MARRIAGE LINES
Naseem Khan
In the summer of 2010, two large-scale events took place n London – one
north of the river in Shoreditch and one south of the river in Tooting. Both
were part of efforts to bring the arts to bear on local issues. Both had grown
out of considerable concerted energy amongst local communities. Both
should have had been unsullied examples of the strength and success of the
concept now known as ‘the Big Society’.
But both have left us feeling bruised and thoughtful, despite the exhilaration
that came out of events that were successful, involved hundreds, energised
just as many and that broke barriers.
What was it all about?
The presentation that Lucy Neal and I will make at ‘Taking Part’ will analyse
our respective experiences in Tooting and on Arnold Circus in Shoreditch. We
believe that these case studies will reveal systemic problems that lurk
beneath the aim of the Big Society idea, for all its aspiration to integration,
meaningful partnerships and local control that no-one with any sense would
reject.
Taking Part comes at a useful point for us, and we want to use the event to
explore and help us refine our thinking. We also want it to feed into the
network for which we have pilot funding from the Cultural Leadership
Programme, bringing together a core membership of people who, like us, are
seeking a way to marry public and private, voluntary and professional,
community and bureaucracy. We are just at the start of that endeavour. It is
called Taking Up Space because we find we are located in what theorist Homi
Bhabha has termed ‘the space in-between’.
It is early days, but two main issues appear to be key.
Firstly, the systemic inability of local authority – sometimes with the best will in
the world - to fit the kind of activity and contribution we can offer into their own
institutional framework, beyond the act of ticking a National Indicator box.
Secondly, an impediment from our own side – a lack of clarity over what we
ourselves have to offer, and what are our terms and needs are.
The landscape has radically shifted since the days when we could be
comfortably slotted into a shelf marked ‘community arts’ and left there. We are
faced today with a fractured society, full of difference and fear of difference,
and by a world that is dominated by climate change, peak oil and economic
disruption. Nationally, it has led the Coalition Government to advocate
community-led action. But we should not forget that this predates this
government: Labour was issuing calls for much of their last term –the Quirk
Review, ‘Community Management of Assets’, ‘Strengthening Communities’
and more – all arguing the need to regenerate community and to renegotiate
the relationship between the state and civil society.
The projects that Lucy and I have been separately developing have taken
great heart from these calls. We believe – as who cannot – totally in the need
for a shift in the allocation of control and power.
The Friends of Arnold Circus that I chair took on a dilapidated set of gardens
and bandstand with a bad reputation, at the heart of Shoreditch’s Boundary
Estate. It started as a loose collection of local individuals who hated seeing
the neglected site, and rapidly turned into a registered charity with 500
members. The rehabilitation of the Circus – finally attracting Council notice
and S106 money – has been achieved on the back of a 5-year outreach
programme involving schoolchildren, Bengali mothers, musicians,
embroiderers, gardeners, architects, theorists and people who just like sitting
around in a nice unthreatening place and passing the time.
Lucy, in her presentation, will focus particularly on her role with the
Trashcatchers’ Carnival - a big and joyous occasion in Tooting. A Tipping
Point Commission, looking at the arts and climate change, it set out to
celebrate the collective ingenuity of a community to create a positive vision of
the changes that can be made in how we live, where we live. Using recycling
as a metaphor for change, the event engaged people in their 100s with the
local Council pulling out all the stops, including the leader’s own personal
support to help the Carnival happen. Precious resources of time, money,
empty buildings and open spaces were given on trust to the project. In a
triumphant effort, Wandsworth Council rallied to the challenge of securing all
important closure of Tooting’s High Road, the A24. Once the project had
happened, despite appearing on the 6 o’clock ITN news as a glorious
community success story, something suddenly changed. Inequalities
between an energetic voluntary group and a local authority came into focus. It
felt as though the Council as a whole could not take part in assessing the
event as a success, thereby stalling chances of building a creative legacy and
onward possibilities. An element of distrust towards appeared as though from
nowhere - as though the value of the event, so celebrated one moment had to
be snapped back into a box.
In different ways, both our experiences have convinced us of the urgency of
drawing cogent principles out of this style of work, if we are to find a way of
having a real dialogue. So let us return to the two key issues – the
relationship with statutory bodies, and the definition of the work. The liaison
with our local Councils has frankly not been easy, for either side. It is not a
matter of evil, ignorant or ill-intentioned officers. We both on our separate
sides of the river have been heartened and delighted by a number of officers
who have totally understood and supported the point of the work. More, it is a
matter of systems and structures. We have been conscious, though never put
it into words, of a disparity in values, capabilities and objectives. There were
things that the Council could do that we couldn’t – down mainly to time and
resources -, and vice versa. But above all, we became conscious of the
absence of a language of aims and values that would be understood by both
sides. I shall not forget my meeting with the new head of Parks when I proudly
told him we had managed to raise money to employ a part-time gardener. He
looked grave and disapproving, and queried whether we would be allowed to
do that. ‘You’ve got it wrong’’ he then carefully spelled it out. ‘It’s not your
park. It’s our park…’
Again, we have to differentiate between individuals and systems. When Lucy
rang a Wandsworth officer to ask for his help at the eleventh hour in securing
the open space of Fishponds Playing Field, for which a subcontracted private
company were asking a £4,000 hire, the officer rang her back in 15 minutes
having arranged for the Carnival to use it free of charge. This was down to
personal relationships over 5 years, the fact Lucy had won an award as green
champion and his wanting to help. Trust existed here. But how does trust
grow?
We live in a time in which we have to share resources and responsibilities,
and to blur the line between ‘yours’ and ‘mine’. We need to place our mark on
our own areas and not be passive beneficiaries within others frameworks.
Inclusiveness, integration, and cohesion have become mocked phrases, but
they are urgent needs and the arts are the ways to gain them.
In order to do so, we need ourselves – both Taking Up Space and the wider
sector – to articulate what it is we offer, what we can conceivably achieve and
what we need in terms of structures, channels, training, to be effective. It is
likely that we have to redefine that, in terms of our present condition, and
even seek for a different paradigm. The marginality of the arts in terms of
public policy is nothing new of course: it has always been its shackle. But
maybe this is the time to prove the accuracy of Bob Palmer’s bold statement,
as Head of Culture for the Council of Europe: ‘Cultural leadership now
occupies a terrain that helps to bring about a marriage of cultural and political
change.’
The best marriages come out of a solid base. At present we have neither the
context for it nor a clear enough understanding of our own significance. We
are going beyond instrumentalism, taking a step change from ‘community arts’
and seeking a way to develop partnership, in which both sides accept the
possibility of transformation. So much of the work of UNESCO and ‘Our
Creative Diversity’ lays stress on the vital importance of the phenomenon of
‘shared space’. But sharing requires a common language, trust, tolerance and
that fundamental quality, empathy.
How can we achieve and embody these aims within our work? How can we
interact with policymakers, holding onto our own integrity? How can we create
channels? How can we be heard and also hear ourselves? For me these are
the fundamental questions and the necessary route to ‘Taking Part’.