What is the community?

An easy question to answer, you might think, but you’d be wrong.  We hear the term all the time, and, to be honest, it usually means ‘poor people’.  Sometimes it can mean the public in general, sometimes it can mean people from some kind of minority.  We hear about agencies (mainly public sector) ‘consulting the community’, which is innacurate, to say the least (only a tiny part of any community is ever consulted).  For us, the community is people, all people, in some kind of geographical or physical context – we are part of the community and not seperate from it.

So, one of the reasons that community art has been so maligned in the past is because of these attitudes that the ‘community’ is over there, is poor people, immigrants, minorities, whatever, means that a patronising approach is often taken.  We witnessed a prime example yesterday when we saw a group of ‘community artists’ present some of ther work, which completely wound me up.  They stated that because they were working with ‘the community’ they had not ‘bothered’ with developing a conceptual framework for their project, instead they had asked the ‘community’ what they wanted and then given it to them.  This is dumbing down of the worst kind, what we call cultural post-colonialism.  We’ve always taken the approach that people, even those with no contact with the arts, have a sophisticated understanding of conceptual work gained through a culture of film, TV and advertising, all of which are influenced by the ‘fine’ arts (advertising people seem to particularly do this – we know at least two artists personally who have had their ideas ripped off by the mainly morally-bankrupt advertising industry).  This means that you can be as ‘conceptual’ as you like and people will still go with the work.  Indeed, people often have a refreshingly honest and open approach to the work, which can be disarming, if at times quite painful.  But this is one of the reasons it is so joyous to make work with and for the general public, rather than an arts audience.

The second thing that really got my goat was the idea of giving people what they want.  This is one of the worst things about working in Birmingham.  From the Council down, the litany is inclusion, inclusion, inclusion – but done soooo wrong.  ‘Give people what they want’ we are told, consult with them and then act upon it.  This reached a ridiculous apex with the Council Arts teams proposed bid for the forthcoming UK City of Culture.  apart from asking  artists and arts organisations to send them ‘ideas’ to put into the bid (for free of course), much of the bid is aimed at youth in the city.  Fine and dandy, you might think, and I agree – but it is how this is done that got me seething.  ‘Exciting arts workshops’ will be delivered during the consultation to find out what people want, aimed at young people between 2 and 21. So 2 year old children will be deciding the cultural offer – should be a hoot! (apart from the fact that the council shouldn’t be delivering workshops – putting them in direct comptetition with people they are supposed to support).  We are a little sick of the whole ‘cult of youth’ prevalent these days, with young people given far too much power in the decision-making process.  Whilst it is great to ‘empower’ (I so hate that word, another time perhaps) young people and involve them, it is going too far when artists with 20 or more years of experience have their proposals judged by teenage children.  Bless them, many teenagers are intelligent, articulate, have a sophisticated relationship with the arts, and many other qualities – what they do not have is experience, nor in my opinion have they earned the right to sit in judgement of people who have.  But the council and its cronies continue to support this approach more and more – we refuse to get involved in any of these projects until a much more equitable and sensible approach is used, rather than hysterically getting young people and others to make decisions which they are not qualified to make in the name of inclusion.

So, as you can see, it did rattle my cage.  What particularly upset me was seeing artists collude with this approach and consequently sit there, smugly happy that they had given ‘the community’ what they wanted.  If you ask people what they want, they’ll tell you – it won’t necessarily be the right thing, or the right thing for them, but it will be what they want.

So how do you know what the right thing is, what people need?  That’s one of  the questions we consistently ask ourselves in our work, what is needed in this context?  We don’t always get it right, but 20 years of experience developing our art in the world, alongside a deep emotional and spiritual intelligence gained with working with thousands of people from all kinds of contexts means we have earned the right to give it a go.  So in our opinion, the best way to include people is to take them on a journey, to stretch their boundaries, to challenge them and to do your best to smash any glass ceilings (economic, cultural and conceptual) that get in your way.

Don’t give people what you think they want, give people what you think they need.