. (eds) (2007) Itinéraires esthétiques et scènes culturelles au Proche-​Orient, Beirut: IFPO. Rogers, S. (2007) ‘L’art de l’après-​guerre à Beyrouth’, La Pensee de Midi, 20: 115–​23. Said, E.W. (1984) ‘The mind of winter’, Harper’s (September): 49–​56. Salibi, K.S. (1977) The Modern History of Lebanon, Delmar, NY: Caravan Books. Salibi, K.S. (2003) A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered, London: I.B.Tauris.

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Sehnaoui, N. (2008) Haven’t 15 Years of Hiding in the Toilets Been Enough? Outdoor installation, Beirut. Seidman, S. (2012) ‘The politics of cosmopolitan Beirut: from the stranger to the other’, Theory, Culture & Society, 29(2): 3–​36, https://​ doi.org/​10.1177/​0263276411410446 Springer, D. (2013) ‘The value of a war-​scarred ruin in Beirut’, Failed Architecture, 9 December. Available at: https://​failedarchitecture.com/​ the-​value-​of-​a-​war-​scarred-​ruin-​in-​beirut/​ Traboulsi, F. (2007) A History of Modern Lebanon, London: Pluto Press. Verdeil, C. (2017) ‘Histoire contemporaine de l’education au Moyen-​ Orient (XIXe–​XXe siècle). Essai de synthèse historiographique’, Histoire de l’education, 2(148): 9–​40. Vloeberghs, W. (2016) ‘Dynamiques dynastiques au Liban: transmettre le pouvoir politique en famille’, Critique internationale, 73: 71–​93, https://​doi.org/​10.3917/​crii.073.0071 Wright, S. (2002) ‘Tel un espion dans l’époque qui naît: la situation de l’artiste à Beyrouth aujourd’hui’, Parachute –​Art contemporain, 108: 13–​31.

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FIVE

Muralism, disputes and imaginaries of community resistance: case studies from settlements in Santiago de Chile and Rio de Janeiro Alexis Cortés, Palloma Menezes and Apoena Mano1

Introduction How do popular communities self-​represent and engage in resistance against unfavourable situations? This chapter explores the relationship between visual artistic experiences of popular sectors,2 their disputes in and about the community and the possibilities of activating imaginaries of community resistance. In so doing, it draws on two experiences: the political muralism of the población (shantytown) La Victoria in Santiago de Chile, an emblematic neighbourhood known for its organised takeover of land (1957) and for its resistance against the Chilean dictatorship (1973–​89); and the murals and graffiti produced by the inhabitants of the Favela Santa Marta, the shantytown-​laboratory of the pacification process (2008) that preceded the sports mega-​events in Rio de Janeiro. In the case of La Victoria, muralism has made the memory of the neighbourhood graphic, generating a dialogue between two historical experiences of community: the land occupation and the dictatorship. It has generated a discourse that, having emerged from the popular, continues to confront the mechanisms of forgetting that have been and are circulated by the official ‘truth’ imposed by the compromised democratic transition. In the case of Santa Marta, the walls express multiple layers of representation, which can be seen as a synthesis of the disputes and the changes that have occurred in the favela during the last decade. So, the walls can be regarded as reflecting different groups’ ongoing disputes about the territorial dominance (by market initiatives, military police orderings or criminal groups’ activities) that surrounds the production of sensations of economic (in)security and that enables different economic exchanges from and within the favela.

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This chapter is divided into two parts, one for each case study, and in each part a brief history of the neighbourhood is presented. These case studies highlight how both neighbourhoods are exemplars in terms of their paths of struggle, and in terms of being epicentres for popular occupation strategies that have been fundamental for the configuration of both cities. Each case demonstrates how the neighbourhood’s trajectory/​path relates to the creation of a popular aesthetic that, via its presence on local walls, allows these communities to express resistance to, and disputes about, the threats faced in their environments.

Part one: La Victoria in Santiago of Chile La Victoria: history, identity and community The población (shantytown) La Victoria is considered to be an emblematic popular neighbourhood in Santiago, Chile. The 1957 land takeover from which it originated has been identified as part of the birth of the Chilean pobladores’ (urban poor) movement (Garcés, 2002). With a strong organic link to leftist parties, especially the Partido Comunista de Chile (Communist Party of Chile, PC), the seizure of La Victoria made the pobladores visible as political actors, that is, as the inhabitants of the city who claimed a place in it via their struggle to have a roof over their heads. Additionally, this event meant the staging of a heretofore unprecedented organisational capacity: the land takeovers had been planned to the last, miniscule detail; and the construction of the camp required a high degree of technical knowledge, which was drawn from the pobladores’ own experience as construction workers, an alliance with professional, social and student groups, and with trade union members (Cortés, 2014). The installation of the La Victoria camp involved a high degree of self-​ management of the seized territory. The sites were parcelled out in such a way that it was also possible to plan streets that could accommodate the transit of vehicles and incorporate buildings that housed the institutions and services considered essential for the community, such as the school, the primary health centre, the church, the neighbourhood organisation, and also including the local Communist Party office (Farías, 1989). The La Victoria pobladores continued to successfully resist attempts to evict them, mobilising various allies: trade unions, the Catholic Church, the student movement, parliamentarians and municipal council members from the left. It was precisely this success that led to the baptism of this new, popular neighbourhood with the name ‘La Victoria’, (The Victory), as it was a triumph for those ‘without roofs’, at a time when

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the housing deficit represented one of the principal social demands in the Andean country (Espinoza, 1988). The takeover of La Victoria promptly incorporated itself into a popular narrative that identified it as one of the major milestones in Chile’s recent social history (Salazar, 2013). This neighbourhood became intimately associated with the history of social struggles in the country. In fact, the toponomy of La Victoria has actively emphasised this connection. The street names of this shantytown make reference to massacres of peasants, indigenous peoples and workers, and they also pay tribute to the martyrs of social struggles and political leaders associated with the left, as well as to religious authorities and other allies who contributed to the continued existence of the neighbourhood. When the socialist Salvador Allende came to power in 1970, intending to implement a path to socialism based upon respect for institutions and democracy, the pobladores movement appeared as one of the decisive actors before the polarisation of the political scene (Garcés, 2015). The Chilean pobladores mobilised, realising a large number of land seizures and promoting an alternative supply system, albeit in coordination with the government, in response to a shortage of supplies that resulted from the boycott of the government by business people and transportation workers (Pastrana and Threlfall, 1974). Nevertheless, the Chilean experiment with constructing socialism was abruptly interrupted by the military coup of 11 September 1973. The population of La Victoria and the pobladores’ organisations became, from the very beginning of the military dictatorship, one of the main targets for repressive policies, due to their strong identification with Allende’s government (Comité de Memoria Histórica, 2005). The pobladores were persecuted, imprisoned and, in some cases, made to ‘disappear’ (meaning they are still missing to this day and presumed dead). The popular neighbourhoods were constantly attacked, the houses of the pobladores invaded and their belongings destroyed. The first years of the dictatorship deactivated the pobladores’ movement, in large part. However, at the beginning of the 1980s a large opposition movement to the authoritarian regime began. More than 20 popular protests stunned the dictatorship (Bravo Vargas, 2017). It was in the popular shantytowns, among them La Victoria, where the most radical responses were seen. This was accompanied by a dense process of recomposing the social fabric and reactivating the pobladores’ movement (Schneider, 1995; Iglesias Vázquez, 2011). La Victoria was converted into an emblem of the resistance, due to the high degree of organisation it demonstrated, the radicalism of its confrontation, and the repression it was victim to. Dozens of pobladores were assassinated

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during the protests, among others the French priest André Jarlan, who was turned into an iconic martyr of the población, because of the shocking circumstances in which he lost his life: while reading the Bible and forgiving his executioners (Cortés, 2018). The La Victoria pobladores understood their resistance to the dictatorship as an extension of the fight initiated by their parents when they seized the land for the población. These two events formed the basis of a territorial identity narrative that associated the neighbourhood with an epic composed of struggle and permanent resistance. One of the main supports of this narrative is muralism (Campos, 2009). The community of La Victoria has represented itself in the murals as a neighbourhood that claims its own history through the ‘conquest of a roof ’, opposing the dictatorship and questioning the terms of democratisation which excluded social actors from the political sphere. Muralism has thus become an indispensable tool for the community’s self-​description. This combined political, social and cultural significance has been described by Bill Rolston as follows: Murals are thus not simply ‘folk art,’ but an essential element of the mobilisation and politicisation of the community. They become simultaneously expressions and creators of solidarity. They speak a live and relevant message to and for the communities in which they are painted. They air past and present grievances and articulate visions for the future; they celebrate the achievements and criticize the shortcomings of the community; and they come out of a strong sense of identity, while at the same time serving to mobilise solidarity. They are a vital part of the soul of these communities, which enables them to continue to function and grow in the face of inequality, neoliberalism, marginalisation, and repression. (Rolston, 2011, pp 114–​15) Muralism as a community tool in La Victoria Initially, in Chile, popular muralism was born from the eaves of the electoral campaign that would lead Salvador Allende to the presidency in the late 1960s. Once his government was installed, muralism allowed for a mixture of art and politics that contributed to the creation of a socialist imaginary with characteristic strokes: strong narrative discursiveness, thick lines, bright colours and monumentality (Grandón, 2011). However, with the arrival of the dictatorship, any iconography identified with Allende was forbidden, and, in many cases, erased. But,

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on the walls of the city, little by little, the muralist tradition began to re-​emerge. First with brief political messages calling for resistance, and later, recovering the prohibited socialist aesthetic. In the case of La Victoria, during the dictatorship, muralism allowed the denunciation of human rights violations of which Chileans, and the pobladores in particular, were victims. The walls therefore expressed what the official media silenced. There, the pobladores were venting through their murals. As noted by a poblador interviewed in 2008 (Cortés, 2016): The murals let us communicate when they killed a neighbour, communicating that the población had people who were taken into custody and were missing, when a neighbour was imprisoned, how to make a Molotov [cocktail], how to defend oneself, to express what was happening at that time via a photo, with a graphic that was put there, when they kill[ed] André Jarlan, which mean[t]‌ for us, such a symbolic thing, [it was] sacred to the entire Victorian community. But the murals were not only denouncing acts, they were also summoning people to organise and to fight, just as they invoked a better future for the pobladores. The authorities were not indifferent to these manifestations and they made strong efforts to ‘clean up’ these murals, but the pobladores, again and again, would restore their walls. The return to democracy created high expectations in the world of the pobladores. After all, they were one of the sectors that had made the most sacrifices for the democratisation of Chile. However, democracy was not accompanied by a restoration of the rights that were violated during the dictatorship, because, broadly speaking, the neoliberal model was preserved, deepening the commodification of different areas of life such as education, health and pensions. The walls of La Victoria were steadfastly critical of this scenario, challenging the democratic transition for having excluded and demobilised the movement of the pobladores, among others. Condemning neoliberalism and summoning political organisation, the different collective groups of muralist settlers used a strong contentious aesthetic on the walls of the neighbourhood. At the same time, La Victoria’s muralism has allowed for the charting of the history of the community’s identity, connecting the land seizures, the struggle against the dictatorship and the return to democracy as milestones in a single epic, in which the pobladores continue to be the protagonists. Muralism has been a fundamental tool through

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which subaltern sectors such as the Chilean pobladores, victimised by the dictatorship and excluded once democracy arrived, can convey a collective memory and an imaginary that refuses to accept an official version of history that tends to silence critical voices in Chile’s democratic transition process. The social eruption that began on 18 October 2019 throughout all of Chile has been interpreted as a radical critique of neoliberalism and its associated forms of political expression which have limited democracy in the country. The strength and size of the mobilisations have surprised every analyst. A few weeks before the demonstrations began, the President of the Republic, Sebastián Piñera, said that Chile was an ‘oasis’ in the midst of the turbulence in the region, alluding to the exemplariness of the country for its stability, allegedly based on its combination of a market economy with democracy. It was, apparently, more of a mirage than an oasis: ‘Chile has awoken’, ‘It was not peace, it was silence’, one can read on walls all over Chile. La Victoria’s walls anticipated this massive discontent that manifested in the current social eruption. The anniversary of the población, 30 October, coincided with the mobilisations. The local celebrations were an extension of the national protest; the walls of La Victoria yet again denounced the strong repression that was relived in a generalised way with the declaration of the State of Emergency by the President. The primary demand of the mobilisations has been the drafting of a new Constitution to replace the current one which dates back to the dictatorship. With regard to this, residents of La Victoria have stated (see Figure 5.1): ‘The takeover of La Victoria happened with struggle and conviction. This is what we need today for a new Constitution’. As in previous decades, the walls in La Victoria are, in the present, spaces for the projection of a different future: a community that no longer only imagines itself as a neighbourhood, but now, as a country. For the last 30 years La Victoria has viewed itself as an island of resistance in political-​cultural and identity terms, but with the process of general rebellion after 18 October this identity is connected with the expectations of change manifested in the streets by the Chilean people.

Part two: Favela Santa Marta in Rio de Janeiro Santa Marta: the Favela consolidation process, the ‘metaphor of war’ and the ‘pacification’ process Located in the Southern Zone of Rio de Janeiro –​the city’s more upscale, middle-​class area –​the favela (shantytown) Santa Marta is situated on an extremely steep hillside in the Botafogo neighbourhood.

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Muralism, disputes and imaginaries of community resistance Figure 5.1: Mural in La Victoria

Source: Alexis Cortés

The occupation of the hill began in the late 1930s. Contrary to the usual direction of favela settlements, Morro Santa Marta’s population expanded from the middle of the hill to the bottom (Rocha, 2005). The hill was occupied essentially because of its easy access to labour markets in Southern Zone neighbourhoods that, at the time, were experiencing booming real-​estate development and building construction, especially in Copacabana. There was a great demand for people to work on construction sites, and those who came to work in the Southern Zone ended up settling in what had previously been the sparsely populated hills surrounding the more expensive neighbourhoods. It is impossible to know who originally owned the 50,000 square metres that make up Morro Santa Marta, now home to approximately five thousand people. Some older favela dwellers talk about generous donations given by owners of the region’s historic estates. However, even before the eradication of favelas became a systematic policy, conflicts with landowners had led to threats of removal. Those events gave rise to negotiations involving allies of favelados (favela dwellers/​ urban poor), political and religious authorities (Catholics) and leaders of left-​wing parties. The consolidation process of Morro Santa Marta was the result of solidarity networks within the neighbourhood as well as individual building activities. Both were important, as they were mutually motivating. The process was such that, first, people invested what little money they had into building their houses. Then, they began to fight

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collectively to improve the infrastructure of the neighbourhood. The arrival of basic services (such as electricity and a water supply), the result of the first collective actions, was seen as a sign by the people that there would be no more threats of removal from the favela. They then felt safe to invest increasingly more time and money into the improvement of their houses in the favela. By the turn of the millennium, favelas were becoming increasingly heterogeneous. On the one hand, municipal authorities and international lending agencies began programmes to provide basic services to many favelas. But, on the other hand, the heavy social stigma and the police brutality faced by favela inhabitants still persisted. As many sociologists and anthropologists point out (Misse, 2006; Machado da Silva, 2008), favelas are often accused of being associated with a powerful drug and crime culture. This association feeds the idea that favelas are violent areas (Zaluar, 2004; Leite, 2008) and, consequently, allows arbitrary measures to be considered as legitimate by the Rio de Janeiro population. The dominant public discourse has apprehended and explained urban violence by resorting to the ‘metaphor of war’ (Leite, 2008) and its attendant ‘myths’: the lawful city versus the city of crime, the state within the state, the banality of violence and so on. These myths have supplied the interpretive toolkit that currently structures the ‘problem of violence’, a biased perspective that underpins proposals and measures to control and reduce crime in Rio de Janeiro. Among the proposals addressing the so-​called problem of public security, one of the highest-​profile projects in the last decades is that of the Pacifying Police Unit Programme (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP)). UPPs were considered ‘a new model of public security’, in which the state reassumes the monopoly of physical force, restoring control over areas that were seen to have been occupied for decades by factions connected to drug traffickers. It was announced as a ‘community policing’ project that intended to foster a closer relationship between the police and the population, and also strengthen social policies inside the favelas. The initial test took place with the permanent police occupation of the Morro Santa Marta in 2008 (Menezes, 2015). The UPPs were presented as ‘an excellent opportunity to lower murder and crime rates and change the police culture of confrontation’ (Beltrame, 2014, p 114). The success of the initial implementation, together with a public relations campaign, was considerable and a portion of the city population began to see the Pacification Police Units as the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ for the problem of urban violence in Rio de

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Janeiro –​which, it is important to remember, was preparing to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games (Menezes and Corrêa, 2017). Since the beginning of the ‘pacification’ process, Santa Marta has received various labels, such as ‘model favela’ (because it was the first favela where a UPP was installed); ‘scenic favela’ (because it has been chosen as the stage for many movies, documentaries, television soap operas and news reports for national and international television); and ‘Disneyland favela’ (due to its many tourist attractions, such as its beautiful views and its statue of Michael Jackson, which was built because the singer filmed his 1996 music video ‘They Don’t Care About Us’ in Santa Marta). Since 2010, public authorities have been trying to transform ‘pacified’ favelas into tourist attractions. The City Hall in Rio, as well as the state and federal governments, developed a project called ‘Rio Top Tour –​Rio de Janeiro from a new perspective’. The objective of the project is to create tourist itineraries in favelas with a UPP presence, and encourage tourists to sign up for favela tours led by residents. Pacification’s aesthetics in Santa Marta A partnership between City Hall, state government and SEBRAE (Brazilian Service to Support Micro and Small Enterprises) resulted in the inauguration of a touristic space in a place previously recognised for its social contrasts and urban violence. With a bronze statue and a large mosaic portraying the global star Michael Jackson, the touristic environment and mobilities in favela Santa Marta exemplify the symbolic reproduction of a pacified favela, one which is being reshaped and represented as a global city that is safe and secure for tourism, investment and commerce (Ost and Fleury, 2013). In synchronicity with this celebration of what can be seen as the paradox of a militarised management of ‘peace’, the ‘pacified’ favelas were also constituted as ‘territories of opportunity’ for socioeconomic integration (Rocha and Carvalho, 2018). Specifically, favela Santa Marta has come to be recognised as both a ‘model’ and a ‘laboratory’ for a wide repertoire of pilot projects to be tested and expanded to other pacified favelas (Menezes, 2015). Among them, we emphasise the Rio Top Tour, a community-​based tourism initiative presented as ‘a possibility to take advantage of the tourism potential of the needy communities through the inclusion of the residents themselves’ (Freire-​Medeiros, 2015: 194). Words such as ‘opportunity’, ‘income’ and ‘innovation’ have been used by local

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residents to describe their perceptions of the new socioeconomic activities in the territory, reflecting public policies’ change of focus and their adoption of the language of ‘community development’ (Mano et al, 2017). Tourism promotion in the favela reflects a radical change to what was initially understood as the scope and purpose of pacification: the initial promises of social inclusion and citizenship, through projects such as the UPP Social, Territories of Peace and PAC Favelas, have metamorphosed into promises of the ‘productive inclusion’ of favela territories and populations in the other parts of the ‘formal city’ through state-​mediated training, financing and professionalisation of favela entrepreneurship (Leite, 2017). In both institutional and media narratives and discourses, the favelas have been moving away from being primarily represented in news stories about urban violence to being featured in reports on tourism, entrepreneurship and the so-​called creative economy (Yudice, 2004). In turn, residents have been expected to redirect their lives towards this already mentioned ‘productive inclusion’. In other words, they have been conditioned to participate in an individualised and subjective disciplinisation, by becoming social entrepreneurs who generate income and accommodate themselves to the pro-​pacification narratives and processes (De Tommasi, 2018). That said, we now continue with an illustrative analysis of the pacification’s aesthetic from the graffiti displayed on the wall of the UPP Santa Marta. Figure 5.2 shows a mural painted during the first years of the pacification process. Significant details of the painting could be noticed by attentive perceptions from any passers-​by, such as the colours of the favela surrounded by white and blue –​the same colours that represent the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro (PMERJ). The mural was designed as part of a social project produced by an external painting company to change the aesthetic environment of the favela and to symbolise a new moment of transformation and integration. Here we draw attention to another significant detail: this graffiti was painted over a wall studded with holes, marks and other traces of shootings that occurred in the past. This form of muralism illustrates how a stipulated or given sociopolitical order must be supported by a perceptive, sensitive and conceptual aesthetic or cultural regime that structures and conducts the ways through which subjects feel and know that this order is normal, natural and adequate (Rancière, 2013). Primarily because graffiti and murals are so widely recognised as representing and expressing ‘community’ identities, they have particular discursive forces as aesthetics that are produced in the context of urban policies that, as in the case of Rio de Janeiro’s pacification, seek to control the

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Muralism, disputes and imaginaries of community resistance Figure 5.2: Graffiti on the wall of UPP Santa Marta

Source: Apoena Mano

creation and circulation of meaning within disputed places. Or to clarify this argument: because they are so widely recognised as ‘speaking for communities’, the murals projected in the pacified favela are particularly powerful and effective when they are captured by powerful interests to evoke dominant interests. In this process the representational power of the favela murals is inverted as a tool of neoliberalism. Therefore, the aesthetics of murals become important ‘ways [through which we] understand the value of resources, the extent of risk, the meaning of urban spaces or the hierarchies between different groups of people’ (Jaffe, 2018, p 1098). Considering that ‘certain images do not speak for themselves, but constantly express and dialogue with typical ways of life of the society that produces them’ (Novaes, 1998, p 110), we emphasise the fact that

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the ideas, objects, products and landscapes generated regarding this ‘pacified’ favela –​such as the graffiti that we are discussing –​became integrated with and similar to those generated in other territories. This favela and others became subject to the same kinds of metonymic representation, irrespective of their local specificities and identities (Freire-​Medeiros and Menezes, 2016). Other examples of this tendency include the multiple external initiatives that reproduce the same kinds of representation on the favela’s many walls; for example, the many house fronts painted by the company Coral Tintas’s initiative ‘Tudo de Cor Pra Você’ (All in colour for you); or how Cantão Square became an iconic venue through the Dutch duo Haas & Hahn’s intervention, favela painting. The engagement and enrolment of young people living in peripheral regions in this type of artistic intervention is directed by public policies and social projects as a possible access route to opportunities for social integration. It is also a component of the potential ‘symbolic efficiency’, that propagates and models a given local identity through shapes, colours and textual messages (Vital, 2014; 2017). As young people get involved with these mural creation processes, they both extend and become constitutive parts of a collective imaginary, whereby the murals they are painting reveal what kinds of aesthetics the authors of the pacification accept and allow in these ‘pacified’ communities. For example, the artistic disposition of colours as we described and the generic representation of the favela that is presented in the mural in Figure 5.2 simultaneously cover over and obscure the wall’s pre-​existing marks and traces of a history of armed conflict. Therefore the mural can be seen as determining and communicating which narratives of community life should be reproduced from that moment on and which ones should not be (Mano, 2020). Conversely, walls that are used to illustrate and express community resistance could be framed as a symbolic expression of a life under siege. This expression is actually happening, as murals emerge that represent alternative narratives of life in community. For example, as police movements and patrols become increasingly jeopardised by the presence of criminal groups and the resurgence of armed conflicts, favela walls are hosting new aesthetic representations of the pacification’s exhaustion. Increasingly graffiti communicates threats to the UPP and exalts the criminal group Comando Vermelho. As the state-​militarised management of ‘peace’ shows signs of failure, new forms of control over this territory are also expressed in the graffiti marks that are visible on the favela walls.

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Conclusion The popular neighbourhoods analysed here share the characteristics of being emblematic and exemplary sites, either because of the ways they were settled, via organised takeovers or by land occupation, but also because both neighbourhoods have shown, at certain moments, a high level of neighbourhood self-​organisation. This has allowed for the establishment of collective narratives that have been expressed in various ways, muralism being an important vehicle for this narrative expression. As the case studies in this chapter show, the walls of these neighbourhoods have become both a disputed space of meanings and spaces for disputed meanings. Communities and social groups seek not only to portray themselves, but also to imagine themselves. These artistic expressions have also allowed them to challenge their societies and the state. Nevertheless, the walls may be appropriated not only as local instruments of resistance, but also as forms of symbolic and representational power by different actors (inhabitants, state actors, private initiatives, NGOs or criminal organisations). Muralism, in this way, appears not only as an indigenous form of expression of and by the community, but also as an aesthetic space or form that reflects ongoing disputes about what should be portrayed as reflecting that community. In the case of Santa Marta, the idea of the ‘model favela’ is represented via the walls, producing an ‘aesthetic of peacemaking’ and a commodified representation that seeks to associate it with the UPPs. The favela’s own name is written (Figure 5.2) in the corporate colours of the UPPs, but the mural’s juxtaposition with the bullet marks on the wall exposes the scars of that pacification process. With the passing of time, this ‘official’ narrative has been resisted or refuted within the territory via other graffiti, some of which claims allegiance to an organisation that is linked to drug trafficking. Thus, muralists and murals that have been mobilised to demarcate a spatial situation under police control are countered by the production of other representations that demonstrate the failure of this political project. In the case of La Victoria, the walls are most clearly presented as instruments of local self-​expression and as spaces and forms of resistance, but Santa Marta shows us that the walls also function as forms of demarcation and territorial domination. While external threats can limit the forms and opportunities for self-​expression in public spaces by the inhabitants of popular neighbourhoods, muralism still is and can become a powerful ‘weapon of the weak’ (Scott, 1987), remaining indispensable for these communities.

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Notes The author Apoena Mano acknowledges that his work was supported by grant #2020/​00670-​0, São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). 2 In this text, ‘popular sectors’, ‘popular communities’ and similar phrases are used. In these contexts, the authors mean ‘popular’ as ‘poblador’, such as the ‘people’s community’ and ‘people’s neighbourhoods’, in the sense that ‘people’s’ has a sense of class consciousness. While the word is translated as ‘popular’ in this chapter, it has the significance of encompassing a class identity and struggle, and should not be confused with the general usage of the word ‘popular’ in English, signifying something that simply relates to the general public or something that is commonly liked or approved of by the general public. 1

References Beltrame, J.M. (2014) Todo dia é segunda-​feira, Rio de Janeiro: Primeira Pessoa. Bravo Vargas, V. (2017) Piedras, barricadas y cacerolas. Las Jornadas nacionales de protesta. Chile 1983–​1986, Santiago de Chile: Universidad Alberto Hurtado. Campos, L. (2009) ‘Los murales de La Victoria: efectos de sentido y lugar’, Actuel Marx, (8): 129–​42. Comité de Memoria Histórica (2005) Tortura en Poblaciones del Gran Santiago (1973–​1990), Santiago: Corporación José Domingo Cañas. Cortés, A. (2014) ‘El movimiento de pobladores chilenos y la población La Victoria: ejemplaridad, movimientos sociales y el derecho a la ciudad’, EURE (Santiago), 40(119): 239–​60, doi:10.4067/​ S0250-​71612014000100011 Cortés, A. (2016) ‘The murals of La Victoria imaginaries of Chilean popular resistance’, Latin American Perspectives, 43(5): 62–​7 7, doi:10.1177/​0094582X16646104 Cortés, A. (2018) ‘La victoire d’André Jarlan: la naissance d’une affaire pendant la dictature militaire chilienne’, Social Compass, 65(5): 608–​ 25, doi: 10.1177/​0037768618800421 De Tommasi, L. (2018) ‘Empreendedorismo cultural nas margens da cidade’ in L. de Matos Rocha, M. Pereira Leite, J. Farias and M.B. Carvalho (eds) Militarização no Rio de Janeiro: da pacificação à intervenção, Rio de Janeiro: Mórula, pp 179–​202. Espinoza, V. (1988) Para una Historia de los Pobres de la Ciudad, Santiago: Ediciones SUR. Farías, G. (1989) ‘Lucha, vida, muerte y esperanza: historia de la Población La Victoria’, in A. Rodríguez (ed) Constructores de Ciudad: Nueve historias del primer concurso de ‘Historia de Poblaciones’, Santiago: SUR Ediciones, pp 49–​63.

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Freire-​Medeiros, B. (2015) ‘Governamentalidade e mobilização da pobreza urbana no Brasil e na África do Sul: favelas e townships como atrações turísticas’, in C. Machado, M. Leite, P. Birman and S. De Sa Carneiro (eds) Dispositivos Urbanos e Tramas dos Viventes: ordens e resistências, Rio de Janeiro: FGV/​FAPERJ, pp 187–​97. Freire-​Medeiros, B. and Menezes, P.V. (2016) ‘As viagens da favela e a vida social dos suvenires’, Sociedade e Estado, 31(3): 651–​70, doi:10.1590/​s0102-​69922016.00030005 Garcés, M. (2002) Tomando su Sitio, Santiago: LOM. Garcés, M. (2015) ‘El movimiento de pobladores durante la Unidad Popular, 1970–​1973’, Atenea (Concepción) (512): 33–​47, doi:10.4067/​ S0718-​04622015000200003 Grandón, R. (2011) Brigada Ramona Parra: Muralismo político y debate cultural en la Unidad Popular, Tesis para optar al grado de Licenciado en Historia, Santiago: Alberto Hurtado. Iglesias Vázquez, M. (2011) Rompiendo el Cerco: Movimiento de pobladores contra la Dictadura, Santiago: Ediciones Radio Universidad de Chile. Jaffe, R. (2018) ‘Cities and the political imagination’, The Sociological Review, 66(6): 1097–​110, doi:10.1177/​0038026118769832 Leite, M.P. (2008) ‘Violência, risco e sociabilidade nas margens da cidade: percepções e formas de ação de moradores de favelas cariocas’, in L.A. Machado da Silva (ed) Vida sob Cerco: Violência e Rotina nas Favelas do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, pp 115–​41. Leite, M.P. (2017) ‘State, market and administration of territories in the city of Rio de Janeiro’, Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 14(3). Available at: http://​www.scielo.br/​scielo.php?script=sci_​ abstract&pid=S1809-​43412017000300504&lng=en&nrm=iso&tln g=endoi:10.1590/​1809-​43412017v14n3p149 Machado da Silva, L.A. (2008) Vida sob Cerco: Violência e Rotinas nas Favelas do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira. Mano, A.D. (2020) Dispositivos de Mobilidade: Estética, precariedade e legibilidade no marco de dez anos da ‘favela modelo’. Dissertação apresentada ao Programa de Pós-​Graduação em Ciências Sociais da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Mano, A.D., Mayer, V.F. and Fratucci, A.C. (2017) ‘Community-​based tourism in Santa Marta Favela/​RJ: social, economic and cultural opportunities’, Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Turismo, 11(3): 413–​35, doi: 10.7784/​rbtur.v11i3.1314 Menezes, P. (2015) ‘Será que estaremos aqui quando as Olimpíadas chegarem? Novas oportunidades e preocupações pós-​UPP na “favela modelo” ’, Trama: indústria criativa em revista, 1(1). Available at: http://​ periodicos.estacio.br/​index.php/​trama/​article/​view/​1708

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Menezes, P. and Corrêa, D. (2017) ‘From disar mament to rearmament: elements for a sociology of critique of the Pacification Police Unit Program’, Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 14(3). Available at: http://​www.scielo.br/​scielo.php?script=sci_​ abstract&pid=S1809-​43412017000300506&lng=en&nrm=iso&tln g=endoi:10.1590/​1809-​43412017v14n3p192 Misse, M. (2006) Crime e Violência no Brasil Contemporâneo: Estudos de Sociologia do Crime e da Violência Urbana, Rio de Janeiro: Lumen Juris. Novaes, S.C. (1998) ‘O uso da imagem na antropologia’, in E. Samain (ed), O Fotográfico, São Paulo: Huitec/​CNPq, pp 113–​19. Ost, S. and Fleury, S. (2013) ‘O mercado sobe o morro: a cidadania desce? Efeitos socioeconômicos da pacificação no Santa Marta’, Dados, 56(3): 635–7​ 1, doi:dx.doi.org/1​ 0.1590/S​ 0011-5​ 2582013000300006 Pastrana, E. and Threlfall, M. (1974) Pan, techo y poder: el movimiento de pobladores en Chile (1970–​1973), Buenos Aires: Ediciones Siap. Rancière, J. (2013) The Politics of Aesthetics, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Rocha, A. (2005) Cidade Cerzida: A Costura da Cidadania no Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro: Editora Museu da República. Rocha, L. de M. and Carvalho, M.B. de (2018) ‘Da “cidade integrada” à “favela como oportunidade”: empreendedorismo, política e “pacificação” no Rio de Janeiro’, Cadernos Metrópole, 20(43): 905–​24, doi:10.1590/​2236-​9996.2018-​4313 Rolston, B. (2011) ‘¡Hasta La Victoria!: murals and resistance in Santiago, Chile’, Identities, 18(2): 113–​37, doi:10.1080/​1070289X.2011.609437 Salazar, G. (2013) Movimientos Sociales en Chile: Trayectoria histórica y proyección política, Santiago: Uqbar. Schneider, C. (1995) Shantytown Protest in Pinochet’s Chile, Philadelphia: Temple. Scott, J.C. (1987) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Vital, C. (2014) ‘Religião, grafite e projetos de cidade: embates entre “cristianismo da batalha” e “cristianismo motivacional” na arte efêmera urbana’, Ponto Urbe. Revista do núcleo de antropologia urbana da USP, (15). Available at: https://journals.openedition.org/ pontourbe/2518 Vital, C. (2017) ‘Grafites do amor, da paz e da alegria na cidade Olímpica: interfaces entre política, arte e religião no Rio 2016’, Ciências Sociais Unisinos, 53(3): 499–​507, doi:10.4013/​csu.2017.53.3.10 Yudice, G. (2004) The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zaluar, A. (2004) Integração Perversa: Pobreza e Tráfico de Drogas, Rio de Janeiro: FGV.

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Contemporary expressions of arts and culture as protest: consonance, dissonance, paradox and opportunities for community development? Daniel H. Mutibwa

The arts, culture and protest Much scholarship on the arts and its use in protest has been situated in social movement studies. In his interesting analysis of protest as artistic expression, Reed (2016: 77) observes that ‘[t]‌o engage in protest is to offer public witness’. That the act of protesting is not only about positioning oneself against something or someone, but –​‘as the prefix “pro” suggests’ –​it is also about ‘be[ing] presentational, putting forth a positive alternative or creative vision’ (Reed, 2016: 77). There are various forms of protest which position themselves against particular issues and/​or individuals or which present specific visions driven by different aspirations, commitments, motivations and objectives. Protests also draw on a range of instruments, materials, practices and media –​ including those typically associated with the arts and cultural spheres. Numerous social movements, both in the past and present, have used the arts and culture to express and to achieve their goals. However, while there exist rich academic analyses of both macro and meso levels of protest, not much focus has been placed on the use of the arts and culture –​and associated organisational structures and production contexts –​at micro levels (Jasper, 1997; Johnston, 2009; Reed, 2016). James Jasper (1997: 5) noted that because scholars have generally preferred ‘to examine fully fledged, coordinated movements’, their work ‘renders invisible’ those other actors, groups and organisations engaging in protest in local or community contexts. Similarly, and more recently, Reed (2016: 84) has observed that ‘[f]‌or the most part, the role of art [and culture] as protest has been subsumed under [a] more

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general concern to define and analyse movement cultures’. To Hillman (2018: 57), this ‘point[s] to a broader issue, which [has contributed to] the scarcity of detailed analyses of art [and culture] in the service of political activism’ at micro levels outside of social movements and mainstream culture. This chapter acknowledges that protest can and does happen ‘even when it is not part of an organised movement’ (Jasper, 1997: 5). The chapter discusses and analyses the significance of the forms of arts and culture that Hillman alludes to. Conceptualising them as arts and cultural work as protest, it considers how such work embodies the ‘public witness’, oppositional and ‘presentational’ functions that Reed (2016: 77) identified. It shows that that work is not limited to putting on arts activities and/​or performances, but that it also involves a rich mixture of analyses, discussions, workshops, writings, exhibitions, communal and ritualistic practices, social activities and events of various kinds. The chapter then explores the different forms of government, institutional and market control that have posed serious challenges to this work for over five decades. It discusses the strategies developed to challenge and resist the said controls and recognises that, although they are not unproblematic and may require making huge sacrifices, such strategies demonstrate a commitment to organisational autonomy and creative freedom. This, in turn, allows for the production of work that puts forward alternative visions and social arrangements aimed at achieving sustainable social change through collective action and solidarity, something that aligns with critical and transformational approaches to community development.

Arts and cultural work as protest Arts and cultural work as protest can be conceptualised as a plethora of ‘non-​mainstream’ activities and practices that ‘deriv[e]‌from slightly different but interrelated ideological principles, visions and practices that incorporate … “radical” and “alternative” approaches to cultural production’ (Mutibwa, 2019a: 346). These approaches –​and the arts and cultural work they engender –​have been said to originate from a number of social movements during the countercultural era1 (DiCenzo, 1996; Jasper, 1997; Johnston, 2009). From the turbulent 1960s onwards, such activities and practices have been termed variously: ‘alternative arts’; ‘art for social change’; ‘arts-​based civic dialogue’; ‘arts in educational contexts’; ‘arts in participatory settings’; ‘combined arts’; ‘community art(s)’; ‘community-​based art’; ‘community cultural development’; ‘dialogical art’; ‘graphic art’; ‘inclusive art’; ‘participatory

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art(s)’; ‘radical arts’; ‘relational art’; ‘social art’ or ‘social arts practice’; ‘socially engaged art’ or ‘socially engaged practice’, among others (Brown et al, 1968; Murdock, 1980; Kelly, 1984; Kershaw, 1992; 1999; DiCenzo, 1996; Kester, 1998; 2004; Hager, 2008; Lowe, 2011; Tiller, 2012; Matarasso, 2013; Reed, 2016; Courage, 2017; Mutibwa, 2019a). To varying degrees, versions of arts and cultural work have been associated with a radical-​democratic tradition that advocates sometimes sharp and even violent breaks with received and traditional arts practice. For example, some versions have advocated the crossing of artistic boundaries, the devising of work collectively, a perpetual dislike for commerce and/​or capital, the celebration of improvisation and the facilitation of broader access to the arts and culture (Lewis, 1990; Cohen-​Cruz, 1998; Kershaw, 1998; 1999; Brockett, 2000; Wiltshire and Cowan, 2018). Across their histories, many versions of this work have exhibited a distinctive, multifaceted, sociopolitical role –​in certain instances informed by overtly radical or Marxist analyses of society (Murdock, 1980; Kershaw, 1992). Such work has been associated with experimentation and improvisation: its aesthetic, cultural, social and politicised interventions aimed at challenging perceived dominant ideas, values and inequalities. It has sought to foster critical consciousness of the organisation of power in society and how it could be transformed, thus championing democratic practice (Rawlence, 1979; Walsh, 1993; Matarasso, 2013). This is reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s idea of the ‘politicisation of aesthetics’ by which is meant the emancipatory and transformative use of the arts (and culture) for democratic communication and struggle (Ostrow, 2005). In this view, the arts and cultural practices seek to enact alternative social, economic and political visions, temporarily replacing life as it is (Cohen-​Cruz, 1998). Often perceived to operate outside of mainstream culture (understood and used to mean the Establishment or status quo in this chapter), arts and cultural work in this context is seen to offer ‘a critical perspective on the present social order [by exposing capitalist excesses and the transgressions of dominant elitism in society]’ (Murdock, 1980: 152–​3). For Cohen-​Cruz, this work not only offers critiques that put forward arguments against the current societal order, but it also proposes visions of what a fairer society might look like (1998: 6). More specifically, arts and cultural work as protest constitutes past and contemporary, non-​conventional processes, activities and projects that are aimed at change, broadly defined (Johnston, 2009). These processes, activities and projects are inspired by a wide range of beliefs, values, methods and lifestyles, both individual and collective, which may or

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may not be subversive in nature (Fahlenbrach et al, 2016). That is to say, although some of them may not be inspired by the overtly radical or Marxist aesthetics discussed earlier –​they can, nonetheless, serve as social, political and cultural spaces through which to pursue change by means of opposition and resistance as much as by participation and consent (Meade and Shaw, 2011: 28). Moreover, the said processes, activities and projects have been said to be informed by ‘complex biographies, personalities and idiosyncrasies’ that individuals bring to ‘protest [activity] outside of organised [social movements]’ (Jasper, 1997: xi). In essence, arts and cultural work as protest is encapsulated in activity and practice that ‘expresses a concern, a problem, or a critique [which] may relate to local, [regional, national] or global matters, express a minority or a majority position, refer to material or immaterial goods, envisage a short-​or a long-​term perspective, and aim at a minor political change or a fundamentally different societal order’ (Rucht, 2016: 28). Further still, such work has been found to ‘mobilise people around [shared] points of view’, to play the role of a ‘witness [through] publicly illuminating [pressing issues of the day]’ and ‘to provide an emotional experience of what might otherwise remain distant’ (Cohen-​Cruz, 1998: 5). An illustrative example is The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil (1973)2 which illuminated the exploitation of the Scots in general, and the Highlanders in particular, at the hands of mostly English landowners, industrialists and their Scottish associates. Charting three centuries of capitalist domination and oppression, the production identified with and explored the real, socioeconomic, cultural and environmental concerns of the people living in the Highlands and neighbouring regions (Van Erven, 1988: 97–​101). The production thrived on public participation to expose ‘the uglier faces of capitalism [as well as environmental degradation that have characterised the boom of the Scottish oil industry]’ and to convey ‘a view from below’ that expressed ‘the lived experience of domination’ (Murdock, 1980: 152–​ 3). The play’s analysis was characterised by ‘self-​evident truths being stated publicly, socially, in an entertaining way’ (Kershaw, 1992: 152). Those ‘truths’ not only uncovered and gave expression to lived realities unknown to the wider British public and beyond, but they also ‘indicate[d]‌an ideological consonance between performer[s] and audience[s], company and community’ (Kershaw, 1992: 153). Arts and cultural work as protest such as this could be said to employ ‘dialogic exchange, participatory engagement and aesthetic reflexivity’ (Kershaw, 1999: 20) to achieve distinctiveness and effectiveness. Dialogic exchange and participatory engagement –​which are integral

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components of the radical-​democratic tradition mentioned earlier –​ foreground the facilitation of broader involvement in the production and interpretation of the arts and culture with a view to enhancing democratic communication and practice. Aesthetic reflexivity evokes artistic expression characterised by numerous dimensions. One dimension is concerned with work that embodies a ‘disturbing and challenging artistic statement’ (Kester, 1998: 126). Another dimension captures work that conveys ‘unpopular ideas, perplexing artistic conventions, and anything that might make the general public uneasy’ (Brockett, 2000: 17). Yet another dimension is encapsulated in ‘the technical competence of the final work, its ambition and originality, its ability to communicate the ideas or feelings of its creators to audiences and the nature and longevity of its impact’ (Matarasso, 2000: 53). The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil (1973) reflects some of these qualities. Analysis of the following case studies reveals the extent to which these qualities and ideas are generalisable, and how distinctiveness and effectiveness are understood.

