drnicko

I blame the parents! Why not hitting your grades has nothing to do with you.

Along with childhood obesity, teenage ennui and the English riots of 2011, the failure of all young people this summer not to achieve 100% in all their exam results can all be levelled at the doors of their wayward parents who clearly have not suffered long enough or hard enough in order to get their offspring to meet the highest GCSE grades that our pristine education system prides itself on.

If you haven’t made the grade and have ended up in a university you never wanted to attend in a city you’ve never heard of – don’t worry, it’s clearly your parents fault, the fault of the parents of those poor misguided examiners who set the exams in the first place and ultimately the fault of the current education minister’s parents for producing a human being whose educational mission is driven by important 21st century values of tradition, servitude and deference to the great and the good of the past – and their parents too of course.

Your parents are also no doubt are also suffering from their parents’ wilful mistakes in bringing them up, so it’s no wonder we’re all going to hell in a handcart with no more than 2 grade U’s and a cycling proficiency test between us all.

It’s tough being a parent these days. Not only are you responsible for your offsprings choice of teenage rebellion, you have to bear the brunt of their inability to dress properly, listen to the right music, buy the right newspaper, vote for the right party and do as the media instructs.

This summer though, instead of beating yourself about your parental breast about why your nearest and dearest have failed yet again to find the holy grail of true perfection, why not just set a torch to those newspapers, throw those parent manuals on the funeral pyre of parental disappointments and wave your offspring a cheery farewell as they sail into their freshers week, their gap year or their close encounters of the wierdest kind down at the job centre?

They won’t thank you for it – indeed, they’ll take great delight in blaming you for it when the going gets tough – but you can sleep peacefully knowing you never did your best because of your own parents inabilities to bring you up as an upstanding model citizen.

As Philip Larkin put it:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

The disappearing knowledge of the Hyperloop passenger: schools beware! Number 6 in the series: Knowledge, traffic and arts based research.

The hyperloop has hit the news again with dreams of tubing it from San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than 10 minutes. Everyone around the world will have their equivalent journeys and will marvel at the apparent ease at which such previously long journeys have been reduced to bats of eyelashes. In the UK, we will wonder how a hyperloop journey could take us from London to Liverpool in just under 30 seconds: although given the magnetic pull London has on all things economic, political and social in the UK, it is a wonder that anything ever leaves London at all, never mind in a hyperloop tube.

But the greater significance of the hyperloop proposal is on how we understand knowledge of traffic flow and our place in the civilised world and how we engage with passengers, train spotters and irate cows on the line.

Because make no mistake, in hyperloop world there will be no room for any of these travel distractions. In a hyperloop tube, you will be strapped to your seat, asked to brace yourself and before you know it you will have been shot across the planet with the equivalent of a ton of TNT shoved under your backside. You will know nothing of the experience and your sum knowledge of the world and all its wondrous creations will not have improved a jot.

This is why we should worry – and worry hard – about the proposed hyperloop project. No longer will students be able to revise on trains before exams; no longer will commuters be able to improve their literary knowledge and no longer will we see people frowning over Sudoku puzzles and other complex numerical machinations. The nation’s literacy, numeracy and emotional intelligences will all suffer enormously.

Where arts based research can help however will be on the hyperloop platforms, both pre and post-TNT backside kick. Artist researchers will offer passengers new ways of consolidating their knowledge before they take the fatal kick up the backside. These researchers will remind commuters of their 12 times table through pretty graphics; confirm proper grammatical construction of sentences and offer new ways of reminding ourselves of our Shakespearian heritage. Whilst the journey will be over in a bat of an eye, our memories shot to pieces, the learning will continue for ever: and for that, Michael Gove will be proud.

More travel knowledge here.

Tips for Business Start Ups: Hang out the laundry!

Business start ups can get so engrossed in the daily nitty gritty of survival, plotting the next step and welcoming the first clink of cash in the bank account that they can often forget to mark the very special moments of achievement they bring about as their business gathers pace and starts ruffling a few feathers down at the business allotment.

They plough on and on, tweaking websites, signing bank mandates and ordering shed loads of stationery ignoring the significant moments of the first sale, the first press review, the first glowing testimonial on TripAdvisor which wasn’t written by their mum or dad.

Whilst they don’t want to get carried away at every milestone by opening up a bottle of Moët, the new self found fledging entrepreneur does need to value those special moments with some out-of-the-ordinary action.

Hanging out the laundry would be one special way to mark a special day if you don’t have a collection of Union Jacks to run up your office flag pole; treat yourself to a frothy coffee using your own milk whisker if a lunch table at the Savoy is out of reach at the moment: or if needs must, dance a little jig on the edge of the station platform when you’re headed off to meet your next customer. It won’t be exactly like an out-take of Riverdance but it will give you added oomph for the day and help mark those special start up moments.

Participants wanted for “Street Art” project, 23 – 30 September in Luxembourg

Inter-actions are organising a Youth Democracy project called “Street art” which will give an opportunity to more than 80 young people from 4 countries to have a participative reflection about the place they have in the society through urban cultural active participation.

The themes will revolve around the role of active participation, empowerment, education, values. Street art forms are different around Europe and may change, but the street art stream goes on and is part and parcel of our all day life and urban space. Politics at any level cannot disregard this aspect that is part of our souranding and with this project we want to bring it to the open discussions.

In “Street art” young people will be able to participate in a complex self-development programme that will provide them with the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to become active social actors and get reflection about the topic. If they will come from the artistic backgrounds- the project will make them aware of civic dimension of their work, influence of their work on urban space and other citizens. It will also make them aware how their creation can be constructive for others and for their future employment. For all participants the project will be a chance to come into the dialogue with politicians on local level- the action that was not in their agenda till now. The project will reveal the sense of the common debate on topics that are important both for youth and for local authorities.

