PASW Regional Newsletter: Spring 2003
Regional Network Meeting Report
CONSULTING THE COMMUNITY - valued or de-valued ?
Plymouth, 7th November 2002
Maggie Bolt opened the meeting, welcoming everyone to Plymouth and thanking the City Council for their support for the meeting. She briefly explained the role of the Network and referred people to PASW’s website for further information.
She went on to introduce the focus of the afternoon meeting, saying that she had wanted to arrange a meeting around this subject for some time and to have an opportunity to question how consultation methods work in practice. What methods really ensure that the process has been rewarding and constructive for all parties? There can be no public art without collaboration and that means consultation, so the key is often who or what group is viewed as relevant consultees and what kind of methods are adopted in order to engage them.
Maggie then introduced the Chair, Eileen Adams.
Eileen Adams talked about her delight at being able to contribute to the meeting and how her interest in community consultation had started nearly thirty years ago as a resident in a housing action area in inner London and through her work in education, where a key aim had been to engage young people in environmental change. This, she said, was further developed through her research in public art, for the London Arts Board, the Southern Band, Commissions East and the Scottish Arts Council. She talked about her role as an external examiner for courses in higher education, which focus on the work of the artist outside the studio and gallery setting. These courses indicate possible directions for the changing role of the artist in society. All of them address the issue of consultation.
Having re-iterated the focus of the afternoon’s meeting, Eileen posed some questions for the meeting to consider:
- what is meant by consultation? What are the aims and agendas involved?
- what is the community being consulted about?
- what are the methods employed in community consultation?
- how does consultation relate to the notion of ‘participation’?
- are there different levels of consultation, depending on context and the aims and purposes of the project?
- what are the opportunities and possibilities, the constraints and limits?
- what are the roles and relationships involved?
- what are useful strategies to ensure effective consultation?
- how does the need or requirement for consultation impact on the role of the artist?
The speakers, she said, would identify the principles that underpin their work and the questions or problems they seek to address, and then, hopefully, share with us some examples of the consultation process and practical strategies that can make consultation more effective. Each of the speakers has interpreted the brief in their own way, informed by their particular experience and perspective - but she suggested we might look out for:
- problems and questions in relation to the notion of consultation
- values / ideas / principles that underpin their work in relation to consultation
- practical strategies to support community consultation.
Eileen went on to introduce Lia Ghilardi. Lia started by explaining that she worked with communities, planners, and local authorities on the building of strategies for local communities, taking an anthropological approach to cultural development. The context for this work was that there are government guidelines to local authorities to develop cultural strategies and consultation involving local people in the decision-making in order to identify opportunities and issues is a requirement.
Lia, with the aid of slides, took us through the branding and marketing of our cities, questioning how cities are competing for investment and economic survival, whether we can sell cities like products and who is selling what to whom. The key, she said, is that now there is an aspiration to involve communities in local decision making.
But the question had to be - how? And to what effect? She suggested that we needed to move beyond participation to co-learning and collective action and to begin to draw values on participation and consultation. The model of cultural planning can, Lia said, provide a basis on which to build consultation, bringing a new approach to the development of place by firstly looking at the history, economy and the community resources of a place. Cultural planning is not the ‘planning of culture’ but a cultural (anthropological) approach to urban planning and policy making. At the centre is a plan of the community resources: the way the community lives, its celebrations, traditions etc. By taking this view, Lia said, you realise that you cannot develop a cultural strategy from the top down, neither can you leave the consultation to the end. It has to be built into the entire process and only then will the process be of value.
Lia cited the following key characteristics :
- interdisciplinary / blurring of boundaries between different cultural forms.
- originality and the experimental. Risk taking.
- challenging and critical/not afraid of conflict.
Lia finished by saying that artists could indeed facilitate this process but that we had to think in terms of the long term. There were no quick fixes.
Following Lia’s presentation, Eileen invited questions from the floor. The following issues were raised:
- whether the general public wanted to get involved in consultation or were in any way prepared and capable of engaging with the process.
- whether there was a balance to be struck between active citizenship and a monetary incentive to encourage people to get involved.
- whether there was a difference between the potential and reality of consultation being managed from the top down.
Eileen then welcomed Noel Perkins. Noel started his presentation by saying that there were very few absolutes; what works one day won’t work in another situation the next day. The question, therefore, was can we or should we be looking at catch all strategies? He talked about his experience being the face to face dealing with the consultation process. In his experience the issues about consultation related to how one defines success and the issue of process versus product.
