Common Place
A Symposium in Art, Community and Social Change. July 5th 2019
This was organised by artist Sovay Berriman via the arts organisation Cultivator, with various
funders including the EU, that meant attendance was free with food and drink also. It was in Redruth, Cornwall, UK.
A local female Cornish speaker, only introduced as Pat, gave a bilingual introduction and then left having made this gesture recognizing Cornwall as a place with an identity separate from England since ancient times.
Sophie Pope,
and Anthony Schrag
gave short presentations and
after lunch we could choose two workshops with two of them. 3 of the 4 came from outside Cornwall.
Questions about the politics and ethics and practice of community art were raised and
inventively played around with using placards, maps, a fanzine, a card game, inventing a
disastrous project to highlight its opposite desirable features.etc.
.
Conflict was accepted as necessary in society rather than something to avoid it at all costs.
Being old enough to not need a job I didn't share the tortuous need for statistics on age, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc. to satisfy funding providers, but it's instructive to hear how the trends in projects in art are going and how tiresome the hoops for jumping through can be.
What hasn’t been surveyed is whether visitors like or dislike being asked to categorise themselves.
Community art has left its previous low status to become an Arts funders' priority.
Some were aware that the usual suspects tend to get the work and it might be better to widen the
selection pool. How to do this was uncertain although I suggested using anonymous applications
and selectors from elsewhere that wouldn't recognise the cvs.
The likelihood that only impoverished communities are offered improving projects, often
condescendingly, sometimes by parachuted in strangers was deplored, but the often impoverished artists appreciate any opportunities. They are being encouraged to divert their interests to fit in with current administrators’ interests.
Personally I felt it was good to be seen to be on the scene and feel myself part of a community of
arty people who aren't just trying to sell a commodity to the more affluent in society, even if it's only
replaced by selling their services to the most able art administrators, who are also on the treadmill of pursuing favour.
Why has social engagement become so popular with the authorities, unless its bread and circuses to divert the masses from their austerity burdened exploitation?
These occasions give the organisers employment and the artists enjoy convivial contacts but
I always notice in meetings whose paid to be there because I'm not.
The physical shape of the beginning and end was of a row of paid speakers facing rows of
participants, some of whom, maybe half, were attending as part of their paid roles. I felt a curved
arrangement would be better for feeling more equal even though we are really in very different situations.
Art that is about contemporary life and seeks to involve people is going on despite all the difficulties
and absurdities that accompany it.
Mary Fletcher
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