(IM)POTENCY

WHAT HAS THE

STATE DONE FOR

CULTURAL

INCLUSION AND HAS

IT WORKED?

Take back the Power

Eleanor Phillips

Background and Introduction

Imagination and its infrastructure of artists and non artists can be mobilised to re-invest

and re-set our sovereignty. Precisely because Ireland has failed we can carefully

recalibrate the public value of art and culture to reunite the broken circuitry between

people and political processes. In 1877 the Irish state established our first national

cultural institutions. In 1951, following the lead of Great Britain, it established an

independent Arts Council. Today, there is an opportunity to use the armature of arts and

culture to recover a new experience of sovereignty.

Last March (2011), a new Government of Ireland was formed that promised a new way

of doing democracy. The 31st Dáil and 29

th Irish Government wanted a sea-change to re-

set our sovereignty and make govern-mentality fit for purpose. Herein we proffer

knowledge and ideas to assist state agencies to address their obligations and explore

possibilities for them in utilising the arts to combat disadvantage.

Utilising the arts to combat disadvantage is closely linked to cultural inclusion and

community art. This is a diverse field in which non-artists collaborate closely with artists

and others to be co-producers of collective meaning and local identity. So-called

community arts approaches when effective can make an invaluable contribution to a

framework for solidarity, equality and human rights in Ireland today.

Too little priority is given to generating ideas and practices about how the sovereign right

of poorer families and communities can express their own sense of meaning. Unless the

arts armature gets deployed to radically address disadvantage, public support will remain

impotent. Why? Because

(i) Poorer people have no voice at the decision-making table of national

cultural institutions, local authority and other state agencies with

responsibility for the arts armature.

(ii) Spending on the arts and disadvantage has no national policy, is ad-hoc

and remains uncoordinated at both national and local levels.

(iii) No agency takes responsibility for utilising art and culture to make

disadvantage, poverty and exclusion impossible.

(iv) Data has not been gathered for analysis and a review of progress that

could provide evidence-based criticism and inform the recommendation of

changes.

The reasons for this situation are complex. For over a decade the dominant cultural

imagery favoured by Irish cities and counties, namely art and culture as economic and

tourist development, has tended to discount community arts and other approaches around

national identity and community spirit in favour of a more instrumental yet insufficient

economic view of the arts.

Notwithstanding tremendous cutting edge projects and programmes that continue to be

developed within and without the existing armature, not least through the courage of

specific communities and artists working against the odds of what is validated, popular or

profitable, some of these initiatives never appear on the radar of the funded until long

after their culturing in communities and many never at all.

When it comes to public spending, we have no data to indicate the contribution made by

such initiatives towards making exclusion and poverty impossible. From 2008 until now

an unprecedented gap has emerged whereby the development of research in the area of

the arts and disadvantage is non-existent. While many aspire, no one agency takes the

lead responsibility for policy and provision in this arena. Put simply, we have not

gathered data in a joined-up way to answer three questions:

What has worked in the area of art and disadvantage?

What has failed, as we can learn from such experiences?

How can we be more critical and make improvements?

The facts, few that we have, are that access and participation in arts, in culture and in

heritage by groups experiencing disadvantage has decreased over the last decade. Why?

Because serious errors were made in the delivery of policy and services in the arts and in

culture. These errors remain unacknowledged.

We make this assertion knowing that art and artists have a distinct and special place in

Irish society, which brings with it responsibilities, and it is proper that the arts, as well as

parallel domains like heritage and public service broadcasting, are held to account when

they become a net contributor to inequality and exclusion.

By way of analogy, there are more stringent checks and balances in place for the use of

logos as a result of funding by the Arts Council, RTE (Supporting the Arts), Office of

Public Works (Heritage Ireland), Local Authorities, and other National Cultural

Institutions than there are for the provision to combat disadvantage, poverty and

exclusion.

What Good is Community Art?

In Framework for Family Support (2011), the Family Support Agency highlights the

importance of developmental outcomes for vulnerable families. Kieran McKeown

argues, „What is good for children can also be good for families and parents‟.

More specifically, Family Resource Centres direct input to SPEAK (Strategic Planning

and Self-evaluation System) reported (2011) that community arts groups are tactically

unsurpassed as ways to engage and work with vulnerable families, especially hard-to-

reach ones. The benefit of community art in family support is the way it enables the rest

of society to hear an otherwise unarticulated voice.

What is the Impact?

Based upon our experience, and informed by national and international research, we have

identified five reasons to recommend the use of community arts in providing family

support and community development.

(i) Engaging with forms of creative and local cultural expression is central to

encouraging engagement of hard-to-reach groups, developing capacities and

skills, facilitating risk-taking among individuals and simply having fun.

