draganklaic_communityarts2006

7/31/2019 draganklaic_communityarts2006

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Dragan Klaic

Community Arts: A missing link, an enriching dimension

IntroductionThis is a discussion paper, aiming to prompt reflection and discussion among those

involved in professional arts training about one specific dimension of their work:

community arts. I have attempted to sketch out some characteristics of the professionalarts education that make it by and large resistant to the contextual understanding of the

art practice. I also have mapped the field of the community arts, seeking some points of

connection and engagement. Discussions prompted by this paper would hopefully lead indue time to some curriculum innovations and development.

1. Arts education, artistic career patterns and their ideology

1.1. A discussion of professional arts education and its future perspectives must surpass

accumulated romantic notions about the artist, talent, inspiration and genius and skip the

ambiguous projections of the artist as a spiritually superior human being but socio-economically marginalized fellow citizen. In the last 200 years professional arts

education has not fully eliminated those truncated notions but succeeded to perpetuate

them in a variety of disguises, even within a rather institutionalized educational process.Despite the rapid multiplication of the professional arts training programs, academies,

conservatories and faculties, often and increasingly within a university structure, and with

wide international acknowledgment of degrees, titles and diplomas, some stereotypesand myths persist while other have been created more recently by the cultural industry,eager to fabricate and exploit the image of an artist as a star, an icon of popular culture

and an embodiment and the steady output of hits, hypes and fads.

1.2. In reality, most artists are professionals who have troubles sustaining their

professional careers and are forced into a precarious existence. Despite the fact that

Europe could take pride in 60 years of elaborate cultural policy as part of public policy,articulated on several levels of the government, and despite an advanced infrastructure of

artistic and cultural institutions, many artists are free lancers, self-employed, temporarily

employed and underemployed, earning income much bellow the average professional

salaries, supplemented often by teaching or some non-artistic work.

1.3. Many artists have difficulties sustaining themselves in one place, so that artistic

nomadism could be more a matter of economic pressures than of the adventurous searchfor inspiration. In the Cold War period artists escaping communist regimes were greeted

in the West as champions of freedom; the post-Cold War mass migration of artists from

Central and Eastern Europe to the West and to the North America has been less gloriousand not so cheered up. There is also a steady trickle of artists from Western Europe to the


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USA and in the last year there are signals of artists displacement to South East Asia and

esp. Hong Kong and Shanghai.

1.4. While the principles of the Bologna Declaration are being applied to the professional

artists education, some of the traditional concepts, images and ideological percepts are

regularly invoked to oppose clear cut definition of the learning outcomes, ofcompetencies to be mastered, of quantifiable time inputs, as discussions held within the

ELIA network and its publications clearly signal. In its essential values and orientation,

professional arts education seeks to emphasize artistic excellence, familiarity with artistictraditions, creative originality and eagerness for innovation and often stresses the

individual artistic creative acts and development rather than collaborative practices. With

such institutionalized ethos, artists leave those training programs without much

sensitivity or interests for various social and institutionalized context in which they couldoperate. Their primary interests are focused on platforms and intermediaries that could

give them visibility, force a breakthrough, pool them out of anonymity as it were, and

create some demand for their artistic work. Such desiderata are artistic residences and

competitions, a limited number of prestigious grants and fellowships, an association withsome prestigious ensembles, galleries, festivals and places of excellence and

experimentation, all perceived and widely known as reputation enhancers within eachartistic discipline.

1.5. In most European countries the notion of the artistic autonomy and autonomous artwork has been prevailing in the second half of the 20th cent. It gave the artists a sense of

self-value but made them also self-centered and often oblivious for the contexts in which

they work and detached from the circumstances and powers that condition the

distribution and the reception of the art work. Furthermore, the autonomist ideology mademany decision makers, shakers and players distant from the artists, their work and

conditions in which they create. Respectful distance has in time been turned into some

sort ofindifference. Designers, fashion creators, architects and film makers are usuallymore aware of the complex web of circumstances, infrastructure, clients and

intermediaries that determine the outcome of their artistic engagement while musicians,

performing and visual artists could more cherish their creative autonomy and yet also befrustrated by its other facets: isolation, lack of exposure and opportunities. Many artists

understand with more or less precision and clarity that they are caught in a complicate

web of powers and that they fluctuate on a market of tremendous competition, sudden

shifts of taste and fashion and many key players: clients, donors, subsidy givers, public,interpreters, intermediaries and supporters. Few artists have a clear developmental

strategy, most improvise, rely on accidental opportunities and intuition or seek some

traditional forms of private and public patronage. Those who try to make it on their ownforget to consider and systematically nurture strategic allies and partners. If they achieve

some institutional affiliation and stability, soon they experience it as stifling, routine,

bureaucratic or hierarchical. In fact, that is exactly how many cultural institutions operatetoday institutional fatigue is a widespread phenomenon in the cultural sector in Europe.

