Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
6 2 December - January 2017
CULTURE
T
OSSED BY the backwash of the Great Reces-
sion, community art and culture seeks to thrive
again close to the bare lives of people and
place. To animate new forms of creative imag-
ining and acting the legacy of this work at
community level must be retrieved. There is a rich legacy
but it is one that has fallen into disrepair.
Some of the most memorable street art produced for
Halloween and St Patrick's Day festivals has come
from community art and culture action.
This work was pioneered by artists
working with communities. The
artefacts produced symbolised
stories of resistance and resil-
ience in the face of job
losses, gentrification, with-
drawal of health, social,
educational or care ser
-
vices, or environmental
destruction. Part of that
legacy involved communi
-
ties creatively contesting
social injustice and giving
witness to the unique identi
-
ties that make up rural and urban
life.
Blue Drum has, since 2010, held
‘convenings’ twice yearly across the
country with the most recent gath-
ering held in Galway in October.
These events took place off the
radar and in small groups, involving
between twenty and fifty artists
and activists at a time. There was
time to explore the crisis of agency
in community art and culture, the
loss of community theatre-making
and other art forms, as well as the wider erosion of
values of solidarity, dignity and empathy. The Great
Recession shrivelled already limited state investment in
community art and culture. This work at times followed
the funding and in turn lost its edge. Subsidies and
grants are important enablers but they cannot create the
change that is needed.
Our ‘convenings’ suggested that the future of com
-
munity art and culture must involve cultural
entrepreneurs, operating with the emphasis on the
economy of gift, of co-operation, and of public good
rather than of profit-taking. Community art and culture
has to be about going against the grain and taking
risks. It involves a shift from social innovators towards
collective public-value producers focused on the ascent
from disconnection to belonging.
The challenge identified for community art and culture
is to once again play its distinctive part in resuscitating
life in community and in change. It must involve the
agency of the artist and the activist working together and
with others to effect change, to fight wrongs, and thus
release the energy and empathy to imagine
alternatives.
This making of community requires an expertise
and potency that is embedded in the spe
-
cific community and its place. One size
won't fit all. It must be home-made
by artists and activists speculat
-
ing at the community
work-bench in the specific
location. Ireland invests
greatly in top-down institu-
tions of arts and culture.
However, without person-
up creativity, we will never
lift the hood on how much
more our personal and com-
munity living can be.
The spectrum of work that
now operates in silos called ‘art
and children’, ‘youth arts’, ‘arts and
disability’, ‘arts and older people’,
‘community art’, ‘intercultural arts’
has to look at reconstituting itself
around a new coherent praxis for
transformation for the common
good. The emergence of community
art and culture needs real people
and spaces. It also requires cultural
contacts beyond the island to avoid
stagnancy.
The enigma of community art and
culture is that it often thrives best when it happens in
the dark and away from the limelight. It is the classical
cultural iceberg where most of its substance is not visi
-
ble below the waterline. Nonetheless, community art
and culture work thrives when it is able to promote and
concretise reciprocal exchanges of stories of success,
risks taken and tools created.
A shift of gear is necessary now from conversations
and ‘convenings’. A clear passion was expressed for a
cultural laboratory where creative agents, activists and
artists from communities could devise new forms of
organising, articulating and creating for change at com-
munity level. Investment is necessary for this process of
discovery, testing and making ideas real. It is a cultural
right, and should be asserted.
Make imaginings real
Blue Drum convenings suggest an appetite for
change, for community cultural laboratories and
for public-value cultural entrepreneurs
by Ed Carroll
Community art
and culture at
times followed the
funding and in turn
lost its edge
