What use are the arts? Sara Keating writes part three of this series exploring the arts and social inclusion.
"Art became a vehicle that allowed me to explore my experiences, and figure out where I . . . fitted into the wider picture . . . not everybody understands the importance of owning their identity" - Lorraine Gallagher, artist
The democratic philosophy of the welfare state is equal rights for all: perfect in principle, problematic in practice. In fact, perhaps the most significant site of contention surrounding the arts relates to issues of social inclusion and access. The origins of the debate can be traced back to that fundamental conflict between the consumers of so-called "high culture", for whom art is a pursuit that is deliberately exclusionary - valued precisely because it attracts the wealthiest, "the superior", elements of our society; and participants in the popular public arts, for whom the "art" of their pursuit should never outweigh its capacity to relate to a potential audience. However, it is through the intervention of the arts on a practical, social level that the arts can have their greatest impact, be that through art facilitators working with communities to develop their social identity, arts events designed to foster social interaction, or the use of the arts to impart practical skills.
Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism Seamus Brennan feels that social inclusion through access to the arts is a key priority. "Art intrinsically makes a wonderful contribution to society. A society without the arts would be very shallow and lacking in any self-awareness," he says. "And I would like in my time [as minister] to make sure that when I leave, the arts are more central to Irish life."
Brennan believes that the traditional frameworks for appreciating and interacting with the arts need to be broadened to widen their social reach: "You often get people who express very dogmatic statements about the arts, like 'That artist isn't very good.' But the arts [need to foster] tolerance too. It should not be about whether you like it or not - it took the person who [ made it] a lot of mental energy and skill. When people go to the Olympics and they don't win medals people say 'Fair play, they trained hard and they did their best.' I think we need a bit of that in the world of arts." With artwork created in the social context, it is also a question of what someone gets out of that effort too.
This potential social value of the arts has been harnessed by organisations such as Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts, to bring the arts into community settings on a fundamentally practical level, with the emphasis on challenging the discrimination of marginalised communities. Here, the arts are used to encourage greater participation in the community, to improve living standards and overall wellbeing, and to rehabilitate the marginalised back into mainstream social - and cultural - structures that they are traditionally excluded from.
The Arts, Culture and Social Cohesion, a report collated by the National Economic and Social Forum (NESF) in 2007, evaluated the use of the arts in diverse community contexts and the benefits both for communities and artists. Access-driven programmes, the study found, were crucial to developing new audiences for the arts; for encouraging alternative creative models; for developing artists and creativity from within the community; and for increasing individual and collective self-esteem, self-determination, ownership, pleasure/leisure and enjoyment opportunities for participants.
The NESF's major conclusion, however, was that the lack of "national policy or legislative provision" requiring arts organisations "to allocate funding to programmes designed to promote cultural inclusion" was a serious ideological and practical limitation to the development of access programmes. The study also saw shortcomings from the community arts perspective, where the use of the arts in social settings is seen as "a byproduct of other work rather than a specific remit." Public art, it concluded, should be informed by a happy coalescence of the two discrete worlds of artist and community.
For some, buzz-words such as access, ownership, equity and diversity are another example of attempts by policy makers and public funders to instrumentalise the arts. However, Willie White, artistic director of Project arts centre, agrees that while social inclusion is a fundamental element of contemporary arts practice, its importance is in fact overstated. The Project, as he explains, promotes social inclusion through the diversity of its programming, rather than as an integrated policy. As White explains, the idea of social inclusion is a "no-brainer".
"The arts as a way to include alternative communities is misguided: that should be their entitlement anyway," says White. "Immigrants pay their taxes to fund public services, such as the Arts Council, so [their interests] should be included. It is logical that all communities should have access to cultural platforms and forums. We're not doing anyone a favour by considering their interests."
Meanwhile, he insists that arts policy makers need to remember that "there are limitations to what art can do. The arts might give people a voice. The arts might distract them from their problems. But if communities are grappling with problems of literacy, health or social services, the arts can't address that. We need to look at the UK and their experience of instrumentalism under Blair, where [ it has] distorted artistic practices. The arts are not a panacea for social problems."
All the same, according to a British Arts Council report on the arts and social inclusion, access and outreach interventions are traditionally arts-led rather than community or policy led; suggesting that successful projects are a byproduct of a socially engaged artistic philosophy rather than an instrumentalist imperative. However, as both the NESF and British Arts Council study suggest, it is in the continuity of a community's relationship to the arts and arts-based projects, rather than in once-off projects, that the real social value of such work can be exploited; national policy is imperative to ensure the continuity and effectiveness of arts projects. Meanwhile, the NESF study concluded that the shortcomings of national policy on the arts and social inclusion also make the success of community arts initiatives difficult to quantify - although this may be because of the intangible, rather than concrete, breadth of many of the benefits.
POVERTY/PARTICIPATION
Aisling Prior, curator of Breaking Ground, has a thoroughly practical view of the benefits that an extension of the arts to a disadvantaged community can yield. Having overseen more than 50 projects since Breaking Ground's inception in 2002, Prior refuses to "patronise" either the artists or the communities affected by Ballymun Regeneration's Per Cent for Art initiative.
"As curator, I came with a remit for the type of artistic work that we'd commission," Prior says. "I wasn't prepared to use the labels 'community art' or 'socially engaged art' or even 'public art'. Some of the artists we commissioned were not necessarily involved with a socially engaged practice either, or might have had no background in community arts. For me that context was deliberate. There's a lot of cliched assumptions made about what sort of work is suitable for a community context. We were merely commissioning artists to make work in Ballymun: I feel that there is enough inherent power or meaning in that alone for the community to benefit."