1.6. Against this backdrop of contradictory beliefs, assumptions, mental habits and

ideological projections it is not strange that most of the professional artists education


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programs ignore the community arts and that most graduates of artistic schools have no

interest for this field or better: this dimension of artistic engagement.

2. Facets and functions of the community arts

2.0. Community arts as an item generates 234 million entries on Google and the numberraises daily. It went up several million entries while this text was being prepared. A

quick scan reveals that most entries concern individual community arts centers, as hubs

of arts activity in smaller places, but also agencies of public authorities, foundations,university arts centers and degree and outreach programs, research and expertise centers.

mostly in North America, UK and Australia. Community arts movement could be seen

as part of a large effort after the World War 2 to develop and spread cultural

infrastructure, democratize culture, ushercultural democracy and, later, implement athorough decentralization of culture. The English term reflects the developments in the

UK originally, but in the last 30-35 years increasingly in North America, Canada,

Australia and N. Zeeland, where it acquired a marked grass root character, as a

counterpoint to the big city, traditional and elitist cultural institutions and with emphasison the participation in culture by of ordinary people without much education and income,

rather than the traditional and more limited notion ofaccess. The notion of activeparticipation has been replacing the notion of access, determined more in consumption

term, and adding a dimension of expected empowerment. Community arts movement and

practice could also be seen as an alternative response to the overwhelming dominance ofthe cultural industry, its mass marketed goods, uniformity of expression they impose and

the passive consumer they seek to shape. In this sense, community arts movement seeks

to create artistic opportunities, practices and strategies that will strengthen the civil

society and the quality of active, engaged and committed citizenship, locally andglobally. In the developing countries, community arts is a part ofculture of development

and a facet of development strategies, merging traditional and contemporary artistic

expression, forms and means.

2.1. The notion of a community requires some scrutiny, however. It is a quite abused

notion, loaded with idealistic connotations and projections of stability, coherence anddurability, and insufficiently conveying the inherent heterogeneity, divergence and

dynamism. Most frequently, it is applied to all people who live on some smaller local

territory, a borough orquartier. Or it is applied to people of some common cultural

features, such as religion or language. But those connected by ethnicity, commoncountry of origin, gender or sexual orientation could also be labeled as a community. In

Europe and N. America the notion has chiefly a positive connotation while in India, with

its history of ferocious clashes among various religious and ethnic groupings, the veryword and the derived term communitarianism have acquired a clearly negative

connotation, as in the writing of Rustum Bharucha: that of a fragmented and shrunk

public space and the diminished chances for equal rights and responsibilities of citizens,pigeonholed into various separate collectives.

2.2. Community arts covers as a term artistic processes firmly anchored in the

community, aimed at its members, often conceived and created with their participation.


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Usually,professionalartists are involved in the process as instigators, leaders, coaches,

collaborators and participants. The characteristic of community arts is the frequent fusion

of the professionals and non-professionals effort. In contrasts to the traditionalamateurism, where the non-professionals imitate the professional artistic output in

repertory, content, style and form but not on the same artistic level (singing as a chorus a

Bach Passion or performing a Sondheim musical or an Ayckbourn play), communitytheater does not strive to imitate the existing cultural production but to create its own,

derived from the collective experience of the community and addressing primarily its

own members, burning issues and traumatic or imminent events.

2.3. The purpose of community arts is to involve the members of the community, make it

more inclusive, cohesive and self-aware of its collective memory, present challenges and

processes and map out multiple alternatives of the future. In this sense, community artsseek to achieve continuity and to overcome a crisis and surpass fatalism through

empowermentand mobilization. The works of art are usually issue driven, derived from

interviews, narratives, reminiscences, oral and written sources of the local culture. In

territorial communities there is often a strong intergenerational dimension. In the workwith communities defined by a specific content some issues might become dominant: in

the refugee camps the forced migration and acculturation; in jails the deprivation offreedom and the time after the end of the jail sentence; among terminally dead the

meaning of life and the dignity of death and dieing; among battered women the

domestic violence etc. While there is often a celebration of the community and itsvitality, community arts grind a critical ax and enhance critical attitudes, are problem

solving in orientation and prompt behavior modification, engagement and

social change on a local or micro level. This activiststreak is clearly visible in six case

studies of community theater on several continents, by Eugen van Erven in his bookCommunity Theatre (London: Routledge 2000) and the accompanying documentary film.

2.4. Community arts have urban and rural facets, exist in the developed and developingworld, within an institutionalized framework and within the lose network of initiatives

and spontaneous movements. A broad range of artistic disciplines are covered, included

and often intertwined. In the visual arts, murals appear frequently, community dance hassurpassed its recreational function and acquired a new eloquence in the collective

movement and rhythm. Augusto Boals theories have promoted widespread practices of

community theater on several continents. Increasingly, polaroid and digital cameras,

digital video, and internet are being used as well. With internet, community has lost itsfixed location and the cyber-communities have multiplied, including various diasporic

communities.

