Does art matter?what can you do about it?

Does art matter?

•art + inequality - a partial history

•art + empowerment - does art matter?

•art + freedom + participation

•art + you - what can you do?

•The Campaign for Creativity

Does art matter?

‘Life expectancy of a person in Henleaze is 13 years longer than someone in Lawrence Hill.’

(Report of the Integrated Public Health Directorate, Bristol, 2003)

art + inequality

‘It is our central belief that the arts have power to transform lives, communities and opportunities for people throughout the country’

(‘Ambitions for the Arts’ Arts Council England, 2003)

art + inequality

Discussion:

•Are these claims justified?

•Do the arts really have a transforming power?

•What’s so special about the arts?We’ll look at your answers later

We’ll look at your answers later

art + inequality •A little ancient history - 2 key

discourses

1.art has become associated with privilege

a.Participation is now about artists and audiences

2.art can be used to tackle social problems

Artists or Audiences?

‘our expressive life is made up of two equally important components: ... a sense of belonging – our cultural heritage – and the arena of accomplishment, autonomy, and influence: our individual voice’.

(Bill Ivey, Arts Inc,2009)

What’s so wrong with

instrumentalism?Maslow has a lot to answer for...

art + empowerment

• Gramsci: ‘We are all philosophers’

is it better to take part in a conception of the world mechanically imposed by the external environment

... or to work out consciously and critically one’s own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one’s own brain, choose one’s sphere of activity take an active part in the creation of the history of the world, be one’s own guide...’

•Philosophy is a social process that affects us all.

•progress requires dialogue between intellectuals and the masses, between thought and action.

• It is in this dialogue that it finds the source of the problems it sets out to resolve

•A unity of theory and action that starts with a sense of being different and apart.

Theory and Practice

Disabled and socially excluded people are not a problem to be solved - they hold the solutions to social inequality.

What’s wrong with instrumentalism?

art + empowerment• Paulo Friere

• the oppressed are not “marginals,” are not people living “outside” society. They have always been “inside” ... The solution is not to “integrate” them into the structure of oppression, but to transform that structure

• Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.

• Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society?

• ‘It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors’

• liberation a mutual process that can only be achieved with the oppressed not for them..

art + empowerment

•What is so special about the arts?

•Your thoughts.

What is so special about the arts?

• The arts are our birthright

• to exclude someone from the arts is to deny their humanity

• everyone has a unique creative contribution to make to our shared culture

• when a person’s creativity is stifled all society suffers

• art gives us the tools to understand the world and to shape our own destinies

• the power of the art belongs to the artist

Policy Action Team, DCMS, 1999.

There are various distinctive contributions which the arts and sport have to offer to tackling the causes of social exclusion. These can be summarised under the headings of growing industries, engaging and strengthening local communities and an emphasis on people, not buildings or places.

Arts and sport:

a. are things in which people participate willingly, and in which there is widespread interest, including among people at risk of social exclusion

b. give individuals social, organisational and marketable skills

c. can communicate directly with individuals and groups and bring out hidden talents which have a lasting effect on the person’s life

d. give individuals greater self-respect; self-confidence and a sense of achievement

e. can contribute to greater selfesteem and improved mental well being

Question

What does this mean for the way you work with people?

Again, we’ll come back to this later

Again, we’ll come back to this later

art + empowerment• Paulo Friere

• Participatory problem posing as opposed to ‘banking’ system of education

• teachers and students are jointly responsible for a process in which all grow

• Simple processes of reflection and action

• pose problem - act - reflect - pose new problem

art + empowerment

Maslow redeemed

•Maslow describes self-actualization as a person's need to be and do that which the person was "born to do."

•"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write."

art + freedom + participation

• participation: democracy as the sum of our decisions, culture the sum of our actions

• ‘the quality of our lives should be measured not by our wealth but by our freedom’ (Kofi Annan)

• Amartya Sen

art + freedomAmartya Sen

•Freedom = participation

•Entitlements: the things we have reason to value

•Freedom as a goal and a journey

•Freedom is a necessary and sufficient condition for responsibility

Exercise

•What does this mean for the way you work with people?

•your thoughts

art + you

•Trust the art, art empowers, release the power of art

•The conditions for creativity & empowerment

•Participatory Problem Posing

•praxis

•it’s not about you.

The Campaign for Creativity

•a structure to enable empowerment to occur

•freedom framework

•participation in the arts - led by the experts

The Campaign for Creativity

•end cultural exclusion now..

a final thought

‘imagine what we could achieve if people in Bristol understood the potential of art to impact on their lives’

(Draft Visual Arts Strategy for Bristol, 2009)

- go on, imagine.

A last word‘Empowering education is thus a road from where we are to where we need to be. It crosses terrains of doubt and time. One end of the road leads away from inequality and mis-education while the other lands us in a frontier of critical learning and democratic discourse. This is no easy road to travel. Any place truly different from the status quo is not close by or down a simple trail. But the need to go there is evident ... that transformation is a journey of hope, humour, setbacks, breakthroughs and creative life, on a long and winding road paved with dreams whose time is overdue.”

Ira Shor: ‘Empowering Education’ (Chicago Press, 1992)