Cultures of commerce, subsidy and managerialism Whereas it may have been easier to operate outside the confines of mainstream culture in earlier decades, it seems much more difficult today. Already in the early 1990s, Justin Lewis observed that contemporary cultural production was in the grip of ‘commercial culture governed by the free market and the subsidised culture governed by an elitist aesthetic’ (1990: 110). To Kershaw (1999: 16), ‘the conformity forced on cultural production by capitalist consumerism [and elitism]’ has always posed a threat to artistic expression. Other scholarly accounts have arrived at a similar conclusion. Grant Kester (1998), for instance, has been critical of the ways in which public subsidy can stultify free artistic expression in his analyses of the activist and oppositional functions of art. Similarly, Michael Mangan (2010: 160) has observed that commercial success stifles creativity which, in turn, renders artistic expression less exciting, diverse and experimental. The consequence –​ Mangan contends –​is that artistic expression loses its identity as a truly alternative voice. The ongoing rise of capitalist excesses can be said to pose an even greater threat to forms of artistic and cultural expression that seek to engage in protest. Saul Ostrow (2005: 236) captures this well when he remarks that past and contemporary struggles against capitalist excesses and other forms of domination and exploitation have been characterised by imaginativeness and creativity impelled by opposition

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and resistance on the one hand, and standardisation, (mis)appropriation and outright dismissal by established actors on the other. He adds that, among other things, standardisation and (mis)appropriation can take the form of commodification which fosters a sense of disempowerment which leaves society at large susceptible to manipulation, domination and exploitation. In his incisive analysis of the (mis)appropriation of radical artistic and cultural expression for protest during the countercultural era, Thomas Frank shows how ‘the Establishment [managed] to buy off and absorb its opposition, emblems of dissent that were quickly translated into harmless consumer commodities, emptied of content, and sold to their very originators as substitutes for the real thing’ (1997: 16). This affected lifestyles around music, entertainment, fashion and ecological living arrangements among other things. In Ostrow’s (2005) view, this state of affairs poses the greatest threat to liberal democracy. This is further aggravated by the advancement of managerialism which is characterised by its ‘own distinctive philosophies, professional etiquettes, communications networks and hierarchies’ (Kester, 1998: 112). Managerialism centres the organisation of power and society on economic performance and perceived efficiency. In many occupations and professions including the realm of the arts and culture, scholars have indeed found that the performance of companies is increasingly measured primarily in economic or industrial terms, including their potential to generate large profit margins (Kershaw, 1999; Mutibwa, 2019b). To Klikauer (2015: 1106–​8), managerialism is not only associated with buzzwords such as ‘performance’, ‘adding value’ and ‘organizational restructuring’, but its overall destructive power: [M]‌anagerialism … deprives society of its very basis. Managerialist progress extends into the entire system of domination, control, coordination, and infinite competition creating forms of existence and of powers [which are alienating and exploitative]. Managerialism has almost totally defeated, refuted, and incorporated all protest in the name of the liberal prospects of freedom … Contemporary managerialist society and managerialism seem to be capable of containing social change by converting every social problem into a technical problem that can be managed … Managerialism has rendered obsolete any qualitative change which would establish different institutions supporting a new direction. (2015: 1111)

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This not only paints a bleak picture, but it also prompts important questions. If ‘all protest’ has been absorbed into and/​or (mis)appropriated by ‘contemporary managerialist society’ and the cultures of commerce and subsidy, how has arts and cultural work as protest responded to this state of affairs in a bid to maintain its distinctiveness and effectiveness? Considering how ‘[t]‌he increasing speed and intensity of processes that commodify or otherwise appropriate dissent ha[ve] complicated the articulation of … alternative [visions]’ (Reed, 2019: 412), what form has the response taken –​if any? State-​sponsored subsidy can be similarly problematic. I have argued elsewhere that although subsidy is generally intended to support work that may not be profitable –​that explores uncertainty and may surprise with new or startling perspectives –​strings attached to it have the potential to constrain producers’ autonomy’ (Mutibwa, 2019b: 136). The same can be said of (business) sponsorships which have been said either to blunt perceived sociopolitical critique or to absorb and misappropriate that critique for their own ends or simply to distract from scrutiny (Van Erven, 1988; Kester, 1998; Reed, 2016). Following a brief discussion of method and case studies, the chapter explores expressions of arts and culture as protest –​paying attention to the organisational and production contexts surrounding such expressions. It asks the following questions: • How has arts and cultural work as protest responded to the conformity imposed on its values and practice by the cultures of commerce, subsidy and managerialism? • In which ways is this response consonant with community development? The response to these questions is informed by an ethnographic investigation that studied arts and cultural work as protest in various transnational contexts over a nine-​year period (2009–​18). This chapter takes two case studies that have utilised puppetry, theatre and a rich mix of associated offerings as a means of artistic and cultural expression for protest from the 1960s onwards. The companies selected are Bread and Puppet Theater (BPT) in the US and GRIPS Theater in Germany. BPT was founded by Peter Schumann in New York City, US in 1963 and is considered to be the longest serving organisation in the use of artistic and cultural expression for protest. GRIPS Theater –​which ‘means “wit, common sense and imagination” ’ (Michaels, 1978: 459) –​was established by Volker Ludwig in 1966 in Berlin, Germany as a left-​ wing troupe. It has an excellent track record as a production site for arts and culture as protest.

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Analysis of both case studies is based on extensive study of accessible documentary evidence in the form of newspaper articles, executive memos, meeting minutes, output scripts and reviews, DVDs, social media presence (where applicable), secondary literature, existing producer interviews and archival artefacts (for example stage designs and stage paraphernalia). Two key criteria informed the selection of the case studies. First, they are both pioneering companies in the use of the arts and culture for protest outside of social movement coalitions and unions, and the arts Establishment. Second, their (ideological) values and practices contributed to shaping some of the major ‘radical’ and ‘alternative’ approaches to producing arts and culture from the countercultural period onwards.

Negotiating the cultures of commerce, subsidy and managerialism I explore how the case study companies have exploited artistic and cultural expression in the service of protest in the wake of pressures to conform to the powerful cultures of commerce, subsidy and managerialism discussed earlier. In doing so, I pay close attention to the organisational and production contexts within which such expression has been conveyed over decades. Bread and Puppet Theater (BPT) To underscore its disillusionment with elitism and capitalism in the early 1970s in urban New York City where it put on work in unconventional spaces such as ‘tiny storefronts and lofts [and] very often streets and city parks’ (Bell, 1999: 63), BPT moved to rural Glover (Vermont) where it has been based ever since. Inhabiting a farm surrounded by wooded hills and natural amphitheatre, which also serves as the set for the company’s work, evokes ‘the sixties environmental countercultural ethos [which was –​and still is –​characterised by] the collective tr[ying] to live [on] the land and off the grid’ and wanting ‘to be independent of any kind of corporate sponsorship’ (Spitta, 2009: 117). It reflects the company’s ‘vision of an alternative way of life at some distance from the economics and mass culture of [global] capitalism’ (Bell, 1999: 63). This organisational set-​up means BPT has never had permanent workers, which helps keep running costs down –​barring short periods when a relatively small number of puppeteers has been salaried at different junctures over the decades (Brown et al, 1968; Goldensohn, 1977; Bell, 1999; Spitta, 2009).

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The number of workers has varied depending on the nature of productions. Large parades have involved more than one hundred workers while smaller productions have averaged 50. In keeping with the countercultural ethos of crossing and/​or breaking artistic borders and welcoming on board new, modest and enthusiastic people (Bell, 1999; Hillman, 2018), BPT encourages workers to develop a wide range of skills and competencies to be able to perform versatile roles. As such, BPT ‘is without actors and their expensive and demanding personalities [but has] instead [workers] without glamour, [and] virtuosity [who] can “play” [any character]’ (Goldensohn, 1977: 80). This not only represents a challenge to conventional, professional arts practice, but also reflects a possible, alternative way of organising. But what the company does have is a board of directors which is clearly a convention of managerialism in relation to aspects of organisation and structure. Other than Peter Schumann at the helm as Artistic Director and Linda Elbow as the manager, the company’s structure appears to be largely horizontal. BPT has neither ‘ “an outreach and development person” nor “a business planner” [meaning that workers take on] a lot of stuff all at once and sort of getting by, by the seat of their pants … It’s been going on [for over] 50 years’ (Claire Dolan, member of the BPT Board of Directors, cited in Kalish, 2013: np). This way of organising has invariably shaped BPT’s work in two main ways. Not only has such work continually made use of ritual, music and performance to mobilise different constituencies in the service of political activism and protest, but it has also exhibited a ‘radical coupling of art and politics [which has] allowed for [numerous societal issues] to be viscerally experienced as the coming together of protest and celebration’ (Spitta, 2009: 108). Thematically, issues tackled have revolved around abortion, housing, religion, wars, consumerism, cold war politics, migrant workers’ rights, unemployment, gentrification, climate change, drug culture, racial discrimination and other forms of inequality. An example for illustration is the company’s most popular production –​ Our Domestic Resurrection Circus (1970–​1998) –​which comprised ‘a complex mix of avantgarde forms, political ideals, populist aspirations, and a definite desire to present an alternative to mass-​media, capitalist culture’ (Bell, 1999: 66). In every one of the 28 years this production was put on, it evoked a particular theme, and most themes had a social or political relevance (Bell, 1999: 67). In alignment with the radical-​democratic tradition, BPT workers ‘play with the puppets and improvise with the characters’, thereby dispensing with [the] use [of] scripts (Brown et al, 1968: 69). Workers let the puppets ‘communicate primarily through gesture’ (Peter

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Schumann, cited in Ryder, 1995: np) while keeping dialogue to a minimum. For BPT, working this way ‘is free of any kind of seriousness or respect for human constructs of authority or responsibility’, something that renders it ‘possible to poke fun at all kinds of targets with a puppet where a live performer might be less accepted’ (Peter Schumann, cited in Ryder, 1995: np). Recurring (giant) puppets in use across BPT’s work include ‘Uncle Fatso’ and Christ-​like characters. The former symbolises elitist dominance and ‘capitalism in its greediest form’ (Peter Schumann, cited in Ryder, 1995: np) while the latter symbolise a religious belief that exercising ‘moral challenge to action’ (Secor, 2007: 268) can bring about social justice. Religious belief gives much of BPT’s work a ritualistic dimension which is reflected not only in the way the corresponding puppets communicate the message of hope and a possible, alternative, societal order, but also in feeding the audience with the company’s trademark, self-​made rye bread (Brown et al, 1968; Towsen, 1972; Ryder, 1995; Spitta, 2009). Putting on work has involved considerable feats of organisational and production strategies. Admission to BPT’s work has been consistently cheap or free of charge (although contributions and donations have been accepted). Workers have tended to work for free often in exchange for living communally on the farm. Because of its radical, ideological orientation, BPT was unsuccessful in attracting subsidy in the earlier years leading it to give up on state-​subsidised culture altogether (Brown et al, 1968; Bell, 1999; Estrin, 2010). Ever since, BPT ‘rejects the absurdity of receiving grant money for protest, and … never budgets shows beforehand [but instead] builds a show with what is available [which] leaves [the company] freer to experiment’ (Goldensohn, 1977: 79). Indeed, the strong desire to want to preserve its autonomy and experiment at will has compelled BPT to devise a range of coping strategies. For instance, all the company’s props (décor, music, masks and puppets) are self-​made. There is a clear preference for and great attachment to recycled and environmentally friendly materials (Estrin, 2010: 24) which points to BPT’s ‘political and ideological resistance both to capitalism and [managerialism’s] depredation of nature’ (Spitta, 2009: 116). During extraordinarily challenging times, workers have taken on jobs as painters, sculptors and carpenters alongside core work. Sustaining the company’s level of output is only possible because workers ‘work 16 hours a day, six days a week’ (Estrin, 2010: 21). Between breaks in productions, BPT produces various artistic artefacts in the form of posters, banners, books and postcards which are sold at very low prices during and/​or following productions. The company

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has put on exhibitions which have featured writings, performance paraphernalia and a host of commemorative artefacts, both in its own museum and away from it. Admission to these has been cheap. It has also earned some income through undertaking co-​productions with entities whose position has been mostly left-​leaning. Most radical of all, ‘now more so than a few years ago’ –​BPT workers ‘eat out of the garbage cans’ as ‘the only way … to stay independent, [not] to write for the arts councils’ grants [and to] make it [on their own]’ (Peter Schumann, cited in Spitta, 2009: 123). Summing up the company’s precarious position in 2013, Peter Schumann remarked that ‘[w]‌e have constantly gone under and come up again and we are constantly collapsing [but somehow] then sort of struggle back again. It’s all the time on the margin’ (Peter Schuman, cited in Kalish, 2013: np). Clearly, BPT’s history and present are marked by resilience. GRIPS Theater GRIPS Theater has always foregrounded ‘emancipatory theatre which encourages children [and adults] to recognise the social conditions that contribute to injustices in their environment’ through provocation and learning (Michaels, 1978: 459). In doing so, GRIPS has toured its work in the form of guest productions in theatres sympathetic to the political left and performed in kindergartens, schools and community centres among other places (Hughes, 2014). From an organisational perspective, the turning point of the company was in 1972 when it secured its own building which was designed as a theatre in the round –​a sharp contrast to the uncomfortably small and restricted space in which the company had operated until that point. Paul et al (1977: 111) captured this pivotal moment in the company’s history as follows: The new, larger, and more practicable hall has banked seats on three walls and an arena-​like, variable stage area. The potential of this space and an increase in subsidised support has [sic] enabled the troupe both to expand and to heighten the quality of its productions. These changes also made organisational consolidation and artistic diversification necessary. Over the next years, analysis of documentary evidence shows that GRIPS’ adeptness at ‘reach[ing] all segments of the population’ not only earned the company the reputation of being ‘a people’s theater’

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(Paul et al, 1977: 100), but it also enabled it to recruit volunteers, freelancers and up-​and-​coming workers to help maintain growing work on a limited budget (Fischer, 2002). As a result of the conditions imposed by state subsidy and a perceived need to enhance its economic-​organisational structure along managerialist lines, GRIPS’ profile has changed over the decades. Over time, commentators have observed calculative attempts by subsidy to lure the company away from its radical-​democratic tradition to the bureaucratic position of accommodating managerialist tendencies under the guise of achieving efficiency, professionalisation and enhanced economic performance (Paul et al, 1977; Claus, 1988; Fischer, 2002). Despite strong resistance, the said tendencies did gradually take hold. Following resignation as Artistic Director in 2010, Volker Ludwig served as Executive Director until his recent retirement. Today, and as I have noted elsewhere, GRIPS has nearly 60 workers across a number of departments and/​or units: educational programming, visitor service and school liaison, public relations, marketing and sponsoring, administration, creative production and technology (Mutibwa, 2019b: 142). This organisational set-​up enables GRIPS to put on at least five new productions on average annually, with performances running for at least two seasons which averages 15 to 18 shows. In addition to the core productions, GRIPS runs educational and outreach programmes while maintaining numerous partnerships with local communities, schools and institutions across the public, private and voluntary sectors (Mutibwa, 2019b: 143). The intergenerational communities GRIPS serves are encouraged to ‘conceive of their problems as a condition rooted in society and as alterable, not as a closed, unalterable fate’ (Paul et al, 1977: 101). The company’s work foregrounds ‘challenging, resisting and subverting the homogenising tendencies of [capitalism and managerialism] by offering alternatives’ (Mangan, 2010: 160). In proceeding this way, the company problematises lived experiences as they are played out in families and neighbourhoods in relation to prevailing sociopolitical dynamics (Claus, 1988). Engagement with contemporary themes has been characterised by a two-​fold aesthetic: a) critical and sociopolitical, and b) emancipatory. GRIPS has made use of the former to scrutinise societal concerns and to sharply critique perceived inequities with a view to engendering some kind of social transformation (Fischer, 2002). To this end, the facilitation of participatory engagement across the company’s productions and the conversations and debates such productions have stimulated have ‘help[ed] define Berlin for generations’ (Hughes,

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2014: 20). Through productions such as Ein Fest bei Papadakis (1973), Heimat los (1992), Die besseren Wälder (2012) and Phantom (Ein Bild) (2018),3 GRIPS has consistently offered timely and well-​received analyses of contentious topics –​relating to migration, gentrification, cultural diversity and the continually changing, multicultural identity of the city of Berlin (Fischer, 2002; Hughes, 2014). In doing so, GRIPS has at times attracted sustained and vicious attacks from conservative elites in the Christian Democratic Party (the most powerful political party in Germany) and their media associates, to the point of risking the revocation of its subsidy (Paul et al, 1977; Claus, 1988; Fischer, 2002). Such attacks can be understood in a two-​fold sense. First, that GRIPS is being taken seriously as an alternative cultural force above and beyond its work. Second, GRIPS’ work is clearly ‘uncomfortable for the comfortable [elites]’ because such work consistently encourages ‘people to think differently; to provoke conversation about social change; and to raise awareness of oppressions’ (Rod Dixon, cited in Wiltshire and Cowan, 2018: 19–​20). The emancipatory aesthetic has been mainly concerned with nurturing a sense of citizenship in children and young people who form an integral part of GRIPS’ intergenerational audience. This has taken the form of ‘developing their self-​confidence, helping them to orient and to assert themselves in their real world … to stimulate the[ir] enjoyment of … creating alternatives, thus stimulating their social imagination’ (Volker Ludwig, cited in Berghammer, 1988: 2). Here post-​production discussions, workshops and associative social events have provided a safe and inclusive platform to engage with the themes tackled and to move beyond the plots of the productions to connecting material to social reality (Berghammer, 1988; Zipes, 2003). Of particular importance here has been the provision of low-​priced booklets along with play scripts and songs following productions to facilitate critical engagement with themes in an accessible and sustained manner (Claus, 1988; Fischer, 2002). The booklets have contained ‘reports, commentary, factual material, illustrated stories, and suggestions for play and thought’ (Paul et al, 1977: 107), all of which have allowed for ongoing study and iterative reflection. Workers at GRIPS have tended to work 12 to 14 hours a day on average, seven days a week (Fischer, 2002). As at BPT, the sheer volume and intensity of work at GRIPS means workers have had to be highly versatile. Although ‘[t]‌his tends to increase solidarity … it also burns up the energy of individuals so quickly that even those who are totally committed to the project become exhausted and may give up’ (Paul et al, 1977: 113). Intriguingly, although virtually all the company’s

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work is nearly always sold out, GRIPS does not make any profit and has increasingly relied on public subsidy and sponsorship to put on productions. Public subsidy in Germany, however, has been on the decline since the late 1990s and early 2000s –​and where it has been awarded, it has tended to be tied to restrictive criteria (Burns and Van der Will, 2003; Hughes, 2007). It is not surprising that the company nearly went bankrupt in 2012.4 In order to keep the company afloat, GRIPS has been compelled to partner with a large energy vendor as its main corporate sponsor along with others –​an investment bank, a city council department and a building society –​to be able to deliver core programming and other work. Moreover, mounting co-​productions with theatres and other spaces has provided a crucial income stream alongside bolstering the company’s profile and reputation nationally and internationally. Some crucial income has also been earned from adaptations of the company’s most successful productions (Fischer, 2002; Hughes, 2014). Because this could be construed as a break from the radical-​democratic tradition that the company claims to adhere to even during extremely challenging times, the founder has justified the strategies to widen GRIPS’ income base by pointing to the reluctance of public funders to support the company’s work on ideological grounds. Remarkably, despite periodic threats and attempts to withdraw public support on the said grounds –​coupled with sustained campaigns of vilification and intimidation from conservative media –​over the decades (Claus, 1988; Zipes, 2003; Hughes, 2014), there seems no evidence to suggest that the company has given in to political pressure or surrendered its sociopolitical aesthetic. Not only has it made no attempt to hide or force its sociopolitical critique on the constituencies it serves, but it also continues to ‘subvert and parody aspects of the [status quo with success], [to] unsettle “given” social positions and [to] interrogate the rules of inclusion, exclusion and domination’ (Peimer, 2018: 43) in its analyses of pressing issues of the day –​including the contentious topics mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, the company’s position remains vulnerable since –​unlike BPT –​it cannot make it on its own.

Opportunities for community development? BPT and GRIPS have been at the forefront of expressions of arts and culture as protest for over 50 years. This has been clearly reflected in the way both companies have organised themselves, the context within which such expression has occurred and the content of that expression. Although the organisational forms imposed on BPT and

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GRIPS by the cultures of commerce, state subsidy and managerialist conventions (albeit to differing degrees) do not appear to have destroyed the companies’ sociopolitical aesthetic, they nonetheless have the potential to undermine the organisations’ ethos and raison d’être which, in turn, can have a depoliticising and destabilising effect as both companies’ near demise shows. The tensions and challenges outlined in the previous sections are similar to those being navigated by community development projects and organisations that seek to embody forms of collective action, expression and communication that are ‘developed through democratic dialogue from within communities themselves’ (Craig et al, 2011: 8). As with community development, there is something profoundly paradoxical about the contexts within which BPT and GRIPS organise and work. Whereas their work truly challenges and forcefully opposes the state and powerful political and economic actors, in some respects BPT and GRIPS are, to varying degrees, themselves a part of that very status quo. Through touring their work in mainstream venues, experimenting with standardised aesthetic innovations and collaborating on co-​productions, both companies ‘share techniques, themes, buildings, audiences, funding council budgets and personnel with productions’ supported by the cultures of commerce, subsidy and managerialism (Mangan, 2010: 155). In doing so, BPT and GRIPS ‘are partly implicated in, not wholly immune to, these processes of appropriation [and] co-​optation’ (Reed, 2019: 412). In a dilemma that will resonate with many community development practitioners, BPT and GRIPS are clearly trying to buck the trend by opposing, resisting and subverting particular agendas of elitist, state, institutional and capitalist control (Mangan, 2010: 160). Further still, both companies are attempting to embody ‘alternative social arrangements that resonate beyond their core [work]’ (Reed, 2019: 414) –​although such arrangements are not unproblematic as we have seen. This dogged determination and resilience are consonant with more critical and transformational community development approaches in the sense that they are committed to, and offer the hope of, sustainable social change while protecting, as far as possible, organisational autonomy and ethos. Hillman underlines the necessity and challenges implicit in preserving ‘hope’, which ‘is after all essential for transforming a sense of urgency into agency, and for making perseverance possible in the long haul of political [and ideological] struggle’ (2018: 56). At a time when a combination of state-​subsidised, capitalist and managerialist ideologies and conventions have the potential to stymie artistic and cultural expression and communication for protest, BPT

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and GRIPS express solidarity with their communities and audiences as ‘ “cultural workers” … engaged in an ethical mission to reform society … not as artists per se, but as representatives of the “greater good” ’ (Kester, 1998: 117). Practitioners working within critical and transformational approaches to community development will relate to this through their attempts to foster social change from a position of collective action and solidarity. This may require working both inside and outside of the organisations and structures that support the said ideologies and conventions in an effort to challenge how things are done. Through collaborative expression of ‘deeper re-​imaginings of [societal life]’ (Reed, 2019: xvi), solidarity can be developed which allows ‘collective action [to be] directed towards altering power relations inscribed in diverse social institutions and cultural practices (Reed, 2019: 382). This way of working is in consonance with progressive strands of community development.

Conclusion Working under extremely precarious and unpredictable environments for over 50 years, BPT and GRIPS have consistently demonstrated tenacity and persistence in the way they have organised and worked with artistic and cultural expression for protest. Despite the ‘paradoxical combination of opposition and dependence’ (Mangan, 2010: 164) that they have had to navigate tactfully, both companies have offered public witness to the exploitative, inner workings of state-​sponsored subsidy and capitalist and managerialist ideologies and conventions. Through analyses drawing on broad participation and informed by evidence and experiential knowledge, BPT’s and GRIPS’ interventions have been conveyed in ways that communities and audiences can engage with. These constituencies have been provided with interpretations of what is problematic about their world –​and of what alternative visions and arrangements might look like. In doing so, BPT and GRIPS have wrestled with and exposed numerous societal inequities, protested against exploitative and alienating views and practices of powerful economic and political actors, and shown how alternative ways of being, seeing and thinking might work –​even if some of these may require communities and citizens to make considerable and long-​term sacrifices to achieve social change. Critical practitioners of community development can draw inspiration from this in their struggle for social justice for their communities and the wider public.

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Notes Often referred to as the new social movements, the movement coalitions and unions that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s were not only impelled by class conflict informed by the classic Marxian model of social change –​but also by emphasis on the dissension from and resistance to institutional rules, fixed beliefs, dominant values, social controls and prescribed lifestyles. Such coalitions and unions addressed issues around feminism, racism, consumerism, nuclear energy, trade unions and liberation struggles in the non-​Western world among others (Shank, 1978: DiCenzo, 1996; Fahlenbrach et al, 2016; Mutibwa, 2019b; Reed, 2019). 2 This production was created by John McGrath –​a prominent, British playwright and founder of the 7:84 Theatre Company in the UK. He died in 2002 and the company ceased operating in 2008. 3 For more details about these productions, visit http://​www.grips-​theater.de/​ programm/​spielplan/​produktion/​104, http://​www.grips-​theater.de/​unser-​haus/​ historie/​, http://​www.grips-​theater.de/​programm/​spielplan/​produktion/​8 and http://​www.grips-​theater.de/​programm/​spielplan/​produktion/​191 4 See, for example: www.welt.de/ ​ n ewsticker/​ n ews3/​ a rticle106258149/​ Finanzierung-d​ es-G ​ rips-T ​ heaters-g​ efordert.html and www.tagesspiegel.de/​kultur/​ hilfe-v​ om-s​ enat-b​ enoetigt-g​ rips-t​ heater-s​ teht-v​ or-d​ er-p​ leite/6​ 497938.html. Also see www.taz.de/​!5095645/​ 1

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Kelly, O. (1984) Community, Art and the State: Storming the Citadels, London: Comedia. Kershaw, B. (1992) The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention, London: Routledge. Kershaw, B. (1998) ‘From the celebratory performance of John Fox and Welfare State International’, in J. Cohen-​Cruz (ed) Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology, London: Routledge, pp 208–​16. Kershaw, B. (1999) The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard, London: Routledge. Kester, G.H. (1998) ‘Rhetorical questions: the alternative arts sector and the imaginary public’, in G. Kester (ed) Art, Activism and Oppositionality: Essays from Afterimage, Durham NC: Duke University Press, pp 103–​35. Kester, G.H. (2004) Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Klikauer, T. (2015) ‘What is managerialism?’, Critical Sociology, 41 (7–​8): 1103–​19. Lewis, J. (1990) Art, Culture and Enterprise: The Politics of Art and the Cultural Industries, London: Routledge. Lowe, T. (2011) Audit of Practice: ‘Arts in Participatory Settings’, Artworks North East. Available at: https://www.artworksalliance.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ArtworksNorthEastAuditofParticip atoryPractice.pdf Mangan, M. (2010) ‘Theatre in modern British culture’, in M. Higgins, C. Smith and J. Storey (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 154–​70. Matarasso, F. (2000) Did it Make a Difference? Evaluating Community-​based Arts and Business Partnerships, London: Arts & Business. Matarasso, F. (2013) ‘ “All in this together”: the depoliticisation of community art in Britain, 1970–​2011’, in E. van Erven (ed) Community, Art, Power: Essays from ICF 2011, Rotterdam: ICAF, pp 214–​40. Meade, R. and Shaw, M. (2011) ‘Community development and the arts: sustaining the democratic imagination in lean and mean times’, Journal of Arts & Communities, 2(1): 65–​80. Michaels, J.E. (1978) ‘Political plays for children: the Grips Theater of Berlin (Book Review)’, Monatshefte, 70(4): 459. Murdock, G. (1980) ‘Radical drama, radical theatre’, Media, Culture & Society, 2(2): 151–​68.

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Mutibwa, D.H. (2019a) ‘ “Sell[ing] what hasn’t got a name”: an exploration of the different understandings and definitions of “community engagement” work in the performing arts’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(3): 345–​61. Mutibwa, D.H. (2019b) Cultural Protest in Journalism, Documentary Films and the Arts: Between Protest and Professionalisation, London: Routledge. Ostrow, S. (2005) ‘Rehearsing revolution and life: the embodiment of Benjamin’s artwork essay at the end of the age of mechanical production’, in A. Benjamin (ed) Walter Benjamin and Art, London: Bloomsbury, pp 226–​47. Paul, A., Martin, B. and Steakley, J.D. (1977) ‘Children’s theatre as people’s theater’, New German Critique, 12: 99–​123. Peimer, D. (2018) ‘Contemporary protest theatre in South Africa’, in K. Wiltshire and B. Cowan (eds) Scenes From the Revolution: Making Political Theatre 1968–​2018, London: Pluto Press, pp 40–​53. Rawlence, C. (1979) ‘Political theatre and the working class’, in C. Gardner (ed) Media, Politics and Culture: A Socialist View, London: Macmillan, pp 61–​70. Reed, T.V. (2016) ‘Protest as artistic expression’, in K. Fahlenbrach, M. Klimke and J. Scharloth (eds) Protest Cultures: A Companion, New York: Berghahn, pp 77–​93. Reed, T.V. (2019) The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Present, (2nd edn), Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rucht, D. (2016) ‘Protest cultures in social movements’, in K. Fahlenbrach, M. Klimke and J. Scharloth (eds) Protest Cultures: A Companion, New York, NY: Berghahn, pp 26–​32. Ryder, A. (1995) ‘Peter Schumann: Puppets, bread and art’, in Sagecraft Productions. Available at: http://w ​ ww.sagecraft.com/​puppetry/​papers/​ Schumann.html Secor, J.L. (2007) ‘Bread and Puppet’, in G.L. Anderson and K.G. Herr (eds) Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp 267–​9. Shank, T. (1978) ‘Political theatre in England’, Performing Arts Journal, 2(3): 48–​62. Spitta, S.D. (2009) ‘Revisiting the sixties and refusing trash: preamble to and interview with Peter Schumann of Bread and Puppet Theatre’, Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, 36(1): 105–​25. Tiller, C. (2012) ‘International next practice review’, Artworks, Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

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Towsen, J. (1972) ‘The Bread and Puppet Theatre: the “Stations of the Cross” ’, The Drama Review, 16(3): 57–​70. Van Erven, E. (1988) Radical People’s Theatre, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Walsh, R. (1993) Radical Theatre in the Sixties and Seventies, Keele: British Association for American Studies. Wiltshire, K. and Cowan, B. (eds) (2018) Scenes From the Revolution: Making Political Theatre 1968–​2018, London: Pluto Press. Zipes, J.D. (2003) ‘Political children’s theater in the age of globalisation’, Theater, 33(2): 3–​25.

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SEVEN

Queering community development in DIY punk spaces Kirsty Lohman and Ruth Pearce

Introduction Do-​It-​Yourself (DIY) approaches, which place artistic value on participation, have a long history in community organising and cultural production. From the 1970s, punk offered a new subcultural context in which DIY approaches were revisited, reinvented and reinvigorated. Recent turns to intersectional feminist, queer, trans, anti-​racist and disability politics have resulted in some punks questioning whether the value placed on participation might be exclusionary. In numerous collectives and spaces, this has resulted in a rethinking of DIY approaches to community development, arising from a growing recognition of the need for active work to empower marginalised groups. In this chapter we show how queer feminist approaches to punk politics enable DIY collectives to prefigure the creative communities they wish to see. Analysing a study of UK punk against literature on prefiguration and community arts, we highlight how queer feminist punks can disrupt the dominant norms that marginalise their cultural contributions, while also facilitating the creation of new spaces, community groups and cultural artefacts.

Prefigurative social action In this chapter, we position queer feminist punk organising as a form of prefigurative social action. As a concept, ‘prefiguration’ has been used to examine the politics and practices of predominantly leftist movements through the 20th and 21st centuries, especially in the Global North. Broadly defined, it describes ‘activities that embody and enact the way in which one envisions a future (better) world’ (Guerlain and Campbell, 2016: 221). Activists and social theorists position a wide variety of ventures as prefigurative, from 19th-​century anarchism (Boggs, 1977), to US anti-​WWII pacifism in the 1940s (Polletta and

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Hoban, 2016), to community gardens in East London (Guerlain and Campbell, 2016), to the Indignados and Occupy movements of the early 2010s (Burgum, 2019). In 1977 Carl Boggs used ‘prefiguration’ to distinguish between ‘old’ and ‘New’ left politics in Europe and the United States. In the context of rising cold war tensions, growing suspicion of Soviet communism and/​or socialism and the authoritarianism of many Communist Parties, the New Left emerged in the late 1950s. It ‘affirmed the importance of generalising the struggles for self-​management beyond the point of production’ (Boggs, 1977: 119). Examples of this included seeking to enact new modes of organisation, integrating countercultural arts movements and incorporating a range of ‘social’ issues alongside class struggle, including demands from the civil rights, feminist and gay liberation movements. Prefigurative movements may involve modelling an ‘alternative’ within wider society, aiming to influence wider society towards change, and/​or focus on developing processes of exacting social change (Polletta and Hoban, 2016). While the New Left sought to model forms of radical equality, the movements themselves were still riddled with entrenched inequalities. In many leftist groups, white men dominated leadership and decision-​ making processes, leading to a prioritisation of class-​based struggle over racial equality, gender equality or any other forms of struggle. In the Civil Rights and other racial equality movements, the role of women’s oppression was often marginalised in favour of men; similarly, Black women found racial struggles were sidelined in many feminist groups (hooks, 1981). In 1977, Boston-​based Black feminist lesbian group the Combahee River Collective implicitly acknowledged the limits of prefiguration within New Left, Black liberation and feminist groups: Many of us were active in those movements (Civil Rights, Black nationalism, the Black Panthers), and all of our lives were greatly affected and changed by their ideologies, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti-​racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-​ sexist, unlike those of Black and white men. (Combahee River Collective Statement, 1983 [1977]: 265) This statement resonated with Black feminist groups in the UK, as did Kimberlé Crenshaw’s writing on intersectional oppression

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(Mirza, 2015). Crenshaw (1989) drew on case studies from US courts to show how neither the concept of race discrimination nor that of sex discrimination is sufficient to account for Black women’s specific experiences of oppression, as the impact of each is compounded by the intersection of racism and sexism. UK-​based groups such as Brixton Black Women’s Group therefore developed forms of prefigurative social action that were built on a recognition of intersectional oppression. Similar critiques have been made of 21st-​century protest camps associated with the global justice, counter-​globalisation and Occupy movements. These campaigns targeted existing economic and political structures, modelling forms of ‘horizontal’ organising and consensus-​ based decision-​making. Yet, decision-​making was often ineffective or unrepresentative. Kyoko Tominaga (2017) draws on the example of the 2008 anti-​G8 protests near Sapporo, Japan, to show how minority groups such as women and LGBTQ+ people felt marginalised in camps that reproduced traditional gender norms. Through modelling the Japanese camps on previous global justice protests, especially the 2007 anti-​G8 protests in Germany, ‘experienced’ protesters took leadership positions, and Eurocentric behaviours were imposed in new spaces. One protester commented: [I]‌was extremely irritated to see all the infrastructure in the protest camp. A room was for ‘staff only’, lavatory rooms were for only females and males, and other spaces were also full of discrimination and prejudice. Although meetings should have been bottom-​up style, organizers often determined important issues by themselves with top-​ down management. (Nojiren, 2008, cited in Tominaga, 2017: 2077) These critiques bear a striking resemblance to those levelled by the New Left at the ‘old’, and indeed by Black feminists at the New Left, showing how new modes of organising tend to replicate existing inequalities. However, as noted by Polletta and Hoban (2016) a key feature of prefigurative organising is the importance of process. The difficult negotiations which took place in Japan’s anti-​G8 camps ultimately resulted in productive discussions and changed behaviours. For example, non-​gendered toilets were introduced alongside female and male facilities. Through building community with others and working through their collective limitations, activists might therefore show that ‘another world is possible’ (Tominaga, 2017: 280).

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Prefiguration, community development and community arts While discussions around prefiguration focus predominantly on political movements, the notion of prefiguring the world that you wish to see has clear implications for community development and community arts. Throughout the 20th century there was a growing recognition that artistic practices have a role in community development and political struggles. Lee Higgins argues that the cultural and political upheaval of the 1960s gave rise to a new wave of UK community artists who ‘had an emphasis on group collaborations and the obliteration of the distinction between performer and the audience. … [C]‌ommunity arts challenged the status of the individual artist, actively eroding the dominant [elitist] notion of artist as genius’ (2008: 25). Many understandings of community art from this period position artists as a sort of vanguard for their community, acting ‘as conscious facilitators for people to express themselves through artistic means’ (Higgins, 2008: 25). Annie Sloman (2012) shows that such initiatives have the power to bring communities together to identify important issues (for example water sanitation), to provide educative programmes (for example HIV/​AIDS) and/​or to engage in political protest (for example at anti-​war rallies). In this way, community arts programmes work by ‘expounding community visions and wishes –​validating beliefs and sharing ideas, stories and aspirations’ (Abah, 2007: 437). Community arts may be prefigurative in that the act of creation is linked not only to imagining different futures, but also to the process of enacting social change through art. Jennifer Spiegel and Stephanie Parent’s survey of participants in a community circus initiative in Quebec showed how socially marginalised participants were inspired to pursue work and/​or education, and overcome personal trauma. Spiegel and Parent describe these as ‘micropolitical revolutions’ which alter ‘power relations and feelings of collective worth’ (2018: 602). However, as with many community development initiatives and, indeed, other prefigurative movements, there are questions to be raised around ‘top-​down’ versus ‘bottom-​up’ work in arts programmes (Abah, 2007). Of particular concern is the potential for attempted community pacification, serving the interests of corporate bodies, governments and/​or colonial powers rather than the community itself (Carpenter et al, 2016). Spiegel and Parent (2018) observe that through moulding ‘productive’ neoliberal citizens, the Cirque du Monde potentially depoliticised the community, drawing attention away from structural factors that cause marginalisation and harm in the first place. Sloman

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(2012) suggests that for community cohesion to be built properly in a way that allows for the potential of real change, creative arts project design should be participatory. We would add that communities should be involved in deciding whether or not they want an intervention to occur in the first place. Lee Higgins (2008) notes that there are forms of artistic community development which are both ‘bottom up’ in terms of their emergence, and which retain –​indeed foster –​political consciousness and activity. He suggests that the punk movement fulfils these criteria. Punk music, style and art emerged in the UK in the 1970s. It was an explicit response to the glamour and elitism of ‘mainstream’ music such as stadium rock, with an underlying DIY ethos; the idea that anyone could and should be able to express themselves creatively, irrespective of formal musical/​artistic training. Higgins observes that this created new forms of community between punks, accessible to anyone who wanted to participate. Many punk ‘communities’ have been explicitly political. Working-​ class, leftist and/​or anarchist politics have been particularly prominent in art and lyrics; gigs are often used as ‘benefits’ to raise money or awareness for one cause or another. Higgins (2008) argues that this combination of political activism, consciousness raising and ‘bottom-​ up’ community-​building positions punk as an embodiment of artistic community development, highlighting the similarities between the aims and activities of punk communities and Mark Webster’s community arts principles: • the promotion of participation regardless of skill or ‘talent’; • the work is undertaken by a group who have the same or collective identity; and • the work is developed primarily to provide opportunities for people who through social or economic circumstances have little opportunity to participate in the arts. (Webster, 1997 cited in Higgins, 2008: 27)

Queer/​punk praxis There is a long history of overlap in community experiences and rationales for ‘punk’ and ‘queer’ politics. In the UK, the 1970s were a time of growing visibility and possibility for people with non-​normative genders and sexualities, some of whom were drawn to punk: prominent examples include Jayne County and Tom Robinson. Punks sometimes found they were more welcome in gay bars than mainstream pubs

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and venues, leading to overlap in social spaces and social relationships (Wilkinson, 2015). Through association with marginalised groups who ‘defiantly confronted and dismantled stereotypes’, punk gained a countercultural and political legitimacy which distinguished it from many other youth styles (Lohman and Raghunath, 2019: 190). Yet, like other subcultural styles, mainstream and underground punk nevertheless remains dominated by white, cis, heterosexual men. In the 1980s, a specifically queer politics emerged. Queer activism (for example Queer Nation and ACT-​UP) celebrates difference, diversity and change, while questioning liberal politics of tolerance and inclusion. Queer theory aimed to build on this through ‘queering’ knowledge, an approach which aims ‘to make strange, to frustrate, to counteract, to delegitimise, to camp up –​heteronormative knowledges and institutions, and the subjectivities and socialities that are (in)formed by them and that (in)form them’ (Sullivan, 2003: vi). Queer feminists have expanded queer theory through incorporating analyses of gender inequalities and intersectional oppression (for example Ahmed, 2017). Tenets of queer theory can be read as tenets of punk: both are intentionally confrontational, and often intentionally difficult or strange. In this sense, queer theory, queer feminist politics and punk align around an active and ongoing rejection of ‘old’ ways of living, attempting to instead actively imagine and build the ‘new’. Both are prefigurative in that they seek to enact a constant process of renewal and change, calling the present into question and seeking always to manifest new futures. In practice, neither punk cultures nor queer feminist activism and theory always live up to these ideals. For example, in both there is often an overwhelming, usually unreflexive centring of whiteness. The discipline of queer theory replicates structural racism within the education sector that upholds whiteness and systematically creates barriers for people of colour (hooks, 1994). Punks of colour, similarly, often struggle to gain the subcultural capital and creative recognition that white punks do, and those who are part of white-​centred scenes are often subject to racist microaggressions (Phillips, 2017). While queers, feminists and punks (and community development workers) may ‘talk’ intersectional politics, this does not always translate to enacting them. This has consequences for who exactly is perceived as being in ‘the community’, and what exactly is being prefigured. Contemporary DIY communities in the UK have attempted to address such issues through queer feminist punk praxis (see Lohman, forthcoming). Collectives in many major cities and some smaller towns put on gigs and festivals, providing platforms for bands and other artists (including poets, zine makers and visual artists) to gather and share their

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creativity. This draws on the legacy of punk as open and inclusive, and pushes against exclusionary punk scenes in a manner similar to riot grrrl and queercore in the 1980s and 1990s (Lohman, forthcoming). In our following discussion, we show how queer/​feminist DIY collectives do this prefiguratively through creating space for those marginalised in other creative cultures, focusing primarily on the example of the First Timers initiative. Our arguments draw primarily on the findings of the Queer/​ Feminist Punk project undertaken by Kirsty from 2017 to 2019. This was a socio-​historic ethnography which produced rich qualitative data: approximately four hundred hours of participant observation at a range of events, including gigs, festivals, meetings and zine fairs. She further undertook 20 interviews with scene participants,1 an analysis of websites and social media pages associated with events and punk collectives, and archival research of zine collections. For this chapter, Kirsty shared preselected interview extracts (from seven pre-​coded interviews) with Ruth to contribute to a ‘duoethnographic’ analysis (Vincent and Erikainen, 2020). We jointly re-​coded and analysed these extracts alongside two further data sets: • The Trans Music Communities project: a small-​scale ethnography undertaken by both authors in 2012–​13. For a full discussion, see Pearce and Lohman (2019). • Informal autoethnographic reflections: the authors have performed at gigs across the UK in queer feminist punk bands (Not Right, Dispute Settlement Mechanism and wormboys) and organised events in Coventry, Leamington Spa and Leeds between 2012 and the present day.