The social context that organically emerged out of Breaking Ground's programme, however, has been powerful, as the statistics of involvement, commissioning and participation testify. "Thousands of people in the community have been directly involved with Breaking Ground," Prior says. "Local residents and local artists have made work. They have been project assistants, or have worked with artists in a management capacity. They have been cleaners, invigilators, and security guards in exhibition spaces. We have provided employment and have shown people that they can get involved in the arts in a very practical way. Nearly every household that is here now has participated."
Prior speaks passionately about the effect that Breaking Ground's work has had on the wider public too: "It has helped to reintegrate Ballymun back into the city. [It has] attracted people who have never been to Ballymun to come, and has helped to deflect unfounded fears about the area. The people [of Ballymun] don't want to be ghettoised or homogenised any more than other people."
While Prior is adamant that the artist's work is always valued above its social function, she is also happy to stand by the "instrumentalist capacity" in which Breaking Ground has been effective. "Instrumentalisation of the arts can work if handled and mediated properly" she says. "It provides another way for the artist to work, but only when the artist colludes with and subscribes to a [ socially engaged agenda]. It is a sophisticated relationship, but our aspirations at Breaking Ground are very realistic. We don't expect to be able to make any major changes, but our artists are commissioned because they want to work in Ballymun, and some of their work has really contributed to positive change in the community."
ETHNIC EXCLUSION
In 2002, in line with their commitment to professional theatre practice that engages with "contemporary issues of social injustice and human rights", Calypso Productions established Tower of Babel in Dublin's inner city. Under the direction of Bairbre Ní Chaoimh, Tower of Babel has been instrumental in promoting intercultural dialogue through drama and music.
As Ní Chaoimh explains, the social and artistic aims of Tower of Babel are intimately, inextricably, linked. "[Tower of Babel] came about as a result of a growing awareness of all the artistic talent within the new minority ethnic communities for which there was no suitable outlet. We were keen to use our imaginative resources as a professional theatre company to devise an integrated cross-cultural arts programme that would develop and showcase the talent and skills of young people from minority ethnic communities living in Dublin, side by side with their Irish counterparts. We also wanted to provide recreational opportunities for some vulnerable young people, especially separated children seeking asylum, who were at risk of isolation or exclusion."
Tower of Babel's weekly workshops have used the arts as a means of exploring "differing cultural traditions" and "transcend[ing] the barriers of language, race, and religion." However, while promoting multi-ethnic integration through the arts, Ní Chaoimh has also ensured that participants in Tower of Babel itself have access to a range of professional arts experiences as well. The workshops are conducted by professional theatre practitioners, film-makers and musicians, group outings to plays and musical events are regularly organised, while many of the participants have graduated to work professionally, both with Calypso Productions [in October of last year, their production of Kate Adshead's play Bonesfeatured seven current Tower of Babel members and two graduates of the programme] and in other mainstream artistic ventures.
As Ní Chaoimh explains, she "also wanted to open up the possibility for some of the [ participants] to consider working in the arts as a career option in the future". It seems fitting that the significance of Calypso's work has been celebrated in a social context (by Metro EireannMedia and Multicultural Awards, and World Refugee Day Awards), but also by the professional theatre community. This year Ní Chaoimh herself won the 2008 Judge's Special Award at the Irish TimesTheatre Awards, commending her achievement of "aligning contemporary Irish theatre with a passionate commitment to human rights". Calypso's work with Tower of Babel proves that this commitment is practical as well as ideological.
DISABILITY/DISENFRANCHISEMENT
Contemporary disability culture approaches issues of disadvantage from a "social" rather than a "clinical" perspective; that is an understanding of disability as the attitudinal and physical barriers developed by society that restrict people with physical or mental impairment. This model of disability does not identify itself with inability, but with the exclusionary structures of mainstream culture.
However, for Padraig Naughton, artist and director of Arts and Disability Ireland (ADI), the objectives of social inclusion for disability arts culture should go hand in hand with artistic excellence: "Social inclusion is very important [issue] for us, because a great deal of people with disabilities who engage with the arts either struggle to get their work seen, or struggle to see themselves within mainstream work; in some cases [people with disabilities] can't even physically access mainstream work. But [ADI] is not just about people with disability as audience members. It's about them as artists as well."
As Naughton explains, "The more work that is seen that directly involves people with disabilities telling their own stories, reflecting their experiences in their own way - be that working in an inclusive way with non-disabled people, or with disabled persons exclusively - the more exposure the general public get, and you can slowly start to break down [social barriers]."
For Naughton, the arts in particular are key to dismantling the physical and social challenges: "Disability and social inclusion can be placed in an academic context or an economic context, but to place them in an artistic context allows for much broader and accessible debate. It's not just about having ramps, audio-description, captioning or arts activities for people with disabilities. It's about giving artists with disabilities and the communities they're a part of an opportunity to tell their story, in their own particular way. It's important that people with disabilities see themselves within the arts, see their stories being reflected back to them and explored within mainstream culture."
As Naughton observed in his excellent essay on his own artistic development in the recently published collection Face On: Disability Arts in Ireland and Beyond, "the making of artwork came first, not . . . politicisation". His words, and the experience of the other artists featured in this landmark publication, serve as a compelling reminder that the issue of social inclusion should be a public right not a political issue. The potential to create is always there. It is when the right to create is taken away that the political campaign for inclusion must begin.