2.5. In the tough multicultural periphery settlements around large French cities les

musiques actuelles have been used to mobilize deeply alienated youngsters, often high

school drop outs and on the edge of criminality and give them skills, sense of belongingand self-value, coupled with collective support. From music practices a range of other

community activities, artistic and civic, have been developed, as I learned in 2001 editing

the first issue ofLes Cahiers de Fanfare. In the UK, community arts find a place in the

recent Arts Council of England Arts Policy for Rural Areas. Major playwrights such as


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Howard Barker have been scripting and directing large complex performances

encompassing great number of inhabitants of the small English towns and villages to

recreate their sense of local history and clarify their developmental perspectives. InAfrica, community arts have been a powerful instrument in the struggle against HIV and

AIDS and deployed for the sexual education of teenagers. In India, community arts made

wife burning practice a public issue. In Brazil, Boals legislative theater used stagingmethods to shape and articulate legislative proposals, some of which were passed by the

Sao Paolo regional parliament. In the USA, homeless of Los Angels become theater

protagonists and consequently toured European festivals as LAPD, while street youth anddrug abusers of several metropolitan areas remade their lives and regained stability and

sense of purpose through artistic involvement. In N. America and in Europe, jails have

become platforms of community arts (sometimes with fatal consequences as the jailbird

actors of the Swedish playwright Lars Nuren who run away and committed crimes andmurder while on theater tour!). Dog troeps production in the Brugge jail in 2002 erased

the hostile frontier between the inmates and jail guards and made them both

undistinguishable from the professional performers. Lastingly, chorus projects have

emerged in several jails from this adventure. Community arts have been used to clarifythe future perspectives of refugees in the asylum seekers camps in W. Europe.

3. The Netherlands: separated realms, unexplored territory

3.1. In the Netherlands, by contrast, community arts is relatively underdeveloped fieldand the division between professional and non-professional arts remains firm.

Professional arts is publicly subsidized, supposedly on the basis ofquality, a container

notion that implies excellence, innovation, originality, and not for involvement in some

community context and interaction with non-professionals as active participants.Governments demand that the cultural organizations actively recruit young audience and

public of foreign descent (R. vd Ploeg/OCW 1998-2002) met fierce resistance and fizzled

out with the change of government in 2002. Non-professional arts are subsidized chieflyaccording to traditional amateurism lines, as part of an anachronistic notion of

formalized association life, nourished primarily by the CDA. Consequently, the Dutch

cultural scene could boost of occasional jail and probation arts project, some art workamong the refugees and asylum seekers, and increasingly participatory arts project of the

secondary school students within their arts and culture curriculum (CKV). The private

foundations, with their more flexible and less departmentalized funding criteria, are in a

better position to fund occasional community arts projects than the public authorities, itseems. Among hundreds of performing arts organizations, subsidized incidentally or for 4

years, only Stut theater in Utrecht and Het Wijktheater in Rotterdam consistently explore

this model. The former is a long standing pioneer, active for more than 25 years in thetougher neighborhoods of Utrecht and undertakes one large project per year, a fully

scripted performance emerging from research and long rehearsals, involving several

generations, with strong intercultural characteristic and often on a controversial topic.The latter has twice successfully organized an international conference and a mini festival

in Rotterdam (2003 and 2005). On the remarkable strengths of the theater for children

and adolescents in the Netherlands, in the last few years a movement has emerged

involving youngsters as participants in productions created by professionals


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(jongerentheater) but the recruitment and embedding lack a purposeful community

context.

3.2. Equally, community arts are hardly discernible in the Dutch professional arts

education (kunstvakonderwijs) institutions. Despite their considerable expansion,introduction of new programs, departments and degrees, a sensitivity for artistic

creativity in some concrete social context and community framework has been missing.

Graduating students do not acquire necessary stimuli, skills and experiences that wouldenable them to integrate in the community context nor do they develop an awareness,

sensibility, mentality, positive attitude for such engagement. Consequently, they imagine

a career path that is not only narrowly defined in terms of pursuit of excellence but also

is the most crowded and the most competitive one.

3.3. Among attempts to broaden career opportunities, one can register in the last few

years the Transmission project, supported initially by the Theater Instituut Nederland and

continued from the Kunstenars & Co; Kunst & samenleving experimental trainingprogram for arts professionals, run in the course of the academic year 2004/5 at the HKU

Amsterdam with a pilot grant of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Most of thoseprojects have been conceived from a perspective of broaderemployability of the

practicing artists and even supported by the employment and employability programs of

the European Commission. They have not been chiefly constructed from a perspective ofa civil society development, benefiting from the insertion of artistic creativity. Moreover,.

social and health services, educational bodies, judiciary authority and integration

agencies as well as numerous NGOs engaged in human rights, environmental issues,

refugee care and other causes do not have a habit to seek out artists and create for themopportunities to work in a community set up and forpublic advocacy. They even rarely

appear as a sponsor or commissioning party of professional arts organization, engaging

them to create around some specific issues and providing them with some special,additional circuit or audience. In the last 2 years, The Ministry of LNV, some social

agencies and veterans organization have been doing single projects with the performing

arts groups, however.