Queer/​punk prefiguration First Timers is a London-​based, collective-​led community-​building initiative that has run sporadically since 2013. Through a programme of events over several months, participants meet prospective bandmates and take part in workshops to learn the basics of playing instruments, song writing and performance. This culminates in a festival where the new bands perform their songs for the first time. First Timers is part of a wider constellation of queer and/​or feminist DIY punk events in the UK and beyond. The person who instigated it, Bryony Beynon, described how she was inspired by Not Enough Fest in New Orleans and Portland, and First Time’s the Charm in Philadelphia. In turn, First Timers directly influenced similar events,

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for example Bristol’s Eat Up For Starters, plus the creation of the venue DIY Space for London (aka DIY Space), led by Bryony. First Timers has also provided important opportunities for scene participants who have gone on to create influential events such as Decolonise Fest, the lessons from which feed back into community activities. Therefore, while our analysis here focuses on First Timers, it necessarily draws in other events and bands from queer and feminist DIY punk communities. To register for a First Timers festival, prospective bands must meet a set of criteria to demonstrate their commitment to countering structural marginalisation within punk and DIY communities. The most recent sign-​up document states: First Timers is about getting new faces and voices in bands, and doing something about the lack of diversity in the make-​up of our music community. The criteria below aren’t intended to exclude anyone, but are [a]‌direct way of addressing this. As such, your band must be able to collective[ly] say YES to at least TWO of these statements about your band to be true. If you want to state anything else about the make-​up of your group that you feel meets [the] criteria, put it under ‘Other.’ • One or more of us has never played in a band before. • One or more of us identify as one (or more!) of the following: a woman, a trans, queer, non binary or gender-​n on conforming person, LGBTQIA+, a person of colour, a person with a disability (visible or non-​visible). • One or more us is playing something in this band that they have never done before. • Other: (First Timers website) Collective member Jodi suggests that the effects of these criteria are substantial: ‘it’s a very inclusive criteria … but what that means by explicitly stating that, is that it ends up that actually most of the people identify with one of those things’ (First Timers Facebook page, 6 October 2019). Analysed against Webster’s community arts principles, we see a strong rationale for understanding First Timers as a form of prefigurative arts-​ based community development. Webster’s first principle emphasises

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the promotion of participation regardless of skill or ‘talent’. First Timers’ reason for existing is to promote participation, and to value this above any form of musical proficiency. Research participant Colette described it as: ‘really awesome because people are playing for the first time, and there’s that energy that’s got a bit of that sort of high school talent competition [vibe], where everyone’s parents are cheering each other, like their kids on or whatever.’ (Colette) This focus on communitarianism is a direct contrast with the competitiveness that underpins many other events such as ‘Battle of the Bands’ showcases, or festivals where there is prestige associated with how ‘high up the bill’ (how late in the night) a band performs. This community-​oriented spirit, supportiveness and emphasis on participation provides space for people to experiment and ‘fail’ in a way that works against the capitalist logics that underpin commercial arts worlds. A crucial initiative facilitating this in London is DIY Space: a social centre run by and for its members (annual cost of membership £2), which opened in 2015: ‘DIY Space does allow for so many things to happen. In a really nice way, it means that if you’re putting on a show for the first time and you don’t know what the hell you’re doing and you make loads of mistakes, there’s people very quietly giving a bit of a guidance behind you, as opposed to, [if] you put on a gig in a[nother] bar, and they’d be like, “Well, we made no money on the bar tonight and you overran, so you’re never allowed to do anything here ever again”.’ (Colette) The second of Webster’s suggestions is that the work of artistic community development should be conducted ‘by a group who have the same or collective identity’. First Timers founder Bryony had long been a member of punk and DIY scenes, where she saw first-​hand how sexism and internalised misogyny dissuaded women –​including her –​from forming bands. When she eventually did so, there was a negative reaction from close friends in the scene: ‘like when we had a good show, he was like, “People only like it because it’s a girl band, so it’s a novelty”. And when

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we had a bad show, he was like, “Well, you know like you should learn to play your instruments”. So either way you can’t win here!’ (Bryony) Many research participants described how their direct experiences of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism and/​or ableism within the cultural scenes they were part of spurred them to work with First Timers or other initiatives. They wished to create cultural space and provide platforms for others with similar experiences. Jodi further explained how it was important that the workshops themselves were led by people from within the punk community who had experiences of marginalisation. Many are first-​time teachers with no formal musical background: ‘the more relatable [tutors] are the ones who are just like, “Oh yeah, I don’t know any music theory but this is what I do when I write a song”.’ (Jodi) In this way, events such as First Timers offer an example of community members identifying their own needs and taking action collectively to address these for themselves, similar to those described by writers such as Oga Steve Abah (2007) and Annie Sloman (2012). Lastly, Webster’s third criterion suggests that community arts should provide for those who don’t otherwise have the opportunity to participate. First Timers conceptualises ‘opportunity’ in a broad sense. A lack of representation and visible role models, as well as negative reactions to new musicians such as Bryony, are in this sense understood to form structural obstacles. By explicitly inviting those who may not otherwise think they can participate in DIY music making, the collective creates a needed opportunity. As musician and organiser Cassie A explained in her interview: ‘Initiatives like First Timers and in Bristol, Eat Up for Starters (which is set on a really similar model) have made huge headway in opening up the scene, making it less exclusive and less about white dudes. It’s really about saying, “You can do this too”. Come and learn how to play drums or come and learn how to [anything else].’ (Cassie A) However, the contribution of First Timers goes beyond the three principles described by Webster. On their website, the First Timers collective assert that ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’, a popular phrase

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commonly attributed to children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman. This perspective underpins their rationale for creating opportunities; however, the implications reach considerably farther than the bands created in any given year. The opening up of possibility through First Timers can have long-​lasting and ongoing influence: this can be seen in the example of the band Big Joanie. Big Joanie formed in 2013 through the First Timers event. Guitarist and singer, Steph, had prior experience of queer and feminist punk/​ DIY scenes with her band My Therapist Says Hot Damn, and was frustrated with racism in these scenes. First Timers provided a necessary opportunity for her to form an explicitly Black feminist band. ‘I don’t think I would have started the band without it. Even though I’d already been in a band, I think I always look for someone to invite me in, and [First Timers] was kind of like an invitation.’ (Steph) Following a successful first gig at First Timers, Big Joanie went on to receive national radio airplay, release multiple records, gig across the UK as well as in mainland Europe and the United States, and play London’s Brixton Academy alongside veteran riot grrrl groups Bikini Kill and Sleater-​Kinney. Big Joanie have consistently used these platforms to encourage other Black women to form bands. ‘I always thought there must be more people like me and I thought that we just need to create space for it. That was like the idea behind Big Joanie, just kind of being honest and true in ourselves. And making more space for ourselves to make some space for other people.’ (Steph) Steph reflected on seeing the effects of this at their gigs and beyond throughout the community: Kirsty: Steph:

Kirsty: Steph:

Were you seeing more people of colour coming along [to shows] than earlier? I think slowly, yeah, slowly. I think over time, in terms of what other bands as well have done and what the scene’s done. Now you look at the scene, it’s completely different to when I first joined. In terms of racial diversity? … In terms of racial diversity but also in terms of people’s attitudes [and accountability] to making sure

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that … people can access this kind of music and feel comfortable. It’s not 100% perfect but it’s a lot better than it was. The success of Big Joanie, which sat alongside continued experiences of racism, inspired Steph to call out for other Black punks to come together to run their own festival. For Steph this was a logical extension of developing her community: ‘I posted on Facebook and asked, “If you would like to see a punk festival for Black punks, you know who would you like to play?” … People really wanted it to happen and like DIY Space was asking when I was going to put it on. [… It was] creating more of a community, extending out beyond the band, finding people I hadn’t met before that were in the community.’ (Steph) The collective that was formed, DIY Diaspora Punx, eventually took a broader remit and worked to support all punks of colour. Their Decolonise Festival has run at DIY Space annually since 2017. This also has an influence beyond the event itself, as seen in Cassie A’s comment regarding how it marks out what is possible in the face of white promoters’ inaction on including punks of colour in other events: ‘Whenever any promoter’s like, “Oh, it’s just really hard to diversify my line-​up”, I use Decolonise Fest as a reference point. Because I’m like, “Well, if they can fill a whole weekend full of bands that will have at least one person of colour in, then you can find one band to put on your line-​up” … they’re showing that it is possible.’ (Cassie A) Events such as First Timers and Decolonise Fest, and bands such as Big Joanie, extend notions of prefigurative possibility by changing norms and expectations within broader punk scenes and beyond. For Steph, the racism and marginalisation that had made participation uncomfortable was therefore more likely to be recognised and addressed within community spaces. Colette similarly comments on changing norms with regard to ableism brought about by First Timers and the accessibility regulations at its current venue, DIY Space. She says these have transformed her attitude to ensuring accessibility when running any event:

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‘I used to, you know, just think that people in wheelchairs didn’t go to gigs. Now I’m frequently at gigs with people with visible disabilities. And I never want to do something in a venue again which means that people couldn’t go, you know? It’s absolutely unnecessary.’ (Colette) Furthermore, community organisers regularly contemplate how they could ‘do’ better. While Big Joanie were to form through the 2013 event, in her interview Bryony reflected –​with some regret –​on her initial decision not to explicitly include race in the eligibility criteria of First Timers: ‘If I’m honest, the first one, I was thinking quite narrowly about gender and gender diversity in the scene. … This is embarrassing … but I didn’t feel confident [to] put on the guidelines something around race and ethnicity. I [wondered], oh is it my place as a white person to be like, “I’m inviting you to come and do a band” [that’s] really patronising … I had those anxieties around getting it wrong.’ (Bryony) Bryony described how by 2016, the second First Timers, she had learned to better make space for punks of colour: ‘[There’s a] progression that happened in broader punk and DIY communities between 2013 and 2016. … I reflect on I suppose my own decision, now, absolutely as a white woman, it is my place to be like, “We need to make more room” [for punks of colour]. … By 2016, absolutely, I was like, “Yeah, hell yeah, [race] is one of the criteria, of course!” ’ (Bryony) Similarly, as abled and white people, we (the authors) have also found ourselves productively challenged by the contributions of disabled punks and punks of colour. This led us to reflect on the whiteness and inaccessibility of gigs we organised and played. When organising events, we always sought to be inclusive; however, our achievements were inconsistent. For example, we changed our approach to designing events such as Revolt! (Coventry, 2012–​17) shifting from avoiding booking all-​white line-​ups, to avoiding line-​ups with a single tokenistic performer of colour. However, we went little beyond this (still

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tokenistic approach) in terms of reaching out to punks of colour and remained an all-​white organising team. In running Revolt! we sought a venue that was wheelchair accessible, had handrails and described the access provisions of our events in advance. In 2014 we pushed for the venue to make their stage wheelchair accessible; yet in 2015 we chose to run Femmington Spa Queer Fest in a basement venue without a proper lift. These reflections highlight how the process of prefigurative community development is –​like queerness and like punk –​necessarily continual, uneven and messy. For each improvement that is made, there remain issues and failings. Reflecting on her experiences in Bristol (a very racially diverse, but divided city) Cassie A said: ‘I think the biggest changes that I’ve seen in the punk scene have definitely been around our understanding of gender, and the spectrum that is gender and the spectrum that is sexuality and identity more broadly. Our support and respect for trans people and gender non-​conforming people and queer people. It’s not to say that we are perfect at all, because we’re definitely not. I still think we’ve got a huge way to go in terms of representation for all those people, and in particular people of colour. There’s still a massive lack of representation in terms of people of colour on the stage, behind the scenes, promoters, and in the audience. Like I’m still usually the only person of colour at the show [laughs] sometimes, depending on how big or small the show is. Usually the only person of colour performing.’ (Cassie A) For Cassie A, the work of Eat Up for Starters is ongoing and needs to consistently improve. She identified how they must do better at reaching out to Bristol’s communities of colour. She further discussed improvements to their skill-​sharing provision; beyond the basics of learning instruments, they began working to provide workshops on sound engineering and technical equipment. Successful prefigurative communities do not rest on their laurels, but instead consistently look to ensure the longevity and continuation of their work. Steph reflected on the future with regard to Decolonise Fest: ‘I’m struggling to see how to make lasting change, how to make this kind of like … so it’s not just these three festivals, and how do we make sure that more festivals happen?’ (Steph)

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Other projects have also grappled with this, with participants commenting on the importance of bringing in new generations and new voices to learn from. Cassie A described how much she has learned from younger punks that have come into the community, in an example of cross-​generational exchange. By the second First Timers, Bryony was joined in the organising work by a collective of those who had participated in the first one: ‘it was all people who had been in First Timers bands [that] approached me … “we want to take this on”. And you know who better to run the thing than the people who know how impactful it could be.’ (Bryony) Reflecting on leaving London, and with it her involvement with First Timers and DIY Space, she noted that: ‘the mark of a successful project is being able to completely remove yourself, and the thing still stays standing, like Jenga.’ (Bryony)

Conclusion Queer feminist punk community initiatives, such as First Timers, provide for a cultural politics of the marginalised. As Cassie A observed: ‘music is the perfect outlet for feminism. Writing and reading and all those things are really important, but as an  activist tool, [a]‌creative tool for activism, [it] is so expressive. … The establishment is scared of angry women, and to channel it through music that can reach a lot of people is a really good way of organising and building community.’ (Cassie A) In this chapter we have shown how First Timers prefigures a desired future through valuing participation above and beyond elitist or capitalist logics. It relies on community members to identify their own needs and concerns, and to use DIY skill-​sharing techniques to provide and extend creative opportunities to others. The effects of these practices have norms and expectations within and beyond their communities. Most importantly, community members engage in self-​reflexive processes to recognise their mistakes, and welcome new voices that challenge the community to continue to improve their development

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work. They evidence a commitment to sociopolitical renewal and change that looks inward as well as outward, calling the present into question while seeking to manifest new futures. Cassie A succinctly summarised this ethos: ‘do you not find that when you’ve found community that’s positive, that’s trying to be better, there’s like [a]‌beacon of hope in a really shit world? … The world is crumbling, we’re all going to burn in a fire from the heat of the sun probably, but before that happens, we can enjoy a punk show and support each other and watch people grow and watch people start bands and become happy and find their people.’ (Cassie A) Note Participants were offered the opportunity to use a pseudonym where desired. Some opted to use their name in recognition of their ‘public’ role as creative community members.

1

References Abah, O.S. (2007) ‘Vignettes of communities in action: an exploration of participatory methodologies in promoting community development in Nigeria’, Community Development Journal, 42(4): 435–​48. Ahmed, S. (2017) Living a Feminist Life, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Boggs, C. (1977) ‘Marxism, prefigurative communism, and the problem of workers’ control’, Radical America, 11(6): 99–​122. Burgum, S. (2019) Occupying London: Post-​Crash Resistance and the Limits of Possibility, London: Routledge. Carpenter, M., Emejulu, A. and Taylor, M. (2016) ‘Editorial introduction: what’s new and old in community development? Reflecting on 50 years of CDJ’, Community Development Journal, 51(1): 1–​7. Combahee River Collective ([1977] 1983) ‘The Combahee River Collective statement’, in B. Smith (ed) Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp 264–​74. Crenshaw, K. (1989) ‘Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989: 139–​68.

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Guerlain, M.A. and Campbell, C. (2016) ‘From sanctuaries to prefigurative social change: creating health-​enabling spaces in East London community gardens’, Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 4(1): 220–​37. Higgins, L. (2008) ‘Growth, pathways and groundwork: community music in the United Kingdom’, International Journal of Community Music, 1(1): 23–​37. hooks, b. (1981) Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, Boston, MA: South End Press. hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom, New York, NY: Routledge. Lohman, K. (forthcoming) ‘Queer and feminist punk in the UK’, in G. Arnold and G. McKay (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lohman, K. and Raghunath, A. (2019) ‘Editorial: notes in the margins’, Punk and Post Punk, 8(2): 189–​92. Mirza, H.S. (2015) ‘ “Harvesting our collective intelligence”: Black British feminism in post-​race times’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 51: 1–​9. Nojiren (2008) ‘Report of anti-​G8 protest camp’ [Anti-​G8 camp e no haken sanka hokoku], Pika Pika Nouchi, 33: 7–​21. Pearce, R. and Lohman, K. (2019) ‘De/​constructing DIY identities in a trans music scene’, Sexualities, 22(1–​2): 97–​113. Phillips, S. (2017) ‘Why a punk fest celebrating people of colour is needed in 2017’, The Quietus, 30 May. Available at: https://​thequietus. com/​articles/​22516-​punk-​race-​racism-​decolonise-​fest Polletta, F. and Hoban, K. (2016) ‘Why consensus? Prefiguration in three activist eras’, Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 4(1): 286–​301. Sloman, A. (2012) ‘Using participatory theatre in international community development’, Community Development Journal, 47(1): 42–​57. Spiegel, J.B. and Parent, S.N. (2018) ‘Re-​approaching community development through the arts: a “critical mixed methods” study of social circus in Quebec’, Community Development Journal, 53(4): 600–​17. Sullivan, N. (2003) A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, New York, NY: New York University Press. Tominaga, K. (2017) ‘Social reproduction and the limitations of protest camps: openness and exclusion of social movements in Japan’, Social Movement Studies, 16(3): 269–​82.

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Vincent, B. and Erikainen, S. (2020) ‘Gender, love, and sex: using duoethnography to research gender and sexuality minority experiences of transgender relationships’, Sexualities, 23(1–​2): 28–​43. Webster, M. (ed) (1997) Finding Voices, Making Choices, Nottingham: Educational Heretics Press. Wilkinson, D. (2015) ‘Ever fallen in love (with someone you shouldn’t have?): punk, politics and same-​sex passion’, Keywords, 13: 57–​76.

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PART 2

Negotiating practice and policy

EIGHT

Access to communication as resistance and struggle in the 21st century Pradip Ninan Thomas

Introduction In 2018 Cambridge University Press published a three-​volume series, Rethinking Society for the 21st Century, consisting of chapters submitted to the International Panel for Social Progress (IPSP) chaired by the Noble Prize-​winning economist Amartya Sen. Chapter 13, ‘Media and Communications’ (Couldry et al, 2018) is a multi-​authored text on the status of contemporary communications. It highlights key contemporary communication deficits –​from the skewed ownership of media and information infrastructures to the various disparities in access to and the efficient distribution of media and information resources. Its recommendations relate to: the need to have effective access to communication infrastructures; the transparency and accountability of media and digital platforms; the need for communication r ights; participatory governance of media infrastructures and digital platforms; participation of civil society in the design of media infrastructures and platforms; protection from surveillance and data extraction; media infrastructures and platforms free from censorship; media and information literacy; linguistic diversity and human knowledge as commons instead of commodities. (Couldry et al, 2018: 555–​7) We live in an era imprinted by the digital as the common language of productivity and reproductivity across multiple sectors, as central to our everyday lives as it is to advances in science, technology, humanities and the social sciences. The digital, however, is a conflicted entity. As the Stanford lawyer Lawrence Lessig (1999) has argued, the digital is

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essentially about the ‘copy’, meaning that potentially any digital text, application, format and product can be replicated often at zero cost. From economics, we learn that there are ‘rivalrous’ and ‘non-​r ivalrous’ resources, meaning that there are tangible products such as a packet of biscuits that are finite, the consumption of which exhausts the packet and the desire for more that can be satisfied by additional purchases, and intangible products such as the digital whose consumption does not in any way degrade their quality or exhaust their availability potentially to everybody who is connected. In this sense the digital product is very different from analogue products such as a video tape or a printed copy of a newspaper. As digital natives we are constantly sharing digital texts and images and yet ‘sharing’ is by no means an accepted norm in the neoliberal economic environments in which we live. So it is somewhat of a paradox that we live in an era that potentially can be characterised by digital plenty when in reality there are any number of digital enclosures that restrict access and availability. It is this gap that is the basis for any number of communication deficits highlighted in Chapter 13 in the IPSP Report. Arguably, access to information and communication is an issue that is of real concern to the community development sector. In the context of the growing prominence of the ‘digital’, and state investments in the provisioning of digital services, access has become an issue that defines one’s quality of life. Access to information on health, education, rights, the law, entitlements and public services are critical today precisely due to the fact that governments the world over have invested in e-​government.

Access in the digital age We need to take access, availability and affordability seriously because our ability to use digital resources reflects the quality of lives that we lead. I am not suggesting that the digital is more or less important than other basic resources and struggles that might inspire community activists, such as the need for food, shelter, employment and so on. We recognise the fact that there are multiple divides in societies, and that we are unable to ‘eat a computer’. However, in the context of the ubiquitous spread of mobile phones and the global imprint of the digital, there is a sense in which the basic services required for living have become digitised, with e-​government being a good example of this migration. This is as true in the Global North as it is in the Global South. While cash is still king, cashless transfers via services such as MPesa in Kenya have become ubiquitous. This SMS text-​based

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service does not require the use of smartphones. The availability of cheap ‘Shenzen’ mobile phones manufactured in China have certainly contributed to the democratisation of access to the digital, and there are vibrant cultures of recycling, reverse engineering and technological appropriation in informal economies throughout the world. Arguably, these cultures and traditions that mainstream society describe as ‘grey’ zones have contributed to the making of many ‘pirate modernities’ throughout the world. This concept of ‘pirate modernities’ refers to the fact that for many people around the world, their first experience of the digital is via ‘pirate’ software, such as refurbished mobile phones, often made in China, and digital games that do not subscribe to rules related to copyright. In this sense, their first experience of digital modernity is via their experience with diverse pirate hardware and software. It is interesting to observe that it is exactly in the places and spaces on the margins of the formal economy, where the rules, norms, attitudes and behaviours related to the dominant digital economy do not hold, that there is maximum creativity and innovation in exploring affordable digital access and creative digital solutions to the deficits faced by people and communities living everyday lives. This is analogous to the experience of economic development by a number of countries in Latin America during the era of Empire that fared best when they were least connected to their coloniser, Spain. There is a sense in which it is in these informal economies located throughout the world that communication rights are best exemplified by access to technologies and their affordable uses, diverse cultures of appropriation, the sharing of tacit knowledge on digital modifications and the making available of such technologies. Christopher Kelty (2008: 10–​11) had described the ‘geeks; involved in the free software movements as “recursive publics” ’. We can extend that term to cover all those involved in many types of digital creativity in the informal sector. In Kelty’s (2008: 10–​11) words: The ‘reorientation of power and knowledge’ has two key aspects that are part of the concept of recursive publics: availability and modifiability (or adaptability). Availability is a broad, diffuse and familiar issue. It includes things like transparency, open governance or transparent organisation, secrecy and freedom of information, and open access in science. … Modifiability includes the ability to not only access –​that is, to reuse in the trivial sense of using something without restrictions –​but to transform it for use in new contexts, to different ends, or in order to participate directly in its improvement and to redistribute or recirculate

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it those improvements within the same infrastructures while securing the same rights for everyone else. While he used the term to describe the qualities of software programmers who were involved in forms of cyberactivism in civil society, as I have noted previously I think that the facility to modify and make available affordable technologies and devices are also characteristic of those involved in the informal digital economy and communication rights activists. Furthermore, it could well be a terrain of possibility for community development activists committed to democratising the digital economy. In fact, there are examples from around the world of development activists who are involved in the radical reconfigurations of digital technologies, thus democratising access and the affordable use of these technologies.

Communication rights –​an issue for community development At a formal level, the experience of communication rights advocacy at global forums has had a chequered history exemplified best by the struggles around the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) in the early 1980s under the aegis of UNESCO. NWICO1 was an attempt by independent states in the developing world to decolonise their economic and information structures. It was followed two decades later by civil society efforts such as the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign associated with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) organised World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that was held in two phases, Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005). While both advocacy campaigns were significant moments in the history of communication rights, on balance, the report Many Voices, One World (1981) –​an outcome of the MacBride Commission that was instituted by UNESCO to assess the world’s communication problems –​remains a key document for those involved in communication rights advocacy precisely because it was the first attempt to articulate the rationale for and the objectives of the right to communicate and to make a case for this right as a basic human right. Clemencia Rodríguez and Andrew Iliadis (2019: 19), in an issue of the journal Media Development dedicated to assessing the legacy of the MacBride Report 40 years on, observe that the recommendations from this report provided a necessary framework for media reform so that:

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During the 1980s and 1990s, several nations restricted how much media content and advertising could be imported from other countries; limited the concentration of media ownership; reserved broadcasting frequencies for public media; taxed commercial media to fund public media; and implemented policy incentives for non-​traditional media producers (i.e., independent filmmakers, alternative/​ community media creators). In the academic and praxis area often referred to as ‘communications for social change’, which potentially has a strong overlap with the concerns of community development, there is a lot of discussion on issues of access, participation, citizen uses of communication in/​ for their own development. Typically, however, there are no rules or established norms related to treating communication as a basic human right on a par with other human rights such as access to food, shelter and so on. In fact, in our contemporary world in which our quality of life is, in some ways, defined by our unimpeded access to information available over a variety of personal devices and media channels, a case can be made for a right that provides all stakeholders with a set of rules, norms and rights related to the digital and our negotiations with the digital. The closest we have to such a right is the right to freedom of expression that in some countries is recognised as a constitutional right, along with the cultural rights that are acknowledged in a handful of UN Declarations. Declarations are not binding although Conventions and Covenants are. Declarations, however, can become the basis for international and national human rights law as is the case with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and states must become signatories to a treaty for it to become binding in any given territory. At a minimum we can say that universal access and participation are key to ‘communication rights’ and that ‘communication rights’ can be primarily considered an ‘umbrella term’, a scaffolding for an engagement with key communication deficits and a framework for the exploration of solutions in different contexts around the world. One of the clearer descriptions of the ‘what’ of communication rights is provided by McIver et al (2003: 8): The right to communicate is a conceptual framework within which to address issues of access, intellectual freedom, property rights, cultural and linguistic rights and privacy in a digital environment. It provides a way of

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framing appropriate questions around these issues –​the most fundamental question being: How can communication opportunities be assured and enhanced for everyone? Unlike the right to freedom of expression and the right to information that have been included in conventions, in forms of legislation throughout the world and included as a constitutional right in some countries, the radical implications of the right to communicate have not been met with the approval of governments. Perhaps this was to be expected given that in a global era characterised by the dominance of neoliberal economics, any call to curb the privatisation and deregulation of the media industries has been met with stiff resistance. In fact, privatisation and deregulation have been relentless and the world over, already large media conglomerates have become even bigger as governments have relaxed cross-​media ownership rules. This relaxation of media ownership rules has been pushed by traditional media industries that have witnessed the migration of advertising revenues to search engines and social media sites such as Google and Facebook, sites and engines that function for all practical purposes as media but which are largely inured from any regulations and regulatory oversight. While this imbalance may be a legitimate concern for traditional media industries, it has led to greater media consolidations and concentrations, which undermine the rights of communities to communicate on their own terms. In this context any community-​based or civil society advocacy at global and national levels in support of communication rights is bound to be fraught given the scale of power, influence and deep pockets of the media forces that they are up against. Despite the Leveson2 inquiry’s investigation of News Corporation and the role played by the News of the World in the phone hacking scandal in the UK (Rush and Treanor, 2012), this media organisation remains as powerful as ever in steering power and knowledge in the cause of partisan right-​wing politics and free-​market solutions. There has been a relentless silencing of alternative voices by right-​wing media –​and the issue of ‘Voice’ has become central to understanding contemporary communication deficits as well as finding solutions. This is especially the case in countries around the world that are under theocratic and/​or right-​wing governments such as in the US, Turkey, Iran or India. Governments in these countries have invested in major disinformation projects, have used Facebook, WhatsApp and other platforms to convey their politics while using censorship to shut down alternative sources of opinion. The shutdown

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of the internet in Kashmir by the Government of India is an example of the politics of right-​wing governments. British media academic Nick Couldry (2010) has made a powerful intervention to reclaim ‘Voice’ and voices as key to resistance in the 21st century against the neoliberal order. Voice is really about the right to speak up and be heard and the enabling environments that are required to make this possible. Couldry (2010) has argued that there has been a devaluation of the voices of ordinary people in the neoliberal era. While it is certainly the case that social movements over the last decade from Occupy! to Extinction Rebellion have helped amplify ‘collective voice’, the sustainability of Voice is difficult precisely because of the status quo and the deep corruption that exists in countries such as Australia, for example, where at the time of writing despite catastrophic climate change induced fires, the government continues to deny any links between the incidence of bush fires and climate change. I will in the next few pages highlight two examples of such resistance –​ the first, perhaps the most significant communication rights movement at a global level –​that led to the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled that is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). It was signed on 27 June 2013 and came into force on 20 September 2016. It is imperative that community development activists and organisations are mindful of such global communications structures and processes, not least because of their material effects for how communities experience, access and contribute to communication. The second example of the role played by the NGO Rhizomatica to establish telecom cooperatives among indigenous communities on the Chiapas region in Mexico. Echoing concerns that are familiar to community activists and organisations, Rhizomatica describes its mission as ‘to increase access to and participation in telecommunications by supporting communities to build and maintain self-​governed and owned communication infrastructure’ (Rhizomatica, nd: np emphasis added). Taken together, the two featured examples highlight and illustrate the nature of conditions for and opportunities from communication rights advocacy at both global and local levels.

The Marrakesh Treaty (2013) and global communication rights There has been a steady increase in writings on the Marrakesh Treaty (Lewis, 2013; Kaminski and Yanisky-​Ravid, 2014; Zemer and Gaon,

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2015; Olwan, 2017; Oppenheim, 2017; Land, 2018) mainly concerned with legal issues and access and inclusion from the perspectives of libraries, nation states and regional blocs, but there have been few if any attempts to analyse this treaty from the perspective of communication rights. The background to this treaty is the recognition of the global book famine experienced by the 300 million visually impaired people, most of whom lived in the developing world and who traditionally were denied access to books as a result of the obstacles and hurdles placed in their way by the world’s large publishing industries. Such obstacles and hurdles include onerous processes related to copyright clearance, no guarantees for applicants who had applied for copyright exemptions and limits to the cross-​border trade and/​or sharing of accessible texts. In UN circles issues of access by people with visual disabilities have been explored since 1981 with the creation of a working group between UNESCO and WIPO and with libraries playing a major role in advocating for access for the visually impaired (International Federation of Library Associations/​IFLA, nd). It is interesting to observe that prior to this treaty, there were attempts by the US, EU and other members of WIPO to put forward a proposal that covered access to all media and not just publications, a move that was scuppered by the US’s premier film lobby, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), along with its major Hollywood members, Paramount Pictures, Time Warner and Warner Brothers among other organisations. They argued that any loosening of copyright law would negatively affect the copyright industries. Arguing against ‘fair use’ this powerful group of lobbyists who gave US$20.7 million to President Obama’s re-​election campaign ensured that the Treaty would not cover audiovisuals (Kindy, 2013). As McClanahan (2013) has observed, lobbying by Hollywood power-​ brokers ensured that the scope of the Treaty would be limited: by July 2012 negotiators had started wrangling over the definition of the ‘works’ to be covered by the treaty. The phrase ‘in any media’ had been put into square brackets, indicating that it was a source of disagreement among the parties, while a phrase limiting the works covered to ‘text, notation and/​or related illustrations’ had been introduced, also in brackets. Audiovisuals have been off the table ever since. The MPAA had also argued for the inclusion of the ‘three-​step test’ that would be used to determine the permissibility of an exception or limitation, that is, that it could only be applied to specific cases, would

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not interfere with the normal exploitation of the work in question and that it would not affect the rights and interests of the copyright holder to the exploitation of the work in question. Nevertheless, despite these interventions by powerful interests, in 2013 and after years of lobbying by international and national NGOs often in partnership with friendly nation states, this treaty came into effect. By 2019, 59 countries had become signatories to this treaty. While its success will be based on its effective harmonisation with national legislations on access, it has been a major achievement in the annals of communication rights advocacy at a global level. This field of advocacy has been dogged by a lack of consensus on such rights: for example, this was the case with the World Summit on the Information Society that was held in two phases under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Geneva (in 2003) and Tunis (in 2005) but which, with the exception of the establishment of International Governance Forums, achieved precious little in terms of global communication rights (Thomas, 2006).3 The Marrakesh Treaty essentially has achieved two major objectives that support the communication rights of people with visual impairments. Firstly, it facilitates people with visual disabilities or organisations working on their behalf the right to make accessible copies of books without having to obtain permission from the copyright holders or without having to pay royalties. Secondly, it has also given permission for authorised entities working on behalf of print disabled communities the right to access books across borders. One question that can be posed is why this global movement linked to communication rights was successful when others have not been. Arguably, the fundamental reason for the success of this movement was that it was based on multi-​stakeholder, cross-​sectoral, cross-​ organisational partnerships dedicated to finding a solution to a universal communications deficit, access for the print and visually disabled. These included international NGOs such as the World Blind Union and its many national chapters, along with a variety of other disability groups; apex bodies such as the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and Knowledge Ecology International; national NGOs that in India alone included organisations such as the Centre for Internet and Society, Inclusive Planet and Daisy Forum of India; individual advocates such as the late Rahul Cherian from India; along with numerous other organisations and sympathetic countries such as Brazil, Ecuador and India. There was, for the most part, unanimity in their advocacy goals. Having been involved in the previous civil society response to the World Summit on the Information Society,

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I personally experienced the lack of unity within civil society, the competition for scarce resources, the absence of sharing financial and other resources and the inability to present a clear message with respect to communication rights. The Marrakesh Treaty thus represented an important instance of effective collective action, shared organisation and common purpose. A second reason for this success was that it addressed a ‘moral’ deficit in the world –​a book famine experienced by 300 million people represented a large constituency that simply could not be ignored. That the copyright industries were basically shamed into supporting this treaty highlights the intransigence of global capital and its willingness to address such issues only after its attempts to stall the Treaty became impossible. Third, the issue of access was a clearly defined one. Typically, communication rights advocacy is multifaceted and includes issues such as language rights, cultural diversity, media regulation, people’s participation in the making of media policy along with access and participation –​ making it a rather complex right. This movement was focused on freeing people with visual disabilities from the requirements and purview of copyright and permission clearances. Sara Bannerman (2016, 179) in a volume on International Copyright and Access to Knowledge has analysed the role played by NGOs in WIPO-​related advocacy over the decades, observing that the Marrakesh Treaty was the first treaty related to intellectual property that was grounded in human rights. Not only was the Marrakesh Treaty a watershed because it marked the first time that an international treaty focused on establishing minimum standards of rights for copyright users rather than owners, it also marked the first time that an international intellectual property treaty enshrined human rights in its preamble. The first statement in the preamble to the Marrakesh Treaty recalls ‘the principles of non-​ discrimination, equal opportunity, accessibility and full and effective participation and inclusion in society, proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’. No other WIPO intellectual property treaty to date contains a reference to human rights. Communications rights advocacy works at both local and global levels and is essentially about bringing about equity and justice to the institutions, practices and policies related to communication at local and global levels. The global communication rights movement is

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primarily involved in lobbying for the fair distribution and ownership of global public goods, namely symbolic goods and services –​such as audio-​visual spectrum, community ownership of media and fairer common-​interest based regulation of intellectual property. It is also concerned with the enabling of capacities associated with the media and facilitating affordable access to ICTs via civil society involvement in global and local media policy making. The recognition and space (inclusive of spectrum allocations) for community radio is an example of a global public good in communication. The electro-​magnetic spectrum is a public resource and the International Telecommunications Unions (ITU) allocates spectrum to states who in turn distribute it to different sectors including the military, the media, mobile phone operators and so on. There are, however, moves to privatise spectrum and if this were to happen, the community sector would find it difficult to access affordable spectrum. Such global public goods are unlikely to be fairly distributed within a deregulated market. Since people with disabilities rank among the most marginalised groups in the world, it is essential that their rights to information, communication and media are established, protected and maintained. The visually impaired lack access to both public and private information goods. There continues to be a paucity of material available in accessible formats such as braille or of online resources that are accessible via friendly keyboards and enabling software. The design of assistive technologies remains a key issue for the visually impaired as it is for people with disabilities. In their overview of advances in design for the visually impaired Bhowmick and Hazarika (2017: 164) record developments in Accessible User Interface Design in: areas such as human-​computer interaction (HCI), interface design, user interface modelling, Braille technology, ubiquitous computing, human factors and ergonomics research, etc; Methods include user-​centered design, auditory interactions and feedbacks, multiple accessibility features, design and usability evaluations; Applications include accessible user interface designs, frameworks for dual interfaces, non-​visual interfaces to ubiquitous services (such as ATM machines, kiosks, home appliances), accessible games for the visually impaired. However, and arguably, access to such products for most of the world’s visually impaired people is limited because of poverty, their lack of Voice and of enabling environments.

