Central
research question/hypothesis/problem/issue/
The focus on community participation in cultural
initiatives is increasingly on the agenda and there is an interest in how
participating in arts and cultural activity intersects with other areas of public
concern including education, community identity and development (AEGIS 2005). This interest in participation is also evident
in many public art policy documents but in reality the community are rarely involved
in anything more than consultation (Pollock & Sharpe 2012:3063). The
aim of my proposed research is to examine the current discourse that informs
permanent public art and its relationship to community members as art makers as
an authentic form of participation. I intend to explore emerging issues and workable
approaches for involving community members as art makers in the genre of
permanent public art.
Working as a community artist I often
make permanent artworks with community members who are also involved as art makers.
I have experienced this type of collaboration as a powerful way of developing
and expressing community ownership, values and identity. Making art with
community members values individuals and diversity but at the same time
develops and celebrates community. Through this work I have also encountered some
issues which make it difficult to involve community members as art makers in larger
permanent council commissions. My lived experience and ongoing investment of
self in community arts based work has led to this research commitment in an
attempt to further understand situation.
Within the urban context of the
western world, where the visual imagery of corporate advertising encroaches on
our daily life, and public space is managed by local governments, there is little
opportunity left for individuals to affect this space and express themselves. In
this research I will use the perspective of cultural democracy ‘which focuses
on inclusion, diversity and access to the means of cultural production’(Gattinger
2011:3, Hope 2011). My research will bring the philosophical arguments
of community arts and cultural democracy into the context of current discourse
about public art and participatory art practice.
Through the examination
of artworks in which community members have been included as art makers, I
intend to explore the rationale, effectiveness, longevity and meaningfulness of
these projects. Through this method the research aims to bring to light the
practical and philosophical implications of community members making permanent
public art.
Research
design and methodology
Research
Method
This research springs out of my own practice as an
artist who works with communities and is deeply influenced by my need to
understand how the notion of community members as makers relates to the current
public art climate. My research subject comes out of a career of 15 years, of working
with communities to make permanent public artworks, and so it has a base in
experience, a particular perspective and an emotional trajectory. In my work I have noticed a particular
contradiction between the drive for community participation and contrarily a
reticence to involve community in the making of permanent public art. I often
feel as if I come up against a brick wall, bear a heavy weight, have an
enormously complex problem to solve and need to find a way around or over a
barrier (see figure 1). This personal emotion
and motive is acknowledged and included in this research. The research arrives
from art-practice and will reflect subjective experience alongside empirical
research.
The methodology chosen for my research, needs to acknowledge
this impetus, accommodate this experience and subjectivity and also enable me
to actively research new perspectives. Sara Lawrence Lightfoot’s (1997) approach
of portraiture appears to be appropriate to accommodate this journey, through
its emphasis on the presence of the researcher and her own lived experience as
she embarks on empirical research seeking other perspectives and the good in
things. (1997:141) Portraiture utilises some of the aspects of case study but
allows room for the researcher’s perspective and experience to enter the
narrative. The narrative style of Portraiture also accommodates reading by a
broader audience and it is my hope that this will encourage a wider leadership
of my research and encourage dialogue about the participation of community
members in public art.
The
positive and good
My initial designs for this research tended to focus
on the negative, the barriers and tensions which I felt were in the way of
community members being involved in making permanent public artwork.
Lightfoot’s methodology of Portraiture will enable me to explore the positive
and good aspects of community engagement as makers and tell the stories of how
communities were inspired to do the projects, how they overcome difficulties
and went forward, how they make good, and achieved their desires (Lightfoot
1997:9,146).
Portraiture
as method
Portraiture is a method framed by the phenomenological
paradigm, ‘sharing many of the techniques, standards and goals of ethnography
(Lightfoot 1997: 13).’ In an ethnographic manner I will be using an emphasis on
dialogue and focussing on the perspectives and lived experiences of people (Groenewald
2004:6). However, the paradigm that is most suited to my research is that of
constructivist/Interpretivist, as through my research I will be trying to ‘make
sense of something,’ turning it from
‘sense impressions’, into something that can be ordered and fitted into
a conceptual structure, theory, discipline or philosophy (Lincoln & Guba
2013:45).
