I dont know about community……

this is how it feels!!

this is how it feels!!

Trying to get everyone together is quite a task. Everyone is busy all the time, myself included. Friday evening I got a big piece of cheese and some bread and set up a laptop with the photos taken by Shaw&Shaw and an interesting piece of writing that has come my way about the I dont know about community networks etc show…..(more please!) As I made the tea, the texts and calls started to roll in as it seems for various reasons that Friday 13th was jinxed and so the meeting ended up between just Jil and I – which was fine. We talked about collective consciousness and what that might mean and whether individuals are enabled by some overall natural support mechanism, whether we influence that through democracy…or if its out of our control. I managed to get through most of the cheese myself!
I had a lovely exchange of e.mails on Friday with Jo Lewington, still in India, who had come up with a title for her work “Father on the right, Mother on the left” which gives a whole new layer to the work, a film made with workers in a factory.
As the works begin to gather a life around them, – they’ve been seen and commented upon which changes in a way some of the understanding of it, I am trying to think again about the practicality of the works coming together and what will it all say then. Here the ideas within the project are emerging . Something is taking shape, the relationship between the works – and the individual pieces – Trying to think is the operative word – I feel like I'm on a steep curve – like I should be on top of it, but something else keeps unfolding – I love it. Time to think however,is at a premium at the moment.
Yesterday, to clear the mind I tried to go sailing at the Debdale club (run by the local council just in case you suddenly got the wrong image) – but the lake is still frozen, with bits of old cars and planks on it and it has a big fence around it so that no one drowns.

A mixed bag of people – students, artists, community arts practitioners, curators, academics, community workers and volunteers and one person from the Transport network piled onto community transport minibus, driven by Mark – thanks Mark. They were given a whistle stop tour of the route and the artworks. Architectural critic Phil Griffin was on board to make the journey more entertaining and informative about Manchester’s varied regeneration with added historical and contemporary anecdotes.

Cultural Tourism. Was there any connection between the lives of the people on the bus and the lives of the community centres. Questions were asked about the centres and I know that some people were certainly on the lookout for opportunities to create stronger connections between their own work in the arts or academia and wider society. Perhaps learning about the places would increase their own cultural capital? One passenger from Manchester International Festival had just arrived in Manchester and found the tour a good way to get an overall view of the city – visiting neighbourhoods she’d never have known about otherwise and she told me that taking part in something small and obscure(!) like this was where she would really learn about the city and what artists were doing out there.

Cilla Baines from the long established and very successful Community Arts North West wanted to replicate the idea of a tour, one that would re -visit key sites and places where community arts projects around Manchester have occurred, recognising the historical significance of that area of practice to the city.

At each place, the tour group created more interest in the work itself from passers by. The fact of 15 or so people crowding around the art works drew people over, like a mini version of the art world generally I guess – what are they looking at, it must be something important?. People asked questions about the work – what was it for, what was it about – the usual questions. Particularly in Wythenshawe – a suburb that was built on the principals of a garden city – and detached from the rest of Manchester by the M56 – someone asked – so is this about Wythenshawe? Well not exactly, but then again yes…the people represented on Joe Richardson’s socio-organi-gram of CN4M and it’s environs 2008 may well have an effect in this isolated, yet self contained community and he's showing how they connect with others.

At any rate Joe’s piece may have had more relevance than the chainsaw carved tree trunk of two birds on a log that it had replaced two weeks earlier – and despite a few cracks in one of the fragile gold leafed pasting tables, where presumably someone had leaned a little too hard on the work, no further damage was reported to any of the works. And unlike the carved log, we didn’t put a cordon around anything!

The exhibition for two weeks in community settings came to and end last weekend.
The time went so quickly that I didn’t have enough chances to stay in all of the venues to see the work in place and gauge how people responded, so I am reliant on feedback coming from the venues and individuals – If anyone did manage to see anything, do let me know – contact me via one-and-all.org.

What I’ve been doing is as I understand it quite different. Its not been about engaging people in the process of making art – so it goes against all the rules of community arts or participatory projects that these venues are familiar with and have come to expect. I didn’t leave a whole lot of information to read about the work – just some basic info about the project and a few lines to explain each artists approach – perhaps the kind of thing you'd find in a gallery. The map/guide had more text and some context. So the idea of an “experiment” was an apt one. How would people respond to a piece of contemporary art appearing in their places (though they are public places too) and importantly how would a contemporary art audience react to the work in those places. The works weren't site specific either. But certainly the sites added something to the work I believe.

What was I trying to do? On the one hand, the aesthetic experience of the places seemed an untapped issue. How did community practice (lets use that term instead of regeneration) actually look and feel. And what would placing these art works in those contexts do to the meaning of the work. And would the work mean anything to the people passing by – do we perhaps do people a dis-credit by assuming they need to be spoonfed their culture? Perhaps people are more sophisticated than some may like to think..