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Rhizomatica and local communication rights The second communication rights advocacy initiative that I would like to highlight is community telecoms in Mexico initiated by the NGO Rhizomatica. If the Marrakesh Treaty is about global communications rights advocacy, the case of community telecoms is about local communication rights advocacy and about generating material improvements in the lives of indigenous communities. On balance, it is clear that local forms of communication rights advocacy, especially those that are a direct response to local needs and demands, stand a better chance of success than global communication rights advocacy. I have written extensively on the ‘Right to Information’ movement in India (Thomas, 2011; 2017) that has been described as the most important social movement in post-​Independent India. Its success can be attributed to the felt need for transparent and accountable government in the light of the fact that the largest welfare economy in the world has had a notorious reputation for corruption. This had a particularly deleterious impact on peasant communities who were dependent on welfare but who typically were short-​changed by the bureaucracy and corrupt officials. A local NGO, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), played an important role in transforming the concept of the right to information into a pedagogical tool that it used to mobilise people to demand their own rights to information, information that often made a critical difference to their lives. Importantly, access to this right became the basis for access to other rights –​employment, shelter, health, education and food. The fact that a movement that began in village communities in the Western Indian state of Rajasthan became national in scope and ultimately led to the national legislation of the Right to Information in 2005, remains an important milestone and achievement in the annals of popular social movements in India. Access to telecommunications and to the technologies and grids that facilitate internet and mobile connectivity is often taken for granted, but despite the ubiquity of mobile phones it remains out of reach for many rural and remote communities. A case in point is Australia where the roll-​out of the National Broadband Network (NBN) less than a decade ago, was, in part, based on the desire to mitigate the digital divide between remote and urban Australia. That divide had not improved despite Universal Service Obligations4 that monopoly providers such as Telstra were supposed to uphold. However, in hindsight, the roll-​out of the NBN has been patchy in remote and rural Australia meaning that the digital divide remains a reality. The

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Australian Digital Inclusion Index (2018) –​based on the measurement of three sub-​indexes, Access, Affordability and Digital Ability –​has concluded that those with low levels of income, education, disability and those who are older, outside the labour force, single parents or members of indigenous communities –​in other words, the very same communities that face other divides in their lives –​are more likely to experience the digital divide (ADII, 2018). A particularly significant digital divide exists between Indigenous and non-​Indigenous Australians. Indigenous people are 69 per cent less likely than non-​ Indigenous people to have any internet connection and are half as likely to have broadband access, largely as a significant proportion of Indigenous Australians live in rural and remote areas. Many remote indigenous communities live without modern conveniences such as broadband connection, Wi-​Fi, and in some cases, even mobile phone reception due to their geographical location. These communities are not only missing out on the convenience, access to information and speed of communication afforded by digital technologies –​they are also missing out on the opportunities that come with them (Ryshenning, 2015). In contrast to the situation in Australia, in Mexico, through the efforts of Rhizomatica and other NGOs, there has been recognition by the Mexican state of the communication rights of indigenous populations. Rhizomatica’s ability to deal with the ‘legal’ layer along with all the other layers necessary for a successful community telecoms project –​technology (hardware and software), building local capacities, commitment to empowerment, lobbying at both national and international levels such as at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for community ‘spectrum’ and so on –​in other words, their ability to respond at all the levels necessary to complete a telecom cooperative initiative, was absolutely critical. This ability to address ‘complexity’ that Christopher Kelty (2008) has described as a quality of ‘recursive publics’ can be applied to an understanding of Rhizomatica. Its founder Peter Bloom, and others in the organisation share a deep commitment to access, local governance and control, open source architecture, the democratisation of networks, an equitable regulatory framework and to projects based on sharing, participation and commitment to the information commons. In a news interview with the international NGO Association for Progressive Communications, Bloom (APC, 2019) makes a case for equitable access to spectrum, a resource that is largely controlled by private corporations who are chary of government allocation of ‘free’ spectrum for community initiatives. In Bloom’s way of thinking spectrum should not be treated as private

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property but as a public good that is fundamental to communication rights. However, he points out the threat of what he describes as a ‘spectrum grab’ and the fact that this has, for the most part, happened below the radar as it were: the massive spectrum grab happening in relation to 5G, or what is more officially known as IMT 2020. From a spectrum standpoint, the worrying part is just how much is being requested. When 4G was harmonised by the ITU, some hundreds of megahertz (MHz) were identified. For 5G, we are talking about 17,000 thousand MHz or 17 GHz –​so a whole order of magnitude more than 4G. Why is this a problem? For one, there is essentially zero input from citizens about this. The entire usable spectrum for radiocommunications is around 300 GHz, so putting aside 17 GHz for one type of use, by likely one type of network provider, is no small thing. But most people, even those working on digital rights, have no idea this is even happening. Bloom believes that there are two strategies available to communities seeking to combat obstacles to communication rights: lobby for better policies, and if that does not work: exercise one’s ‘right to network’ through building a ‘squatters’ movement equivalent for community networks’ (Bloom, 2019, np). Working in five of the poorest states in Mexico –​Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla and Veracruz –​Rhizomatica, along with groups such as Networks for Diversity, Equality, and Sustainability Nonprofit Organization (REDES) and mobile network supporters such as OpenBTS and Range Networks, have been involved in establishing local and regional telecom coops managed by indigenous communities. In other words, key to this initiative has been partnership between socially committed hardware and software experts and local indigenous communities. Velazquez and Bloom (2017: 13) in a manual on mobile community telephony refer to the role played by the hacker and developer communities and their ability to ‘to reverse engineer and re-​encode GSM’s close source technology in order to make it available as open source’. They began their work in the mountainous rural village of Talea de Castro located in the Sierra Norte, serving 3,400 indigenous people in Oaxaca that had expressed an interest in connectivity. This community was chosen because indigenous communities in this region had long been involved in community

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actions, were familiar with local governance and the region was already home to close to 60 unlicensed community radio stations. It was also a region underserved by Mexico’s telecom giant Telcel owned by Carlos Slim and by competitors such as Movistar. So when Rhizomatica approached the local municipality, the municipality immediately saw a telecom network as a natural progression from community radio. Rhizomatica was involved in getting the technical side off the ground including the actual Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network. They began without a licence in March 2013 and soon had 600 subscribers who paid 15 pesos per month for unlimited calls as opposed to 85 pesos for a single call within the State of Oaxaca. The total cost of the network was US$7,000. While the GSM was up and running, Rhizomatica in parallel was lobbying the regulatory body, the Instituto Federal De Telecomunicaciones (IFT) for a licence, including a long-​term GSM licence for such initiatives. Rhizomatica’s lobbying case was based on both the normative and legal rightness of this initiative, and the IFT was not able to refute the fact that this was a successful, low-​cost solution despite the fact that it was illegal. Rhizomatica held meetings with 33 indigenous communities in Oaxaca and together they made a submission to the Mexican Secretariat of Communications and Transport highlighting the fact that they had been denied such services as were their constitutional right. Rhizomatica and REDES also explored the status of indigenous Mexicans with respect to communications under Article 2 of the Mexican Constitution5 as well as the public use of spectrum under the Telecommunications Law. They also lobbied at regional and international levels including the ITU-​Development Sector6 for provisions related to small-​scale, rural solutions. An IFT Commissioner visited Talea and in May 2014, the IFT granted an experimental licence to REDES for a two-​year period, and soon close to 16 communities set up their own GSM initiatives (Thomas: 2019). IFT amended its spectrum policy to accommodate for its social uses and has reserved ‘2 × 5 megahertz in the 800Mhz band for “social” use’ (Internet Society, 2018: np). The regional organisation Indigenous Communities Tele­ communications is the first community organisation to be given a mobile phone concession and there are currently 356 municipalities in the five states served by community telecoms (Lakhani, 2016). Operating a GSM network, this community organisation coordinated the establishment of these networks and is involved in its maintenance, training, technical capacity building and with respect to regulatory issues. In contrast to private telecom companies that offered the general public connectivity in exchange for US$50,000+, this mobile phone

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alternative cost US$7,500 to set up. Subscribers pay 30 pesos for a monthly subscription to the mobile network that offers them cheap calls over voice-​over-​IP (VoiP) connections when the big networks charge 3 pesos a minute (The Economist, 2015). However, relationships between the Indigenous Telecommunications Organisation (ITOs) established to expand telecom coop services in Oaxaca and the IFT have been difficult, and the IFT has been trying to recover fees for the ITO’s illegal uses of spectrum before it was granted an experimental permit (Pskowski, 2018). These continuing issues highlight the fact that community development workers often have to a strike a balance between ‘official’ approaches to development that are inscribed in law and policy and ‘unofficial’ approaches that often evolve as a response to needs that are not met by governments. While digital access is widely subscribed to by governments the world over, the accent is on access for digital services as the basis for e-​government. Access as the basis for digital empowerment continues to be explored through unofficial means such as the efforts of NGOs and civil society actors that are involved in democratising communication rights.

Conclusion Both the Marrakesh Treaty and community telecoms in Mexico are examples of successful communication rights advocacy at global and local levels. However, the success of these movements can be attributed to enduring, multisectoral partnerships between local communities, NGOs and the public sector, along with the availability of enabling environments including media support and the political will to support access as a human and communication right. The fact that Rhizomatica is involved in community cellular projects in Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua, mobile mesh networks in Nigeria and that there are parallel networks such as the Zenzelini Community Network in South Africa offering coop-​based telecom services does suggest that there is growing international awareness and support for such community-​based responses and initiatives. The availability of free and open source software and hardware solutions and the growing number of services geared towards fulfilling local networking needs have also played a significant role in the strengthening of communication rights. Moreover, there have been some unintended effects, as the development of such services has motivated commercial vendors to experiment with low-​cost alternatives thus facilitating greater choice and diversity. There are, however, significant challenges to these local and global expressions of the right to communicate, including the

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relentless efforts by global platforms and media companies to enclose information and communication markets and to restrict innovation and creativity through supporting and lobbying for stringent intellectual property protections. It is ironic that in this the era of the ‘copy’ that affords the means to extend and implement universal access there are, at any given time, a number of attempts to enclose and privatise the physical layer such as spectrum and code via software patents. In an era in which ‘access’ to informational goods and services defines one’s quality of life, this right to a basic necessity simply has to become a recognisable and acknowledged global right –​the human right to appropriate digital technologies and affordable access must be taken up by community development organisations as part of the wider struggle for participation, justice and equality. Notes NWICO was the first attempt by states in the South to shake off their information/​ communication dependencies on Western nations. The Irish nationalist Seán MacBride, under the aegis of UNESCO, convened the MacBride Commission that looked into the world’s communication problems and recommended multiple measures to strengthen local communication capacities and lessen information/​ communication asymmetries. 2 The Leveson inquiry was a judicial inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press, in particular digital hacking that was used to access private information on issues broadly considered to be personal and intimate. 3 There have been few notable communication rights success stories at a global level. Reasons for this include the lack of effective networking among civil society organisations and the inability to communicate ‘communication rights’ to the public. The communication rights movement at a global level stands in stark contrast to the environmental movement that has been able to convert environmentalism into a ‘common’ imaginary. 4 Telecom operators have been, as part of their licensing agreements, obliged to extend Universal Service Obligations (USOs) –​meaning basic telecom services to rural and remote areas. However, the record of provisioning USOs has been dismal the world over. 5 ‘VI. Extend the communication infrastructure, enabling integration of communities to the rest of the country, by constructing and expanding transportation routes and telecommunication means. Also, authorities are obliged to develop the conditions required so that indigenous peoples and communities may acquire, operate and manage media, in accordance with the law’ (Mexico’s Constitution of 1917 with Amendments through 2015, p 5. Available at: https://w ​ ww.constituteproject.org/​ constitution/​Mexico_​2015.pdf?lang=en) 6 The ITU’s work is carried out in three sectors –​Radiocommunications (ITU-​R), Telecommunications Standards (ITU-​T) and ITU Development (ITU-​D). 1

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References APC (2019) ‘What’s new on the spectrum? “Let’s make sure we can use it for what is needed” ’: a conversation with Peter Bloom from Rhizomatica,’ APC, 14 November. Available at: https://​www.apc. org/​en/​news/w ​ hats-n ​ ew-s​ pectrum-“​ lets-​make-​sure-​we-​can-​use-​it-​ what-​needed”-​conversation-​peter-​bloom Bannerman, S. (2016) International Copyright and Access to Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bhowmick, A. and Hazarika, S.M. (2017) ‘An insight into assistive technology for the visually impaired and blind people: state-​of-​the-​ art and future trends’, Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, (1–​24), 11(2): 149–​72. Bloom, P. (2019) ‘The right to the network: on capitalism and next generation networks’, Rhizomatica, 10 June. Available at: https://​ www.rhizomatica.org/​the-​r ight-​to-​the-​network-​on-​capitalism-​and-​ next-​generation-​networks/​ Couldry, N. (2010) Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism, London: Sage. Couldry, N., Rodriguez, C. et al (2018) ‘Media and communications’, in IPSP (ed) Rethinking Society for the 21st Century: Report of the International Panel on Social Progress: Volume 2: Political Regulation, Governance, and Societal Transformations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 523–​62. IFLA (nd) The Treaty of Marrakesh. Available at: https://​www.ifla.org/​ node/​10916 Internet Society (2018) ‘Unleashing community networks: innovative licensing approaches DRAFT’, Internet Society, 19 March. Available at: https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/2018/ unleashing-community-networks-innovative-licensing-approaches/ Kaminski, M.E. and Yanisky-​Ravid, S. (2014) ‘The Marrakesh Treaty for visually impaired persons: why a treaty was preferable to soft law’, University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 75(3): 255–​300. Kelty, C. (2008) Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, Durham NC: Duke University Press. Kindy, K. (2013) ‘Filmmakers’ group tried to reshape treaty that would benefit the blind’, The Washington Post, 22 June. Available at: https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​politics/​filmmakers-​g roup-​ tries-​to-​reshape-​treaty-​that-​would-​benefit-​the-​blind/​2013/​06/​22/​ f98e6130-​d761-​11e2-​9df4-​895344c13c30_​story.html Lakhani, N. (2016) ‘It feels like a gift: mobile phone coop transforms Mexican rural community’, The Guardian, 15 August. Available at: https://​www.theguardian.com/​world/​2016/​aug/​15/​ mexico-​mobile-​phone-​network-​indigenous-​community

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Land, K.M. (2018) ‘The Mar rakesh Treaty as bottom-​u p lawmaking: supporting human rights action on local law making’, Irvine Law Review, 8(513): 513–​34. Lessig, L. (1999) Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, New York, NY: Basic Books. Lewis, H. (2013) ‘Marrakesh Treaty to facilitate access to published works for persons who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print disabled’, International Legal Materials, 52(6): 1309–​20. McClanahan, P. (2013) ‘US film industry tried to weaken copyright treaty for blind people’, The Guardian, 24 June. Available at: https://​www.theguardian.com/​global-​development/​2013/​jun/​ 24/​us-​film-​industry-​copyright-​blind McIver, W.J., Birdsall, W.F. and Rasmussen, M. (2003) ‘The Internet and the right to communicate’, First Monday, 8 (12). Available at: https://​ firstmonday.org/​ojs/​index.php/​fm/​article/​view/​1102/​1022 Olwan, R. (2017) ‘The ratification and implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty for visually impaired persons in the Arab Gulf States’, The Journal of World Intellectual Property, 20(5–​6): 178–​205. Oppenheim, C. (2017) ‘The Marrakesh Copyright Treaty for those with visual disabilities and its implications in the European Union and in the United Kingdom’, Alexandria: The Journal of National and International Library and Information Issues, 27(1): 4–​9. Pskowski, M. (2018) ‘The pirate cell towers of Rural Mexico: a small non-​profit is fighting big telecom companies to bring cell service to the country’s indigenous groups’, New York, 1 November. Available at: http://n ​ ymag.com/​developing/​2018/​11/t​ ic-o ​ axaca-i​ ndigenous-​ affordable-​cell-​phone-​service.html Rhizomatica (nd) ‘Our Mission’, About Rhizomatica, Available at: https://​www.rhizomatica.org/​about/​ Rodríguez, C. and Iliadis, A. (2019) ‘The MacBride Report legacy and media democracy today’, Media Development, 3: 17–​24. Rush, T. and Treanor, J. (2012) ‘News Corp shareholders “troubled” by Murdoch’s Leveson testimony’, The Guardian, 26 April. Available at: https://​www.theguardian.com/​media/​2012/​apr/​26/​ news-​corp-​shareholders-​murdoch-​leveson Ryshenning (2015) ‘What is the digital divide’, May 5. Ryshenning: teaching in a digital world. Available at: https://​rhyshennig.wordpress.com/​ 2015/​05/​04/​hello-​world/​ The Australian Digital Inclusion Index (2018) Available at: https://​ digitalinclusionindex.org.au/​ w p-​ c ontent/​ u ploads/​ 2 018/​ 0 8/​ Australian-​digital-​inclusion-​index-​2018.pdf

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The Economist (2015) ‘Mobile networks: DIY telecoms’, The Economist, 5 March. Available at: https://​www.economist.com/​ technology-​quarterly/​2015/​03/​05/​diy-​telecoms Thomas, P.N. (2006) ‘The Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) Campaign’, The International Communications Gazette, 68(4): 291–​312. Thomas, P.N. (2011) Negotiating Communication Rights: Case Studies from India, New Delhi; Thousand Oaks; London; Singapore: Sage. Thomas, P.N. (2017) ‘Contentious actions and communications for social change: the public hearing (Jan Sunwai) as process’, Journal of Communication, 67(5): 719–​32. Thomas, P.N. (2019) Communication for Social Change: Context, Social Movements and the Digital, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Velazquez, E.H. and Bloom, P. (2017) Community Mobile Telephony Manual: Connecting the Next Billion, Redes, Mexico. Available at: https://​espectro.org.br/​sites/​default/​files/​downloads-​formacao/​ MANUAL%20TIC%20ENG%20FINAL.pdf Zemer, L. and Gaon, A. (2015) ‘Copyright, disability and social inclusion: the Marrakesh Treaty and the role of non-​signatories’, International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, 10(11), 836–​49.

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Unholy alliance or way of the future? The intertwinements of community development, cultural planning and cultural industries in municipal and regional cultural strategies in Finland Miikka Pyykkönen

Introduction The main question explored in this chapter relates to how the economic and entrepreneurial orientation of creative industries resonates with artistic and cultural goals, and with other strategic municipal and regional development goals. It also focuses on the ‘pressure’ that the strategisation of cultural policy poses to the use of arts and culture in community development. As the chapter deals with the role of creative industries in cultural planning in Finland, the primary data drawn upon consists of 16 municipal cultural strategies and five regional cultural strategies. They are analysed using a theoretically oriented content analysis, where the theoretical concepts and perspectives used are derived from previous international studies on cultural planning, community development, creative industries and the economisation of culture (for example Evans, 2001; Throsby, 2002; Lewis and Surender, 2004; Bilton, 2007). Previous research suggests that cultural industries and enterprises are typically justified in cultural policy based on the idea that they bring social improvements and community development (Verwijnen and Lehtovuori, 1996; Evans, 2001). The assumed impact is not regarded as being one-​sided, as enterprises are also expected to benefit from community resources. However, the potential contradictions between individual for-​profit business goals and community development’s equity goals are rarely pointed out in cultural strategies.

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The public funding of culture and appreciation of the ‘intrinsic value’ of arts and culture have a long tradition in Finnish cultural policy. One issue explored in this chapter is how entrepreneurial initiatives with community development goals change the nature of arts, culture and cultural policy. It considers how they become instrumentalised for purposes other than directly cultural ones, such as local brand and competitiveness, profit-​making and social welfare.

Finnish cultural policy tradition Finnish cultural policy belongs to the tradition of what is often referred to as the ‘Nordic cultural policy model’. Although there is national heterogeneity within the Nordic tradition, it includes many systemic similarities, such as relatively decentralised administration of cultural policy through its arts council system. Nordic countries also share many core principles and values in their cultural policies: autonomy of the arts, social welfare, equality and inclusion, for instance. The Nordic model encapsulates inclusive public support for arts and culture, and promotes services that make access to arts and culture available to as many citizens as possible. Community development is an important element of this model. Both national and local cultural policy programmes, actions and projects target the active participation, wellbeing and interaction of communities and their members (Duelund, 2008; Mangset et al, 2008). Anita Kangas (2004) has recognised three different phases in Finnish cultural policy: nation building (1860–​1960), welfare state (1960–​90) and economisation (since 1990). The instrumentalisation (Kangas, 2001: 88–​9) and strategisation of culture (Jakonen, 2020) have been characteristics of the latest phase, because some power over arts funding has been transferred from the regional and field-​specific arts councils to the Ministry of Education and Culture and a new semi-​state-​led body, Arts Promotion Centre (TAIKE). Kangas (2004) remarks that these phases are not exclusive, but every new phase is constituted on the previous one(s) and intertwines with their features and principles. The current ‘economic phase’ of cultural policy is characterised by the dominance of a cultural and creative industries discourse and certain accompanying practices. However, the new phase is not entirely about economisation, and there remain elements from the earlier phases, such as commitments to access and participation (for example Ministry of Education and Culture, 2017b). One significant feature of the current phase has been the stated aim of improving, through culture, the welfare of people who are ‘customers’ of various social and health institutions, such as hospitals and elderly care homes

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(for example Finnish Government, 2018: 23). These objectives intertwine with the new ethos in governing culture, which incorporates forms of New Public Management managerialism, strategic and knowledge-​based management, and results-​based steering. Already in 2001, Kangas called this orientation ‘new instrumentalism’, where culture has an expanding role in both strategic regional planning and participatory community development. Looking internationally at the ‘government’ of community development policies and practices, we can see that similar tendencies have been increasingly evident for some time (Kangas, 2001; Mangset et al, 2008; Forde and Lynch, 2015; Heiskanen, 2015; Alexander et al, 2018; Jakonen, 2020; Pyykkönen and Stavrum, 2018).

Cultural industries in Finland The cultural industries consist of market-​based arts and cultural activities that create wealth or other economically measurable ‘impacts’ (for example wage labour and employment) at and for different levels of society and diverse actors. Hence, they refer to those forms of text, music, film, broadcasting, publishing, crafts, design, architecture, visual arts, performing arts and cultural heritage that produce quantifiable economic value. These industries involve private, civil society (associations, cooperatives and foundations) and public or semi-​public organisations, ranging from individual entrepreneurs and one-​off cultural events to big corporations and public institutions (Throsby, 2002; Hesmondhalgh, 2013). In recent years, an enthusiastic view of the potential of cultural industries has spread, together with increasingly prevalent references to the ‘creative industries’. This latter term has further boosted the economic and commercial connotations of cultural industries (McGuigan, 2016). Chris Bilton (2007: 164) describes the conceptual evolution from cultural industries to creative industries as follows: ‘The term “cultural industries” indicates that creativity grows out of a specific cultural context and emphasizes the cultural content of ideas, values and traditions. The term ‘creative industries’ emphasizes the novelty of ideas and products and places creativity in a context of individual talent, innovation and productivity’. The notion of cultural industries first reached Finnish policy discourse in the 1990s (Heiskanen, 2015) via the final report of a ministerial working group for cultural industries called Kulttuuriteollisuuden kehittäminen Suomessa (The Development of Cultural Industries in Finland) (Ministry of Education, 1999).1 It introduced the idea that

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the marketisation of culture and artistic entrepreneurship was necessary, and the working group inspired several new projects, seminars and publications. Among the most influential was a project called Kulttuuriosaamisen merkitys kansalliselle kilpailukyvylle (The significance of cultural know-​how for national competitiveness) carried out by Turku University Business School and funded by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra (Wilenius, 2004). This project rooted the concepts of creative industries and creative economy in Finland and defined them as positively contributing to both the economy and culture. The assumptions underpinning creative industry and creative economy discourses have undergone only relatively minor changes since, even though the significance of creativity for the national economy has been increasingly emphasised and the number of policy/​government speeches on cultural entrepreneurship has grown. Since the end of the 1990s, all the strategic documents published by the Ministry of Education and Culture have included a section on the economic significance of culture. Since 2010, the Ministry has published eight special reports, programmes, strategies and other documents concerning creative industries and the economy per se. However, the creative economy discourse has not entirely replaced or displaced other arts/​culture discourses in the Ministry’s cultural policy; discourses relating to the social function of culture or access and participation have also remained. Rather, what has happened is that ‘economisation’ has become intertwined with those pre-​existing discourses (for example Ministry of Education and Culture, 2017b). Current policy documents on the creative sector show that creative economy and industry discourses favour private entrepreneurs and companies (including cooperatives) that are self-​managing as well as economically self-​sufficient (Heiskanen, 2015; Pyykkönen and Stavrum, 2018). Entrepreneurs and enterprises are seen as beneficial for five reasons: they feed innovation and renewal in the fields of cultural production; they promote economic practices in the cultural sphere and create new markets; hence, they support general wellbeing through the generation of new jobs and tax income; they promote the diversity and accessibility of cultural services and activities; and creative industries contribute to local and community development for all of the previously stated reasons (Ministry of Trade and Industry, 2007; Ministry of Education and Culture, 2017a). Although cultural and creative industries and entrepreneurship are popular topics in political and economic speeches on culture, the figures do not indicate growth; rather, they suggest the contrary. In 2014 the whole cultural sector employed a total of 4.7 per cent of the entire

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employed labour force (n=2,400,000) in Finland. However, looking at the national economy, the impact of the cultural sector is relatively modest, accounting for 3 per cent of GDP in 2014. According to Statistics Finland: ‘During the period between 2008 and 2011, the added value generated by the cultural sectors has declined by one tenth. During the same period, the total value added of Finland’s economy has increased nearly 5 percent.’ (Statistics Finland, 2015).2 While 7.2 per cent of Finnish businesses operated in the creative industry sector in 1995, in 2012 this figure was 5 per cent. Finland’s exports of cultural products also dropped dramatically during 2008–​2012, from €693,993 to €341,566 (Ministry of Education, 1999; Peltola et al, 2014; Statistics Finland, 2015; Ministry of Education and Culture, 2017a). Despite the collapsing numbers, the Ministry of Education and Culture keeps on emphasising the strategic significance of cultural industries: since 2010 the Ministry of Education has, together with the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture (AVEK), distributed annual grants for development projects in the creative economy and cultural entrepreneurship. The Finnish Regional Councils and regional TAIKE branches offer workshops and information services to generate enterprises in local creative sectors. Growing cooperation between the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Education and Culture in strategic development programmes concerning creative sector jobs also represents one of the concrete policy changes. Another example of the economisation of cultural policy is the Creative Sector Fund, established by the aforementioned ministries and maintained by the explicitly market-​oriented Business Finland (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2017c; 2019). The creative economy is also one of the six sub-​branches under Cultural Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Cultural planning and strategic community development ‘Cultural planning’ is both an academic and an administrative term that refers to the strategic use of culture for broader urban or local and regional development. The premise behind cultural planning is that ‘culture’ is not always utilised to maximum effect within local development policies and work. It assumes that policy makers, state administrators and developers should adopt cultural planning as a strategic tool for developing regional or local social policy by enhancing the position of culture within it. Cultural planning promotes networked, collaborative and multisectoral processes in local governance. Following the spirit of New Public Management, this not

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only involves cooperation between public administrators and policy makers, but also cooperation between public officials and non-​state organisations, communities and citizens. Public administrators and consultants who advocate for cultural planning typically argue that, locally, it develops cultural activities and practices, empowers civil society organisations, increases competitiveness, citizen wellbeing and participation and develops the economy by creating new consumer demands and markets. Within this framework, the local public sector is an important lead actor, facilitating the participation of citizens, communities, organisations and creative industries but also other kinds of businesses (Evans, 2001; Mercer, 2004;; Stevenson, 2004; Landry, 2008 [2000]; O’Brien, 2011). Usually ‘culture’ is defined broadly in cultural planning. This means that it covers not only the arts and heritage, but also identities, cultural traditions, ways of living and languages, and many researchers and community activists support this broader view. For them, it is a means to dismantle the elitist associations of culture, especially when planning targets poor working-​class areas. This resonates with the ideals of ‘cultural democracy’, which assert that ‘culture belongs to all’. According to this tendency, cultural policy must serve local inhabitants, facilitate all forms of local cultural expression and strengthen civil society and citizens’ opportunities to influence policy making (Bianchini, 1996; Landry, [2000] 2008; O’Brien, 2011; Connolly, 2013). One of this chapter’s main arguments is that the influence of ‘cultural planning’ can also be seen in local and regional strategic development work in contexts other than urban ones. In Finland, regional and local cultural strategies –​many of which concern rural and rural-​like areas –​ speak about culture’s role in strategic development and management in more or less the same way as corresponding documents on urban regions. These strategies also anchor culture in broader local –​often economic –​development through references to how culture can bring together and serve the interests of different stakeholders and promote the networking of local actors, such as artists, cultural workers, citizens and businesses. For policy makers and public administrators, cultural planning is part of strategic community development (SCD). It leans on the idea that the public sector and policy makers are core actors in promoting community development. Nevertheless, in many cases SCD texts and related actions afford local residents and organisations an active role, and SCD objectives may overlap with those of community-​led development projects. The latter, too, try to enhance social cohesion, empower citizens, increase participation and create economic and

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employment opportunities. Both claim to improve the quality of life within communities, and relationships between communities and governing bodies. The biggest difference between them is that ‘community development’ is primarily aimed at serving the interests of a limited community (both geographical and identity based), while SDC connects community interests to the broader interests of local, regional and national public administration (Blair, 2004; Shaw, 2008). An amendment of the Municipal Cultural Activities Act was passed in September 2019. The strategic work for this renewal was led by the Ministry, and included participation by experts and representatives of municipalities. The amendment makes culture a part of municipalities’ strategic development. The amendment, and the government proposal (HE 195/​2018) preceding it, define municipalities as organisers of cultural work, cultural planning and community development, but they also intertwine culture with other political and social goals in the municipalities’ work. The amendment and proposal also place municipalities at the centre in relation to the realisation of the objectives (Section 3) which should serve the interests of citizens and the local cultural world. The Act’s objectives are to: 1) support people’s possibilities for creative expression and activities, as well as for making and experiencing art and culture; 2) promote equal opportunities of all population groups to participate in culture, art and education; 3) enhance the wellbeing and health of the population, as well as their inclusion and community engagement through culture and art; 4) create conditions for the development of local and regional vitality and creative activities that support it through culture and art. (L 166/​2019, Section 2) Aesthetic, creative and ‘intrinsic’ values of culture are highly appreciated and traditional Finnish cultural policy values such as equal opportunities for access, participation and inclusion are considered in the Act, but the instrumental side is also taken into account. Culture should, hence, enhance the ‘local and regional vitality’ at large. There is no question that ‘vitality’ is connected to economic objectives: The industrial policy dimension of culture and arts –​such as creative economy and cultural entrepreneurship, the development of cultural services, events and tourism and multisectoral utilisation of creative know-​how –​enhances the vitality of municipalities. … Therefore, the sector has an

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important role in diversifying the Finnish business structure in accordance with the developments of the knowledge and service society. The sector of culture and arts is a resource for individual municipalities. (L 166/​2019, Section 2) National measures adopted as a result of the Act include the establishment of indicators for municipal self-​assessment work, knowledge-​based strategic governance, as well as a Development Fund. Municipalities can use this fund to improve the quality of their cultural work, its impacts, staff know-​how, resident and citizen equality and cooperation between municipalities. Local and regional strategies are the documents through which public institutions spatialise and contextualise the spirit and requirements of the Act. The Act does not obligate municipalities to devise a strategy, but it has inspired many to do so: already by 2017 one third of the municipalities had a cultural strategy, while at the end of 2019 a little less than 40 per cent had one, and around 20 additional municipalities were in the process of creating one. Many municipalities also renewed their strategy after the Act came into force. Five regional councils had a cultural strategy before the Act, and two introduced a new strategy after it. At the time of writing, three regional strategies are in the making. Next, I will analyse how these municipal strategies define and use the term ‘community development’, and what they constitute as the role of creative industries, especially cultural entrepreneurs.

Analysis of cultural strategies After assembling all existing Finnish municipal cultural strategies available online, I undertook a thematic analysis of them, drawing on extant theorisations of cultural planning and previous studies on local and regional cultural policy developments in Finland (for example Häyrynen and Wallin, 2017). On the basis of that kind of close reading, analysis and thematic classification accordingly,3 I discuss three different orientations –​in terms of how the role of culture is understood –​ that I identified within the texts: culture for comprehensive strategic management; culture for communities and citizens; and culture for the economy and entrepreneurship. Each one is explored in the following sub-​sections and together they serve as a kind of window to observe how cultural policy constructs communities and development.

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Culture for comprehensive strategic management In this orientation, culture and arts are instrumentalised to pursue and achieve broader objectives, which unite the perspectives and interests of different administrative sectors. Culture is not approached as an end or good in itself, but from the perspectives, and for the purposes, of cultural policy administrations and institutions. Broader objectives are based on economic, social and health rationales, which are often intermeshed with each other. For example, Uusimaa regional strategy states the following: In this strategy, culture is viewed as an opportunity that can help us to address many of the challenges faced by Uusimaa. Our cultural strategy demonstrates that the cultural sectors support the development of the region in a multisectoral way. … In the same vein, we acknowledge the impacts that arts and culture can have when employed in social and health care services, not to mention the significance of arts and culture for improving wellbeing at work. … The aim of this strategy is to define the meanings, impacts and role of culture in Uusimaa from the perspective of regional development. (Helsinki-​U usimaa Regional Council, 2016: 3, 8, 10) Significantly, in those strategies where this orientation is strongest, the public authority with responsibility for cultural policy administration has the primary role. According to these strategies, public intervention/​ oversight is necessary for the strategic development of the cultural field in order to: maintain accessible cultural institutions and services; initiate and facilitate discussions and dialogue between diverse actors; create networks between cultural actors and inspire them to develop and organise events; collect and produce knowledge and share information; and to organise support and resources for actors (for example City of Helsinki, 2012; Regional Council of Southwest Finland, 2015; Helsinki-​Uusimaa Regional Council, 2016). Participation by other public sector administrators besides those directly involved with culture is surprisingly low in these strategies, considering the multisectoral nature of cultural planning in general (see Bianchini, 1996; Connolly, 2013; Häyrynen and Wallin, 2017). The steering role of public sector actors is highlighted when the strategies reference, for example, facilitation and support: ‘In addition to the

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state, the city has a more powerful role than before in supporting both professional arts and the voluntary cultural activities of citizens’ (City of Helsinki, 2012: 17). However, it is not unusual for local cultural and arts worlds, citizens and communities to be acknowledged as sources of inspiration; in some instances non-​state actors have had a clear and active role in the strategy planning process, and some regions or municipalities have strong traditions of civil society participation. Regardless of the fact that public sector actors alone hold the discursive power, or that some actors from other fields or sectors participate in strategic planning, the focus on ‘strategicness’ that is characteristic of this orientation means that arts policy is primarily seen to serve the interests of the state administration, which also has a key role in operationalising that policy. In this orientation ‘culture’ is broadly understood as referring to a ‘way of life’: ranging from the traditions, patterns and wellbeing of residents, the cultural industry and heritage work, to particular forms of arts practice (for example Regional Council of Southwest Finland, 2015; Helsinki-​Uusimaa Regional Council, 2016; Mänttä-​Vilppula, 2019). This has the effect of increasing the overall significance of culture: the more dimensions ‘culture’ covers within the strategies, the more interest groups (citizens, communities, businesses and tourists) it touches upon and the more social policy sectors it can be seen as relating to; hence, greater stress emphasis should be placed on the role of culture within the overall state administrative system. Some strategies even indicate that culture is –​or at least could be –​the ideal frame for regional and local strategic development, within which other broad developmental needs can also be met: A better consideration of social and spiritual needs will be significant for the wellbeing of people … Cultural services will have a crucial role … in improving people’s wellbeing. (Board of the Regional Council of Satakunta 2015, 10) This orientation is common in both the regional strategies and those of bigger cities. However, two rural municipalities also clearly reflected this orientation by linking culture and its different dimensions strongly to the comprehensive development of the municipality. All these municipalities and regions have an administrative structure that includes a separate and permanent cultural department. If we situate this orientation against Finland’s cultural policy traditions as referenced previously, it aligns with the current phase, which highlights the strategic management of arts and their economic value. It also parallels

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conceptions of culture in urban planning projects all across Europe, especially those linked to European Cultural Capital awards (Mercer, 2004; O’Brien, 2011). Culture, arts and creativity are instrumentalised to serve other needs: the empowerment of poor neighbourhoods, the bettering of citizens’ wellbeing and the improvement of local economies. Although it erodes the intrinsic value of culture, it can also mean new job opportunities and income sources for artists and cultural workers. Culture for communities and citizens The ‘culture for communities and citizens’ orientation is underpinned by the idea that culture improves citizens’ quality of life by activating them and giving them the means to participate in actions and hobbies, and consequently improve the vitality of the region, municipality, village or neighbourhood. Whereas the previous orientation mainly defined the ‘strategicness of cultural planning from the perspective of the state or public authorities, in this orientation the primary purpose of cultural planning is to address people’s needs and desires, as expressed through their organisations and initiatives. The concept of ‘community’, which is not as rooted in Finnish policy making language as it is in the UK or the US, for example, remains rather abstract or refers loosely to all citizens of a municipality or region in the strategies. Only local immigrant groups are explicitly named as ‘identity communities’, and sometimes activities for older, young or disabled people are framed as ‘community work’ (City of Helsinki 2012; Regional Council of Southwest Finland, 2015: 10). Most often the word ‘community’ refers to loose association-​like organisations and collectives of citizens (Board of the Regional Council of Satakunta, 2015; Hakala, 2015; Kuortane, 2018). This is also how the word is commonly used in legal and political vocabulary in Finland. Several strategies talk about geographical entitles such as districts, neighbourhoods or villages as communities, but it is not common (Mänttä-​Vilppula, 2019; City of Vantaa, 2017). ‘Community’ is thus a ‘floating signifier’ (Laclau, 2005) in the texts representing this orientation, insofar as it means different things and is filled with distinct significations based on the objectives of the strategy and those behind it. Within the texts, ‘community’ is about doing things together locally and regionally for the ‘common cause’. Culture and the arts are constructed as improving social cohesion, promoting a sense of community and companionship; therefore, also contributing to sustainable development. Cultural work is seen to build a more vital

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and cohesive community which, again, revitalises the whole region or municipality. One important subtheme is that participation in cultural activities enables people to meet fellow citizens and better understand them: relationships are built with cultural actors and practitioners and with the wider population. This latter meaning can be found in strategies that address the cultural diversity of the region or municipality and the challenge of how people can learn to live together despite their different backgrounds. Strategies that attend to this issue call for a common regional or local identity and seek to create shared traditions despite the diversity: In Ylä-​Savo (Upper Savonia), our focus in cultural activities is on development and seeking collaboration opportunities. … Through collaboration, we will be far better equipped to promote our local culture than when operating alone. … Activities produced by active people themselves will enhance community engagement and improve opportunities for participation. Culture will rejuvenate villages and municipal centres. … Our collaboration is based on openness and equality. When we become better acquainted with each other, our collaboration will be more productive. … Culture has the ability to include everyone. (Ylä-​Savo, 2015: 9, 11, 13, 17) This theme of a supportive sense of community emphasises the value of cultural heritage and identity as well as multiculturalism. (Board of the Regional Council of Satakunta, 2015: 10). In other words, this orientation constructs ‘community’ as a network of public actors, associations, foundations, businesses and individuals working for the development of arts and culture and, therefore, for the development of the whole locality or region. This community generates cultural activities and events that serve the needs and interests of the citizens. At the same time ‘community’ implements austerity and outsourcing from the public sector. This latter aspect is barely acknowledged, however, because the strategies’ purpose is to celebrate culture and represent its positive impacts on regional development. However, the economic imperative of using multi-​actor networks for guaranteeing the continuity of local or regional cultural services lies in the background of the strategies, especially in small rural municipalities: In the future, the purchaser-​provider model, outsourcing of the production of municipal cultural services and

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collaboration with the independent arts sector will increase [in public cultural service provision], and administrative barriers will be brought down. … Audience outreach programmes support the development of new, accessible cultural services for children, senior citizens, old people, immigrants and other special groups. The collaboration between different-​sized actors and events guarantees the continued vitality and growth of municipalities and regions. (Regional Council of Southwest Finland, 2015: 6–​7, 12) It is also common for the idea of community to be associated with the wellbeing and active citizenship of community members: this is the case especially for so-​called ‘at risk’ groups (unemployed, disabled and older people and immigrants). This is in line with many of the core principles of Finnish cultural policy, such as equality, participation and democracy, but it also mirrors newer, some might say ‘neoliberal’, rationalities, such as the idea of making citizens more active and responsible for their own wellbeing, care and government (Rose, 1999). Often the economic impacts are an indelible part of these wellbeing and active citizen agendas: In Ähtäri, we understand culture as many different types of social activities that are meaningful to individuals and communities. … Art, culture and different events have very wide-​ranging meanings and impacts on wellbeing. These wellbeing impacts are social, communal, individual, economic and regional. Their scope is both small and significant in the lives of the residents and communities of our municipality. (Ähtäri, 2011: 4, 32) We should improve measures that enhance community engagement in order to reach groups that are at high risk of marginalisation: they include, among others, people with disabilities, aging people and immigrants in the most vulnerable positions. (Helsinki-​Uusimaa Regional Council, 2016: 21) In general, this orientation is typically found in the regional and municipal strategies of rural areas, but it is also present in the strategies of more densely populated areas. It is emphasised in regions and municipalities where the cultural public sector is weak or is located within the educational or youth services, and where the role of local third

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sector organisations is strong. These are also areas where the population is ageing significantly and the need for cultural services and practices is justified accordingly. Finally, creating meaningful cultural activities is rationalised by the expectation that culture might also attract newcomers to those areas. This orientation has a ‘double-​standard’: on the one hand, culture is something that develops in communities by citizens, but, on the other hand, cultural activities should also serve broader local and regional interests. Thus, it is very similar to British social policies during and after the ‘Third Way’, where communities were seen as breeders and developers of social capital and the social economy, and as helping local development by substituting for reduced public service provision. In this reading, the value of culture and communities comes from the benefit they can offer to local and regional social policy goals (cf Lewis and Surender, 2004). Although the core rationality in this orientation is not economic, it intertwines with the New Public Management as it aims to optimise cultural and social services through the deployment of communities, artist organisations and citizens (cf Reichard, 2010). Culture for the economy and entrepreneurship In the third orientation, cultural planning is understood as contributing towards the economic development and growth of the regions and localities. In this orientation, ‘culture’ is primarily associated with the cultural and creative industries and their economic impacts. This orientation is determined by policy makers and administrators, and its objectives are directly linked to more general local and regional development strategies. What is typical for the strategies in this orientation is that they acknowledge non-​cultural stakeholders and beneficiaries that profit from arts and culture; references to collaboration between cultural and non-​cultural actors are also common in the texts. The term ‘creative industries’ is more commonly used than ‘cultural industries’, and is understood in a broad sense. For example, ‘creative’ stands for everything from arts to clothing, artefacts, cultural tourism and food. Nowadays creative industries can have close ties with commercial services, manufacture and software production through industrial design and other types of cross-​sectoral collaboration, for example. (Ilmajoki, 2011: 14) This orientation is divided into two strands in relation to the economic significance of culture. First, there are strategies that speak directly and openly about the economic benefits of culture. In this reading, arts

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and culture are valuable because they accumulate economic wealth by creating jobs, surplus value and ‘hubs’, which can attract other businesses. The key actors are cultural entrepreneurs as well as businesses that take advantage of the creativity of cultural labourers and artists. In rural regions, the economic benefits of culture are often linked to an increase in tourist income and industries. In cities, industries like IT and health and welfare are seen to play an important role. The objective: the creative economy and cultural entrepreneurship will create new jobs and promote a spirit of innovation and synergy, and thus boost the regional economy. (Etelä-​Karjala instituutti, 2007: 54) Culture boosts economic growth. Culture has clear economic significance. Creative labourers contribute to the production of economic growth, wellbeing and entrepreneurship that benefit the city. (City of Helsinki, 2012: 9) Second, there are strategies in which the economic benefit of culture is expressed through, or intertwined with, other –​usually social –​ objectives of community development. In other words, the economic benefits of arts and culture are recognised, but they are not justified primarily or solely by economic rationalities –​rather, the economic use of culture is seen to support/​supplement other regional and local goals. The economic growth offered by creative industries is thus regarded as flowing into other sectors and increasing overall participation, active citizenship, wellbeing, vitality, sustainability and civility: THE POWER OF THE CULTURAL ECONOMY A strong arts and culture sector will make Uusimaa flourish • Active cultural activities, creative industries and cultural interaction will provide a significant resource for future expertise, development and business. • Collaboration and partnerships with businesses will increase intangible value creation, growth and jobs in the region. • Wellbeing and balance in daily life will improve people’s engagement with their community and neighbourhood. (Helsinki-​Uusimaa Regional Council, 2016: 12)

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This economic orientation is most typically found in cities, regions and municipalities that include big or middle-​size towns. Usually, they are also municipalities with relatively established cultural industries and/​or art and cultural educational institutions. This orientation intertwines with the current Finnish cultural policy phase described earlier; arts and culture can –​and perhaps even should –​benefit economy and markets. A similar trend can be found in many other European countries as well (for example Alexander et al, 2018). It also reflects the more general trend of the economisation of the public sector, community work and human capital, which many describe with the term ‘neoliberalisation’ (Evans et al, 2005).