Portraiture seeks to combine systematic empirical
description with aesthetic expression, and for this research context I will use
Lightfoot’s purpose of, ‘capturing the richness, complexity and dimensionality
of human experience in social and cultural context, conveying the perspectives
of the people who are negotiating the experiences’ (Lightfoot 1997:3). Portraits
are usually written texts in the form of narratives, but I will be extending
Lightfoot’s ‘aesthetic expression’, to combine text and sketching. Portraiture
uses observation and dialogue to construct a narrative and during the process
of research, patterns and findings emerge from the research context (Lightfoot
1997:185). The portrait also encompasses the researcher’s narrative as a writer
inside the work, not outside the work (Davis 1997:21). I will also be using
case study methodology (Yin 2003a, 2003b, Stake 1995, 2006) to guide some of
the research design, screening research subjects (public artworks), development
of interview questions, data gathering and analysis.
Structure
The research will include the researching and making
of four portraits. Three of these portraits will be of permanent public
artworks where communities have been involved as makers in order to explore the
rationale, effectiveness, longevity and meaningfulness of these projects. A fourth
portrait will be a self-portrait which will examine my own ongoing involvement
in the research as an artist in the field and celebrate my subjective role in
the research.
Portraits
of Permanent Public artworks
In order to create thick description (Geertz 1973:6),
data for these portraits will include document collection, dialogue and
observation. Documents collected will include; texts, website materials,
reportage (internet, audio, video or hard copy), and other miscellaneous
documents related to the project.
Interviews:
Lightfoot (1997:3) refers to the collection of dialogue and I will undertake to
record this in two ways, using formal interviews with semi-structured questions
and casual conversations. Casual conversations will be held at sites relating
to the artworks, for example sites of making or installation. Interviews will be
held with six people from each project, drawing from participants, facilitators
and the local community who live with the artwork. Lightfoot and Davis (1997:9)
suggest dialogue with ‘actors’ in the portrait to centre around the ‘good” of
the portrait subject. I will closely work with Lightfoot’s model of ‘voice’
(1997:85) which combines a stance of being ‘vigilantly counterintuitive,
working against the grain of formerly held presuppositions, always alert and
responsive to surprise,’ and her methods of searching for patterns (1997:185).
Self-portrait:
The
fourth portrait will focus on the research journey, acknowledging that it is
driven by my personal experience and emotional response of my lived experience
of the research subject. This self-portrait will run alongside of my
investigations of other artworks made by communities and document my changing
perceptions during the research, along with my thinking about how these
perceptions and research findings play out in my actual art practice with
communities. Portraiture places centrally the voice of the researcher and their
role as an active learner through the narrative. This portrait will include emotions,
viewpoints, arguments and experience, telling a narrative of the development of
my own perspectives through the research journey.
Audience:
Particularly
relevant in my use of portraiture, is that Lightfoot’s model addresses a wider
audience ‘with its focus on narrative, with its use of metaphor and symbol,
portraiture intends to address wider,
more eclectic audiences’ (1997:10).
‘The attempt is to move
beyond academy’s inner circle, to speak in a language that is not coded or
exclusive, and to develop texts that will seduce the readership into thinking
more deeply about issues that concern them’ (Lightfoot 1997:10).
This information is valuable for any community wishing
to make their own public artwork and likewise for art practitioners and arts
workers wanting to involve communities as makers in a permanent public artwork.
Lightfoot’s portraiture method walks beside my own efforts to illuminate the
idea of community engagement with art-making when she suggests that, ‘its goal
is to speak to broader audiences beyond the academy (thus linking inquiry to
public discourse and social transformation). .’(Lightfoot 1997:14).
Literature
Review
The literature
review will include a wide range of texts including documents, policies and
media texts relating to permanent public art. The Literature review will also
be used as an investigation of previous research to develop more insightful
questions about the topic (Yin 2003b:9). Using Lightfoot’s (1997:209-213)
methodology, alongside Yin’s (2003b:9) guidance, I will be looking for patterns
and themes to emerge in the research (in relation to the research enquiry) and
these will become the focus which link the literature review and the portraits.
The scope of the study will be limited to the areas raised by the literature
and the research exploration of the practical and philosophical considerations
of involving community members as makers of permanent public art (Yin 2003a:23).
Theoretical
frameworks
My concerns in examining public art culture through
the lens of cultural democracy falls into the theoretical fields of the Birmingham school of cultural studies, the
Bourdieuan theory on social capital and habitus, the community arts movement of
the 70’s and its marxist underpinnings, discourse analysis, and feminist and
participatory art theory. Themes of dominant ideologies, cultural hegemony
(Gramsci), power structures (Bourdieu) and socio-geography will provide additional
theoretical underpinnings to my research. My proposed research will utilise a social science
approach but incorporate relevant literature and theory pertaining to art,
public space, participation and social change.