4. Conclusions

4.1. There is an urgent need to integrate community arts dimension in the highereducation, in the formation of future artists and in its interdisciplinary perspective,

seeking to fuse arts and sciences. The chief purpose would be to give future artists the

know-how, skills, insights needed in order to operate effectively within a communitysetting. Other academic disciplines at universities could be also implicated (political

science, international relations, education, sociology, psychology, anthropology, public

health, environmental sciences, cultural policy and cultural management). In thedevelopment of the new masters programs (research, teaching arts) this dimension cannot

be omitted, I believe, and especially as it offers opportunities to build new productive

partnerships, locally and internationally, with the NGOs, artistic collectives and in the

academia.


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Some web resources

www.wwcd (Institute of Cultural Democracy, Australia)

www.communityarts.net (USA)www.britishcouncil.org/arts/performing-arts-for-development

www.cultdevelop.net (Australia)

www.artsusa.org(USA arts advocacy)www.fordfound.org (Ford Foundation)

www.cretivity.net (arts for social change)

www.pioneersofchange.net(young people in community action)

www.livable.com(Partners for Livable Communities, Washington DC)www.insideoutca.com(Inside Outside, Calif)www.uoregon.edu/icas(Un. of Oregon Institute for Community Arts)

www.cca.edu/academics/ communityarts (New BFA program, Calif. College of Arts)

www.colum.edu/OCAP (Office of Community Arts Partnership at Columbia College,

Chicago)www.artsresourcenetwork.org/community_arts (city of Seattle, WA.)

www.artsalliance.org (Illinois, US)

www.artsforcitizenship.umich.edu (Univ. of Michigan community outreach program)

Dragan Klaic, a Permanent Fellow of Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, teaches arts and

cultural policies at Leiden University. Educated in Belgrade and at Yale, he held

professorships in Belgrade, Amsterdam and the US, led the Theater Instituut Nederland,

co-founded the European Theater QuarterlyEuromaske, and led European culturalnetworks ENICPA and EFAH. He is the initiator of the European Festival Research

Project and active across Europe as writer, lecturer, researcher and advisor. Publications

include several books in the former Yugoslavia as well as Terrorism and Modern Drama(co-edited with J. Orr, Edinburgh Univ. Press 1990, paperback 1992), The Plot of The

Future: Utopia and Dystopia in Modern Drama (Michigan Univ. Press 1991), Shifting

Gears/ Changer de vitesse (co-edited with R. Englander, TIN Amsterdam 1998), an exilememoir,Exercises in Exile, in Dutch and Croatian (2004 and 2006),Europe as a

Cultural Project(Amsterdam: ECF 2005) and many articles and contributions to over 40

edited books. Contributing Editor of the Theatermagazine (USA).

Published asn Community arts: a missing link, an enriching dimension. In Kunst in

mijn buurt. Community arts festival. Utrecht: Vreede van Utrecht 2006, 69-74.

D. Klaic 2006
http://www.wwcd/http://www.communityarts.net/http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts/performing-arts-for-developmenthttp://www.cultdevelop.net/http://www.artsusa.org/http://www.artsusa.org/http://www.fordfound.org/http://www.cretivity.net/http://www.pioneersofchange.net/http://www.pioneersofchange.net/http://www.livable.com/http://www.livable.com/http://www.insideoutca.com/http://www.insideoutca.com/http://www.uoregon.edu/icashttp://www.uoregon.edu/icashttp://www.cca.edu/academics/communityartshttp://www.cca.edu/academics/communityartshttp://www.cca.edu/academics/communityartshttp://www.cca.edu/academics/communityartshttp://www.colum.edu/OCAPhttp://www.artsresourcenetwork.org/community_artshttp://www.artsalliance.org/http://www.artsforcitizenship.umich.edu/http://www.wwcd/http://www.communityarts.net/http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts/performing-arts-for-developmenthttp://www.cultdevelop.net/http://www.artsusa.org/http://www.fordfound.org/http://www.cretivity.net/http://www.pioneersofchange.net/http://www.livable.com/http://www.insideoutca.com/http://www.uoregon.edu/icashttp://www.cca.edu/academics/communityartshttp://www.colum.edu/OCAPhttp://www.artsresourcenetwork.org/community_artshttp://www.artsalliance.org/http://www.artsforcitizenship.umich.edu/


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