Conclusion According to the regional and municipal strategies included in my analysis, it seems that cultural planning as community development is becoming a strategic trend catalysed by the 2019 Act regarding the cultural activities of municipalities in Finland. Municipalities and regional councils see cultural planning as a ‘way of the future’, where the intertwining of community development with the economic agendas of creative industries does not form an ‘unholy alliance’, but rather generates common good. This is in line with the wider European trend that emerged in the 1990s and has been fuelled by initiatives such as the European Capital of Culture (for example Connolly, 2013). It is also consistent with the main lines of current national cultural policy in Finland, in which cultural expression, wellbeing and business go hand in hand (for example Ministry of Education and Culture, 2017b). My analysis shows that municipal and regional culture-​mediated strategic community development instrumentalises art and culture for broader social and economic policy goals. In this its results are equivalent with, for instance, conclusions made by Lewandowska (2017) about the instrumentalisation of culture in Europe. Inclusion of arts in broader policies for SCD, does not completely renew its social meanings and values, but adds new demands to it: art must be innovative and creative on the one hand, but this must not be too revolutionary or avantgarde, instead serving strategic management. Innovations should help the local and regional economy, social cohesion or tourism, for instance (cf Murzyn-​Kubisz and Dzialek, 2017). Cultural planning, as proposed by the analysed strategies, tends to create new connections between artists, communities, public government and the local economy and its businesses. This has been the administrative trend in urban social and cultural policy for several

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decades in certain countries, such as the UK (Pratt, 2009), and now it is truly landing in Finland, in administrative strategic rhetoric at least. Finnish municipal and regional strategic cultural planning seems to also resonate with the current trends in community development, where the engagement of artists, citizens and communities means a complex interplay of empowerment and new forms of power and governance (for example Meade et al, 2016). Notes Previously, this working group had already published two reports, but they were more general international and conceptual overviews about the nature of cultural industries and did not entail guidelines about how industries should be promoted and developed in Finland, or why. 2 All translations of texts from Finnish sources are by the author. 3 The analysis was done as follows: I performed a preliminary close reading of the texts before deciding on the key themes to be used for classifying the text corpus, which were: 1) Strategic planning linking culture to broader local and regional development schemes. 2) Community empowerment, civil society collaboration and citizen participation. 3) Creative/​cultural industries, the economy and entrepreneurship. 4) The connections between pro-​community and pro-​business speech. Interrogating the texts according to these themes, I analysed how the role of public administration typically was constructed; the kinds of understandings of culture reflected; how the role of public cultural policy and its relation to culture communities, citizens and creative industries was described; and what kinds of differences there were between (a) regional and local strategies and (b) strategies of rural and urban municipalities. 1

References Ähtäri (2011) Ähtärin kaupungin kulttuuristrategia vuosille 2011–​2020, Ähtäri: Ähtärin kaupunki. Alexander, V., Hägg, S., Häyrynen, S. and Sevänen, E. (eds) (2018) Art and the Challenge of Markets Volume 1: National Cultural Politics and the Challenges of Marketization and Globalization, London: Palgrave. Bianchini, F. (1996) ‘Cultural planning: an innovative approach to urban development’, in J. Verwijnen and P. Lehtovuori (eds) Managing Urban Change, Helsinki: University of Art and Design Helsinki, pp 18–​25. Bilton, C. (2007) Management and Creativity: From Creative Industries to Creative Management, Oxford: Blackwell. Blair, R. (2004) ‘Public participation and community development: the role of strategic planning’, Public Administration Quarterly, 28(1): 102–​47. Board of the Regional Council of Satakunta (2015) Satakunnan kulttuuristrategia 2015–​2020, Satakuntaliitto. City of Helsinki (2012) Helsingin kulttuuristrategia 2012–​2017 ja taustaselvitys, Helsinki: Helsingin kaupunki.

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City of Vantaa (2017) Vantaan kulttuuristrategia 2017–​, Vantaa: Vantaan kaupunki. Connolly, M. (2013) ‘The “Liverpool Model(s)”: cultural planning, Liverpool and Capital of Culture 2008’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 19(2): 162–​81. Duelund, P. (2008) ‘Nordic cultural policies: a critical view’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 14(1), 7–​24. Etelä-​Karjala instituutti (2007) Luovuus sitoo sirpaleita. Etelä-​Karjalan kulttuuristrategia, Lappeenranta: Etelä-​Karjala instituutti. Evans, B., Richmond, T. and Shields, J. (2005) ‘Structuring neoliberal governance: the nonprofit sector, emerging new modes of control and the marketisation of service delivery’, Policy and Society, 24(1): 73–​97. Evans, G. (2001) Cultural Planning: An Urban Renaissance? London: Routledge. Finnish Gover nment (2018) Ratkaisujen suomi: hallituksen toimintasuunnitelma 2018–​2019, Helsinki: Valtioneuvosto. Available at: https://v​ altioneuvosto.fi/​documents/​10184/3​ 21857/H ​ allituksen +toimintasuunnitelma+2018-​2019+25.5.2018.pdf Forde, C. and Lynch, D. (2015) Social Work and Community Development, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hakala, J. (2015) Alavuden kaupungin kulttuuristrategia 2015–​ 2020. Strategian prosessin kuvaus, lähtökohdat ja tuotos, Seinäjoki: Seinäjoen ammattikorkeakoulu. Häyrynen, M. and Wallin, A. (eds) (2017) Kulttuurisuunnittelu. Kaupunkikehittämisen uusi näkökulma, Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. HE (2018) Hallituksen esitys eduskunnalle laiksi kuntien kulttuuritoiminnasta, 195/2018. Available at: https://​ w ww.eduskunta.fi/​ F I/​ vaski/​ KasittelytiedotValtiopaivaasia/​Sivut/​HE_​195+2018.aspx Heiskanen, I. (2015) ‘Taiteen ja kulttuur in uusi asemointi talouteen: kulttuuriteollisuus, luovat alat ja luova talous’, in I. Heiskanen, A. Kangas and R. Mitchell (eds) Taiteen ja kulttuurin kentät. Perusrakenteet, hallinta ja lainsäädäntö, Helsinki: Tietosanoma, pp 109–​90. Helsinki-​Uusimaa Regional Council (2016) Uudenmaan kulttuuristrategia 2025, Helsinki: Uudenmaan liitto. Hesmondhalgh, D. (2013) The Cultural Industries, London: Sage. Ilmajoki (2011) Ilmajoen kunnan kulttuuristrategia –​kulttuuria läpi elämän, Ilmajoella, Ilmajoki: Ilmajoen kunta.

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Jakonen, O. (2020) ‘Results-​based steering as a tool for centralized power and instrumentalization within art policy? The ambiguous case of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland’, Nordisk Kulturpolitisk Tidskrift, 23(2): 125–​42. Kangas, A. (2001) ‘Cultural policy in Finland’, The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 31(1): 57–​78. Kangas, A. (2004) ‘New clothes for cultural policy’, in A. Kangas and J. Virkki (eds) Construction of Cultural Policy, Jyväskylä: SoPhi, pp 21–​41. Kuortane (2018) Kuortaneen kulttuuristrategia 2018–​2021. ‘Kulttuurin hehkua’, Kuortane: Kuortaneen kunta. Laclau, E. (2005) On Populist Reason, London: Verso. Landry, C. (2008 [2000]) The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators (2nd edn), London: Comedia. Lewandowska, K. (2017) ‘New public management reform in European cultural policies: has Poland followed suit?’, Cultural Management 1(1): 29–​38. Lewis, J. and Surender, R. (2004) Welfare State Change: Towards a Third Way? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mangset, P., Kangas, A., Skot-​Hansen, D. and Vestheim, G. (2008) ‘Nordic cultural policy’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 14(1): 1–​5. Mänttä-​Vilppula (2019) Mänttä-V ​ ilppulan kulttuuristrategia 2019–​2029, Mänttä-​Vilppula: Mänttä-​Vilppulan kaupunki. McGuigan, J. (2016) Neoliberal Culture, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Meade, R.R., Shaw, M. and Banks, S.J. (2016) ‘Politics, power and community development: an introductory essay’, in R.R. Meade, M. Shaw and S. Banks (eds) Politics, Power and Community Development, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 1–​27. Mercer, C. (2004) Cultural planning for urban development and creative cities. Available at: http://w ​ ww.kulturplan-o ​ resund.dk/p​ df/S​ hanghai_​ cultural_​planning_​paper.pdf Ministry of Education (1999) Kulttuuriteollisuuden kehittäminen Suomessa: kulttuuriteollisuustyöryhmän loppuraportti, Helsinki: Opetusministeriö. Ministry of Education and Culture (2017a) Luova talous ja aineettoman arvon luominen kasvun kärjiksi, Helsinki: Opetus-​ja kulttuuriministeriö. Ministry of Education and Culture (2017b) Opetus-​ja kulttuuriministeriön kulttuuripolitiikan strategia 2025, Helsinki: Opetus-​ja kulttuuriministeriö.

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Ministry of Education and Culture (2017c) Working group: Creative Business Finland services should be created for creative industries, Helsinki: Opetus-​ ja kulttuuriministeriö. Available at: https://​ minedu.fi/​artikkeli/​-​/​asset_​publisher/​tyoryhma-​luoville-​aloille-​ luotava- ​ c reative-​ business-​ f inland-​ p alvelut?_​ 1 01_​ I NSTANCE_​ vnXMrwrx9pG9_​languageId=en_​US Ministry of Education and Culture (2019) Luovia aloja ja kulttuuritoimintaa tukevan rahaston perustamista selvitetään, Helsinki: Opetus-​ ja kulttuuriministeriö. Available at: https://​minedu.fi/​artikkeli/​-​/​ asset_​publisher/​luovia-​aloja-​ja-​kulttuuritoimintaa-​tukevan-​rahaston-​ perustamista-​selvitetaan Ministry of Trade and Industry (2007) Luovien alojen yrittäjyyden kehittämisstrategia, Helsinki: Kauppa-​ja teollisuusministeriö. Murzyn-​Kubisz, M. and Dzialek, J. (2017) (eds) The Impact of Artists on Contemporary Urban Development in Europe, Cham: Springer. O’Brien, D (2011) ‘Who is in charge? Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008 and the governance of cultural planning’, Town Planning Review, 82(1): 45–​59. Peltola, S., Ollila, M. and Metsä-​Tokila, T. (2014) Luovat alat: Toimialaraportti, Helsinki: Työ-​ja elinkeinoministeriö. Pratt, A. (2009) ‘Creative cities: tensions within and between social, cultural and economic development. A critical reading of the UK experience’, City, Culture and Society, 1(1): 13–​20. Pyykkönen, M. and Stavrum, H. (2018) ‘Enterprising culture: discourses on entrepreneurship in Nordic cultural policy’, The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 48(2): 108–​21. Regional Council of Southwest Finland (2015) Luova Varsinais-​Suomi 2025. Varsinais-​Suomen kulttuuristrategia 2015–​2025, Turku: Varsinais-​ Suomen liitto. Reichard, C. (2010) ‘New public management’, in H.K. Anheier and S. Toepler (eds) International Encyclopedia of Civil Society, New York, NY: Springer. Available at: https://​link.springer.com/​ referenceworkentry/​10.1007%2F978-​0-​387-​93996-​4_​89#howtocite Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom; Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shaw, M. (2008) ‘Community development and the politics of community’, Community Development Journal, 43(1): 24–​36. Statistics Finland (2015) Kulttuurityövoima Suomessa 2014, Helsinki: Tilastokeskus. Stevenson, D. (2004) ‘Civic gold rush: cultural planning and the politics of the third way’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 10(1): 119–​31.

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Throsby, D. (2002) Economics and Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Verwijnen, J. and Lehtovuori, P. (eds) (1996) Managing Urban Change, Helsinki: University of Art and Design Helsinki. Wilenius, M. (2004) Luovaan talouteen: Kulttuuriosaaminen tulevaisuuden voimavarana, Helsinki: Edita. Ylä-​Savo (2015) Kulttuuria tehhään yhdessä. Ylä-​Savon kulttuuristrategia. Available at: https://​www.sonkajarvi.fi/​loader.aspx?id=adb4fb61​8e04-​4796-​8b7b-​d94e3b5c0fff

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Frameworks for assessing and reconsidering empowerment in community arts Samson Kei Shun Wong

A broad range of literature agrees that, alongside artistic vision, empowerment is a widely shared objective of participatory arts practices in communities; that people are supported towards developing greater awareness of and actions specific to their social situations (Goldbard, 1993; 2006; Dickson, 1995; Lacy, 1995; Kester, 2004; 2011; Krensky and Steffan, 2009; Mulligan and Smith, 2010; Higgins, 2012; Thompson, 2012; Finkelpearl, 2013; Wu, 2015; Cartier and Zebracki, 2016).1 Although increasingly elaborate accountability demands regarding the efficacy of participatory arts practices have emerged, the use of analytical frameworks in conceptualising and communicating objectives remains uncommon. This chapter explores two such frameworks, drawn and adapted from the extant literature, that can guide practitioners to reflect on and assess their practice. The range of models of participatory arts practices represented in the aforementioned literature means that any attempt at identifying their commonalities is ambitious and challenging. Yet, it is perhaps the right time to attempt such cross-​practice discussions because distinctions are becoming less relevant, as practitioners from diverse fields of community arts work or share ideas across boundaries. For example, in at least eight major conferences held in Hong Kong since 2013,2 over a hundred representatives of this broad field have presented their work –​with over a dozen presenting at more than one event. They have invoked different conceptualisations to frame and make sense of their practice, such as ‘dialogical arts’ (Kester, 2004), ‘relational aesthetics’ (Bourriaud, 2002), ‘community cultural development’ (Goldbard, 2006) and ‘heritage preservation’, among others.3 This shows that organisations and artists are aware of the multiple ways of conceptualising their work, and that attendees are ready to look beyond familiar concepts and consider new possibilities. Furthermore, many of

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the projects highlighted at the Hong Kong conferences were developed by different combinations of artists within a pool of local practitioners. The emergence of such clusters of artists and organisations is indicative of emergent trends in the field. First, project hosts see the value of diverse or cross-​disciplinary teams that bring a range of expertise and approaches to their projects. Second, many artists are capable of collaborating with others who come from different practice and training backgrounds. Yet, such a working arrangement still requires artists and organisers to share a common framework from which to conceptualise and communicate their work. Therefore, this chapter takes ‘empowerment’ to be a widely shared goal among all parties involved and proposes two existing frameworks to guide this inquiry.

Community empowerment, participation and autonomy in arts processes The term ‘empower’ is defined in this chapter as follows: ‘to promote the self-​actualization or influence of ’ particular individuals, groups or communities of people (Merriam-​Webster, nd: np). This definition is fitting as an entry point to a complex concept that can encompass several common, generalised, and interrelated objectives such as community ownership, capacity building and emancipation. These objectives are commonly discussed in the wider participatory arts literature, and they repeatedly feature in organisations’ or artists’ accounts of their practice, either as intended impacts of the work or as embedded within the processes of collaborative art making. What is constituted or claimed as community empowerment is highly variable, however, ranging in scope from the modest to the far-​reaching. A meta-​study on the social impacts of the arts that was commissioned by England’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, titled Understanding the value of arts and culture, published in 2016, found the reliability of many of the claims regarding art’s long-​term impacts to be wanting. Instead, the study suggests that researchers should pay more attention to the ways individuals and communities experience art in personal and social settings (Crossick and Kaszynska, 2016). This chapter emphasises how empowerment can be observed within arts processes and it regards individuals’ own motivation and autonomous choices to participate as the basis for empowerment. The dynamics between individuals and their communities have generated decades worth of studies in the social sciences and psychology. McKnight (1995) has drawn upon Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, to describe the kind of empowered community

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he envisioned. First, the people ‘decided they had the power to decide what was a problem. Second, they decided they had the power to decide how to solve a problem. Third, they often decided that they would themselves become the key actors in implementing the solution’ (McKnight, 1995: 177). This early image of an empowered community was later refined by McKnight and Block (2010) to refer to a context or set of relationships where people are not conceptualised as customers, clients, income units, patients or audience members, but as mutually dependent citizens who share their strengths to meet personal and collective needs. It is a community formed by people who are motivated to take charge of their own lives, and thus it implies and requires the autonomy of individuals who choose to act collectively with others. While the concept of empowerment has political and legalistic dimensions, the empowerment of communities is not primarily dependent on or reducible to the public systems and structures established to enable participation. Systems and structures mean little if people are unmotivated and do not access them. Empowerment, whether relating to forms of political participation, education, cultural production, or access to resources, must be rooted in people’s own motivation to take action to change their lives. Bringing this discussion back to the contexts of collaborative art making in community settings, the degree of autonomy actualised through such processes is identified here as the most basic condition for empowerment. Therefore, any analytical tools that seek to assess empowerment in community arts contexts should be able to explain, compare and critique the different degrees of autonomy observed. In the following sections, it is proposed that Roger Hart’s (1992) ‘ladder of participation’ and Harry Shier’s (2001) ‘pathways to participation’ are two such analytical frameworks. Both are rooted in Sherry Arnstein’s prior efforts to conceptualise participation in planning processes, but both Hart’s and Shier’s tools are also influenced by educational theory and are often used in education settings. Therefore, in the following discussion, theories from the fields of education and psychology regarding motivation are briefly drawn upon to inform the analysis.

Considerations for using the analytical tools The British art critic and historian Claire Bishop (2012) has challenged the use of Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of participation as a guide for assessing participatory arts practices and impacts. Arnstein’s framework assesses different levels of citizen participation; the steps on her ladder

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signalling the ascending degrees of autonomy afforded by ‘participatory processes’, from manipulation, therapy, informing, consultation, placation, partnership, delegated power up to citizen control. Bishop (2012: 279) has stated that: ‘The most challenging works of art do not follow this schema, because models of democracy in art do not have an intrinsic relationship to models of democracy in society. The equation is misleading and does not recognise art’s ability to generate other, more paradoxical criteria’. Bishop’s scepticism regarding any simplistic applications of this assessment tool is sound. However, her conclusion is premature in that she does not consider how modified and adapted forms of the ladder might work in various arts practices and contexts. Hart’s ladder consists of eight stages, divided into the two key categories of manipulated or genuine forms of participation. ‘Participation’ as used by Hart (1992: 5) can be seen to ‘refer generally to the process of sharing decisions which affect one’s life and the life of the community in which one lives’. The settings of the examples given include participation in governing processes as well as larger community initiatives, classroom-​based learning and small-​group decision-​making. Hart (2008: 21) later updated his metaphor from a ‘ladder’ to a ‘scaffold of participation’, at the same time explaining that his framework is not only applicable for children, but also for analysing other relationships where one seeks to guide the other: ‘whereas the ladder metaphor is usually used to characterize only child–​adult relations, the scaffold metaphor can be thought of as a mutually reinforcing structure where all people, including adults and children of different abilities, help each other in their different climbing goals’. Hart (2008: 23) acknowledged criticisms of the ‘ladder of participation’ idea; how ‘[i]‌n some ways the ladder metaphor is unfortunate for it seems to imply a necessary sequence to children’s developing competence in participation’. In response, he explained that ‘[i]n fact the ladder is primarily about the degree to which adults and institutions afford or enable children to participate’ (Hart, 2008: 23), and in practice: While a child may not want at all times to be the one who initiates a project they ought to know that they have the option, and to feel that they have the confidence and competence to do so on occasion. Adult facilitators of projects should not be made to feel that they must always support their child participants to operate on the ‘highest’ rungs of the ladder, but they must manage to communicate to children that they have the option to operate with these ‘higher’ degrees of engagement. (Hart, 2008: 24)

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This raises valuable questions for participatory arts. Is community arts most effective only when participants are fully in control? Or could varied levels of participation result in different kinds of impact? As this chapter investigates whether Hart’s and Shier’s models might be suitable for analysing the participatory and empowerment claims associated with community arts activities, it bears in mind Bishop’s (2012) concerns and those echoed by Anne Kershaw (2014: para 12) who has warned of the ‘dangers and pitfalls in the shift to participatory arts practice’ if one simplistically believes that these models ‘can enable us to rapidly progress on the “snakes and ladders” board of arts participation’. On the other hand, such a structure can also pose challenging questions to organisations using community arts. Do they really want their participants to be empowered? Under the needs-​based funding structure which pertain in many countries, funding for many participatory arts projects is premised upon the disengagement and marginalisation of communities, or at least the ongoing ‘representation’ of communities as marginalised and disengaged. Even when intentions are noble, this reality requires ethical practitioners to ‘constantly review our role in perpetuating exploitation of these groups’ (Lyons-​ Rei and Kuddell, 2011: para 5).4 In a statement that takes seriously the implications of such popular catchwords as ‘capacity building’ and ‘empowerment’, Lyons-​Rei and Kuddell (2011: para 22) express a sobering reminder to artists and organisations: Train yourself out of a job –​you should be obsolete after the project is over. Build local skills to a level so the community can do it themselves. This is what you promised in your funding submission … And yes, this needs more time, but even on short programs, you can start the process and plant a seed for future initiatives. This chapter now discusses the suitability and applicability of Hart’s ladder and Shier’s pathway for assessing how participants’ autonomy might be supported in community arts processes. The following section provides some background details of the artists who have facilitated the activities that are drawn upon for illustrative purposes in the chapter.

Cases for discussion Examples of community arts practice are woven into the analysis presented in this chapter. The bulk of the examples are from programmes that were facilitated and developed by the Hong Kong

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artist, arts educator and community artist Evelyna Liang. She has been actively engaging with communities through her artistic practice and projects since the 1980s. Her early projects include Vietnamese Art in the Camp and Art in Hospital. She began mentoring another generation of younger artists when she founded Art for All in Hong Kong in 2001 to focus on her work with under-​recognised or underprivileged communities, including minority ethnic, victims of abuse and differently advantaged people. Evelyna Liang is also active in several mainland Chinese cities and villages, developing projects and training community arts practitioners. More recently, both her own artistic path and changing societal demographics have led her to develop projects with groups of older people in Hong Kong and mainland China. Evelyna’s work in community art is primarily visually based and most often is incorporated with dance, music, or drama, connecting with the expressive tendencies of different participants. According to Liang (2015), artists and participants are first and foremost people, who are themselves whether they are inside or outside of the workshop/​ studio. Therefore, the person empowered within the arts activity is, or should also be, empowered in life. She partners with NGOs in the communities she serves to ensure that the impact of the arts projects match local needs and find constructive outlets. This contrasts somewhat with the work of Phoebe Man, who designs participatory arts processes that often utilise dialogues to involve audiences (Man, 2017b). Though she only began her socially engaged practice in 2012,5 her series of works around issues of sexual assault, housing and politics have become important fixtures in Hong Kong’s field of socially engaged art. Her work has engaged thousands of individuals in Hong Kong and Taiwan by capturing the tensions and intricacies of these important issues. Participants become involved either through workshops or through visits to her exhibitions, where they can contribute to her works. These two artists provide contrasting, though not necessarily opposite or mutually exclusive, examples of participatory arts practices. As illustrated in the examples to be discussed, Evelyna works with people from, and in, a physical community, connecting with wider stakeholders and collaborating with other artists to engage participants’ senses through multiple media. On the other hand, Phoebe designs processes that are suited for participation in workshop or gallery settings. Such processes might include participants answering a question in written form and seeing others’ answers posted on gallery wall, thus engaging each other in a dialogical process on pressing social issues.

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Adapting Hart’s ladder of participation As noted already, Hart’s ladder was originally conceived for describing children’s participation, and Table 10.1 showed the original wording and layout of the model. Table 10.2 is an adaptation, as might be applied to an assessment of artist-​participant relationship within a given participatory arts context. As previously mentioned, Hart (2008) expected his model to be suitable for describing other relationships; where one leads others. Two examples illustrate the use of this ladder. Kwon (2002: 122), in discussing one process of collaboration among artists and matched participants in the Culture in Action exhibition of 1993 in Chicago, observed that much of the detail and expected results were determined well before the work occurred. Kwon explained that this was problematic because the promotional materials gave audiences the impression that the work was ‘the result of an organic and dialogical relationship between artist and the community’. Depending on the dynamic during the implementation process, and whether participants were able to provide input that was received and considered, this case might fall under level 3, ‘tokenism’, or level 4, ‘assigned but informed’ on the ladder. One may also apply different levels of the ladder to different parts of a bigger work. For instance, a documentary of Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument (Art21, 2015), shows that

Table 10.1: The ladder of participation Phase Models of genuine participation

Manipulation and tokenism: models of non-​participation

Original heading 8

Child initiated, shared decisions with adults

7

Child initiated and directed

6

Adult initiated, shared decisions with children

5

Consulted and informed: children’s views treated seriously.

4

Assigned but informed: children understand and see the meaning of assigned role.

3

Tokenism: children’s voice given no weight on meaningless platform, not given a chance to formulate ideas.

2

Decoration: children with no voice and no understanding of action. Adults do not pretend children do.

1

Manipulation: children with no understanding of action. Adult’s control disguised. Children understanding not required.

Source: Hart (1992: 8), UNICEF Office of Research –​Innocenti.

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Arts, Culture and Community Development Table 10.2: Adapted ladder of participation Phase Models of genuine participation

Adapted heading 8

Participants initiated: where participants share decision making with artists

7

Participants initiated and directed

6

Artist initiated: where artist shares decision making with participants

5

Consulted and informed: participants’ views are treated seriously and accommodated by the artist.

4

Assigned but informed: participants understand and see the meaning of their assigned roles within the arts process.

Manipulation 3 and tokenism: models of non-​participation 2 1

Tokenism: participants’ voices are given no weight, process creates meaningless platforms, and participants are not given a chance to formulate ideas. Decoration: participants have no understanding of action. Artists do not pretend participants do. Manipulation: participants have no understanding of arts action or process. Artists’ control is disguised. Participants’ understanding is not required.

Source: the author’s adaptation of ‘The Ladder of Participation’ by Hart (1992: 8), UNICEF Office of Research –​Innocenti.

while participants such as Stanley Scott and Adam Guessongo6 seem to be participating somewhere between levels 5 to 8 on the ladder, there are other aspects of the work where Hirschhorn demands participants’ full compliance.7 Hart’s (1992) original ladder was part of an essay commissioned by UNICEF and was designed as a framework to stimulate dialogue about participation rather than serving as a comprehensive tool for pursuing it. The previous discussion highlights some of the author’s clarifications over the years and how readers might regard the ladder as a useful ‘jumping-​off point for their own reflections’ (Hart, 2008: 19). One major difference between Hart’s ladder and Arnstein’s is the nature of the top rung: whereas Arnstein (1969) considers ‘citizen control’ to be the highest degree of participation, Hart (1992) believes children demonstrate the highest degree of autonomy when they are able and willing to ask for help. Is this true also in the application of participatory arts in promoting the autonomy of participants in community contexts? Keeping this question in mind, this discussion continues.

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Value of non-​understanding and non-​participation Shier (2001: 110) comments that the most useful function of Hart’s ladder is that it helps people ‘recognize, and work to eliminate, these types of non-​participation in their own practice’. Is this also applicable to community art or the arts in general? Consider the following two activities that are often observed in participatory forms of art: Example 1: Instructions are given for participants to draw small individual shapes without any explanation of their later application. The artist then combines them into an impressive collage. The participants witness the visual impact of the collage and understand their part in creating it. Example 2: Participants are divided into two groups, each required to learn a rhythmic pattern. The two groups are gathered to perform their pattern together so that it combines to form a unified beat. The community artist then sings a song on top of that beat. In both examples, participants begin with little information but end up with a realisation of the wider meaning and significance of their individual action. Perhaps both activities illustrate that certain degrees of non-​participation and non-​understanding in art are acceptable and effective, provided that: a) the artist knows that the eventual application of the participants’ contributions will be satisfying to the (initially non-​ understanding) participants; b) the artist provides the understanding in due course; and c) the degree, level and duration of non-​understanding is dependent upon the trust and mutual understanding established between the artists and participants. This application of ‘non-​understanding’ or ‘delayed understanding’ echoes the idea of the ‘manipulation of expectation’ that is explained in Dissanayake’s (2014) investigation of the origins of art. The ‘manipulation of expectation’ is a dramatic device observable in carer-​ infant interactions usually after four months of age. Carers begin this ‘manipulation of expectation’ when simplest forms of interaction become predictable by the child and can no longer trigger past responses.8 However, such uses also require consideration of the possible reactions of the infant or those of the audience/​participants, when applied to community art. Perhaps more important than the skill of manipulating expectations is how the artists go on to use participants’

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inputs. Example 1 would, perhaps, have been poorly designed for a community arts activity if the images combine into a controversial political slogan to which they had not given their assent.9 In community art, being directed to paint the background first, to perfect a dance routine or to listen seriously to everyone’s comments may seem tedious and unsatisfying. However, this hard work can and should culminate in something more meaningful for the participants. Using the ladder of participation, it can be observed that in participatory arts processes in community development settings, artists should consider both artistic issues and empowerment issues when designing the activity. Wong (2015: 7), writing about a community mural project in Henan that was led by Evelyna Liang, described how the artists persistently urged participants to paint the background before the details. Technically, this was to give participants experience of brush-​work before the hard task of painting in details. Visually, it made the first day’s progress look more substantial and thus more satisfying for the participants. In this regard, the artists’ judgements to withhold certain opportunities or activities are essential. On the second day, participants had time to fill in details with their newly acquired brush skills. After lunch, the artists discussed with each group its progress, and most groups were able to visualise and determine their next steps towards completion. The participants can be described as having started on level 2 or 4 of Hart’s framework and progressed to level 5 and beyond.

Figure 10.1: Participants instructed to paint background before details

Source: Author’s own

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Interesting insights regarding the value of pacing information disclosure also emerged during a 2014 training project for social workers and university students in Shanghai. In this example, Evelyna first held a collaborative storytelling session where participants took turns contributing details for a story, using a magical stone as a narrative device to represent themselves at their current stage of life. She then instructed them to individually paint their own painting of something important in the story. Then, participants were asked to describe their own paintings to each other. After that, Evelyna instructed the group to create a collage together, combining the individual paintings and additional drawings, on a canvas of approximately four square feet. This larger painting-​collage would represent an imaginary realm where their stories and lives met. She suggested they form the collage based on their understandings of each other’s stories and visual elements. Throughout the process, participants were only told the next step once the previous step was completed. Evelyna gave two reasons for this pacing. First, for participants with little or no artistic background, the final goal of collaboratively creating a large painting-​collage might seem daunting, thus negatively affecting enthusiasm. Second, from her experience of working with university students in China, she realised they are highly goal-​oriented. She wanted to avoid providing prior knowledge of the final product, which might cause them to plan ahead instead of being mindfully present in the expressive inward journey that was crucial to the activity. The Erosion of home? artwork by Phoebe Man is another example of the manipulation of expectation. This artwork invites gallery visitors to answer the question ‘to buy a brick [flat], did you give up anything?’ on a piece of card printed in the image of a brick. Bricks/​cards are then pasted onto the gallery wall until they completely cover it. The context for this work is the skyrocketing housing prices in Hong Kong and Taipei, which are causing younger generations either to give up on the idea of buying a home, or to spend decades working to pay off mortgages. As Figure 10.2 and Figure 10.3 show, the earliest participants/​visitors to the artwork would not initially be aware of the intended or likely impact of the final version of the work. They might also be sceptical as to whether enough people would participate to fill the wall. Yet, if the artist were to provide advance illustrations of the intended outcomes, so that participants could decide if participation was worth their time and effort, the possible wonder at the artwork’s emergence and the impact of its completion would have been lost. The preceding discussion of the potential value of strategic non-​ understanding opens up an alternative application of the ladder of

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Arts, Culture and Community Development Figure 10.2: Erosion of home? (a)

Source: Phoebe Ching Ying Man. https://​phoeberelationalart.wordpress.com/​erosion-​of-​home/​

Figure 10.3: Erosion of home? (b)

Source: Phoebe Ching Ying Man. https://​phoeberelationalart.wordpress.com/​erosion-​of-​home/​

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participation. Hart (2008: 24) explains that an important feature of the ladder is to empower children to ‘know that they have the option, and to feel that they have the confidence and competence’ to initiate or direct projects and request the help of those with more experience. This can be modified to state that participants in arts processes should be educated to know when a certain level of autonomy is preferable in collaborative art activities, and when or for what purposes such autonomy can be temporarily suspended. By taking the lead with demonstrations of their captivating presence, and facilitating increasingly challenging activities, artists say with their being, ‘Why don’t we get started and see where this leads’. Essentially, participants are practising trust. By accepting uncertainty in an activity, participants have subjected themselves temporarily to the direction of the artist. They should understand that, if at the starting point they demand to know the artist’s plan in order to decide for themselves whether or not to participate, they would be sacrificing the dramatic effect of the activity for the sake of making an informed decision. But is there room in community arts for those who are not ready to trust? In both Evelyna’s mural in Henan, and Phoebe’s Free Coloring if I Were (2018),10 there were active participants focused on the drawing, and observers who may or may not have joined in. The author observed two commonalities. First, observers took their time, likely considering if and how they should participate. Second, once the observers decided to join, they would agree to the guidelines provided by the artists; in other words, they began subjecting themselves to the rules of the artistic effort. The later the participant entered, the more informed and less of a risk they were taking but, in this author’s opinion, also experiencing less of the satisfaction.

Shier’s pathways to participation Shier explicitly credits Hart with influencing his ‘pathways to participation’ and Shier’s (2001) model functions as a process of decision-​making, and how that can be transferred or extended to children or participants in a systematic way.11 In Shier’s (2001) ‘pathways to participation’, readers are guided to consider a series of questions regarding ‘children’ as participants, but the approach could apply to participants of all ages that are taking part in arts processes. Therefore, for this discussion, ‘children’ has been replaced with ‘participant’. The five levels in the model describe an increasing level of ‘power’ and ‘responsibility’ shared with the participants (Shier, 2001: 111). At every level, the model asks (a) if the user –​or for our purposes

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Arts, Culture and Community Development Figure 10.4: Free coloring if I were

Source: Phoebe Ching Ying Man. https://​freecoloringifiwere.wordpress.com/​

the artist and facilitator –​is mentally ready to welcome a certain ‘level of participation’, (b) if the programme design actively includes ‘opportunities’ for that prescribed level of participation and (c), if there are policies in place to ensure that level of participation is supported and achievable (Shier, 2001: 111). Level one asks the user to consider whether or not they are ‘ready to listen to’ participants, while the second and third levels progress to the supporting of participants in ‘expressing their views’ and then onto taking their ‘views into account’ (Shier, 2001: 111). Further on, at levels four and five, respectively, the model requires the involvement of participants in the ‘decision-​making processes’, and, ultimately, the sharing of ‘power and responsibility for decision-​making with’ them (Shier, 2001: 111). Progression to the next stage is not a simple decision. Shier explains that: [t]‌he most useful discussion will probably occur when the answer to a question is ‘no’. Then it can be asked, ‘Should we be able to answer ‘yes’?’, ‘What do we need to do in order to answer ‘yes’?’, ‘Can we make these changes?’ and, ‘Are we prepared for the consequences?’ (Shier, 2001: 111)

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Whereas Hart’s ladder is helpful in describing various levels of autonomy, Shier’s pathway, in its questioning form, guides and encourages artists to open up the participatory process for participants to be better informed and have greater control. Perhaps less anticipated by Shier, is the consideration of when control may be taken back. For example, when the mural was nearly finished and the activity was winding down, participants had no problem relinquishing their autonomy to follow clear instructions on how to touch up the painting. In hindsight, it is hypothesised here that participants were willing to give back control because they trusted the artists’ assessment of the painting progress. What are the considerations made in between? How do artists ensure that group members are able and willing to take on a particular level of autonomy and the responsibilities it entails? Shier’s (2001) model addresses such questions by outlining how different levels and degrees of participation can be conceived as emerging from active decision-​ making processes. Through self-​assessment and a questioning of the opportunities for participation facilitated by their activities, the artist is able to work towards increasing the autonomy of the participants. The key element of this model is the artist’s ability to ‘[weigh] up all the potential risks and benefits of the situation’ (Shier, 2001: 116). What is perhaps missing, or at least only implied by Shier in the assessment of children/​participants’ ‘responsibility for decision-​making’, is their ability or skill to carry out their decisions. In Henan, participants were encouraged to paint freely during the drafting and background painting stage as there was negligible risk in creating a poor draft, while the benefits of painting freely were great. Towards completion, when the participants too were aware of the risk of an incomplete mural and the benefits of a good painting, the artists reduced the level of autonomy afforded to participants and directed their actions. Wong (2015) described over a dozen participants who were eager to follow through with the menial work of paint touch-​ups. According to the pathway, the autonomy of the participants has returned to level 1, where it is reasonable for artists to (kindly) refuse new inputs in order to follow through with existing plans.

Critical reflections on using the model in community art In collaborative art making processes, such as community art activities, states of limited autonomy or non-​understanding are often a part of a fuller experience. Hart’s and Shier’s models are useful for guiding, or

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for critically questioning, the degrees and opportunities for autonomy that are afforded within participatory arts processes. They provide descriptions of and vocabularies for communicating different forms and levels of engagement by individuals and communities. It is suggested that a question should be added to those proposed by Shier in order to assess if participants can or want to assume more autonomy within community arts processes: will this activity be more satisfying if autonomy is increased or decreased? A complicated question, it depends on the context and participants, as well as the interplay between providing satisfaction through art, and greater participation. However, considering the widely shared goals to empower, it is argued here that in any community art project participants must ultimately be facilitated to make some decisions and take actions meaningful to the artistic experience.12 For longer projects, where the participatory arts have a significant role alongside community development, the top stage of Hart’s ladder: ‘participants initiated and decisions shared with artists’ is a suitable guide. Evelyna (Liang, 2015, 5 March 2015) adopted such an approach in her work with women from indigenous tribes in Yunnan as she explained in a talk on art and empowerment in 2015: we can work on self-​portrait or embroidery, but if they have to continue this creative work, they have to dig into their own traditions. I don’t know their culture, their patterns, their styles. I was only a facilitator. I told them they have the power to create their own things. [After a few years], they don’t need me anymore, they found their own ways. Based on the preceding discussion, several questions are suggested to assess the effectiveness of any arts activity in its management and development of the autonomy of the participants. Were the participants made aware of the context and nature of the artistic activity, so that they may decide how to act? Were the participants provided with tools and skills, so that they may act accordingly? Does the activity provide different levels of autonomy for various participants? Were the activity and artists successful in managing and facilitating this process in an interesting and captivating way? And, looking beyond, did participants emerge from the activity with a greater awareness and knowledge of their own ability and entitlement, in the activity and in life in general?