(ii) Community arts practices impact personally and practically in the following

domains:

cultural well-being by activating the right to participate in the creation of

culture.

health well-being (both physical and mental) by making

individuals/groups feel better.

active well-being through learning (education/training) and doing

(working). Seeds new skills, capacities and co-productions.

personal well-being by being humanly connected to family, friends,

neighbours and the local community.

social well-being by being enhancing inclusion and participation in

society.

(iii) Contributing to social change and the struggle to make poverty impossible and

establishing frameworks for equality, solidarity and social justice.

(iv) Valuing collectiveness, locality, personality, creativity, communality, collegiality

and spirituality. (v) Advocating for systems to take account of the human person, especially for voices neither

seen nor heard in our society.

Is it Reasonable for the Public to Invest in Art to Combat

Disadvantage?

The Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, famously cautioned never to violate the

artist's right to express. But he added

(..) we will be permitted to reproach, make requests, appeal and to coax. Even

granting that the artist does not owe anybody anything, it is painful to see how

(...) an artist can deliver the real world into the hands of self-seeking, insignificant

or even insane people.

In Ireland, there has been a systems failure to create conversations between arts/culture

and other momentums for social and political rights. Now, more than ever, we have to

place our efforts in the framework of developing a new consensus about the public value

of culture. No artist requires permission to write a poem, but there are obligations never

adequately fixed in any manifesto or handbook that are formed at the creative community

bench.

Blue Drum attended the Rustbelt to Artist Belt Conference in St. Louis in April 2012.

During that conference, American cultural theorist, Arlene Goldbard, defined cultural

inclusion as a form of community-artist collaboration in order to explore concerns and

express identity in ways that build the capacity of local communities and lead to positive

social change.

During the same conference, an organisation called Americans for the Arts spoke about a

project, Animating Democracy, that supported 36 organisations utilising arts and culture

to enhance civic dialogue. The Mapping Initiative found that arts-based civic dialogue

“brought forward new voices, empowering disenfranchised groups and providing access

to public dialogue and decision-making processes to people who had never before felt a

welcoming entry point”.

Since 2008, the management and govern-mentality that has dominated Arts Council

thinking has introduced a number of fractures, gaps and shortcomings.

Firstly, our system of managing the arts has become congealed, dogmatic and

bureaucratic. Secondly, our system of managing the arts has lost the sovereignty of its

statutory responsibility because it no longer has the trust of the people. Thirdly, while we

face a poverty of leadership and management of the arts, this is a unique moment to bring

forward something radically new for art and culture. This has parallels to the 1877

establishment of our national cultural institutions and the 1952 founding of the arms-

length Arts Council.

Blue Drum‟s primary context is within family resource and community centres in

disadvantaged areas. The estimated income of a household of four on social welfare is

currently €80 a week below the poverty line. The radically new idea we proffer is that

the state has a duty to find ways to make poverty impossible in Ireland – homelessness,

household poverty, unemployment traps, poverty traps and child poverty – because it

tears our social cohesion asunder. What families and experiences are we talking about?

Homeless including those living on illegal halting sites.

Poor housing quality including dampness and structural problems.

Mental health and addiction problems.

Unemployment including some for more than two generations.

High levels of debt and indebtedness.

Contact with social, justice and court services.

Asylum seekers and migrant workers.

If we really want to utilise the arts to make social exclusion and poverty in Ireland

impossible then we have to start listening to the views of poorer people and give those

views a place at the decision-making table, where resources reside. It may be that the

view from the window of a Minister, the office of a Council Manager, the chair of an

Arts Officer or even the doorway of Blue Drum is very different from a parent in local

public authority housing, a halting site or ghost estate!

Community arts are not a tool for engaging vulnerable families and parents. They are

about much more than that. Article 2(1) of the Cultural Heritage Convention that was

adopted on 17 Oct 2003 defines community arts as

the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as

instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that

communities, groups and in some cases, individuals recognise as part of their

cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to

generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their

environment, their interaction with nature and their history and provides them with a

sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural expression and

human creativity.

Community art operates in this field of intangible cultural heritage and contemporary

cultural expressions that are local, indigenous and often not recognised by the State.

Article 4 of the Cultural Diversity Convention states,

Cultural expression refers to the manifold ways in which the cultures of groups and

societies find expression. These expressions are not passed on within and among

groups and societies. Cultural expression is made manifest not only through the

varied ways in which cultural heritage of humanity is expressed, augmented and

transmitted through the variety of cultural expressions, but also through diverse

models of artistic creation, production, dissemination, distribution and enjoyment,

whatever the means and technologies used.

In local hands and using the tactics and devices of community artists we can make sure

that the voices of the voiceless do not disappear and that well-being deepens.

We have a unique armature of funding and infrastructure (people and places)

complemented by courageous leadership that can be utilised to combat disadvantage.

Table 2 provides an overview of 2011 Estimates for the Arts.

