communiqué #2

What public good are the

Arts?

Niall Crowley recalled a discussion at

We Are Family showcase event in

Limerick in 2011. a showcase event of

Family Centres in Limerick and Clare.

He recalled: “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.”

Witness statements to the 2012 Dáil

Committee on Arts and Disadvantage

also raise questions. Mary Nash, of the

Department of Arts, Heritage and the

Gaeltacht, commented: “There are

people who are almost proud to say

they have nothing to do with the arts.”

Liz Meaney, of the Cork City Council

Arts Office, suggested: “Large swathes

of our society do not engage because

they do not believe that they have a

right to the State’s resources.” Orlaith

McBride, Director of the Arts Council,

reported: “Significant groups of people

remain excluded from arts and cultural

life.”

During the same public session,

Senator Fiach Mac Conghail, from The

National Theatre questioned the Arts

Council about one of its

recommendations for social inclusion

to encompass the arts. He asked: Is that

really its position? Is it really

something it should be doing?

What good are community

arts?

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.

Blue Drum’s work is solely focused on

the role of community art in family

support. 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’.

Family Resource Centres annual 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 and its

duration in time is valuable at many

levels and enables the rest of society to

hear an otherwise unarticulated voice.

By translating national and

international research and practices,

Blue Drum has tried to create a

framework to map out community arts

pathways for vulnerable parents.

communiqué #2

PATHWAYS:

Community Art and Parent

communiqué #2

What is the impact?

We have identified five reasons to to

value community arts in family

support:

(1) 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.

(2) Community arts practices impact

personally and practically in the

following domains:

cultural well-being by activating

the right to be co-creators of

culture

health well-being (both physical

and mental) by helping people 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 community

social well-being by enhancing

participation in society.

(3) Contributing to social change and

the struggle to make poverty

impossible and establishing

frameworks for equality, solidarity

and social justice.

(4) Valuing collectiveness, locality,

creativity, communality,

collegiality and spirituality.

(5) Advocating for systems to take

account of the human person,

especially for voices neither seen

nor heard in our society.

Who are the families?

Blue Drum’s primary context is

within family resource and

community centres in urban

and rural disadvantaged areas.

The estimated income of a

household of four on social

welfare is currently €80 a week

below the poverty line.

The radical idea we proffer is

that the state has a duty to find

ways to make poverty

impossible in Ireland. This

means ending homelessness,

household poverty,

unemployment traps, poverty

traps and child poverty because

it tears our social cohesion

asunder.

This work is about real people

in real situations:

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.

communiqué #2

How to measure the value

of good community arts?

Community arts are not a tool for

engaging vulnerable families and

parents. They are about much more

than that. Much of the rhetoric of

research signifies urban and rural

disadvantaged families and

communities as damaged and deficient.

This approach is inherently limiting

because it implies that the system only

needs to be tweaked. Damage cannot

be the only way or best way that we

talk about ourselves. The community

arts work of Blue Drum’s and Family

Resource Centres operates far beyond

the horizon of damage limitation.

Family Resource Centres from Tacú in

Ballinrobe to Fatima Mansions in

Dublin report that community arts

groups are tactically unsurpassed as

ways to engage and work with families

experiencing exclusion.

Projects, programmes and classes

operating in Family Resource Centres

engage people that would otherwise

not get involved. For example, take

Seamus McGuinness in his ‘Lived

Lives Project’ with families who have

lost loved ones to suicide. Or Ailbhe

Murphy in her ‘Tower Songs Project’

about the collective memory and

experience Fatima Mansions as they

made the transition from tower block

living.

In its essence, community arts is about

representations, oral traditions,

performing and visual arts practices,

social practices, rituals and events.

Community arts include instruments,

objects, artefacts, and cultural spaces

that communities mark as their own.

There is a need for a cultural rights

framework. This would have a capacity

to foster many positive outcomes: self-

expression, self-esteem, creativity,

empathy, civic participation and a

whole raft of other vital and necessary

human responses that lead to real

citizenship, participation and change in

a society. We need to know:

What has worked in the area of

community art and family

support?

What has failed, as we can

learn from such experiences?

How can we be more critical

and make improvements?

Community arts take the courage of

specific communities and artists who

work against the odds of what is

validated, popular or profitable. That

is why such practices appear on the

radar of the official culture long after

their culturing in communities, if at all.

There is a need for a cultural rights

framework. This would have a capacity

to foster many positive outcomes: self-

expression, self-esteem, creativity,

empathy, civic participation and a

whole raft of other vital and necessary

human responses that lead to real

citizenship, participation and change in

a society.

A cultural rights framework would

advocate for systems to take account of

the fact that they are not good enough.

Such a framework might dare to

imagine that this State will make

homelessness, household poverty, long

term unemployment, and child poverty

impossible.

communiqué #2

Select Bibliography A. Goldbard (2006) The Art of

Cultural Development, New

Village Press: Oakland CA.

B. Naius (2009) Art for Change –

Teaching outside the Frame. New

Village Press. Oakland CA.

G.H. Kester (2011) The One and

the Many. Contemporary

Collaborative Art in a Global

Context. Duke University Press.

G.H. Kester (2004) Conversation

Pieces: Community and

Communication in Modern Art.

University of California Press.

J.B. Graves (2004) Cultural

Democracy: The Arts,

Community, and the Public

Purpose. Univ.of Illinois Press.

J. Holden. (2010) Culture and

Class, UK: Counterpoint.

K. Knight, M. Schwarzman et al

(2006) Beginner's Guide to

Community-Based Arts

(Paperback) Oakland, CA.

NESF (2006) The Arts, Cultural

Inclusion and Social Cohesion.

NESF: Dublin.

P. Lunn and E.Kelly (2008) In

the Frame or Out of the Picture?

Joint NESF/ESRI Publication,

Dublin: 2008.

T. Borrup (2006) Creative

Community Builder’s Handbook.

New Village Press, Oakland.

W. Cleveland (2009) Art and

Upheaval: Artists on the World's

Frontier. New Village Press.

Oakland CA.