Fig 1.
Fig 2.
significance
There is a significant movement
towards participation in both local and state government funding policy and in
contemporary art practices (Bishop 2006:180, Lacy1995, Pollock and Sharp 2012:3063). Participatory art practices work towards
a more democratic production and consumption of culture but most artworks are
ephemeral and rarely eventuate into permanent public art and conversely
permanent public artworks rarely involve community members as makers. My
research will examine this paradox.
Permanent artworks are powerful because they are
durational and are players in creating narratives of history and culture. The role
of permanent public art in representing human identity and values, is
significant, particularly when it is funded by public money and has the
capacity to affect the way we see ourselves. Jane Rendell (2006:6) says:
‘Democratic public space is frequently endowed with unified properties, but one
of the problems of aiming for a homogenous public space is the avoidance of
difference.’ We need to ask questions such as: whose story and whose values are
being told through public art? Does the artwork play a role in confirming
dominant ideologies or does it provide space for the individual and the
‘other’? The proposed research will tell how artworks involving community
members as makers address some of these questions.
Though permanent public art often involves
community consultation, this research examines what real participation looks
like. My
research will produce new perspectives and understandings about practical
methods and philosophical approaches to involving community members as art
makers. This knowledge will be useful
for local councils, arts industry workers and artists who work with communities
and public art.
There is a dearth of literature about community
participants as makers of permanent public art. This research will contribute
to knowledge in this area and create dialogue from a broad range of
perspectives, allowing new voices to be heard, and addressing the lived
experiences of public art (Zebracki 2011:315). My research will provide telling narratives of authentic participation which
demonstrate why and how community participation in making public art is
important. It will be accessible and engaging to a broader audience,
and have a greater capacity to engender dialogue about this research between
those who work or make decisions in the field of public art.
Contribution
to knowledge,
Introduction
My research is about the practice of involving community members
in the making of permanent public art. Literature that addresses this research
comes from a variety of fields, including contemporary participatory art genres,
public art theory, and socio-geography. There is not a significant amount of
literature specifically pertaining to community participation as art makers of
permanent public art, and this may reflect the common assumption that this
practice falls into the paradigm of community arts and therefore belongs nowhere
else. Though
participatory art practice has been adopted by art institutions, Jacobs
(1995:56) claims that participatory art is devalued because it looks like
social work, that it’s made by the community instead of the artist, therefore
it is not art.
Literature about community involvement in art tends to contextualise
the need for community participation and often includes reports about projects,
but these projects tend to be temporary and are not permanent public art. This review
of literature therefore is compelled to skirt around the central research
topic, pulling in the pertinent fields of academic debate, which when drawn
together provide the philosophical base of my research. The impetus for
community participation in public art is currently discussed in democratic or
social justice readings of space, placemaking and in public art (Pollock and
Sharp 2012, Duncum:2011) but in most cases the combination of permanent public
art and community as makers are not discussed. There are many case studies and
reports of ephemeral participatory public artworks (Beyes 2010, Lacy 1995, Bishop 2006) but the philosophical
and physical implications involved when this participation moves into permanent
form in public space, is less explored. My research intends to address this
lack of literature.
What is public art?
Public art is not part of mainstream
art discourse (Phillips 1995) because it is in public space and usually commissioned
by council employees instead of curators and, its reception and audience
becomes a concern (Phillips 1995:67). Permanent
public art is not generally part of an artist’s general practice (it is illegal
to make permanent art in public space without permission/commission), and
public artworks are often made by designers and architects (Holesworth
2015:8). Artists working in public space
have multiple and often complex roles (Phillips 1995:67), they need to work in
collaboration with architects, engineers and a committee and because their work
is made to serve a specific purpose, it is often dismissed by mainstream art culture, ‘as the work of
second-rate artists working on commissions’ (Holesworth 2015:6).
Public art does
not fit with Art’s freedom from function, as Jane Rendell points out ‘ In many
public projects, art is expected to take on ‘functions in the way that
architecture does (Rendell 2006:4) and the claims about what function and role
public artworks play are largely devised by the planners and creators of public
art, not the public (Zebracki 2011:304).To provide further confusion, public
art is commissioned for a variety of reasons including; urban revitalisation (
Pollock and Sharpe 2011), economic development (Schuermans et al. 2012) or for
public good (Holesworth 2015:7). There
are also social benefits attributed to public art and these include ideas such
as civic pride, social interaction, a sense of Community and local
identity (Schuermans et al. 2012).