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Final thoughts on using arts for instrumental purposes Thinking more broadly and critically, we might even ask ‘should the arts be represented as a tool for empowerment?’ Evidently, community art can develop participants’ understandings of autonomy; its potential, and its variability across different processes. However, concerns must be voiced if social, educational or political outcomes are prioritised over artistic ones. Numerous writers issue clear warnings against the instrumentalisation of art, highlighting how instrumental values detract from the intrinsic enjoyment of activities such as learning and art making (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; 1997; Dewey, 2005; Ryan and Deci, 2000). If instrumental values are imposed on community arts processes –​such as the expectation that the arts will empower participants by eliciting political participation, behaviour modification, psychological healing or other forms of socialisation –​then art’s own intrinsic value, such as creating a satisfying collaborative art-making process, will be diminished. This concern is also raised by Clements (2007), who discusses the ‘natural’ primary intention and exploitation of community arts projects. Clements (2007: 333) points out that ‘participation in the arts tends to be embedded in leisure and creative education which should be the primary evaluative considerations’. Following on from his example of a prison art programme that illustrates an instrumentalised deployment of community arts, Clements (2007: 330) reflected that if programme evaluations focus primarily on their instrumental value, this could result in the arts becoming less experimental, peripheral or stilted (Clements, 2007: 330). Instead, he suggests that ‘short-​term programmes need to be immersed in an exploration of the art form and creative education that may “naturally” include a social impact agenda’ (Clements, 2007: 330). Therefore, while the ladder or pathway of Hart (1992), Shier (2001) and Arnstein (1969) may be highly instructive towards evaluating aspects of arts practice, they are valuable only insofar as they enable the intrinsic goals of community art.13 The development of autonomy is not the intrinsic goal of community art. Yet it is also clear that people can become more satisfied when they become increasingly autonomous in and through their participation in community art, perhaps even to a point where they are able to initiate collaborative art making among their own social circles. Trust and the relinquishing of control go both ways.14 As illustrated in the aforementioned mural painting process, autonomy and trust

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are shared among participants and community artists. Wong’s (2016) interviews with artists who use diverse media in their work with communities, found that all of the interviewees welcomed participants being able to take on greater autonomy. They were also satisfied and inspired by participants who had taken greater control to contribute to the artwork. If one were to observe Phoebe, Evelyna and her team of artists, one could often see their eyes shine when participants took charge and created works that went beyond their expectations. These moments often inspired and contributed to the projects in significant ways beyond the artistic realm. If these inputs are well moulded into ideas and actions, they can become the not-​so-​rare moments of community participatory work and deliberation when all involved can say with pride, ‘Wow, we did this’. Notes This only represents a selection of literature. The writers may be practitioners or academics writing about others’ projects. Earlier works are included to highlight the existence of the objective of empowerment over time. 2 Including the Dialogue! Publicly Engaged Art Practices (December 2013), Art as Social Interaction (October–​December 2014), Asia Pacific Playback Theatre Conference 2015, Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Forum on Community Art 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2019, and the i-​dArt Conference in 2015 and 2019. 3 The four forums on Community Art organised by CUHK are titled: ;For the Sake of the people’ (2014), ‘Community Arts and Heritage Preservation’ (2016), ‘Community Arts Keywords’ (2018) and ‘The Arts of Healing: Individuals, Communities, Society’ (2019). 4 The reflection also includes the extent of community representation in or ownership of finished works as well as training, evaluation, organisational and accountability processes. 5 2012 is the year she provides in the introduction of her book Phoebe Man’s Socially Engaged Art. The participatory portion in her earlier works such as ‘Psychogeography: Bitan’ (2010) possibly puts that date earlier. 6 Stanley Scott 2: 34; Adam Guessongo 5: 19. 7 Stanley Scott 2: 34; Adam Guessongo 4:10 8 ‘Manipulation of expectation’ fits the function of ‘shock’ as debated between Kester (2004) and Bishop (2006). Dissanayake explains that suspense, mystery and misdirection are artistic devices that require audiences to temporarily relinquish autonomy in ‘going along’ with a story. She originally wrote about mothers and infants. Mother is substituted with carer in this discussion. 9 The issue of manipulation opens the discussion of ethics, an important and substantial topic beyond the scope of this chapter. 10 Free is set similar to Erosion of Home, but with a dedicated desk for people to write and draw on one of three specially designed colour-​it-​yourself templates, each with a different image of a floral design. Each of them with one statement: ‘If I were a victim’, ‘If I were a perpetrator’ and ‘If I were a bystander’. See https://​ freecoloringifiwere.wordpress.com/​ 1

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Frameworks for assessing and reconsidering empowerment As discussed, the experience of community arts does not lie in being informed all the time. 12 The possibilities of using art to raise awareness, challenge preconceptions and actualise autonomy is simply endless. Therefore, this author hesitates to say that all participatory arts process for community development must essentially be more autonomous. 13 Politics or town hall participation is only one arena where participants of community arts may choose to exercise the artistic and social enrichment they have gained. Wong (2016) demonstrates that the enrichment more directly offered through community art deals with self-​awareness of expressive and perceptual inclinations, and personal identity in social contexts. 14 Kester (2011: 114) observes that ‘the relative autonomy of each participant is alternately diminished and enhanced as the subjectivity of the viewer … fluctuates with the subjectivity of the producer’. 11

References Arnstein, S.R. (1969) ‘A ladder of citizen participation’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4): 216–​24. Art21 (2015) Thomas Hirschhorn: ‘Gramsci Monument’. Available at: https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=O5yyegM2u88 Bishop, C. (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, New York, NY: Verso Books. Bourriaud, N. (2002) Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Less Presses du raeel. Cartier, C. and Zebracki, M. (eds) (2016) The Everyday Practice of Public Art: Art, Space, and Social Inclusion, New York, NY: Routledge. Clements, P. (2007) ‘The evaluation of community arts projects and the problems with social impact methodology’, International Journal of Art & Design Education, 26(3): 325–​35. Crossick, G. and Kaszynska, P. (2016) Understanding the Value of Arts and Culture, Swindon: Arts and Humanities Research Council. Available at: https://ahrc.ukri.org/documents/publications/ cultural-value-project-final-report/ Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997) ‘Flow and education’, in M. Csikszentmihalyi (2014) Applications of Flow in Human Development and Education: The Collected Works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Dordrecht: Springer, doi: 10.1007/​978-​94-​017-​9094-​9, pp 129–​47. Dewey, J. (2005) Art as Experience, New York, NY: Perigee Books. Dickson, M. (1995) Art with People, Sunderland: AN Publications.

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Dissanayake, E. (2014) ‘A bona fide ethological view of art: the artification hypothesis’, in C. Sütterlin, W. Schiefenhövel, C. Lehmann, J. Forster and G. Apfelauer (eds) Art as Behaviour: An Ethological Approach to Visual and Verbal Art, Music and Architecture, Hanse Studies, 10: 43–​62. Finkelpearl, T. (2013) What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Goldbard, A. (1993) ‘Postscript to the past: notes towards a history of community arts’, High Performance, 16(4): 23–​7. Goldbard, A. (2006) New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development, Oakland, CA: New Village Press. Hart, R.A. (1992) Children’s Participation: From Tokenism to Citizenship, Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. Hart, R.A. (2008) ‘Stepping back from “the ladder”: reflections on a model of participatory work with children’, in A. Reid, B.B. Jensen, J. Nikel and V. Simovska (eds) Participation and Learning: Perspectives on Education and the Environment, Health and Sustainability, New York, NY: Springer Verlag, pp 19–​31. Higgins, L. (2012) Community Music: In Theory and in Practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kershaw, A. (2014) ‘CollaborARTory: investigating arts collaboration and participation’, Arts Participation Incubator, 2. Formerly available at: http://​www.artsparticipationincubator.com/​ Kester, G.H. (2004) Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kester, G.H. (2011) The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Krensky, B. and Steffen, S.L. (2009) Engaging Classrooms and Communities through Art: A Guide to Designing and Implementing Community-​Based Art Education, Lanham: Altamira Press. Kwon, M. (2002) One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lacy, S. (1995) ‘Debated territory toward a critical language’, in S. Lacy (ed) Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, Seattle, WA: Bay Press, pp 171–​85. Liang, E. (2015) Art and Empowerment, public talk given at Centre for Community Cultural Development, Hong Kong, 5 March, transcribed and translated by author. Lyons-​Rei, J. and Kuddell, C. (2011) Get Off My Back, Australia Council for the Arts. Available at: https://​tallstoreez.com/​about/​ blog/ ​ g et- ​ o ff- ​ my- ​ b ack- ​ m anifesto- ​ t hought-​ p iece-​ f or-​ a ustralia-​ council-​for-​the-​arts

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Man, C.Y.P. (2017a) ‘Exploring the aesthetic of community arts’, Hong Kong Visual Arts Year Book 2017, Department of Fine Arts, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Man, C.Y.P. (2017b) Phoebe Man’s Socially Engaged Art: ‘If I were’ and the Others, Hong Kong: Why Not? Art Space. McKnight, J. (1995) The Careless Society: Community and its Counterfeits, New York, NY: Basic Books. McKnight, J. and Block, P. (2010) The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, San Francisco, CA: Berrett-​ Koehler Publishers. Merriam-​Webster (nd) ‘Empower’, in Merriam-​Webster.com dictionary. Available at: https:// ​ w ww.merriam-​ webster.com/​ dictionary/​empower Mulligan, M. and Smith, P. (2010) Art, Governance and the Turn to Community: Putting Art at the Heart of Local Government, Melbourne: Globalism Research Centre, RMIT. Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2000) ‘Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions’, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1): 54–​67. Shier, H. (2001) ‘Pathways to participation: openings, opportunities and obligations’, Children & Society, 15(2): 107–​17. Thompson, N. (ed) (2012) Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991–​2011, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wong, S.K.S. (2015) ‘Painting new roles and relationships: a rural community mural project in China’, The International Journal of Social, Political and Community Agendas in the Arts, 10(2): 1–​13. Wong, S.K.S. (2016) Defining Community Art: Theoretical and Practical Reconstruction, doctoral dissertation, Hong Kong: Lingnan University. Wu, M. (2015) Art as Social Interaction, Organizers: Association of the Visual Arts in Taiwan, AVAT Kaitak, Centre for Research and Development, Academy of Visual Arts, HKBU. Available at: https://​ issuu.com/​artassocialinteraction/​docs/​asi_​ebook

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Maintaining a critical approach to collaborative art and youth work practice in neoliberal times Fiona Whelan and Jim Lawlor

Figure 11.1: Fiona and Jim

Source: Fiona Whelan & Orla Whelan. Illustration by Orla Whelan, originally published in TEN: Territory, Encounter & Negotiation by Fiona Whelan, 2014. © Fiona Whelan & Orla Whelan.

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Introduction Fiona Whelan and Jim Lawlor (Figure 11.1), based in Dublin, Ireland, have been working together since 2004; Jim as Manager of Rialto Youth Project (RYP), a community-​based youth service in Dublin’s south inner city; and Fiona as artist in residence there. Together, and in collaboration with a range of other partners in youth work, community development, the arts and beyond, their collaborative practice has been committed to a complex critical exploration of power relations at personal, community and societal levels. In this conversation, they exchange and build analyses of prior arts processes that engaged young people and adults in open-​ended dialogical enquiries into power and inequality. They also critically interrogate the values and methodologies at the core of those collaborations. As contemporary youth work and community development in Ireland becomes increasingly evidence-​ based and outcome-​driven, Fiona and Jim both debate and argue for an emergent approach to practice that is collaborative, open-​ended, dialogical and imaginative. Fiona first met Jim when she commenced an artists’ residency in Rialto, Dublin in 2004. Over 16 years, the artist and organisation forged a working relationship, creating the conditions for a trans-​disciplinary and open-​ended collaborative practice to emerge, committed to exploring and reconfiguring power relations. This includes three major projects –​ Policing Dialogues (2007–​11), Natural History of Hope (2012–​ 16) and What Does He Need? (with Brokentalkers 2018+). This chapter transcribes part of a conversation Fiona and Jim had in late 2019, using the theme of power to examine the possibility of maintaining a critical approach to collaborative art and community-​based youth work. At stake is the extent to which the field of practice is increasingly subject to neoliberal and managerial imperatives vis-​à-​vis prescribed ‘outcomes’.

Setting a context Rialto is located in the south-​west inner city of Dublin and has a population of about 5,000. RYP was established in 1980, from a recognition that the needs of many young people in Rialto were not being met by the traditional youth club model of the 1970s, requiring a distinct role for the new organisation. In its 40-​year history, much of the youth work practice in RYP engaged with young people living in two local authority complexes –​Fatima Mansions and Dolphin House –​ while also running an area-​wide youth service. Strong community development traditions are associated with these complexes. Fatima

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has seen significant social and physical regeneration driven by strong community leadership in response to a drugs epidemic, a sustained period of high unemployment, anti-​social behaviour and evidence of state neglect.1 Dolphin House is currently going through a major regeneration. Today the wider neighbourhood of Rialto is made up of a diverse population, with a mix of social and private housing.2 The trans-​disciplinary practice of Fiona Whelan and RYP operates at the intersection of collaborative arts practice and community-​based youth work, engaging a range of partners and producing multiple public manifestations over the last decade and a half. The early years (2004–​07) saw strong working relationships form between Fiona and the youth work team in RYP, where many projects were established with groups of young people exploring their sense of place. It was from this phase that the theme of power emerged, and in 2007 there appeared to be a collective appetite to explore both unequal societal power relations and the power relationships at play in a collaborative process between a youth organisation, young people and an artist. This signalled a distinct direction for the next decade of practice (2007–​ 16) which would traverse discipline and sector, and engage staff and young people in RYP and wider publics in two projects, committed to critically examining and responding to power relations at a personal, community and societal level. The first project (2007–​11) was led by a group of young people, youth workers and an artist who formed as What’s the Story? Collective, whose commitment to examining power relations led to a longitudinal project engaging An Garda Síochána (Ireland’s national police service) exploring and responding to young people’s lived experiences of power and policing. This iterative process included The Day in Question (Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2009) –​a dialogical encounter or event which centred on participating Gardaí reading aloud a choreographed collection of young people’s anonymous experiences of policing in the presence of the collective, and a group of invited witnesses. A year later, Policing Dialogues (The LAB, 2010) was a six-​week exhibition and residency which engaged a diverse set of publics and included a weekly training inquiry intended to increase awareness of dignity and respect in relationships between Gardaí and young people. The project culminated in the production of a newspaper The Policing Dialogues Review (2011). Subsequently, the Natural History of Hope project (2012–​16) brought together a diverse group of women to explore contemporary equality issues. Based on a collection of 200 anonymous stories gathered from women living and/​or working in Rialto, this project first manifested in

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a series of public events called ‘Listenings’, followed by the development of a temporary local school for women, underpinned by three core values as a guide to action: exploring power, sharing personal truth and acting in solidarity. The project culminated in a major theatre performance titled Natural History of Hope (with Brokentalkers, Project Arts Centre in 2016), in which the female protagonist, a mannequin called Hope, would attempt to survive, and if possible to thrive, against a backdrop of social themes identified through the gathered stories. In each public manifestation across both projects, the form of the work and the constitution of the targeted publics, as well as the nature of the engagement between those publics and the creators of the projects, all emerged organically through the cumulative process. This can be said for our current project too –​What Does He Need? (Fiona Whelan, Brokentalkers & Rialto Youth Project, 2018+). This project picks up on some of the critical tensions presented in Natural History of Hope (2016), and explores how men and boys are shaped by and influence the world they live in, intending to create significant public dialogue about the current state of masculinity. The core methodological device that is central to the research phase of this project, is the co-​creation of a boy by a group of people who take responsibility for naming their boy and guiding him through life. In each case, the boy that is created is from the specific place in which he is made, drawing on the knowledge and lived experience of his makers. To date, 13 boys have been created by different groups of adults, young people and children, the research informing two planned public manifestations in 2020.3

Conversation: Fiona:

Jim, you will recall at the event we organised in 2014 in the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin, Professor Kathleen Lynch described how the charity model of social justice, which is dominant in Ireland, institutionalises unequal relationships.4 Her analysis connected for me, with what the art critic Grant Kester describes as the ‘salvage paradigm’, which sees an artist setting out to improve the people with whom they work, people who are positioned as flawed in some way.5 For me, this all resonates with the contemporary ethics of ‘social inclusion’ which I see as insidious in so far as the systemic power relationships underpinning the conditions of inclusion are not challenged. As the

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sociologist Kevin Ryan has tracked, the language of power radically altered during the 1980s and 1990s when inequality became reframed as ‘disadvantage’, and poverty became subsumed within the concept of social ‘exclusion’ leading, in turn, to policies centred on ‘inclusion’.6 As with the language of participation or integration, I am cautious about a version of social inclusion which doesn’t take full account of the root causes of inequality. Engaging with such practices of ‘inclusion’ creates the risk of denying or neutralising systemic power relations.     I think our collaborative practice offers a different ethical framework, placing analysis of power relations as the core principle –​both at the micro-​level of lived experience, which typically reveals macro-​level systemic inequalities, and at the meta-​level of collaborative arts practice. For me, this persistent commitment to constantly examine, talk about and represent power relations offers an alternative ethical framework to that of social inclusion, and a commitment that has become one of my strongest governing principles. I believe that this has been hugely influenced by my immersion in the distinctive values of Rialto Youth Project (RYP) during my formative years as an artist, watching RYP consistently refusing to endorse the de-​politicised language in the Irish State’s classification of Rialto as ‘disadvantaged’. Instead, in your guiding mission statement, you adopted the defiant language of class-​based ‘oppression’ and ‘marginalisation’. Can you speak to the values of RYP, how they emerged and the challenges the organisation faces in living by them in this era of neoliberalism?7 Jim:  I have lived and worked through all the youth work reports that have been commissioned by the Irish State over the last 40 years. I was at the conference in 1970 when the first grant for youth work was announced and it was seen as such a victory for the youth work sector because, for the first time ever, youth work was being recognised by the State. The consequence now is neoliberalism, and a new version of youth work. At that time in the 1970s, the antagonist –​the outside critical thinker –​was welcomed in, but the politics of

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youth work changed as a natural development when the State interfered. Some of the national voluntary organisations fought tooth and nail not to put youth work on statutory funding. As you have described elsewhere in relation to the community arts movement, once you put something on a statutory basis, you suck the life out of it; it becomes more about the procedures and the governance, and now in 2019 that is at an extreme in Irish youth work.8     To fill in the bit in the middle, somewhere in the 2000s, the Irish State began to fight against the democratic values of community development and youth work. I would argue that the context of austerity which began in 2008 provided the State with an opportunity to engage in a process to reclaim the power.9 They came after us. They took over the sector. Local partnership companies were shut down. They went for some of the big ones like the Dublin Inner-​City Partnership –​that was quite a powerful one. Then Community Development Projects were eventually taken over by the local authorities, a 44 per cent cut in youth work followed, and we’ve seen where the figures are at now.10 Local councillors claimed that it was always in the plan that those local partnerships would be taken back under the control of the local authorities, but at community level, we all thought naively that we were in control. The community sector was challenging local councillors, and local authorities. The whole regeneration of Fatima happened during that phase with local people fighting for their voices to be heard. But the State is now reclaiming the sector in order to control it. So, the issue is that the social inclusion model has become institutionalised.     If you take RYP, the values here are clear. A group of us wrote the mission statement in the early 1990s and in all the time since, it hasn’t needed to change: In an age of inequality, where working class communities are oppressed, the Rialto Youth Project is working towards bringing about social change, providing an integrated youth service, based on the needs of young people and in particular those most at risk.11

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Fiona:

But an organisation having a clear set of values doesn’t ensure anything. In fact, mechanistic practice exists here like anywhere else. I don’t say that in order to criticise or demoralise staff, but I feel it’s important to name it. Community work and youth work requires us to be more than mechanistic. We have responsibilities. We’ve no right to impose our personal lives, our values and our experiences on young people or communities. We should never get settled into a way of doing youth work. We need to be unsettled all the time. And so, what you say about us needing to always talk about power sits well with me, because it doesn’t let you settle. The outcome that we should look for with all this talking about power, is that young people talk about power themselves. If people in the community are talking about power, we have succeeded. I think that would be a very significant effect of the practice. I also think it’s exceptional to aspire to always being unsettled as a key value. As you say, constantly talking about power is one way to achieve that, as it always throws up something uncomfortable to engage with. But can I pick you up on your use of the word outcome, which is means-​end focused, and seems at odds with the idea of an emergent practice that is always trying to stay unsettled. I distinctly remember the change in culture in RYP as a result of The Atlantic Philanthropies’ influence here from around 2009.12 Laptops appeared in front of every youth worker, linked to a central database, which was fed by new tools including logic models, where desired outcomes are framed from the beginning of the process.13 The approach suited much of the programme-​based work taking place in RYP in which outcomes had been identified and could be striven for, such as programmes in sexual health, drugs awareness as well as the various arts programmes which had a clear linear structure of progression marking distinct phases of development. But framing outcomes from the outset, which the logic model requires, always seemed at odds with the emergent, open-​ended project-​based work we were doing somewhat intuitively and responsively. More than ever, I feel it’s politically important to resist the

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pressure to be outcome-​driven, feeding evidence into the system to achieve these outcomes. I wonder, can you elaborate on how you are using the term ‘evidence’ in the increasingly outcome-​driven and evidence-​ based landscape we inhabit, where we are expected to indicate ‘outcomes’ and ‘impact’ in a way that is often short-​sighted and reductive? We have obviously argued about this at different stages over the last decade but I’d be interested in your position now. Jim: Fiona, you are the most evidence-​led person I know, because you record everything. You sit with your laptop as you are now, and you take notes on everything. What is that only building evidence? Like in the recent process during What Does He Need? (2018+), where you wrote the poem ‘Our Stevie’ based on the conversations you had with the group of young men. You took down every word they said in those conversations. Then you reorganised those words into a narrative in the form of a poem, but then you checked back with them, over and over. You were not checking in an academic way, you were reading their body language, hearing what was not said as well. Now you are at a point of being able to say ‘I heard right’ because they didn’t object to the order you put on the words, nor did they take issue with the content. You helped them to communicate something. You heard them, you shared with them what you heard and they agreed with what you heard. They would never write it the way you wrote it but they recognise themselves in what you wrote. That is evidence gathering. The young men’s intelligence is gathered in there. They have a sophisticated understanding of their lives but they don’t have a narrative, or the language to describe it. You caught their spirit and they recognised it. It’s simple at one level, but very sophisticated on another level.     You might say it’s building for the next phase of work, but I interpret that as evidence –​you are building the evidence base so you can make the next good decision. So, we need to separate out what this evidence thing looks like. All you have to do is look back to Policing Dialogues and Natural History of Hope and the processes involved. They were organic, and that is what we need

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Fiona:

Jim:

to stay faithful to; but that does not mean they don’t have a pedagogy, a system, a set of ways of working that builds evidence to work from. Sometimes it sounds when you talk about things being open-​ended that it is so free and open that there is nothing structured. That’s not true. It requires very careful evidence gathering and planning based on that evidence. We can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater [the baby being the tools that have become linked to the neoliberal order that surrounds us]. What I consider good practice is actually evidence-​based work. I’ve sat in rooms where I have felt very awkward saying those things, because it does feel like I’ve gone over to the other side, but I don’t think I’ve changed at all in relation to my view on that. I always use you as an ­example –​you are recording everything that is being said. Yes, I see your point. But for me, recording is part of the listening practice that is central to what I do, in which I try to capture the layers of a process, in real time, to be able to respond appropriately. That includes capturing the learning that emerges from collaborative practice in this specific context. Yes, this process can be interpreted as evidence gathering; however, my concerns are in relation to how evidence is framed by the Irish State or the State agencies that are funding the sector –​the current ‘evidence-​based’ paradigm that dominates the policy arena. Who is [the] evidence for? Who gets to decide on what counts as evidence? It’s a power issue. When I record and gather evidence in the way you describe, it is for me to ensure my practice is as rigorous and informed as it can be, but the first destination of what is gathered is the collective space of collaboration, where I’m working with a group and we are gathering our own evidence, and analysing and responding to it. It’s not evidence to be extracted as data for the purpose of control, so that new outcomes can be prescribed externally. But I would argue that sometimes along the way, that evidence is very useful to extract, when you want to influence policy. Really that’s the only use for it. The Policing Dialogues (2007–​11) project got us to a point where we were in conversation with decision makers

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Fiona:

Jim:

Fiona:

and policy makers and we were influencing how young people should be policed. Hopefully, the What Does He Need? (2018+) project and the insights gathered from the boys like Stevie that are created can influence policy around education. Yes, of course, and having influence at policy level has been an important ambition of the practice. We can see it particularly with Policing Dialogues, where we established a specific strand of the project to examine existing police training and explore ways of addressing identified gaps. But my point is that, when we started talking about power with young people in the early days of that project, we didn’t set out to develop local police training or to feature in an influential report from the Commission for the Future of Policing.14 We arrived at those moments because our own critical process led us there. As outcome-​driven logic models now seem to have become part of the governance of youth work, I worry about the possibilities that are shut down when outcomes are predetermined. I think that is a misinterpretation of what a logic model is. That may well be where I depart from neoliberal values. For me, the logic model is a tool that can be used to build evidence in the way we have described here, to inform the next phase of a process. It may be a reductive interpretation of the logic model, but whatever potential the logic model has for creating useful evidence, that holistic approach isn’t what we see as a result of neoliberal tools infiltrating management and governance structures from third-​ level institutions to the community sector. In fact, there can be a real suppressing of critical thinking and open-​ended ideas, in favour of a means-​ends rationale. I understand your point about throwing the baby out with the bathwater –​there are many tools that can be useful to us, but they all should come with warnings about their potential to become part of a formulaic approach. I can relate to this in a different way. In my recent thesis reflecting upon the last decade of practice, I identified three methodological devices that I see as consistently present throughout our last two projects and public manifestations, but it’s important to me

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Jim: Fiona:

 

that I framed these devices retrospectively.15 As you are only too aware, in reality, collaborative arts practice operates in messy relational spaces. So I want to resist the application of those methodological devices as part of a framework that should be absolutely reproduced in other contexts, because that is another demand in this neoliberal era –​the expectation for replication, the desire for repeatability.16 I also think that framing these specific devices is important for this conversation, because collectively they enforce the values of collaboration and open-​ended enquiry. Let’s hear them at this point. Ok, the first device is the central positioning of personal anonymous testimonies in the projects, which has created opportunities for individual investment for those involved. Through the projects and in various public manifestations, these individual stories get threaded together and they re-​emerge publicly as relational experiences. This presence of first-​person narratives is enhanced by the second device which involves the visual representation of power in all public events, presenting specific metaphors and symbols to de-​individualise stories of inequality and to give representational form to systemic inequality. There are many examples of this from the different projects. One such example is from the Natural History of Hope (2016) performance, where the theme of class is signified through the metaphor of the bubble, introduced on stage to the mannequin Hope. The bubble is described as something that you can look out from while also being observed through, representing the relational nature of class-​b ased inequality. Where one is positioned in relation to the bubble is sustained both by external forces such as oppressive forms of visible power and through internal forces such as cultural norms perpetuated within.17 The bubble forms part of a visual lexicon for power that emerges during the performance, existing alongside a script built from the collection of personal narratives. Crucially, the final device is the presence of a core group of young people or adults who represent and publicly perform the relational nature of inequality in the public work that emerges. This relates back to my earlier

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Jim:

Fiona:

Jim:

point about research not being extracted from people as data, but always returning to the group to process its significance. For example in the Natural History of Hope (2016) performance, the individual anonymous testimonies and the metaphors were experienced by the audience in the presence of a cast of 30 women living or working in Rialto, the group becoming caretakers of the collection of stories. A group’s physical presence forms part of the visual and haptic experience of each public manifestation, their own bodily experience co-​ existing in the space. This haptic register creates a live public opportunity to reconfigure new relations with the stories and the visual symbols of power. When the three methodological devices (verbal, visual and performative) converge in any of the work, it feels like we are operating in the generative, collaborative space of political imagination, where new ways of collectively being in the world can be imagined. Yes, but what strikes me in your description of these devices is the practice of collaboration –​what it really takes to collaborate. The word ‘collaboration’ has been colonised. We see this all the time in policy as less radical definitions are put on the language we use. It happened with ‘participation’ and ‘disadvantage’, and you described earlier what happened with the principles of ‘inclusion’. They all sound fine as words, but when you scratch the surface you find that they are being used differently. ‘Collaboration’ is now used by policy makers to describe a working method. It sounds very straightforward, but these devices you are describing take me back to those messy spaces and how nuanced they are; the risk involved, the time, and the listening –​deep listening. Listening can sound like something simple but it’s so sophisticated … … Listening, negotiation, conflict, all the small steps, the thousands of meetings you and I and others have had in this very room, over years, that don’t get represented anywhere, but are central to the collaborative process. Those meetings are what it all rests on. The question to someone who says they want to collaborate should be, ‘Are you really up for it? It’s not the easiest way to do things. You can want what RYP stands for. You can want to live by values of collaboration and collective

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thinking, but are you up for it? Are you really willing to invest your time? Will you actually engage in the collaborative process?’ Fiona: What strikes me is how ordinary that process is really, like building any good relationship; but now it feels politically important to fight for an open-​ended, collaborative and generative practice, in an increasingly individualistic and outcome-​driven society. Jim: But neoliberalism is so dominant. It has been so successful at infiltrating every part of life that these processes we do, are mere drops in the ocean [or the bathwater]. It is really important to have the drops, because if there is to be a push back, if there is to be a resistance, we need to have had these collaborative experiences to learn from. But what we now have to do is turn these experiences into processes that change systems. Fiona: Absolutely. That’s certainly the challenge I feel faced with now, having stood back from the practice to write a thesis about it. I really believe in our approach to date, where a form of relational power is built through collaboration, in which experiences of power are shared, where people collectively engage with those experiences and their context, and then develop approaches to speak back to power. And of course Natural History of Hope (2012–​16) took some of the devices and principles of Policing Dialogues (2007–​11) as a starting point, from which the process evolved to engage with invisible and intangible forms of power. So we know there’s a practice there that could be further developed and multiplied to have greater effect, and systemic change has always been the ambition. But I’m caught now in terms of how to achieve this.     If we were to align to the open-​ended values of project-​based work that has got us to this point, we should be resisting any formal application of this methodology; and yet I’m not so happy with myself that I want to simply continue to live by the values of the practice as it is, and keep developing ‘projects’. In youth work, framing this practice as ‘project-​ based’ helped us to distinguish it as organic as against programme-​based approaches. In the arts, framing

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Jim:

Fiona:

Jim:

one’s practice as project-​based differentiates it from the creation of products. But doing projects is no longer enough for me. It feels like we are at an important juncture now, that requires another approach –​perhaps the establishment of a new entity, an organisation or institution. I know I have been saying this for a while, but I feel this might be where I’m heading, which feels like a significant step for an artist to make. Yes, we have done these projects and they have got us this far on a journey. Relationships were formed that brought us to a certain place. But if we see this as ‘evidence-​building’, and I’m using the term in the way we have used it in practice, then we now need to respond to our own evidence. A change in approach does not mean you disregard the processes to date. No, you take them as evidence and you let them influence what is next. That stays true to the values. Yes, it does. But of course the issue is that we still very much rely on systems that have been affected by neoliberalism. As soon as we start looking for funding, we are faced with the language of ‘evidence’ and ‘impact’. Likewise, when it comes to engaging in platforms for analysis and distribution of the work, such as academic publishing where this conversation is being distributed, we are participating in a sector that profits from precarious labour, with many people working in academia on temporary contracts, competing against each other for limited opportunities, and which makes it an imperative to publish in journals owned by for-​profit corporations. I say ‘yes’ to publishing opportunities repeatedly because I want to bring the practice into the discourse of the sectors we engage in, especially where I see like-​minded people carving out space to critique and explore such issues, but there is always a game of power at play when you look for funding, promotion, distribution. You have to keep one eye on that all the time. The task is to find funders and supporters whose values are close enough to your own. Every year I look at the funding structures available to RYP. I look at our values, our philosophy and the work we are trying to do and I map that against national policy –​the State’s

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Fiona:

definition of youth work for example. You will see on our website, we talk about the Costello Report from 1984. It is the closest policy there has been to where we sit as an organisation, because it recognises more explicitly the systemic inequalities that exist in our society. Now in 2019, the State considers youth projects as theirs, and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs are working off principles of value for money, evidence and measurement. We can see this in Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures: The National Policy Framework for Children and Young People, 2014–​2020, in which the reality of inequality in the life of young people is watered down. What the department have done to this end, is make youth work only one part of the youth sector. So it’s not the youth work sector now, it’s the youth sector, which encompasses people working in care settings and other forms of education such as those run by the Education and Training Board. The State robbed the language of youth work, watered it down and turned it into something else. There is still enough space in current policy to suit the values of RYP, so I can apply for streams of funding, but the base of this is getting narrower and narrower. But I think it’s important to remember the space of political imagination that I mentioned earlier, which recognises that we are both affected by political action in the world and can have an effect on the conditions of possibility for political action. You have highlighted changes in policy over nearly half a century, so while we are witnessing how the youth work sector is currently subject to the neoliberal/​managerial paradigm, we can also see that change has happened, and that like all power structures, the field is contingent and contestable. Mick Wilson described certain registers of collaborative arts practice as ‘applied experiments in political imagination’, recognising the potential of real lived imagination that operates within those messy spaces of collaboration we know well.18 In ending this conversation, I think it’s important to remember the scope of solidarity and resistance associated with the concerted power of practitioners working collectively and imaginatively –​the generative potential in this type

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of relational practice, where contestation is kept alive. Why is it important? Because it reminds us that other futures are not foreclosed. Notes Fatima Mansions was a social housing complex in Rialto, built in 1949 as part of the solution to Dublin inner-​city tenement living. Following a decline of the estate due to recession, limited social investment, poverty, exclusion and a drugs epidemic, in 2004 an agreement was reached which gave way to a physical and social regeneration of the estate. See Fatima Groups United (2015) ‘Regeneration’, Fatima Groups United, https://​fgu.ie/​index.php/​regeneration 2 Dolphin House is Dublin’s largest remaining public housing flat complex, currently undergoing a major regeneration. See https://​www.dolphinhouse.ie/​about/​ 3 The core methodology referred to here was first developed as a one-​day immersive workshop for adults, bringing together the transdisciplinary practices of Whelan and Brokentalkers and the significant socio-​political analysis and embodied knowledge of youth work and community development practice to create a boy. This immersive workshop process was honed through an intensive studio-​based development phase for the artists supported by a residency awarded to Create/​ Brokentalkers through ‘... the lives we live’ Grangegorman Public Art. Whelan and Rialto Youth Project subsequently developed a dynamic programme for children and young people, which engages groups in a creative and pedagogical process to co-​create a boy and explore his needs and experiences as he interacts with the world around him. See http://​www.whatdoesheneed.com 4 Lynch, K. (2014) ‘The Careless State: Why We Need Radical Egalitarian Thinking in Ireland’. Presentation at TEN: Territory, Encounter & Negotiation seminar and book launch, NCAD, Dublin, 5 November 2014, http://​www.fionawhelan.com/​ event/​ten-​seminar-​book-​launch/​ 5 Kester, G. (1995) ‘Aesthetic evangelists: conversion and empowerment in contemporary community art’, Afterimage, 22, January. 6 See Whelan, F. and Ryan, K. (2016) ‘Beating the bounds of socially-​engaged art? A transdisciplinary dialogue on a collaborative art project with youth in Dublin, Ireland’, Field Journal, 4(Spring). Available at: http://​field-​journal.com 7 See Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 8 See Whelan, F. and Ryan, K. (2016) ‘Beating the bounds of socially-​engaged art? A transdisciplinary dialogue on a collaborative art project with youth in Dublin, Ireland’, Field Journal, 4(Spring. Available at: http://​field-​journal.com/​issue-​4/​ beating-​the-​bounds-​of-​socially-​engaged-​art-​a-​transdisciplinary-​dialogue-​on-​ acollaborative-​art-​project-​with-​youth-​in-​dublin-​ireland 9 Following the global recession of 2008, Ireland entered a period of austerity characterised by an unprecedented programme of fiscal consolidation, which included an increase in taxes, a reduction in State spending and a recapitalisation of the country’s banks. This period had significant material consequences for the youth and community sectors. See Coulter, C. and Nagle, A. (2015) Ireland Under 1

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Austerity: Neoliberal Crisis, Neoliberal Solutions, Manchester University Press, muse. jhu.edu/​book/​51327 Kiely, E. and Meade, R. (2018) ‘Contemporary Irish youth work policy and practice: a governmental analysis’, Child & Youth Services, 39(1): 17–​42. See Rialto Youth Project (2017) ‘What we do’, Rialto Youth Project, rialtoyouthproject.net From 2009 to 2014, Rialto Youth Project received funding from The Atlantic Philanthropies. This funding supported the development and implementation of new tools to capture and guide the youth work process in Rialto. This included a logic model template, which was implemented for all youth workers developing a new process, coupled with an Individual Learning Plan (ILP) developed for each young person. In proposing a new process for young people in RYP, a youth worker now develops a logic model, which sets out the background/​context to the proposed activity, a needs assessment of those involved, the programme plan, the participants, inputs, outputs and desired learning outcomes. Final report by the Commission on the Future of Policing to the Minister for Justice in September 2018, Commission on the Future of Policing (2018) The Future of Policing in Ireland, http://​www.policereform.ie/​en/​POLREF/​The%20 Future%20of%20Policing%20in%20Ireland(web).pdf/​Files/​The%20Future%20 of%20Policing%20in%20Ireland(web).pdf Fiona Whelan’s 2019 PhD Reconfiguring Systemic Power Relations: A Collaborative Practice-​Based Exploration of Inequality with Young People and Adults in Dublin is available at https://​arrow.dit.ie/​appadoc/​95/​ See Kiely, E. and Meade, R. (2018) ‘Contemporary Irish youth work policy and practice: A governmental analysis’, Child & Youth Services, 39(1): 17–​42. See Two Fuse (2018) Freedom? Cork: Cork University Press. Wilson, M. (2018) ‘Applied experiments in political imagination’, in Learning in Public: TransEuropean Collaborations in Socially Engaged Art, Create (Ireland) and Live Art Development Agency (UK) on behalf of the Collaborative Arts Partnership (CAPP) network.

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The kinaesthetics of community: social circus, corporeal aesthetics and the balancing act of a development practice in (post-)neoliberal conditions Jennifer Beth Spiegel

Introduction Movement is an inextricable aspect of changing social configurations. As mind-​body, nature-​nurture binaries are increasingly challenged, not only by shifting intellectual frameworks, but by the very ways in which social and cultural programmes and initiatives are designed, the role of kinaesthetic dynamics and the kinds of social and cultural modes of engagement they encourage or make possible, is increasingly being taken into consideration within community development theory and practice (Breivik and Sudmann, 2018; Morton et al, 2019). Corporeal habits and modes of engaging the world shape both individuals’ subjective experiences and, potentially, collective modes of co-​creation, altering how worlds are materially shaped. Moreover, while the movement of bodies occurs at the local and ‘micro’ level –​ foregrounding questions of touch, physical balance and affectivity –​the conditions of movement are shaped by wider institutional structures and policies. This chapter focuses on global practices of ‘social circus’, highlighting some of the ways in which circus arts are currently being used as a community development modality to transform human social experiences and relations through the creation of conditions for experimentation with bodily movement and bodily relations. It further explores the ways in which questions of the personal, the interpersonal, the community and the institutional interrelate within the context of programmes using circus arts in the service of social and community development goals.

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Antonio Gramsci (1971: 138) famously argued that each individual ‘participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it’. The work of ‘development’ within community-​based arts practices is not then merely a matter of conceiving the world, but also living and navigating it from within. More recently, Meade and Shaw (2007: 419) argue that ‘community arts constitute important sites of counter-​hegemonic struggle against limited and limiting accounts of human experience’. Artistic practices can provide sites for resisting received ways of encountering the world and altering a sense of one’s role within such a world. Each practice, project and programme offers unique aesthetic and disciplinary tools that may shed light on the ideological and discursive formations that shape subjectivity through, for example, the creation and discussion of images, as well as the creation of alternate images and development of alternate practices. By affectively reorienting perceptions of the various relations that make up a world, arts-​based community practices can provide avenues for the development of both subjectivities and collectivity. Such processes, however, function in complex and constrained conditions. The intention of this chapter is to offer kinaesthetically based understanding of the unique ways in which circus arts –​specifically ‘social circus’ programmes –​can contribute to processes of community development, and the production of subjectivity and collectivity therein, by tapping into bodily modes of relating to and engaging with the world. Over the past 50 years or so there has been a simultaneous resurgence of interest in the social construction and political stakes of corporeal practices, theorised most famously by the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1975; 1980). Foucault (1980: 55) showed how ‘the phenomenon of the social body is the effect not of a consensus but of the materiality of power operating on the very bodies of individuals’ via a number of both state and non-​governmental institutions. These can include educational investments to train bodies in certain ways, imprison them in certain ways, sanction particular kinds of sexual unions, among other avenues. However, Foucault equally pointed out that bodies conditioned in particular ways nonetheless utilise the awarenesses and disciplines cultivated in myriad ways, including in pursuit of alternate configurations of power and alternate social, political and libidinal desires. Sociologist of dance, Randy Martin (2012) extended this analysis to demonstrate the ways in which corporeal artistic practices –​specifically dance –​can model and transform what he calls ‘kinaesthetic sociality’. This term refers to

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how social relations and power dynamics are reinforced or transformed through embodied techniques passed on in various formal and informal settings that shape how we move through shared spaces within our everyday lives. Practices like hip-​hop, he argued, transform the ways bodies move, and create a different system of valuation, celebrating different kinds of bodily expressions than might be recognised and valued elsewhere, and thereby carving out a space for different ways of kinetically experiencing the world. Moreover, how technique is taught, and what relations of power that technique and its teaching embody, likewise encode values. Here, I adapt this concept to the practice of social circus, focusing on kinaesthetics of community at work: how community is developed through physically based relationships and sensibilities to self and other, and altered through socially oriented artistic processes of social circus as a community development practice. The chapter is based on a six-​year study conducted with selected social circus organisations in Canada and Ecuador, all of which were internally networked with instructors, trainers and programme designers in active dialogue. The bulk of fieldwork took place between 2014 and 2018, during which time I was joined by colleagues from both countries.1 While strong differences existed between sites and programmes, the shared history of the practice as it evolved across these connected sites gave rise to several striking similarities in the approaches, practices, reported experience and dilemmas. Here I synthesise some of these trends as they relate to the corporeal practices of social circus as a form of community development that engages in reconfiguring ways of seeing and engaging the world. Through this analysis, the kinaesthetics of community, I suggest, are multi-​scalar; cutting across micro and macro processes, ultimately shaping the ways community is formed through the bodies of those who constitute –​and artfully transform –​it. While the practice of social circus has evolved within a predominantly neoliberal policy climate, in part helping to provide skills to navigate imperatives for self-​management and generate entrepreneurial potential, the collectively based character and anti-​ hegemonic expressivity social circus fosters through its re-​forging of bodily habits, I argue, offers some tools for creative resistance. The first section explores the ways in which distinct approaches to embodiment in social circus encode processes of valuation and suggest distinct approaches to community development. The second section situates these specific corporeally based development approaches within the varied and changing policy terrains of community art and development. The third, and final, section anchors the role of social circus as a kinetic art and argues for the role of performance as pivotal

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to its force as an approach to community development, socially nuanced by the specificity of the aesthetic generated.