Noel talked about the role of the artists in the process and that many artists wanted to engage in the process but often needed training. He saw a mismatch of commissioners’ expectations and where the artists’ perceptions lay. He said he felt that artists needed to be clear about what they could and couldn’t deliver and commissioners needed to be clear about what they wanted to achieve and with whom. Noel questioned what was meant by consultation, and went on to illustrate two extremes, passive approval and facilitation. The reality he said should be somewhere in between.
Anatomy of a Public Art Project. Network Meeting Nov 2002.
Artist: Noel Perkins
Follow this link to open a large version of the diagram.
Public art, Noel said, is complicated and dynamic. It does not have coherent agendas. It is a battleground. But it can be managed. It should be seen as an open ended journey to develop art. People want certainties. But the challenge for the artist is to keep open the possibilities as long as possible. You have to create a structure in order to let ideas unfold. Uncertainty and risk-taking have to be accommodated. He suggested some guiding principles:
- have clear objectives
- listen
- respond sensitively
- build bridges, facilitate
- energise
- take route of least resistance
- make mistakes
- take risks
Noel finished by making a plea for creativity to be part of the process, saying you have to value risk-taking, not just playing safe. There is no shortage of creativity, it is underused and not integrated. It will find a way out. We need to tap into people’s energy and creativity. The artist is a co-learner, bringing skill, expertise and experience.
Eileen thanked Noel for his presentation and then invited comments and questions from the audience. Various questions were asked and comments made including:
- a plea for building partnerships with other sectors working in this field.
- how home zones offer a real vehicle for consultation.
- exit strategies from projects and when the right time might be to evaluate a project.
Eileen then welcomed the last speaker, Lucy Byatt. Lucy referred to artists currently working independently, not on large scale sculptures but rather work based around process. She then talked about her experience as an artist and project manager working in Scotland on projects such as Possil Park in Glasgow, Royston Road and the National Park near Loch Lomond. The Possil Park project was, she said, something that she learnt a lot from. Whilst the intention had been to engage the local community, with the pressures of the proposed festival, they were forced to deliver a project without really dealing with the process. She said that she felt that commissioners needed to know about art and that her mantra was - you don’t have to like it but you should be able to understand it. She said that she felt that it was only when work was seen by the public could one decide how successful it was. When talking about the Royston Road project, Lucy said that often it becomes convenient to use artists in the roles which should be filled by social workers or teachers and, as such, these situations often set an artist up to fail. It was crucial to allow artists to work within the context of their own practice.
Lucy talked about the project she had managed in a National Park near Loch Lomond which had been centred around artists’ residencies. The consultation process that they had implemented had been concentrated on a few people over a long period. Despite this she felt that it was crucial to communicate what was happening and essential, if creating some thing new, to provide people with the opportunity to experience that work/space, to facilitate and encourage celebrations.
She then went on to talk about the need for funding systems to alter this way of working and the need for commissioners to provide artists with a prepared context and consistent support through the process. Lucy finished by saying that every instance is different and therefore a tool kit for consultation is not appropriate.
Eileen thanked Lucy for her presentation. She summed up some of the issues that had been raised:
- the focus on values.
- the way to engage in consultation is dependent upon value.
- the role of artists’ practice and whether it should inform community development.
After a break for tea and coffee the meeting reconvened and Eileen chaired a lively plenary session which focused on the following issues:
- the importance of the project manager having an understanding of the creative process and how this affects the way the artist is asked to engage.
- the need to educate the players involved in the commissioning process.
- the need to educate educators about the role of artists if practice is to continue.
- the current gaps in the training of artists.
- that creativity should be seen as a resource/transferable skill, not just linked to the artist.
- the need to balance creativity with achieving something with it.
- where the artist is placed in relation to the intention of a project.
- how artists become instruments of others’ agendas.
- the need to demystify the role of artists.
- the changes currently taking place in the planning process and the opportunities it will afford artists to engage with the consultation process.
- our responsibility to drive cultural change.
• the need to work on a number of strategies to engage people.
• the need to be wary of always consulting with the same communities.
• the need to identify what we mean by communities, therefore allowing us an understanding of how the process should be delivered.
Maggie thanked all the speakers for their contribution to the meeting and Eileen Adams for her chairing role. She finished by saying that Eileen and she would be working on producing an information sheet on consultation and the issues which have arisen during the course of the debate, including a bibliography of useful publications.
Lisa Harty, Network Co-ordinator, on behalf of PASW