Figure 1—2011 Estimates

Cultural Projects 4,297 4,297

Cultural Dev. 465 7,800

Culture Ireland 3,997 3,000

Arts Council 64,317 850

National Museum 12,240 2,000

National Library 7,084 1,000

Irish Film Board 2,431 16,000

National Gallery 8,100 2,000

RTE 100,000 ------

€249,961 €38,847

If public funding for arts and culture carries an obligation to support families and

communities in their process of making sense of their lives, then we have a unique

armature. The spectrum of funding is wide, and concentration is rightly directed at The

Arts Council (€65 million in 2011). However, we also must look wider e.g. to RTE

(received €100 million in 2011) and the heritage functions of the Office of Public Works.

These agencies are significant, especially in relation to supporting Irish identity and the

spirit of being Irish.

The State has a duty to protect and promote our intangible cultural heritage and

expression emerging from the highways and byways even when it remains invisible to

public funding. This duty includes various means (practices, artefacts, etc.) and must

ensure public access not just as consumers (audiences, ticket buyers, box office receipts)

but also as creators, producers, distributors, commentators, critics, decision-makers and

policy-makers.

Part of that duty has to be concerned with changing the perception of official arts by

ordinary people. This perception was well illustrated by a senior civil servant to a 2012

Dáil Committee.

I hope members will forgive me for observing that in Ireland “the arts” is

sometimes used as a pejorative term, as relating to a certain type of sophisticated

person. (...) there are people who are almost proud to say they have nothing to do

with the arts. (…) For the socially excluded, in particular, it can be absolutely

forbidding.

Last year, Niall Crowley addressed a national forum of theatre organisations and recalled

a discussion during We Are Family, a showcase event of Family Centres in Limerick and

Clare. He recalled,

The very term „arts and culture‟ was problematic (…) Arts and culture were seen

as „high-falutin‟. The term was rejected as excluding and as having little to offer

the realities faced by most participants. In one telling exchange the RTE arts

programme „The View‟ was criticised as highbrow and out of touch with ordinary

people, whereas RTE‟s Nationwide was celebrated as being the best arts

programme.

It is important to restate what we know from existing research. Poorer families and

communities place low value on „official‟ culture and don‟t access or participate in it.

This reflects the larger problem of a broken circuitry between individual citizens and the

political process. Community arts in the context of family support needs a re-visioning

and re-sourcing in terms of new forms of equality and solidarity to build social cohesion.

A new deal for disadvantaged families is required, which acknowledges „up front‟ some

of the features of the work where „value for money‟ can sit within a wider ecology of

„public value‟.

In this regard, we caution against the rhetoric of research that signifies disadvantaged

families and communities as damaged and deficient. It is inherently limiting because it

implies that the system only needs to be tweaked. The horizon in which artists and arts

organisations embedded in community activity resides far beyond the horizon of damage

limitation.

We argue that an alternative visioning is required. Europe needs a new soul was the

message delivered to European leaders at the June 2011 meeting of the European Anti-

Poverty Network. Arts and culture is about the rights of ordinary families to express their

own way of making sense of living in Ireland today.

New visioning will resist a taboo-centred strategy in favour of the resilience of arts and

cultural practice that resuscitates family and community sovereignty in Ireland today in

ways that address our indissoluble problems: What is the public value of culture and who

benefits from it? What sort of society do we want? How do we sustain our poorer

families and communities?

l

What is the role of the State through the Arts Council and

Local Authorities?

We contest the fitness of our cultural systems for action in the arena of utilising arts to

combat disadvantage. Poor families are significantly harder to engage and more likely to

be passed over when it comes to arts and culture. There are real systemic problems with

the way arts funding is delivered at Arts Council and local-authority levels via the Arts

Act, Per Cent for Art, etc. It will not be fixed by giving the state more say in how state

funding is spent. The problem is complicated by the fact that our public service

broadcaster, which already receives the Arts Council‟s El Dorado of €100 million takes

no responsibility in the arena of combating disadvantage. Nor is cultural inclusion

embedded formally nor informally in the heritage work of the Office of Public Works, its

associated agencies nor national cultural institutions.

In 2003, a TASC study about participation in the arts, commissioned by the Civil Arts

Inquiry, identified:

growing gulf between policy thinking and state action and the absence of a

uniform and critical debate about the State‟s responsibilities.

compelling need to advance a role for arts and culture in examining low

levels of participation in the functioning of the state process.

An urgent need for greater access and accountability to address culture as a

right for which the State can be held accountable.

Much of the evidence given to date to the Committee articulates a concern with remit,

power and authority. Thus, it makes little sense to advocate for „a status switch from arts

officers to arts manager designation‟ or „more power in relation to public art funding at a

departmental level‟ and „nomination to the Arts Council‟. None of these concerns will

make one iota of difference for poorer families and communities. Let‟s look at what we

know:

People with lower educational attainment, social class and income are many times less

likely to attend a range of arts events. And if you are over 45 you are much more likely to

attend no arts events. [References: ESRI, 2008, pp. 8, 13, 58n.]