Kinaesthesis as a basis for community development The practice of social circus is grounded in the kinetic art of circus. People from diverse backgrounds come together and learn circus skills together: juggling, aerials, human pyramid making, partner acrobatics, tumbling, stilt walking, clowning and whatever other circus or circus-​ related skills are in the arsenal of local instructors. The use of circus within broader social and cultural development agendas has a long and varied history, traversing the professional art world and the stimulation of cultural industries (Leslie and Rantisi, 2010; Leroux, 2012; Zhang, 2016), creative social outreach initiatives of states and NGOs (Rivard, 2007; Spiegel and Ortiz Choukroun, 2019) and initiatives to promote the social and cultural formation of future labour forces (Hurtubise et al, 2003; Spiegel, 2016). Socially oriented community circus programmes with specifically ‘at risk’ or ‘marginalised’ communities have existed at least since the mid-​20th century when, in Spain in the 1950s, Father Silva started what would become a travelling boys circus troupe, as a fundraising initiative for largely orphaned street-​involved youth, and toured the world inspiring similar initiatives (Arrighi, 2014). The sites of intervention by social circus are multiple: programmes have sought to help young women with eating disorders, bridge cultural divides, address trauma in refugee children and youth among other goals (Spiegel and Ortiz Choukroun, 2019). Through a range of physically based creative activities from trapeze to partner acrobatics, juggling and clowning, social circus programmes typically seek to offer those involved a set of tools for viewing and engaging with the world differently. Since the late 1990s, the Quebec-​based transnational circus company Cirque du Soleil has been one of the largest single funders of social circus in the world. The programmes were originally launched in the Americas –​simultaneously in Brazil and Quebec, Canada –​with street-​involved youth, though quickly expanded to other locations and communities. As explained in Cirque du Soleil’s Community Workers Guide (Lafortune and Bouchard, 2010), ‘the primary goal [of social circus] is not to learn circus arts, but rather to assist with participants’ personal and social development by nurturing their self-​esteem and trust in others, as well as by helping them to acquire social skills, become active citizens, express their creativity and realize their potential’. Within this approach, the principle of the ‘tandem’ –​the pairing of

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community workers anchored in local community organisations with artist-​instructors –​is core. At the end of each social circus session, typically all participants gather in circle formation and share experiences. This embodied experience becomes the anchor for extending lessons beyond the singular moment of creative discovery. The collectively generated conditions of the circus discovery, combined with the sharing of what was experienced within the collective setting, and its metaphorical possibilities, allows for what we might consider to be a collective aesthetic transformation in shared kinaesthetic memory. In their chapter entitled ‘Launching the Ball’, Ecuadorian social circus pedagogue Benjamin Ortiz Choukroun and Canadian professor of Arts Education Lynn Fels (2019: 126) write: ‘the simple act of throwing and catching the ball becomes both metaphor and practice for creating a show, being present in our relationships, attending with care to those standing in the circle, playing in exploration, in learning, in a shared journey’. Social circus strives to reach and welcome youth estranged, for various reasons, from dominant institutions. In this, the cultural practice and approach consciously distances itself from the perceived hierarchies of elite cultural training facilities, where only those with strong professional potential are selected and honed for success within an increasingly competitive job market (Spiegel and Harrison, 2019). Much of social circus’s pedagogical approach hinges on participants working collectively in activities that require entrusting one’s physical safety to others, such as in acro-​balance routines. For example, participants routinely report that they are motivated to control their own substance use in order to avoid letting down others in the group who are relying on them for support in a group pyramid (Spiegel and Parent, 2018). While cultural contexts, focuses and pedagogies of social circus vary from programme to programme, certain trends in experiences are common among youth in different parts of the world. Echoing the social circus discourse of the Quebec-​based Cirque du Monde programme, one participating artist described the philosophy of social circus as affecting transformation by moving from the individual to the collective through the body: The objective is to transform each individual and gradually change society. Learn not to judge others for their condition, appearance, or way of thinking ... . I feel it [social circus] has helped me find other alternatives, roads … When you recognize yourself as an individual, then you can be part of society and have some sort of impact. Change starts with oneself.

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However, social circus programmes seek to alter, in the sense of providing alternative modes of valuation, without necessarily challenging external social conditions head-​on. The individual, as a relational embodied being, is taken as the locus of change to be cultivated and is invited to co-​construct community. Partly due to ambivalence in the social objectives and ontology embedded in social circus pedagogies as circulating in the Americas, the ways in which corporeal learning takes place and the kinds of sociality and cultural aesthetic of valuation it potentiates are multiple and can be at odds with each other. Over the course of the research conducted by our team, three trends emerged concerning the way corporeality was approached as a kinaesthetic basis for community development. The first trend is firmly anchored in discipline and self-​control, wherein kinetic technique and bodily self-​control become signifiers of moral worth. One must be focused and practice to learn a new circus skill; one must be relatively sober to support another person in a two-​person tower. As one person who frequented a social circus programme in Quito put it, ‘I learned the technique; one must learn to control one’s body and become better, not to compete with others but to make oneself a better person.’ ‘It made me a more patient and tolerant person; somehow it helped me a lot to know myself and to have control over myself ’, stated another. The development of a sense of personal control became linked to finding one’s role and value within a broader community –​first within the social circus community, and later within the community more broadly. The role of discipline was equally highlighted by participants in Quebec, Canada: [The instructors] gave us small responsibilities. I realize that taking on this small responsibility showed me how to push and challenge myself. I wanted to be disciplined, because if I wasn’t disciplined, how could I tell [others to be]? Like you learn how to adapt and accept other people really. I find that interesting because I apply that type of stuff at work and at home, with my family. And it’s stuff I never realized before but it’s incredible because you finish by applying it in other spots and other circles in your life. Here, control over one’s own body becomes something that is learned, then shared, so that the sense of personal responsibility can echo out as responsibility for and to the collective. Through learning to control and develop ourselves, in other words, we learn to be there for others differently. This underlines the ways in which bodily potential and

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embodied identity are at a core level learned collectively, beginning with how one physically moves in the world. By extension, in learning how to be physically there for others, it can be cohesive and even anti-​individualist, or at least ‘collectively individualist’ –​generating safe practice conditions for different individual bodies. The second trend pertains to developing the expressive nature of the body and the relationship this bears to empathy and community. The focus on creative expression correlates most explicitly to the theatrical dimensions of circus, and within social circus is developed most directly in theatre games that can then integrate other circus disciplines. Thus, for example, one exercise leads participants to develop a character based on three others they wish to explore, and to allow that character to shape every aspect of their embodiment as they go about their technical circus activities. The expressive nature of bodies is further underscored in the capacity of physical actions to generate metaphor: much of the metaphoric work is grounded in the kinaesthetic learning that orients the choice of warm-​up games that, in turn, serve to orient circle discussions and provide a frame for the choreography of performances. For instance, in a ‘flocking’ game, one person offers a gesture that the rest of the ‘flock’ mirrors. One member of the flock separates from the group with their own gesture. Then, following the impulse of someone at the front of the ‘flock’, the rest of the collective responds to the lone individual with a collective movement. In one instance a participant confided later that he felt that the individual who broke away was one who was struggling to integrate into the group, and thus he chose to lead the ‘flock’ in offering a hug: an experience that the hug-​instigator recounted was pivotal to the evolution of that group. This exercise would later be integrated into a performance as a piece of choreography. As one participant explained, ‘Since I have been in social circus, I have been able to perceive body language in a different way. I can understand other things. I can understand a situation without words’. In learning to observe bodies, and to relate to bodies as expressive agents, social dynamics both within the room and out in the world become more readable to participants. Moreover, the effect of different relational responses to how an excluded member might act or feel also becomes an object of reflection and empathetic response. For example, in groups in which participants may be struggling with mental health issues, or have difficulty finding a place to shower, or come from radically different ethnic and class backgrounds, as is frequently the case in urban centre programmes, this empathy can serve to internally fortify community across difference.

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Critics of the tendency of social arts programmes to focus on inclusiveness and developing individual attitudes have argued that ‘none of these outcomes will change or even raise consciousness of the structural conditions of people’s daily existence, it will only help people to accept them’ (Bishop, 2012: 16). While the drawing out of lessons via an unpacking of the corporeal experience of mastering disciplines through training, as well as the developing of ways of reading and interpreting the body of the self and others may provide potential sites for conditioning and resistance, much depends on the discursive approach of the facilitators as well as the goals and designs of the programme (Gallagher, 2014). The third trend relates to the force of bodies as performative agents of social communication. As encountered in our field studies, those who harkened to this potential did so in a way that sought to address some of the concerns of the aforementioned critique. In social circus, the creative process is driven by the performer: the movements, characters and theme, or theme interpretation, are shaped via a series of exercises through which participants can transform circus skills into artistic expression. This often means that social circus can be used to address social issues or to offer a unique social aesthetic to resonate with the sensibilities of those engaged. Reflecting on a circus performance created for a Youth For Human Right’s event on the theme of prejudices experienced by street-​involved youth, one participant explains: I think that sometimes, you must put things into perspective so that people see it as if it were them and ask … would I like to feel judged, be stared at, because I am different? They [the audience] understand a bit more how we experience these prejudices. Through the circus show, people are more open to understanding this kind of thing. Here participants had generated a series of sketches of life ‘in the streets’ and engaging with related public institutions. They used acrobatics, clowning and object manipulation: a juggling pin becomes a bottle, a chase scene with police is depicted as a group acro-​balance act, a genderqueer character seeks a sense of equilibrium in a topsy turvy world by juggling with devil sticks while balancing on a rola bola (a plank on a roller). This third trend of the body as performative and social agent of communication is often the least developed in social circus pedagogy. The creation of a performance and the sharing of accomplishments with broader communities often provides a focus for the collective

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processes intrinsic to social circus. There is, however, much controversy over who the appropriate audience should be. Ostensibly, social circus may seem to be performance-​oriented in the sense of people viewing a show, presented as a product that is consumed by others beyond/​ outside the group. However, the idea of the arts as a product, primarily to be consumed, was rejected by the 1980s community arts movements out of which social circus pedagogy grew, in favour of maintaining focus on the process-​based social experience of participants in the arts themselves (Bishop, 2012). Approaching the kinaesthetic as performatively communicative of social processes of valuation, makes the social circus experience not only a matter of participants learning to empathise and relate to others, but of collectively generating a shared aesthetic approach and treatment of a theme. For example, in an intimate recital in the early years of a programme in Quito Ecuador, youth who were recruited largely off the streets explored how they might overcome their fear of heights. This fear becomes a shared metaphor, offering a verbal narration in a combination of Spanish and Kichwa, and redeveloping a language of the body through which to reorient themselves to social and cultural life. An aerial drop –​tumbling down from the ceiling on a silk –​became a metaphor for facing an unravelling future without fear. The kinetic nature of the art form meant that the metaphor had a strong metonymic basis: the overcoming of fear could be deeply felt in the body of the performer and extrapolated by those watching. Framed in this way, such a form of practice becomes one that makes personal growth a community affair, dependent on community support and creating kinetic avenues for re-​engaging in the life of the community. The audience itself acts as a key component of collective development that allows performers to extend themselves as community agents. The sense of playing with and transforming the sensible perception of identity and meaning for an ‘audience’ is already present within the closed spaced of a workshop of performing for others in the group as ‘spect-​actors’ (Boal, 1985). The performance of risk suggests that the development of such disciplined subjectivity is a community affair, responsive to a collective gaze, while the audience might themselves be inspired and moved, coming to see the (in some cases previously stigmatised) performer in a new light. In this sense, performers offer a unique artistic vision growing out of the process of collective exploration. Those involved are often well aware of the institutional imperatives that form the scaffolding of their work, even as the collective

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creation occasionally acts to re-​create a lifeworld and/​or to destabilise institutional imperatives (for example to show personal growth or to control substance use) thus giving expression to the social and cultural visions and aspirations of those engaged in the creative process. In some cases, such collective technologies of co-​creation ‘from below’ can offer a site for the subversion of dominant social relations and modes of embodiment through the kind of kinaesthetic sociality modelled; for example, the building and collapsing of a human pyramid while shouting the word ‘capitalism’ by a group performing with Montreal’s social circus organisation Cirque Hors Piste, before proceeding with a performance that satirises police aggression towards drunk street-​ involved youth, depicted as drinking from a juggling pin while hula hooping and acro-​balancing with the police officer. Many of the behaviours depicted and satirised are precisely those that social circus programsme are credited with addressing, including substance use and the alienation of street life more generally. This critical satirical vein suggests that the creative art form, and the expressive mode in which it functions, allows for alternative modes for developing, rather than simply disciplining, community. In this production, all characters remain present on stage the whole time, offering a sense of the collective process of creation and support in generating their social commentary. In social circus, such explicitly socially themed performances are, however, the exception rather than the rule: pirates, Halloween and Alice in Wonderland are just as likely to be themes chosen by organisers or participants themselves. Sensibilities around a theme are frequently heterogenous, reflecting the diversity perspectives in a group, in ways that can be contentious. For instance, in a group comprised of participants from multiple different indigenous communities, as well as non-​ indigenous youth from different backgrounds, the question of whether and how to incorporate traditional knowledges and performance styles was hardly straightforward. The navigation of this heterogeneity offers fertile ground for community development. A collectively produced show provides a site for multiple interpretations, informed by the desires and experiences of both performer and interpreter. In this, the social and aesthetic practice of kinetic performance creation is as processual as it is ‘show oriented’, with the telos of the show orienting the process itself. Attention to the body explicitly as a performative and collectively embodied developer of aesthetic sensibilities raises the stakes, both socially and artistically, in ways that community arts movements historically, and social circus communities have shied away from to

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varying degrees. Although these three aesthetic approaches to the body typically co-​exist, how they converge and are shaped by the ways in which specific policy inflects how kinaesthetic process can function as community development.

The corporeal politics of tumbling amid shifting policy terrains Social circus as a form of community development teeters at the crossroads of changing cultural practices, discourses of the body from both an artistic and social standpoint, and changing approaches to development more broadly. While in the 1970s many publicly supported community-​based arts practices emerged from various revolutionary movements, by the 21st century, concerns with sustainability required that programmes be supported by a combination of governmental funding and non-​governmental organisations (Plastow, 2015). In the later decades of the 20th century, principles of cultural democracy became prominent in discourses of community art in the hope that this approach could assist communities to learn from one another and communicate in multiple directions, countering the agendas of those elite institutions dominating the cultural sphere (Graves, 2005; Goldbard, 2006; Nicholson, 2011). By the early 2000s, austerity budgets had led to much concern that community arts were being used as cheap cosmetic ‘fixes’ in light of cuts to community services and infrastructures, and were aimed more at helping people adapt to, rather than resist, the exacerbation of social inequities (Bishop, 2012). In the second decade of the 21st century, cultural polarisation accompanying the rise of populist governments suggests that there may be a need to return to ‘identity bridging’ modes of community development. The framework of social change dominant within contemporary social circus, beginning with the transformation of personal embodied habits, can be seen to stand in iterative relationship to institutional and social conditions. A host of divergent political, cultural, social and economic considerations orient how bodily movements are experienced, as well as how the practice of social circus is conceived of and taken up by participants, funders, facilitators and others. The experience of touch, for instance, or the ways in which one reads the movement of bodies in order to draw emotional and social inferences, depends in large part on past associations as well as on the sense of social pressure carried over from other aspects of life. Italian autonomist Maurizio Lazzarato (2012) has shown how, in contemporary neoliberal societies, individuals are expected to be

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constantly working on themselves in order to prepare for engagement in the workforce. According to Federici (2004: 146), ‘the human body, and not the steam engine, not even the clock, was the first machine developed by capitalism’ when it mechanised the body as a tool to be disciplined by and for the economic system. The re-​enchantment of bodies as ‘more’ than simply tools only began to be embraced after the process of managing the body had been pervasively internalised, and individuals had been well integrated into the rhythms and demands of the workforce. In other words, social circus gains traction alongside a post-​industrial economy at a time in which ‘creativity’ is valorised in ever increasing domains, from marketing to the fostering of an entrepreneurial spirit. While focused ‘on’ the self, in the first instance, social circus as a form of art for community development can potentially become part of transforming social imaginaries, thus re-​shaping not only the would-​be ‘performer’ as a creative and potentially ‘productive’ agent, but also ways of relating to others and the world. Through practice, relationships to the body are redrawn within a changing social terrain. In the Americas, the first participants of the Cirque du Monde social circus programmes of the 1990s were street-​based youth often steeped in the critical punk countercultures of the time. Because of the virtuosity and technical skill required, circus can be approached as an ideal art for disciplining the body, while the integration of long-​ established street arts such as juggling, along with the larger-​than-​life fantastical imaginaries of acrobatics and aerial trapeze, can allow for spring-​boarding into alternative realities. Around the world, art and community development initiatives must grapple with the power of capital to influence social and creative processes through the various institutional structures that shape their delivery. Within the context of social circus, manifold perspectives on the relationship between creativity and precarity have shaped programmes, often leading to internal tensions in the direction that pedagogies and institutional configurations take (Spiegel and Ortiz Choukroun, 2019). While some focus on issues of economic precarity by offering job-​building skills, either in the form of transferable skills or artistic skills for entering the culture industry, others focus more directly on social precarity and correlated alienation. Despite a pedagogical focus on process, social circus as it has evolved around the world since the 1990s has increasingly became goal-​oriented; in the sense of building skills for navigating changing economies and preparing participants to be ‘creative’ and to forge their own paths (Spiegel and Ortiz Choukroun, 2019). Increasingly, programmes stress

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‘pre-​employability’ skills, and create avenues for ‘engagement’ in the community. In the case of Montreal’s social circus organisation, Cirque Hors Piste, collective creation workshops of two to three weeks are funded by a variety of public and private bodies as a ‘pre-​employability’ programme for the youth involved, with participants offered a small honorarium. The collective creation process, and development of skills it offers, is intended to help cultivate ‘transferable’ skills for eventual integration into economically productive systems, while fostering community in ways that are directed by micro-​community decision makers assembled by the programme. By contrast, in Latin America there is a strong desire for social circus to provide not only transferable skills, but artistic skills that can be used to develop not only creative industries (specifically the development of a professional circus scene), and tourism sectors, but also individual and regional artistic visions and creative livelihoods. Such an approach to art and cultural work as community development also seeks to uplift regionally produced cultural visions and unsettle economic dependence on natural resource extraction through developing artistic sectors (Spiegel and Ortiz Choukroun, 2019). These differences in approach occasionally place Latin American programmes in tension with north American and European funders (Sorzano, 2018). As practices circulate within global networks of ‘development programs’ the ‘beneficiaries’ and indeed even the ‘practitioners of such practices are caught in the nexus of competing institutional cultures. Indeed, ubiquitous terms such as ‘target population’, ‘artist’ and ‘community member’, and the implicit assumptions concerning who belongs to which category, are fraught with colonial and class politics. Globally, control of funding criteria by organisations and countries within the western and/​or northern regions over communities within the Global South, especially in Africa and Latin America, has meant the imposition of particular development models. Such models encode frameworks for the ways in which bodies are trained to see, interact and express, singularly and collectively as community members. Even within programmes, much discrepancy exists concerning the desired goals –​and thus the emphasis of the programme –​including the various perspectives on how each community ought to be developed through the kinetically based artistic process. These range from fostering community relations, to creating transferable skills for economic integration, or contributing perspectives as community artists. While this debate is far from unique to social circus, it plays out in particular ways. The three approaches to embodiment identified previously (the disciplinary, the expressive and the

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socially resistant) point to trends that have been given differential emphasis across programmes. Dissensus exists not only across the field of social circus, but sometimes within a single programme, with some emphasising the artistic and technical development, and others emphasising the social. Arguably both contribute to community development. High-​quality artistic skills development for those with little other access can offer an avenue for cultural democracy, while addressing social elements such as trust-​building can generate a community ethos. The goal in principle may be a blend of both; in practice, however, this is a tricky balancing and juggling act (literally and figuratively), negotiating between different pedagogical and outreach approaches within competing discursive and ideological frameworks. Many programmes seek a level of social ‘mixing’ between those of different cultural backgrounds, class backgrounds or both. Bessone (2017) has gestured towards this process as social circus’s creation of ‘organized cultural encounters’ where affective trust and de-​ stigmatisation across difference can build. Such goals are particularly common in inner city programmes, where a number of community organisations, each serving different (often overlapping) communities, partner with the circus artists. Within this context, a process that insists on timeliness and attendance risks alienating those whose survival needs make regular attendance difficult, while failure to do so may risk the capacity for group formation. A process that emphasises technical prowess, for example, risks alienating those with little background or confidence in their physical capacity. On the other hand, a programme that emphasises performance creation risks adding unnecessary pressure while shared language is still being formed. At the same time, under-​ emphasising the performance element risks depriving the process of a critical artistic horizon. The dual process of social circus sets about to integrate social ethics and social aesthetics in ways that can, in principle, be carried forth by those involved. As one participant put it, ‘I can’t say that my goals changed, because I didn’t have any before’. Now, however, her goals included touring to communities, sharing her own skills. By facilitating a process of corporeal ‘self-​management’ that connects the individual at once to community through rebuilding trust and practices of creative play, social circus can subvert a process of neoliberal self-​ management. In so doing, it fosters resilient and potentially resistant modes of seeing and engaging with the world that draw on kinetic art to collectively reconfigure social habits of interaction between and among geographically localised groups.

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Collapsing pyramids and the kinetic art of togetherness Before it became formalised as a modality of social outreach and community development, circus was first and foremost an art known for its spectacular qualities, and the ‘wow effect’ it frequently inspired. In the 18th and 19th centuries, at the height of what is now known as ‘traditional circus’ in the era of late-​colonial industrialism, an ethic of the triumphant individual had exalted the ingenuity and capacities of the human body, highlighting the ‘exceptional nature’ of individual performers and performances (Stoddart, 2000). By contrast the nouveau or contemporary circus, formed in the later decades of the 20th century, expanded the corporeal potentiality modelled by circus arts to celebrate the potential of ‘ordinary’ bodies. Here spectators are drawn into a thematised show, often with a narrative arc. Circus performers began to be presented in a more accessible manner, as inspiring figures that spectators might wish to emulate. Even though much contemporary circus hinges to some degree on the exceptional body (Hurley, 2008; Leroux, 2012), the awe-​inspiring presentation of these newer acts gesture towards a collective imaginary (Hurley, 2008). Performances frequently feature a combination of clowns, other-​worldly aerialists and ‘ordinary’ naive and childlike characters who wander into the world of dreams so that audiences can be transported and transformed by the possibilities of the on-​stage world (Hurley, 2008). Social circus as practised around the world grows largely out of this latter tradition, and can be understood to extend the ‘inclusive’ aesthetic further. Seen as an extension of evolving circus traditions, social circus once again, brings circus closer to ‘everyday’ people by tapping into the potential offered by the changing aesthetics. What remains constant in the social circus approaches studied is that creative treatment of themes and characters emerges from the playful explorations of those participants. Not every process succeeds in generating an internally cohesive creative process. However, the performance of both singular and collective vision –​however heterogenous the latter may be –​allows for the expression of identities and desires that are unique to each group and each process. As such, the creative process offers an avenue for resisting more limited visions of community and the role of non-​normative bodies therein. The ensuing explorations are diverse: they may involve a playful dramatisation of encounters with police, as we saw, or a fantastical gender bending carnivalesque show-​g irl emerging in ‘wonderland’. Performers are often encouraged to experiment, not only artistically but socially, with mixed results from an audience standpoint. The creation of a space in

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which bodies are performing ‘out of place’ and ‘out of role’, may in this respect hold open a space within the otherwise high-​performance culture of circus; one in which those involved can nuance their corporeal aesthetic with their own embodied histories, desires and relational trajectories. What is put on display then is process itself as an unfinished community work-​in-​progress. To build a human pyramid, for example, takes some skill, and to safely collapse it, even more, not to mention a huge amount of trust among participants from diverse milieu, facing diverse pressures some of which could compromise dexterity, judgement and response time. In kinaesthetically working through these tensions collectively, the creation of a future horizon from diverse embodied realities becomes the work not only of singular healing but of collective embodied experimentation. If these processes involve skills for survival in a neoliberal world, they also offer some potential for generating culturally resistant practices; using neoliberal entrepreneurial self-​management skills towards potentially resistant collective expression. By approaching community development through the kinetic arts of a socially oriented circus, it becomes possible to approach the corporeality of community relations as contested and culturally transmuting and transmutable. Embodied expression afforded through stretching bodily relational capacity itself becomes a community practice for building and questioning the very terms of individual and collective development, and for exploring what might be needed to realise alternate forms of social relationality. Note Location specific methodologies and findings are discussed in greater depth in The Art of Collectivity (Spiegel and Ortiz Choukroun, 2019); ‘Re-​approaching community development through the arts’ (Spiegel and Parent, 2018) and ‘Social circus; the cultural politics of embodying social transformation’ (Spiegel, 2016).

1

References Arrighi, G. (2014) ‘Towards a cultural history of community circus in Australia’, Australasian Drama Studies, 64: 199–​222. Bessone, I. (2017) ‘Social circus as an organised cultural encounter embodied knowledge, trust and creativity at play’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 38: 651–​64. Bishop, C. (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London and New York, NY: Verso. Boal, A. (1985) Theatre of the Oppressed (Translated by Charles A. McBride and Maria-​O dilia Leal McBride), New York, NY: Theatre Communications Group.

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Breivik, J. and Sudmann, T.T. (2018) ‘Applying creativity and physical arts in community work education’, Community Development Journal, 53(3): 482–​99. Federici, S. (2004) Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, New York, NY: Autonomedia. Foucault, M. (1975) Discipline and Punish, Gallimard: Paris. Foucault, M. (1980) Power and Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–​1977 (Edited by C. Gordon, translated by C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K. Soper) New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Gallagher, K. (2014) Why Theatre Matters: Urban Youth, Engagement, and a Pedagogy of the Real, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Goldbard, A. (2006) New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development, Oakland, CA: New Village Press. Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Translated by Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith), London: Lawrence and Wishart. Graves, J.B. (2005) Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community, and the Public Purpose, Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Hurley, E. (2008) ‘Les Corps multiples du Cirque du Soleil’ (Translated by Isabelle Léger), Globe: revue internationale d’études québécoises, 11(2): 135–​57. Hurtubise, R., Roy, S. and Bellot, C. (2003) ‘Youth homelessness: the street and work: from exclusion to integration’, in L. Roulleau-​Berger (ed) Youth and Work in the Post-​Industrial City of North America and Europe, Boston, MA: Brill Leiden, pp 395–​407. Lafortune, M. and Bouchard. A. (2010) Community Workers Guide: When Circus Lessons Become Life Lessons, Montréal: Cirque du Soleil. Lazzarato, M. (2012) The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition, New York, NY: Semiotext. Leroux, L.P. (2012) ‘Cirque in Space! The Ethos, Ethics, and Aesthetics of Staging and Branding the Individual of Exception’. Paper presented at the Centre for Canadian Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC. Leslie, D. and Rantisi, N.M. (2010) ‘Creativity and place in the evolution of a cultural industry: the case of the Cirque du Soleil.’ Urban Studies, 48(9): 1771–​87. Martin, R. (2012) ‘A precarious dance, a derivative sociality’, TDR/​ The Drama Review, 56(4): 62–​77. Meade, R.R. and Shaw, M. (2007) ‘Community development and the arts: reviving the democratic imagination’, Community Development Journal, 42(4): 413–​21.

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Morton, S., O’Brian, K. and O’Reilly, L. (2019) ‘Boxing and substance use rehabilitation: building skills and capacities in disadvantaged communities’, Community Development Journal, 54(3): 541–​59. Nicholson, H. (2011) Theatre, Education and Performance: The Map and the Story, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ortiz Choukron, B. and Fels, L. (2019) ‘Pedagogy of Circo Social Ecuador: launching the ball’ in J.B. Spiegel and B. Ortiz Choukroun (eds) The Art of Collectivity: Social Circus and the Cultural Politics of a Post-​Neoliberal Vision, Montreal: McGill-​Queen’s University Press, pp 91–​126. Plastow, J. (2015) ‘Embodiment, intellect, and emotion: thinking about possible impacts of theatre for development in three projects in Africa’ in A. Flynn and J. Tinius (eds) Anthropology, Theatre and Development: The Transformative Potential of Performance, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 107–​26. Rivard, J. (2007) Le mouvement paradigmatique autour du phénomène desjeunes qui vivent des difficultés: l’exemple du programme Cirque du Monde, Montréal, QC: Université de Montréal. Sorzano, O.L. (2018) ‘Is social circus the “other” of professional circus?’, Performance Matters, 4(1–​2): 116–​133. Spiegel, J.B. (2016) ‘Social circus: the cultural politics of embodying social transformation’, TDR/​The Drama Review, 60(4): 50–​67. Spiegel, J.B. and Harrison, F. (2019) Social Circus in Quebec: Anatomy of a Socially Engaged Arts Program. Video produced by the Art for Social Change Research project. Spiegel, J.B. and Ortiz Choukroun, B. (2019) The Art of Collectivity: Social Circus and the Cultural Politics of a Post-​Neoliberal Vision, Montreal: McGill-​Queen’s University Press. Spiegel, J.B. and Parent, S.N. (2018) ‘Re-​approaching community development through the arts: a “critical mixed methods” study of social circus in Quebec’, Community Development Journal, 53(4): 600–​17. Stoddart, H. (2000) Rings of Desire: Circus History and Representation, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Zhang, T.Y. (2016) ‘The Chinese connection: the transnational origins of Québécois circus arts’ in L.P. Leroux and C.R. Batson (eds) Cirque Global –​Quebec’s Expanding Circus Boundaries, Montreal: McGill-​ Queen’s University Press, pp 202–​22.

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Building peaceful communities: collaboration and co-​creation through theatre Nilanjana Premaratna1

Introduction State-​centric binary understandings of peace and conflict have been critiqued for their inability to satisfactorily consider the range of actors involved, or the complexity of building peaceful communities, at ground level. Rebuilding societies and sustaining peace requires nuanced approaches that focus on people and are embedded in the everyday life of a given community. Practices and processes that can build community at ground level and create solidarity are important here. Thus, we need to explore creative, pluralistic approaches that can work with and through local cultures to successfully challenge ingrained conflict-​prone and oppressive identities and ways of relating to each other.2 The purpose of this chapter is to examine how theatre can contribute to building community and peace in different contexts. Theatre has a history of being used for social and political transformation. Specific theatre forms, such as agitprop, bring politics to the ground to rally support for political causes (Brown, 2013) while Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) encourages dialogue and emancipatory action through participation (Boal, 2006). McCarthy (2012) offers theatre-​ based activities that are specially designed for development professionals and activists. As an approach that can be participatory and flexible (Nicholson, 2014), theatre can work in plural ways. However, there are limited studies on how different theatre forms are used to build community and peace in different settings, and we need further empirical and analytical inquiry into the area. I examine two theatre groups for the ways in which they build community in their respective contexts: Jana Sanskriti from India and Jana Karaliya from Sri Lanka. Jana Sanskriti, as a political

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theatre group, engages with communities in West Bengal through Theatre of the Oppressed, tackling issues of structural injustice and inequality. Jana Karaliya, as a multi-​ethnic, bilingual mobile theatre group, addresses the ethno-​linguistic divisions resulting from the Sri Lankan conflict, and brings together Sinhala and Tamil communities. Thus, the groups differ in their approaches towards theatre and community engagement. The chapter illustrates how, despite these distinct entry points, both strive to build peaceful communities through their respective processes of artistic collaboration and co-​ creation. Jana Sanskriti challenges narratives of structural violence and unsettles the present in the communities they work in, while Jana Karaliya produces narratives of interethnic cohesion and encourages envisioning a shared future.

Jana Sanskriti: unsettling everyday narratives of structural violence with the community Jana Sanskriti works in West Bengal, India and uses TO (see Da Costa, 2010; Ganguly, 2010; 2017). Among the varied theatre forms within TO, Jana Sanskriti primarily uses forum theatre3 to engage with the community on a pertinent issue of injustice or a narrative of structural violence. This artistic engagement subsequently leads to political discussion and mobilisation. The process is guided by group members who are part of the same communities and questions conventional centralised power hierarchies. Through artistic collaboration and co-​ creation with these members, Jana Sanskriti identifies and unsettles everyday narratives of structural violence present at community level. Jana Sanskriti’s process of unsettling everyday narratives of structural violence can be discussed at three levels: eliciting, performing and challenging. Jana Sanskriti elicits the stories for its plays from the community. The organisation’s founder, Sanjoy Ganguly, recognises that TO needs to be conducted by those who share that particular life in order to prevent ‘Theatre of the Oppressed becoming Theatre for the Oppressed’.4 Accordingly, the group is structured in a way that brings out community-​level voices. Jana Sanskriti has a core team that meets at their centre and collaborates to make overall decisions regarding Jana Sanskriti’s activities. The core team, in turn, is made up of members of Jana Sanskriti’s village-​level teams. In each village, Jana Sanskriti has two interconnected village-​level teams that work through artistic and political engagement. When developing a play, the core team gathers and discusses issues that affect the everyday life of the communities they come from and identifies relevant issues. Once they

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agree upon a shared issue, the core team members, together with the founder, develop a forum theatre script. Thus, the stories that inspire Jana Sanskriti’s plays come from the village level. The dual status of core team as members and representatives of the village teams ensures that the issues are pertinent for their respective communities. Jana Sanskriti’s performances, and the process through which these performances are developed, also demonstrate artistic collaboration and co-​creation. This becomes visible within the group and in their engagement with the audience. Once they develop a script, the core team members rehearse the play. Upon their return to their own communities, each core team member trains the members of their own village teams. As the following description of the scripting process illustrates, there is also room for collaboration and co-​creation at this level. The village-​level team members can adapt the plays to their own contexts as needed. Each team makes changes to the language, costumes, characters, or the story to make it more relatable for their own community, while keeping the main plot and the issues of structural injustices highlighted therein intact. The group is also open to feedback from the audience, and revise their plays accordingly (Premaratna, 2018). Thus, Jana Sanskriti’s group process has flexibility and openness for co-​creation at the village-​level performances. The performance format of forum theatre plays a key role in enabling Jana Sanskriti to co-​create its plays with the audience. The artistic team performs a short forum play that depicts how narratives of structural violence overlap to create a situation of oppression. At the end of the performance, an appointed person from the team –​called a Joker –​ initiates a dialogue with the audience. Here, the Joker asks the audience whether they approve of the play’s narrative and whether it is fair; and if not, to intervene and change the story at any point. From then on, the performance space becomes open to anyone in the audience; the audience members can replace any character in the play and respond differently to the situation in that particular character’s place, in order to transform the narrative. Each such intervention offers a chance to engage in a dialogue on, and perform resistance to, an issue of violence and oppression that the community members experience on an everyday basis. Jana Sanskriti encourages community members to question what they may have seen as a norm or a tradition by using forum theatre to depict how everyday silences and complicities can contribute to an overlapping web of structural violence and oppression. These interchanges allow Jana Sanskriti to unsettle boundaries between theatre and everyday life, actors and community members, and their public and private lives. Artistic collaboration and co-​creation here

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open up windows for the community members to develop their agency, critical thinking and accountability. Jana Sanskriti challenges everyday narratives of structural violence through their political teams at village level. Political teams support communities to integrate the changes into their own everyday spaces. As part of the community, political teams are able –​and are often invited –​to intervene in real life matters similar to those that are discussed in the plays. According to the team, the issues they mediate in span a wide range that includes domestic violence and political violence. Personal actions of Jana Sanskriti members also unsettle structural narratives in their villages. For example, male members of Jana Sanskriti refrain from the practice of accepting a dowry when marrying; another member refers to how the awareness gained through engaging with the group led him to marry a previously married woman, despite his family’s disapproval. Another person comments on how a play on gender discrimination, where an intervention and the subsequent discussion questioned the practice of dowry, enabled her to successfully challenge the same practice in real life when it came to her sister’s marriage. Thus, Jana Sanskriti’s process of initiating change within a community inspires personal action and transition at community level. At times, unsettling and challenging narratives of structural violence can lead to violent expression. An example is Jana Sanskriti’s work on alcoholism. The village-​level artistic and political teams identified alcoholism as a contributing factor to poverty and increased domestic violence. The group developed a forum play around the issue and worked through the political team to organise an anti-​liquor movement in the area. The community wanted to organise a protest rally early on, before the artistic team had sufficient time to work with the community on the issue and rehearse non-​violent ways of addressing the issue. The march, which was initiated as peaceful and organised but contrary to the political team’s objectives, turned into an outburst of pent-​up anger and frustrations. It ended with damage to personal property and equipment used in local alcohol production and trade. As this instance shows, Jana Sanskriti’s active political mobilisation component, which is critical for community building and transformation, could also lead to unintended consequences. After the violent outburst of the initial anti-​liquor movement, the group decided to primarily work through forum theatre and artistic teams at the early stages, and move into mobilisation only after the character of forum discussions became peaceful. With the next village, Jana Sanskriti performed the same forum play at regular intervals

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for 18 months before moving into mobilisation with the political team. The artistic team adapted the play to community responses with each repeat performance. Forum group discussions at the end of performances facilitated collective reflection, while the intervals between performances allowed individual reflection. The founder calls this a cycle that helps us understand that violence is not a solution; for the destruction of property cannot stop the alcohol trade, and it is bound to resume unless there is a deeper structural transformation within the society that either repudiates or delegitimises it. Thus, the scope of Jana Sanskriti’s community engagement is determined by the issues the community identifies as important, and their willingness to collectively challenge the associated structures. Jana Sanskriti unsettles what is experienced as ‘the present reality’ at community level through artistic collaboration and co-​creation.

Jana Karaliya: encouraging the community to envision a shared future Jana Karaliya is an interethnic theatre group in Sri Lanka that produces plays in the Sinhala and Tamil languages (Premaratna and Bleiker, 2010). The group was formed as a mobile theatre group that travels to different parts of the country with a collapsible tent for extended periods. The ethnic, linguistic and geographical diversity among its members makes the theatre group somewhat representative of the society at large. Jana Karaliya’s relevance for community building therefore emerges through their peacebuilding practice: the group embodies interethnic collaboration and co-​creation in their artistic processes and, in doing so, produces narratives of interethnic cohesion and encourages the wider community to envision a shared future. Collaboration and co-​creation through Jana Karaliya’s artistic space produces narratives of interethnic cohesion. These become visible in Jana Karaliya’s within-​g roup relations and theatre practice. These relations involve Sinhala and Tamil members recruited through open calls and advertisements. Members come from different regions in the country and have had limited previous exposure to those from another ethnicity. Once they join the group, they are expected to live, travel, work and perform together. Most are able to speak only either Sinhala or Tamil but learn each other’s languages in order to perform in plays produced by the group. Thus, the members co-​created Jana Karaliya as an interethnic, bilingual theatre group through collaborating with the perceived ‘other’ ethnicity in theatre and everyday life. The process is very much applied and exploratory, and leads to the development

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of relational peace within the group.5 Today, Sinhala and Tamil Jana Karaliya members co-​direct plays and work together to train other theatre teams. Some members translate plays from one language to the other. Their productions have won numerous national and international awards. Jana Karaliya’s within-​group relations, therefore, produce narratives of interethnic collaboration and co-​creation in art and beyond. Jana Karaliya’s theatre practice bridges Sinhala and Tamil art and theatre traditions, and thereby produces artistic narratives of interethnic cohesion. Cultural and linguistic diversity of the members enable the group to access both Sinhala and Tamil performing arts traditions. As founder Parakrama Niriella notes, Jana Karaliya intentionally draws and combines elements from both in its theatre practice: an example is the Sinhala and Tamil versions of the play Charandas where the Sinhala version uses selected music instruments, dance steps and costumes from Tamil traditions, and vice versa. The group also produces stories associated with one culture in the language associated with the other: examples are the production of Nalapana Jathakaya, a story from a Buddhist text in Tamil and the translation of Enthayum Thayum, a Tamil play by Kulanthei Shanmugalingam into Sinhala. Thus, the theatre practice of the group draws from and merges diverse cultural resources and traditions to produce more inclusive and pluralistic aesthetic narratives in Sri Lanka. The interethnic collaboration and co-​creation within Jana Karaliya, in turn, encourages the wider community to envision and move towards a shared future. The group’s ethnic composition often triggers hostile emotions such as suspicion and mistrust. By the end of their stay, these transform into more inclusive and welcoming emotions such as warmth, connection and empathy. Jana Karaliya’s practice of staying and performing in a given community for extended periods is key here. It gives the group the opportunity to engage with that particular community inside and outside the theatre space. The community initially gets to know the group through their performances. With time, interactions outside the theatre space develop and strengthen the community’s relationship with the interethnic group. The community gets to see interethnic collaboration during rehearsals and in everyday life situations such as cooking, shopping, or taking care of an ill member. Witnessing these regular tasks being carried out together by Sinhala and Tamil members makes peaceful coexistence more relatable for the community. Personal interactions with those from the other ethnicity become more normal for someone who has never imagined that possibility before. Such connections formed at locations can lead

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to friendships that continue beyond the group’s stay. An example is a Tamil family that travelled from Jaffna to the south of the country several times over the last few years to celebrate special events with Sinhala Jana Karaliya members. Such voluntary interaction over time has the potential to seep into communal narratives, and become part of what sustains Jana Karaliya’s effect and legacy at community level. The interethnic collaboration and co-​creation embodied in Jana Karaliya’s artistic processes, and the narratives of interethnic cohesion produced therein, encourages the wider community to envision a shared future. While Jana Karaliya has a strong commitment to aesthetics, and requires its members to undergo a rigorous training process, the group’s political awareness emerges through an unscripted process. Exposure through the group and its behavioural accommodation are expected to lead to inclusive attitudes and ideas about the other ethnicity. This process can result in surface-​level accommodation that leaves existing power hierarchies intact. An example is the group’s use of Sinhala for meetings and rehearsals with the Sinhala speaking founders. This places those who can speak Sinhala at an advantage, and has led to Sinhala being the default language for everyday interactions. A more systematic approach towards gaining a deeper political awareness of the conflict and its resulting social, cultural and structural impact can address some of these concerns. This is especially relevant as the mobile theatre aspect of the group is undergoing a transformation at present due to changes in personal circumstances and logistical challenges. A systematic process that draws from the group’s unscripted interactions, and uses appropriate education and information to guide it towards reflection, can provide an even more solid foundation for Jana Karaliya’s artistic collaboration and co-​creation.