Public artwork
has also been criticised in many ways, ‘a menace and something that has to be
maintained’, ‘overblown versions of studio-based sculpture’ (Phillips
1995:65-66), ‘wallpaper to cover over social conflict and tensions (Miles
1997), Plonk art (Winikoff 2015) or ‘a
sedative that quiets legitimate concerns or objections’ (Phillips 1995:64). However
this adverse position of public art, as
being outside mainstream art, provides it with a border condition, from where it
can ‘frame and foster a discussion of community and culture’ and provide a view
of the ‘relation between institutionalised culture and participatory democracy’
(Phillips 1995:60.) Likewise Rendell (2006:4) suggests that public art has a
possibility as a ‘critical spatial practice’ to ‘work in relation to dominant
ideologies but at the same time question them.’ Chantal Mouffe (2008) situates
the work of artists in public space as a crucial dimension to democracy, in
that they ‘disrupt the smooth image that corporate capitalism is trying to
spread’, they play an important role in subverting dominant hegemony, and they
contribute to ‘the construction of new subjectives’.
Participation
Alongside this new push for participation in both local
government and institutional arts policies (Pollock & Sharp 2011, City of
Melbourne 2015) there is a parallel turning towards the audience and
participation, by some areas of contemporary art practice. These approaches
spurred in the 1990’s are described in various conceptual frameworks include
the social turn (Bishop 2006, Diana Boros 2011), new genre public art (Lacy1995), relational aesthetics (Bourriaud 2002:14),
dialogical aesthetics (Kester 2005), dialogue-based public art (Tom
Finkelpearl, New Situationism (Claire Doherty) or spatial aesthetics (Papastergiadis
2006). These theoretical stances share a common interest in process, using
public space and the involvement of the audience or public as part of the work.
With the emphasis on participation and the de-emphasis of object-based work (Jacob
1995:57) means that though this philosophy champions community participation,
it tends not to include permanent public art.
Claire Bishop (2006:180) alludes that both governmental
policy on participation and the new social art use the same rhetoric. Joanne
Sharp (2007:274) agrees that public art’s use as a tool for urban renewal ‘reflects the influence of ‘new genre public art’
approaches which privilege art as process over art as product’. Pollock and
Sharp (2012), express their concerns about
the rhetoric of participation, pointing out that through processes of
consultation and token ‘participation’, communities may become increasingly
aware of their powerlessness to affect their environment.
Paul O’Neill (2010) emphasises that
although participatory art does not often place emphasis on the end product, it
is this end product which is often documented, written about and experienced. This
dilemma of object versus process, as explicated in contemporary participatory
movements, remains as an area that needs further interrogation. Contemporary
participatory art and community participation as art-makers and their
relationship to permanent art objects are implicitly connected and begs
exporation.
Public space has become the subject of
much theoretical debate and the literature in this field is extensive and
informative. I will be accessing much of this theory to explore the role of
public art. Authors not mentioned above who have made important contributions
to the socio-political role of art in public space or socio geography include
Guy de Bord, Timon Beyes, David Pinder, Hannah Arendt, Timon Beyes, Martin
Zebracki, Jacques Rancière , Nigel Thrift , Rosalyn
Deutsche and Miwon Kwon. Earlier philosophers who influenced this work
include Henri Lefebvre’s (‘critique of everyday life:1947, 1961, 1981), Michel
Foucault, Walter Benjamin and Michel de Certeau. Thus the larger literature
review for this research will include these and other authors.
The
dearth
Most literature utilising historical narratives of
public art tend to not include artworks made by communities and this may be
because they are viewed as community arts projects, and not as real artworks.
Though there is much literature about community participation in art-making
there is significantly less in relation to making permanent public artwork. Case
studies about community participation tend to refer to design and consultation such
as contributing of stories or subject matter (Pollock &sharp 2012, Stephens
2006). O’Neill’s (2010) interest in durational participatory art refers to
several projects some of which have permanent outcomes including the Nouveaux
Commanditaires and The Breaking Ground Program in Dublin. Both Crehan (2011)
and Mark Dawes (2008) discuss the impact of community involvement in making
instead of consultation, but neither refer to permanent artworks. Scholarly
articles about community engagement as makers in permanent public art include
Anderson and Conlan’s (2013) writing about the Belfast community murals. Stories
about community members making public art can be found in reports, newsletters
and historical renderings, but rarely in academic literature. There is a need
for more critical writing in the area, particularly given the context of the increased
concern in participation, attached to recent both public art and contemporary
art theory. Artworks made by community members need to be included in critical
debate.
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