At a local level, the awareness of local authority arts officers and local arts centres is

heavily skewed towards the more advantaged groups. The NESF report noted comments

from some arts officers that they were not adequately qualified nor experienced to

provide good community arts work, to work with people excluded from the arts nor to

conduct appropriate analysis of participation rates and outcomes.

[References: ESRI, 2008, p. 58 // NESF, 2007, p. 108]

Arts officers subsidise the endeavours enjoyed by the better off. Part of the aim of arts

officers‟ posts is to reach out to less well-off communities. Yet, evidence suggests this

has not been achieved.

Only 20% of people are aware of local arts officers. Those with degrees have

nearly twice the odds of being aware, relative to a person with second-level

qualifications, and more than four times the odds relative to someone with none.

Men with lower educational attainment are particularly unlikely to be aware.

[References: ESRI „08 p.58 f22 NESF, 2007 5:49]

There is a lack of centrally held data. This means that up-to-date information on who

needs to be targeted to take part in the arts does not exist and policies cannot, therefore,

be properly evaluated for their effectiveness. At the decision making-table for public

funding of the arts, there is no evidence that such representation will effect greater or

lesser utilisation of the arts for disadvantage groups.

What happens to existing money?

The view about how successfully that armature delivers for those from disadvantaged

backgrounds is splintered. From the State perspective, the Department of the

Environment estimated that €53 million goes towards its arts programme. In addition,

local authorities receive €3.5 million from the Arts Council, €7.2 million from their own

resources and transfers of €1 million, giving a total income of approximately €11.5

million.

Local authorities have their own income from commercial rates and other sources and

discretion, within those broad sums of money, to decide how best to spend this money.

2006 was a year the Arts Council received exactly what it sought from government. No

evidence exists that this high tide in funding saw any special decision-making in favour

of cultural inclusion. When the beginnings of a three-year cycle of reductions began in

2009, there is no evidence that cultural inclusion was a factor in making cuts.

Cultural inclusion is neither a requirement nor is it measured in any documentation about

the arts spending of local authorities, national cultural institutions or the Arts Council. It

doesn‟t seem to matter that arts funding and support takes no account of cultural

inclusion, even though report after report highlighted

(i) huge deficiencies in nurturing culture in a holistic way and of the

considerable gaps that exist in cultural development in Ireland and

(ii) the capacity for cultural development to foster many positive outcomes:

self-expression, self-esteem, creativity, empathy, civic participation and

whole raft of other vital and necessary human responses that lead to real

citizenship, participation and change in a society.

In 2010, the Arts Council received €68 million, of which just over €65 million came from

the National Lottery. The Lotto revenue is gathered disproportionately from lower socio-

economic groups. From the available data it is almost certain that the substantial public

money spent on the arts is regressive, meaning it is a transfer of resources from the

less well off to the better well off.

A more holistic and long-term approach to developing society through the mobilising of

community arts approaches could mend our broken circuitry between people and the

political process.

Short Bibliography

Arlene Goldbard (2006) The Art of Cultural Development, New Village Press: Oakland

CA.

Beverly Naius (2009) Art for Change – Teaching outside the Frame. New Village Press.

Oakland.

James Bau Graves (2004) Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community, and the Public

Purpose. University of Illinois Press.

John Holden, (2010) Culture and Class, London: Counterpoint.

Keith Knight, Mat Schwarzman and many others (2006) Beginner's Guide to

Community-Based Arts (Paperback) Oakland, CA: New Village Press CA

Mat Schwarzman (2005) Beginner‟s Guide to Community-Based Arts

Tom Borrup (2006) Creative Community Builder‟s Handbook. New Village Press,

Oakland.

William Cleveland (2009) Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World's Frontier. New

Village Press. Oakland CA.

About Blue Drum

For over a decade Blue Drum (www.bluedrum.ie) has worked within the community

development and family support spheres and responded to the growing use of community

arts in these domains. It was established through the Combat Poverty Agency in 2001 in

response to a growing need for creative approaches to engagement, empowerment,

education, progression and integration of vulnerable families and communities.

Blue Drum provides direct supports and developmental initiatives, e.g. project

development advice, knowledge and information exchanges, and training. The intention

is to support and insert the creativity of community arts in family support and the anti-

poverty work. In practice, this enables children and parents in the most disadvantaged

areas to become co-creators of their community identity and spirit.

In 2012, funding came from the Family Support Agency of €72,000 to deliver an agreed

programme of work and supports to 107 Family Resource Centres in urban and rural

communities.

Blue Drum was also successful as an cultural policy analysis organisation, having been

selected to undertake research under the EU Culture Programme in June 2012.