Conclusion This chapter examined how different theatre forms can contribute to build peaceful communities in contexts characterised by violence, using two examples: Jana Sanskriti uses TO in a context marked by structural violence in West Bengal, India, and Jana Karaliya as an interethnic bilingual mobile theatre group addresses the Sri Lankan conflict. Despite the differences in their approach and group structures, the theatre practices of both groups were community-​oriented, and drew from and worked through local culture. Artistic collaboration and co-​creation manifested differently in each group. Through a collaborative process of co-​creation, Jana Sanskriti developed their plays on, and proceeded to address, issues of structural

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violence. The group integrated community responses and feedback, and adapted the plays through repeat performances to develop a community consciousness around the issues. Jana Sanskriti’s political team ensured that the performed transformation on the stage was carried forward to off-​stage community-​level action through mobilisation. Jana Karaliya’s within-​group relationships model interethnic collaboration and artistic co-​creation. The group’s presence and plays produce new stories of harmony and cohesion, enabling the communities they work in to envision an alternative future. Sustained work in a given community over a long period, and working at the level of the community are key elements in this process. Theatre groups like Jana Sanskriti and Jana Karaliya that have carried out sustained work over a long period have much to offer to each other, and to other theatre groups working on similar issues in the region. While Jana Sanskriti’s plays integrate culturally inspired aesthetic elements such as songs and dances, their focus is primarily on social and political transformation. Thus, the aesthetics of the performance takes a secondary place. Jana Karaliya has a strong focus on producing and taking professional quality theatre to regional areas and can offer further training to the artistic teams of Jana Sanskriti. On the other hand, Jana Karaliya members would benefit from further training in developing their political awareness and analytical skills. Jana Sanskriti as a political theatre group has tried and tested strategies to develop these capacities that Jana Karaliya can learn from, borrow and adapt. Such an exchange would enable Jana Karaliya members to engage in deeper discussions with the community on the Sri Lankan conflict, and take their role beyond modelling and inspiring coexistence. Community engagement through a structured process, such as that used by Jana Sanskriti on cross-​cutting issues such as gender, can enhance Jana Karaliya’s contributions at the community level. In addition to these specialised areas of each group’s praxis, there are other gains to be had through bringing regional theatre groups together. Theatre groups working in South Asia often have to face similar challenges in terms of resource mobilisation and socio-​cultural factors. Learning exchanges and mutual training programmes organised at regional level allow the groups to utilise each other’s competencies and experience to make a stronger contribution towards building peaceful communities. Notes This chapter draws on my previous research on theatre and peacebuilding. I am particularly grateful to the University of Queensland where this research started, and the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Grants (M16-​0297:1 and P19-​1494:1) that

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2



3



4 5

allowed me to continue the research at the Umeå University. I am thankful to Lars Waldorf for his insightful comments on an earlier draft and the Varieties of Peace research network including Ann-​Sofi Rönnbäck for the many thought-​ provoking discussions. See Meade, Shaw and Banks (2016) for a detailed discussion on the relevance of engaging with communities through creative, pluralistic practices that challenge neoliberal discourses. Developed by Augusto Boal (2006), forum theatre uses short plays around issues of social justice and oppression. Once the play ends, an appointed member called a Joker invites the audience to intervene and stop the play at any point if they would like to replace an actor and change the story. The audience in forum theatre therefore are called spect-​actors (both spectators and actors). Interview with the author, 18 October 2012. Another way to think about building peaceful communities is through the relational peace framework developed by Söderström, Åkebo and Jarstad (2020) that draws attention to peaceful attitudes, ideas and behaviour.

References Boal, A. (2006) The Aesthetics of the Oppressed, London: Routledge. Brown, K. (2013) ‘Agitprop in Soviet Russia’, Constructing the Past, 14(1): 5–​8. Da Costa, D. (2010) Development Dramas: Reimagining Rural Political Action in Eastern India, New York, NY: Routledge. Ganguly, S. (2010) Jana Sanskriti: Forum Theatre and Democracy in India, New York, NY: Routledge. Ganguly, S. (2017) From Boal to Jana Sanskriti: Practice and Principles, New York, NY: Routledge. McCarthy, J. with Galvão, K. (2012) Enacting Participatory Development: Theatre-​based Techniques, London: Earthscan. Meade, R.R., Shaw, M. and Banks, S. (eds) (2016) Politics, Power and Community Development, Bristol: Policy Press. Nicholson, H. (2014) Applied Drama: The Gift of Theatre, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Premaratna, N. (2018) Theatre for Peacebuilding: The Role of Arts in Conflict Transformation in South Asia, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Premaratna, N. and Bleiker, R. (2010) ‘Art and peacebuilding: how theatre transforms conflict in Sri Lanka’, in O. Richmond (ed) Advances in Peace and Conflict Studies, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 376–​91. Söderström, J., Åkebo, M. and Jarstad, A. (2020) ‘Friends, fellows and foes: a new framework for studying relational peace’, International Studies Review, 1–​25, doi:10.1093/​isr/​viaa033

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Afterword It is mid-​September 2020. As we gather our thoughts to give final expression to the monumental changes which have occurred since this book project began, it is difficult to overstate their significance for life across the planet. Many of us are reeling from the impact of the pandemic on our sense of self, of place, our frameworks of understanding, our plans, hopes and fears for the future. It’s clear that nobody is unaffected by the coronavirus moment, though clearly not all in the same way. As an Italian correspondent put it in a letter to The Guardian newspaper: COVID-​19 exposes: the enormity of the world’s suffering –​the decimated Amazon rainforest tribes, the jobless Indian labourer who walked for hundreds of miles from his ancestral village, the homeless man who slept in the entrance of an office building until metal spikes were placed on the floor –​and the understanding that we are all connected. (Francesca Melandri, 2020: np) The sense of existential connectedness expressed here, and across the chapters in this book, may be a source of both comfort and critique in the times to come, in spite of those systems of power which seek to differentiate and divide. As Arundhati Roy (2020: np) puts it, ‘For all the suffering, finally, we have all been compelled to interrogate “normal” ’. This unparalleled context has precipitated degrees of paralysis, panic or chaos worldwide as powerful interests rush to shore up economic models which have informed and infused all aspects of social, political and cultural life, the mounting and visible contradictions of which have previously been denied or quietly and crudely mitigated. The hegemonic ‘market-​first’ approach has finally and unequivocally been exposed as grossly inadequate in the face of a pandemic which does not recognise borders, boundaries or biometrics. In fact, the intensity, extensity and velocity of global interconnectedness (see McGrew, 2020) so necessary for predatory mobile capital, could be said to provide a perfect conduit for the spread of contagion. The crisis has also confirmed just how precarious and inequitable supply chains of goods, services and workers are. At the same time, however, as Anthony Barnett (2020: 8) suggests: ‘the pandemic has revealed an incompatibility between the economic

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market “dogma” that claimed to shape the wealth creation of the world, and an expectation of the right to life that … accompanied its growth’ (emphasis added). In other words, the arbitrary and unaccountable power wielded by the market may inadvertently have produced more morally discerning and demanding citizens than might have been anticipated. The rights-​based discourse associated with ‘progressive neoliberalism’ (Fraser, 2019), as a means of appropriating ‘radical’ or ‘progressive’ ideas or movements in the interests of commodification and market share, may contain a fault line which has become patently exposed in recent times: a genuine and stubborn public concern for human rights, however impoverished the conceptions offered by advertisers, policy makers or political leaders. It is indeed possible that a better understanding of ourselves, our bodies, the limitations placed on the lives of many, and the future of the planet may be turned away from consumerism and towards citizenship (Barnett, 2020). At the very least, the pandemic has plainly shown that the public interest is not always or necessarily the same as the mere aggregation of private interests. This turn of events may present an exhilarating challenge for community development as a practice through which citizens ‘act together for the purpose of influencing and exerting greater control over decisions that affect their lives’ (Kenny, 2016: 47). The British cultural theorist Raymond Williams developed the term ‘structure of feeling’ to refer to a ‘shared, though not yet fully articulated sense of a particular experience of life’ (in Moran, 2015: 95). It seems a very apposite term at this time, as people struggle to express common feelings of displacement, helplessness and fear at a world that is literally spiralling out of control –​what author Zadie Smith (2020: 6) describes as ‘the global humbling’. A structure of feeling regarding the necessity (and the possibility) of empathy, generosity and reciprocity could be said to have loosely coalesced through these months of uncertainty, alongside a willingness or desperate need to bear witness. In the enforced hiatus, some have reached for the muscularity of metaphor –​ rupture, shuddering, mask, plague, pestilence, among others –​to give voice to their fear and unease at self-​isolation, semi-​imprisonment and punitive monitoring. For some, of course, social isolation is the status quo under caste or class systems (for example Roy, 2020); for some, lockdown brings relief from an unattainable consumerist and unceasingly performative world (for example Mishra, 2020) and for some, shielding normalises at last the vulnerability which has always characterised their lives (for example Lamb, 2020). Some look to themselves and find sustenance or despair while others actively seek, or silently yearn for, community and solidarity.

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As this book highlights, there are plainly different versions of solidarity in contention across the world: global Black Lives Matter and climate crisis mobilisations, alongside epic struggles for democracy, freedoms and rights, and against tyranny and corruption. There are also ‘negative’ forms of solidarity: the weaponisation of fear, hate and blame; authoritarian populism, COVID-​19 nationalism and Darwinian politics being some of the most salient at this time (Davies, 2020). But the pandemic may also have revealed a ‘secret history of solidarity’ evident in numerous and widespread acts of human kindness that have been disregarded or misrecognised across the political spectrum (Butler, 2020: np). Community activism based on mutuality appears to have mushroomed in many contexts as a response to flailing, absent or underfunded services. Human resilience and resourcefulness have been seen in abundance across the globe (Stirin and Colectiva Sembrar, 2020). In this respect, there are direct lines of continuity and affinity with the various expressions of cultural creativity and agency that are explored across this book. Chapters recount how collective action that centres on the arts and cultural practice might destabilise oppressive norms, while creating opportunities for people to express themselves as they are or as they might wish to be. However, as we edge forward in this time of crisis and anxiety, we would do well to heed the reminder that is collectively issued by contributors to this volume: agency should not be mistaken for power. If activism is not to be construed as an alibi for ill-​funded or inequitable distribution of resources, the realities of structure need to be vigorously reasserted. Naming and framing contemporary problems within broader relations and systems of power, such as these authors seek to do, remains critical and offers an ongoing prospectus for committed arts and cultural work. While acknowledging the calamitous contingencies of context, the Turkish author Elif Shafak (2020: 87) commends a determined attitude of ‘conscious optimism’ alongside an equal measure of ‘creative pessimism’: We have all the tools to build our societies anew, reform our ways of thinking, fix the inequalities and end the discriminations, and choose earnest wisdom over snippets of information, choose empathy over hatred, choose humanism over tribalism ... . After the pandemic, we won’t go back to the way things were before. And we shouldn’t. (Shafak, 2020: 90)

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As numerous commentators have pointed out, the way in which resources have been repurposed, redistributed, or taken into public ownership in diverse countries belies the ‘market-​first’ propaganda, and suggests that economic and social life could be organised differently. There are alternatives! This is a profound challenge to the current global hegemony which has successfully embedded itself in our common consciousness, our imagination and our public morality. Stranded in old calculations, the current conjuncture clearly cries out for a radical recalibration of what is at stake, and for whom. In Out of the Belly of Hell, Anthony Barnett (2020: 44) counterintuitively insists that the coronavirus is a ‘gift’ because it ‘makes clear that the future of humanity is a matter of choice’. Unlike those vacuous versions of ‘choice’ that individualise and atomise while demanding our perpetual enslavement to ‘market forces’, this way of thinking suggests a more active and engaged political process. As the chapters in this book so vividly illustrate, choice can be founded on notions of publicness and mutuality, it can be exercised collectively and it can be explored through a diversity of cultural forms and expressions. More fundamentally, perhaps, we can also ‘choose’ determinedly to respond to the now irrefutable global interconnectedness of our (multiple) species through an ethics of care rather than exploitation. The contributors to this book assert the importance of the imagination in and for community development. A hopeful imagination can be said to animate and enlarge the parameters of choice and is undoubtedly an antidote to fear and helplessness, but the psychic imperative of hope can be tyrannical if it denies genuine despair or justifiable anger. It may be more constructive to think of hope as collective action which emerges out of, or in spite of, despair and anger. This takes us firmly into the terrain of arts, culture and community development: curating and creating from the lived experiences of people in real communities; encouraging groups to sing their own words, dance their own steps and paint their own worlds. The chapters in this book show us how new worlds, ways of being and ways of seeing can be prefigured when people experiment with the arts. They consider how cultural democracy is actively claimed and performed, often under oppressive conditions. They evoke an imagination that is simultaneously artistic and sociological; that stands for a capacity and willingness to locate personal and communal experience in wider external contexts and relationships, and to project it through a rich variety of forms and spaces. In The Necessity of Art (2010) Ernst Fischer argues that art is not some optional form of entertainment nor a luxury of civilised life, but an

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essential component of human consciousness and social being. What the chapters in this book demonstrate is that community engagement in and with arts and culture offers people in diverse contexts a rare ‘space for themselves [to fill] with intimations of freedom and presence’ (O’Donohue in Greene, 2000: 142). At times of disorientation and dismay, artistic expression can act as a crucible for the flourishing of human connection. What community development amounts to in the contemporary context will depend on the degree to which such connection can be honoured, supported or forged anew. The chapters in this book suggest that this project is well underway. References Barnett, A. (2020) Out of the Belly of Hell: Covid-​1 9 and the Humanisation of Globalisation. Available at: https://​w ww.open democracy.net/​en/​opendemocracyuk/​out-​belly-​hell-​shutdown-​ and-​humanisation-​globalisation/​ Butler, J. (2020) The Opposite of a Cynic: David Graeber, 1961–​ 2020. Available at: https:// ​ n ovaramedia.com/ ​ 2 020/ ​ 0 9/ ​ 0 4/​ the-​opposite-​of-​a-​cynic-​david-​g raeber-​1961-​2020/​ Davies, W. (2020) ‘Who am I prepared to kill?’ London Review of Books, 42(15). Available at: https://​www.lrb.co.uk/​the-​paper/​v42/​n15/​ william-​davies/​who-​am-​i-​prepared-​to-​kill Fischer, E. (2010) The Necessity of Art, London: Verso. Fraser, N. (2019) The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born, London: Verso. Greene, M. (2000) Releasing the Imagination, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-​Bass. Kenny, S. (2016) ‘Changing community development roles: the challenges of a globalizing world’, in R.R. Meade, M. Shaw and S. Banks (eds) Politics, Power and Community Development, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 47–​64. Lamb, G. (2020) ‘How to help the “vulnerable” ’, Concept, 11(Covid-​ 19 Supplementary issue). Available at: http://​concept.lib.ed.ac.uk/​ article/​view/​4367 McGrew, A. (2020) ‘Globalization and global politics’ in J. Baylis S. Smith and P. Owens (eds) The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (8th edn), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 19–​38. Melandr i, F. (2020) ‘Letter from Italy: this pandemic is showing us who we really are’, The Guardian, 4 July. Available at: https://​ w ww.theguardian.com/ ​ b ooks/ ​ 2 020/ ​ j ul/ ​ 0 4/​ letter-​from-​italy-​this-​pandemic-​is-​showing-​us-​who-​we-​really-​are

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Mishra, P. (2020) ‘Flailing states’, London Review of Books, 42(14). Available at: https://​www.lrb.co.uk/​the-​paper/​v42/​n14/​pankaj-​ mishra/​flailing-​states Moran, M. (2015) Identity and Capitalism, London: Sage. Roy, A. (2020) ‘The pandemic is a portal’, Financial Times, 3 April. Shafak, E. (2020) How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division, London: Profile Books. Smith, Z. (2020) Intimations: Six Essays, London: Penguin Books. Stirin, M. and Colectiva Sembrar (eds) (2020) Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-​19 Crisis, London: Pluto Press.

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Index Page numbers in italic type refer to figures and photographs. References to endnotes show both the page number and the note number (231n3).

A abortion  66, 97 academia  89, 135, 208 acrobatics  216, 217, 220, 224 activism  7, 10, 14, 43, 90, 97, 111, 114–​16, 134, 137, 243 ACT-​UP  116 aesthetic form  5, 10 Accessible User Interface Design  141 African Diaspora  23 agitprop  231 alcoholism  234 Allende, Salvador  48, 75, 76 Amel, Mahdi  65–​7 American Federation of Labor  44 American Magazine, The  44, 49n4 anarchism  43, 111, 115 An Garda Síochána  197 anti-​G8 protests  113 Ara, Azad  52, 56 architecture  143, 153 art  and culture  157, 166, 225 collaborative  174, 175, 185, 189, 195–​7, 199, 205, 209 criticism  6, 175, 198 artefact  25, 32, 96, 98, 99, 111, 164 Art for All  178 artistic director  34, 97, 100 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)  174 Arts Promotion Centre (TAIKE)  152, 155 Association for Progressive Communications (APC)  143 Atlantic Philanthropies, The  201, 211n12 austerity  162, 200, 210n9, 223 Australia  137, 142–​3 bush fires  137 Australian Digital Inclusion Index  143 autonomy  4, 6, 7, 152, 175, 176, 180, 185, 187–​9, 190, 191n12 avantgarde  97, 166

B balad  63, 64, 67 Banks, Cruz  26, 29, 31

Beirut  51–​4, 56, 63, 65, 67 see also Lebanon walls  52, 60, 68 Benjamin, Walter  91 Berlin  95, 100, 101 Beynon, Bryony  117–​20, 123 biculturalism  22, 27, 29, 30 Big Joanie  121, 122, 123 Bikini Kill  121 bilingualism  232, 235, 237 Black Lives Matter  4, 243 Black Panthers  112 Boal, Augusto  9, 10, 27, 28, 239n3, 249 see also Theatre of the Oppressed body language  202, 219 Bomba  22–​4, 28, 29, 31, 32 Bombazo  34–​6 braille  141 see also visual impairment Brazil  4, 7, 9, 99, 139, 146, 216 see also Rio de Janeiro, favela military dictatorship  9, 27, 75 Bread and Puppet Theater (BPT)  95, 96–​9 Bread and Roses strike  44, 49n4 Brecht, Bertolt  43 Bristol  118, 120, 124 Brixton Black Women’s Group  113

C capitalism  3, 8–​9, 12, 15, 27, 91–​3, 96, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 119, 125, 222 Caribbean  23, 24, 31 Carpenter, Edward  46 Catholic Church  see Catholicism Catholicism  43, 74, 79 Charandas  236 Chartism  44, 46 Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, The  92, 93 children  21–​8, 30–​2, 99, 101, 121, 163, 176, 179, 185, 199, 209, 216 see also school Chile  4, 7, 48, 73, 74–​6, 77, 78 see also Santiago de Chile Christian Democratic Party  101 choreography  23, 197, 219

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Arts, Culture and Community Development circus  5, 12, 97, 114, 213–​16, 217–​20, 223, 224, 227, 228 see also Cirque du Soleil, Cirque du Monde, Cirque Hors Piste Cirque du Monde  114, 217, 224 Cirque du Soleil  216 Cirque Hors Piste  222, 225 citizenship  9, 68, 82, 101, 165, 242 Civil Rights Movement  42, 47, 48n1 civil war  51–​2, 53–​4, 55, 56, 57, 64–​7, 69 classroom  21, 25–​7, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36, 176 -​based learning  176 climate change  97, 137 clowning  216, 220, 227 coexistence  206, 223, 236, 238 collaboration  6, 9, 13, 36, 114, 162, 163, 165, 167n1, 196, 203–​9, 231–​5, 237 collective gaze  219 cold war  97, 112 collective action  3–​7, 14, 140, 243, 244 colonialism  2, 4, 5, 8, 22, 24, 27, 114, 225, 227 Combahee River Collective  112 Comando Vermelho  84 Commission for the Future of Policing  204 commodification  13, 21, 24, 25, 77, 85, 93, 242 Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS)  134 communism  66, 74, 112 Communist Party  66, 74, 112 community-​based art  1, 13, 90, 181, 191, 214, 223 community  development  1–​8, 82, 89, 90, 95, 102–​4, 111, 114–​16, 118, 124, 146–​7, 151–​3, 157, 191n12, 200, 213–​16, 222–​23, 244 of colour  21, 22, 25, 27, 29, 35, 37, 124 worker  11, 14, 216, 217 work  161, 166, 201, 228 consumerism  93, 97, 105n1, 242 coronavirus  see COVID-​19 corporeality  213, 214, 215, 218, 223, 228 Costello Report, The  209 counterculture  90, 94, 96, 97, 116, 224 see also subculture County, Jayne  115 COVID-​19  2, 14, 15, 241, 243 see also lockdown Creative Cities  15

creative economy  15, 82, 154–​5, 165 creative industries  15, 151–​5, 158, 164, 166, 167n3, 225 see also cultural industries cultural industries  151, 153, 155, 164, 166, 167n1, 216 see also creative industries Creative Sector Fund  155, 204, 234 Crenshaw, Kimberlé  112 crime  73, 80, 84–​5 see also police critical thinking  12, 204, 234 cultural democracy  2, 8, 9, 156, 223, 226, 244 cultural healing  30 cultural planning  151, 155–​7, 159, 161, 166, 167 culture for communities and citizens  158, 161–​4 cultures of commerce  93, 95, 96, 103 cyberactivism  134

D dance  5, 13, 15, 21–​4, 22, 28, 178, 182, 214, 236, 238, 244 see also Bomba communal  26, 28, 30, 32–​7 Decolonise Fest  118, 122, 124 democracy  2–​9, 75, 77, 78, 94, 156, 163, 176, 223, 226, 243–​4 Department of Children and Youth Affairs  209 dialogical arts  90, 173 dialogic exchange  92 diaspora  24, 29, 31, 60, 61 dictatorship  9, 48, 75–​6, 77, 78 Diggers  45, 46, 50n8 digital age  132 digital platform  9, 131 disability  111, 118, 120, 123, 138–​40, 141 diversity  8, 26, 101, 116, 118, 121, 140, 162, 222, 235, 236, 244 DIY Diaspora Punx  112 DIY Space  118, 119, 122, 125 Do-​It-​Yourself (DIY) approach  7, 111 Dolphin House  196, 197, 210n2 domestication  24 dowry  234 drawing  183, 185 drug culture  80, 97 drug trafficking  80, 85 drumming  23, 28, 29, 32–​3, 36 Dublin  196, 200, 210n1 Inner-​City Partnership  199 duoethnography  117

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E

G

Eat Up For Starters  118, 120, 124 education  25, 31, 116, 142, 152, 166, 175, 189, 209 and Training Board  209 curriculum  25, 29, 30, 34, 35 Ecuador  139, 215, 217, 221 e-​government  132, 146 elderly  35, 36, 152 elitism  91, 93, 96, 98, 103, 114, 115, 125, 156 El Rass  51, 65 employment  132, 142, 154, 155, 157, 165, 217 see also unemployment empowerment  3, 6, 13, 21–​8, 31, 94, 156, 161, 167, 174, 175, 178, 182, 188, 190n1 Enthayum Thayum  236 entrepreneurship  82, 100, 151–​4, 155, 158, 164, 215, 224, 228 epistemology  22, 24, 33, 34 ethnicity  4, 123, 235, 236, 237 ethnography  95, 117 ethos  96, 97, 103, 115, 126, 153, 226 Eurocentrism  22, 24, 25, 35, 113 European Capital of Culture  166 European Cultural Capital awards  162 exile  43, 48, 61, 63 existence  21, 33, 75, 94, 220 Extinction Rebellion  137

gallery  7, 13, 52, 178, 183 Ganguly, Sanjoy  232 gender  2, 25, 28, 32, 34, 36, 57, 113, 115, 220, 227, 238 discrimination  234 equality  112, 116 Geneva  134, 139 gentrification  97, 101 globalisation  3, 14, 113 Global North  111, 132 Global South  132, 225 Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM)  144–​5 Google  66, 136 graffiti  52, 53, 73, 82, 83, 84–​5, 100, 101 Gramsci, Antonio  214 Gramsci Monument  179 see also Hirschhorn, Thomas Grangegorman Public Art  210n3 grassroots  art  25 music  42 Great Depression  42 GRIPS Theater  95, 99–​102 Grupo Bayano  21, 22–​4, 25, 26, 28, 31–​4, 36, 37

F Fabian Society  46 Facebook  118, 122, 136 see also social media facilitator  3, 8, 14, 114, 176, 186, 188, 220, 223 Fatima Mansions  196, 210n1 favela  73, 78–​81, 82, 84, 85 painting  84 Fels, Lynn  217 feminism  34, 105n1, 111, 112, 116, 121, 125 Black  112–​13, 121 filmmaker  135 Finland  7, 11, 151, 154–​6, 158, 161, 166, 167 Finnish Regional Councils, The  155 First Timers  117–​21, 122, 123, 125 Floyd, George  4 folklore  23 forum theatre  9, 232, 233, 234, 239n3 see also Theatre of the Oppressed Foucault, Michel  214 Freedom Singers  42, 48n1

H Habermasian  69 Hackney Music Workshop  47 Hamdan, Hasan  see Mahdi Amel health care  61, 77, 142, 152, 155, 159, 165 heritage  153, 156, 160, 162, 173 Hirschhorn, Thomas  179, 180 see also Gramsci Monument HIV/​AIDS  114 Hollywood  138 homophobia  120 Hong Kong  7, 173, 174, 177, 178, 183, 190n2 Hoover, President Herbert  42 hospital  see health care housing  75, 97, 178, 183, 197, 210n1 human pyramid  216, 22, 228 hurricane  23, 24

I immigration  44, 45–​8, 49n4, 161, 163 India  7, 136, 137, 139, 231, 232, 237 Indigenous Communities Telecommunications  145 Indigenous people  23, 31, 75, 137, 143–​5, 147n5, 188, 222 Indignados movement  112

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Arts, Culture and Community Development Individual Learning Plan (ILP)  211n12 inequality  2, 5, 9, 14, 26–​7, 35, 76, 91, 112, 116, 196, 199, 200, 205, 209 infrastructure  9, 54, 80, 137, 147n5, 223 Instituto Federal De Telecomunicaciones (IFT)  145–​6 intellectual property  9, 15, 137, 140, 147 international copyright  140 International Governance Forum 139 International Panel for Social Progress (IPSP)  131, 132 International Telecommunications Union (ITU)  134, 141, 143 iPod  41 Irish State  199, 200, 203

J Jana Karaliya  231–​2, 235–​8 Jana Sanskriti  231, 232–​8 Jarlan, André  76, 77 jobs  see employment ‘John Brown’s Body’  45, 46 juggling  216, 220, 222, 224, 226 justice  13, 26, 29, 31, 99, 104, 113, 140, 147, 198, 232–​3, 239

K kinaesthetic  12, 213, 214, 215–​18, 219, 221, 222, 228 learning  219 process  223 kinaesthetics of community  213, 215–​18 Kulttuuriteollisuuden kehittäminen Suomessa (The Development of Cultural Industries in Finland)  153

L ladder of participation, the  175, 176, 179, 180, 182 Adapted  180 land seizure  75, 77 Latin America  34, 133, 225 La Victoria  73, 74, 75–​9, 85 Lawlor, Jim  196, 198–​209 LGBTQ+  113, 118 see also Queer Lebanon  4, 7, 51–​4, 56, 57, 59, 60–​7 see also Beirut left-​wing  79 Leveson inquiry, The  136, 147n2 Liang, Evelyna  178, 182, 188 see also Art for All Little Red Songbook  44

lobbying  138–​9, 141, 143, 145, 147 local economy  166 local governance  143, 145, 155 lockdown  15, 242 logic  3, 11, 119, 201, 204, 211n12 Ludwig, Volker  95, 100, 101

M MacBride Commission  134, 147n1 managerialism  13, 93–​6, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 153 Man, Phoebe  178, 183, 184, 186 Many Voices, One World  134 marginalisation  76, 111–​13, 114, 117, 120, 141, 163, 177, 199, 216 Marrakesh Treaty  137–​40, 142, 146 marriage  41, 234 Marxism  66, 91, 92 mass media  see media media  1–​6, 9, 13, 15, 44, 97, 131, 135, 136, 141, 146, 147, 178, 190 broadcasting  135, 153 regulation  140 mental health  219 metaphor  68, 78, 80, 176, 205, 206, 217, 219, 221, 242 Mexican Secretariat of Communications and Transport  145 Mexico  7, 137, 143, 145, 146 micropolitical revolutions  114 mind-​body  213 Ministry of Education and Culture  152, 154–​5, 166 misogyny  119 mobile phones  132, 133, 141, 142–​5 Morris, William  46 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)  138 Movistar  145 multi-​actor network  162 multiculturalism  21, 22, 25, 39, 101 Municipal Cultural Activities Act  157 municipality  157–​8, 160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 167n3 mural  31, 52, 64, 73, 76, 79, 82–​5, 182, 185, 187, 189 muralism  5, 73–​7, 82, 85 museum  7, 13, 52, 99, 197 music  5, 10, 14, 15, 23, 25, 27, 30–​5, 41–​2, 47, 48, 81, 97, 178, 236 folk  28, 33, 41, 42, 47, 48 gospel  48n1 hip-​hop  215 pop  15 punk  115–​18, 120, 122, 125 rap  51 rock  41, 42, 115

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N Nalapana Jathakaya  236 National Broadband Network (NBN)  142 National College of Art and Design (NCAD)  198 nationalism  3, 112, 147n1, 243 nation state  15, 138, 139 Natural History of Hope  196, 197, 198, 202, 205–​7 nature-​nurture  213 neoliberalism  11, 25, 76–​8, 83, 114, 132, 137, 166, 195–​9, 203–​9, 213, 223–​6, 242 neoliberal capitalism  12, 15 Nesbitt, Edith  46 Networks for Diversity, Equality, and Sustainability Nonprofit Organization (REDES)  144–​5 New Left  112–​13 New Public Management  152, 153, 155, 164 New World Information and Communication Order children (NWICO)  134 New York City  34, 95, 96 children NGO  2, 85, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143, 146, 177, 178, 216 Nordic culture/​tradition  152 nuclear energy  105n1 nuclear weapons  43

O Obama, President Barack  48n1, 138 Occupy movement  112, 113, 137 October Revolution  52, 61 open-​ended enquiry  196, 205 open source  143, 144, 146 oppression  199, 200, 233, 239n3, 243, 244 Ortiz Choukroun, Benjamin  217, 224, 228n1 outreach  97, 100, 216, 226, 227

P Panamá  23 pandemic  2, 241–​3 see also COVID-​19 Paramount Pictures  138 participant  11, 14, 34, 176, 177, 179, 180–​3, 185–​90, 191n13, 216–​19, 222, 224, 227 participatory art(s)  173–​5, 177, 178, 179, 180, 188, 191n12 participatory engagement  92, 100 pathways to participation  175, 185–​7 patriarchy  14, 25, 57

pacification  73, 78, 81, 82, 83–​5, 114 pacifism  111 pedagogy  22–​6, 28, 30, 34, 142, 203, 210n3, 217, 218, 220–​1, 224, 226 performer  47, 92, 98, 114, 123, 220–​1, 224, 227 Piñera, Sebastián  78 Pinochet, General Augusto  48 pirate modernities  133 población  73–​4, 76, 77, 78 pobladores  74–​6, 76, 77, 78 poetry  4, 44, 49n4, 52, 116, 202 police  47, 73, 80, 82, 84, 85, 197, 204, 211n14, 220, 222, 227 see also Commission for the Future of Policing brutality  80 occupation  80 training  204 Policing Dialogues  197, 202, 204, 207 Policing Dialogues Review, The  197, 203 policy making  13, 15, 141, 155, 156, 161, 164, 204, 206, 242 political activism  90, 97, 115 popular communities  73, 86n2 popular sectors  73, 86n2 populism  3, 97, 223, 243 post-​war  53, 54, 57, 58, 63, 64 art  57 cinema  53, 54 literature  53 power  1–​5, 83, 85, 91, 96, 104, 133, 136, 160, 165, 175, 186, 196, 198, 206 practitioner  3, 103, 104, 162, 173, 177, 178, 209, 225 prefiguration  111, 114–​15, 117–​19, 124, 244 Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture  155 protest  7, 10, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48n1, 49n4, 51–​2, 58, 61–​7, 75, 78, 89, 113–​14, 234 see also political activism psychology  21, 26, 174, 175, 189 Puerto Rico  23, 24, 31, 37 public administration  156, 167n3 public policy  82, 84 public space  57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 85 publishing  15, 131, 138, 153, 154, 167, 174, 195, 208 punk  42, 111–​17, 118, 120, 121, 122, 125, 224 black  116, 121, 122 counterculture  224 praxis  10, 115, 116 queer feminist  111, 116, 117, 125 puppetry  95–​7, 98

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Q Quebec  114, 216, 217, 218 queer  10, 115–​16, 118, 121, 124 see also LGBTQ+ feminist punk  111, 116, 117, 125 theory  116 Queer Nation  116

R racism  3, 4, 14, 27, 30, 31, 35, 38, 48n1, 97, 105n1, 111, 116, 120–​2 Reagon, Bernice  42, 48n1, 48n2 recession  210n1, 210n9 regeneration  197, 200, 210n1, 210n2 regional identity  36, 162 religion  3, 4, 14, 58, 75, 79, 97, 98 Revolt!  123–​4 Rhizomatica  137, 142–​6 Rialto Youth Project (RYP)  196, 198, 217, 218, 210n3, 211n11, 211n12 right to communicate  134–​6, 146 Right to Information  136, 142 rights activism  44, 121, 134 right-​wing  136, 137 Rio de Janeiro  73, 78, 80–​2 riot grrrl  117, 121 Rio Top Tour  81 ritual  57, 90, 97, 98 Robinson, Tom  115

S Santa Marta  73, 78–​80, 81, 82, 85 Santiago de Chile  73 scaffold of participation  see Ladder of Participation, the school  see education Seattle  22, 23, 24, 31, 37 SEBRAE  81 sectarianism  52, 59, 60, 65 Sehnaoui, Nada  56, 57 self-​assessment  158, 187 self-​control  218 self-​esteem  216 self-​management  112, 215, 226, 228 self-​representation  73 Sen, Amartya  131 shantytown  73–​5, 78 see also favela Shier, Harry  175, 177, 181, 185–​7, 188, 189 Sinhala  232, 235–​7 slavery  30, 33 Sleater-​Kinney  121 social capital  11, 164 social cohesion  11, 156, 161, 166 social economy  164

social justice  10, 13, 26, 29, 98, 104, 198, 239n3 social inclusion  82, 191, 198, 199, 200 socialism  46, 48, 75–​7, 112, 189 social media  61, 96, 117, 136 see also Facebook social movements  89, 90, 92, 96, 105n1, 137, 142 coalitions and unions  96, 105n1 sociopolitical  26, 28, 82, 91, 95, 100, 102, 126, 210n3 software  133, 141, 143, 144, 146, 164 programming  134 Solidere  58, 63, 64, 82 song  5, 9, 15, 25, 30, 31, 33, 41–​8, 101, 117, 120, 238 strike  44–​5 Songs for Socialists  46 South Africa  146 South Asia  238 Spain  133, 216 Spokane  44, 48n3 Spotify  41 Sri Lanka  7, 231, 232, 235–​9 see also Sinhala, Tamil stereotypes  29, 116 St George’s Hill  44, 50n8 storytelling  183 strategic community development (SCD)  155–​6, 166 structure of feeling  242 subculture  111, 116 see also counterculture sustainability  33, 90, 103, 137, 144, 161, 165, 223 Syria  54, 66

T Taiwan  178 Tamil  232, 235–​7 tax  154, 210n9 Telcel  145 Telecommunications Law  145 Territories of Peace  82 theatre  5, 9, 10, 13, 23, 198, 219, 231–​8, 239n3 Theatre of the Oppressed (TO)  9, 231, 232 Third Way, the  164 Time Warner  138 tokenism  22, 123, 124, 179, 180 tourism  15, 81–​2, 157, 160, 164, 165, 166 trade union  105n1, 74 trans-​disciplinary practice  196–​7, 210n3

252

Index transformation  26, 29, 82, 90, 91, 100–​4, 217, 223, 228n1, 231, 234, 235, 237, 238 transgender  111, 117, 118, 120, 124 transphobia  120 trapeze  216, 224 trauma  26, 53, 114, 216 trust  28, 35, 181, 185, 187, 189, 216, 226, 228

U unemployment  97, 163, 197 see also employment UNESCO  134, 138, 147n1 UN Declarations  135 UNICEF  179, 180 United Arab Republic  53 Universal Declaration of Human Rights  135, 140 Universal Service Obligations (USOs)  142, 147n4 UPP Santa Marta  82, 83, 100 Uusimaa  159–​60, 163

V

wellbeing  11, 14, 48, 152, 154, 157, 159–​61, 162, 165, 166 West Bengal  9, 232, 237, 250 see also Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre What Does He Need?  196, 198, 202, 204, 224 WhatsApp  61, 136 What’s the Story? Collective  197 Whelan, Fiona & Orla  195, 196–​8, 211n15 Wi-​Fi  143 Wobblies, the  43, 46 World Blind Union  139 World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)  137 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)  134, 139 working class  22–​8, 46, 49n3, 115, 156, 200 workshop  47, 90, 101, 117, 120, 124, 155, 178, 210n3, 221, 225

Y

Vietnam  41, 48, 178 violence  10, 14, 48n1, 49n4, 80, 81, 82, 232–​5, 237, 238 visual impairment  138–​41

young people  12, 84, 101, 195, 200–​4, 205, 209, 210n3, 211n13 Youth For Human Rights  220 youth  see young people YouTube  41

W

Z

war  41, 51–​4, 58, 69, 78, 80, 97, 112, 114 see also civil war, cold war Warner Brothers  138

zaiims  54, 65 Zenzelini Community Network  146 zines  117 Zuboff, Shoshana  8, 9

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“This is an important global contribution to understandings of how the arts work as critical and creative mechanisms of both community development and cultural democracy.” Darlene E. Clover, University of  Victoria “This book affirms how communal arts practices and cultural knowledge can nurture the hope that a radical democracy is, indeed, possible. A must-read for cultural activists!” Astrid von Kotze, Popular Education Programme, South Africa “Beyond the mechanistic and reductionist paradigms of community development, the volume offers a fabulous account of creative and collective endeavours of communities in rescripting the conditions of their own lives. The editors and authors must be congratulated for providing a nuanced understanding of aesthetic expressions emanating from disempowered community contexts.” Pushpesh Kumar, University of Hyderabad How and why are arts and cultural practices meaningful to communities? Highlighting examples from Lebanon, Latin America, China, Ireland, India, Sri Lanka and beyond, this exciting book explores the relationship between the arts, culture and community development. Academics and practitioners from six continents discuss how diverse communities understand, re-imagine or seek to change personal, cultural, social, economic or political conditions while using the arts as their means and spaces of engagement. Investigating the theory and practice of ‘cultural democracy’, this book explores a range of aesthetic forms including song, music, muralism, theatre, dance and circus arts.

ROSIE R. MEADE is a lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies at University

College Cork, Ireland. MAE SHAW is Honorary Fellow in the Moray House School of Education and Sport at

the University of Edinburgh, UK.

ISBN 978-1-4473-4051-5

@policypress @policypress PolicyPress policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk

Rethinking Community Development

9 781447 340515