Active young people will take part in one of the 2 international Urban Seminars that will be organized in Luxembourg and in a “Open Art Week” that will organise street art events in several places in the country. It will give them a chance to reflect about street art and exchange their experience and opinions. These 3 events will provide young people with concrete methodology that they will be able to use after the international activity in their home countries with other peers.

Each Urban Seminar will have a particular focus. The first one will be around urban music (dance, singing, beatboxing), the second about visual art (graffiti, light animations, etc). The third event will bring together 40 young people who will organise events around Luxembourg.

During the 3 events young people will debate with decisions-makers, MEPs, deputies, mayors and experts about related topic as well as interact with local groups. The seminars will be organized in cooperation with local authorities and give visibility and content to the event. The discussions during the seminars will be facilitated by young people themselves to give them a chance to experience leading a real participative activity.

The project will have a sustainable impact and multiplier effect. We believe that many young people will be empowered by this action.

The project will reach numerous young people as well as decision-makers and make streetart as support for youth positive active participation.

Contact:

Luc Wendling
16,rue fort Wallis
L-2417 Luxembourg
Mail: wendling@inter-actions.lu
Tel.00352 492660
Gsm:00352 621 227 285

Calling all football fans: Football Beyond Frontiers tours the Balkans

Football Beyond Borders (www.footballbeyondborders.org) is an NGO run entirely by volunteers that aims to use football to tackle political, social and cultural issues.

They are organising a tour to the Balkans this summer (previous tours have taken in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Brazil and Ghana) to promote racial tolerance with messages through football, one cultural medium which still divides the Balkan countries in partisan, volatile fashion.

The tour will take place from 28th August – 18th September 2013. The group going on tour will be made up of 24 individuals of mixed gender and of diverse ethnic backgrounds. On the tour, they will ravel to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia, teaming up with local grass-roots organisations. These include:

OSCE – Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (www.osce.org)
Belgrade – Belgrade Faculty of Sports and Physical Education, Balkan Alpe Adrian Project
Sarajevo – Bubamara BC (www.bubamara.ba), The Orhideja Stolac Association (orhideja.org/wordpress)
Mostar – United World College Mostar (www.uwcmostar.ba)
Zagreb – qSPORT (int.qsport.info)

They aim to organise multi-ethnic football tournaments to bring divided footballing communities, especially those from rival fan groups, together and preach our inclusive, anti-racist, anti-sexist stance. Staying at the homes of local families will also help us to integrate deeper into the community.

To raise money for the tour, they have been staging events across London, such as mixed-gender football tournaments, and on 25th August they will be hosting a dinner at Russell Square, London. They welcome all interested parties to the dinner, which will be a 3-course meal at £20 per person, including keynote speakers from those closely involved with the tour and the organisation including Jasper Kain, the founder of Football Beyond Borders.

They also have a sponsoring page which gives full, comprehensive details on the tour, including a promotional video on our work:

http://www.sponsume.com/project/football-beyond-borders-leveling-playing-field

They would therefore welcome any feedback or support that you may have for our work, as we are constantly seeking partner organisations that we can work with to strengthen our message.

For further details please see:

Football Beyond Borders – http://www.footballbeyondborders.org
Balkans Tour Sponsorship – http://www.sponsume.com/project/football-beyond-borders-leveling-playing-field

Listen hard, listen long and don’t forget to waggle your ears: It’s World Listening Day!

It’s another “World of…Something” day today, and today’s celebration is for the skill of listening. Hardly a day goes by these days without it turning into a day to celebrate some human micro-activity or another. Many of these activities are focused around very small neuro-muscular complexes and are intended to produce specific movements by those complexes, presumably for the benefit of the individual concerned and the human race as a whole. Today’s celebration is the combination of little bones, muscles and nerves which permit the act of listening.

In education recently, we’ve seen this tendency to glorify minor muscular movements in lots of different manifestations: we promote the acts of writing, singing and reading for example in stealth-like attempts to exercise and strengthen the neuro-muscular arrangements that constitute the fingers, the vocal cords and the ocular muscle systems.

This increasing focus on micro-regions of the human body has naturally generated educational initiatives and consequently businesses which promote those differentiated, atomised and fractured human activities. We already have many organisations which focus on the actions of writing, of reading and of talking: and today no doubt there are businesses committed to building the neuromuscular assemblages which will improve our ability to listen.

Whether we are able to express ourselves any better, comprehend what previous generations are telling us, or hear what someone is trying to tell us is a moot point: but this fracturing of the human body into profit centres can only be good for the economy as a whole. Whilst some faint hearts might be questioning whether or not fracking our planet might be good news for the environment as a whole, the good news is that the fracturing of the human body into profit centres can only be good for the economy – and with the minimum of disruption to the Blackpool pleasure beaches to boot.

PASCO: animating communities through the creative industries (further horizons)

The PASCO (Performing Arts Scene in Obrenovac) project has had significant effects on the cultural infrastructure in the Obrenovac municipality since the project started in 2009. Due to generous support both locally, Buskerud County in Norway and the KS funding programme of the Norwegian government, PASCO has had demonstrable economic, cultural and social impact on the region. The Aspire Trust, together with its Serbian and Norwegian partners had a critical role to play and this post discusses how the future might unfold and what is on the planning horizon.

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We propose a cultural regeneration programme across the other ‘Inner Ring’ Municipalities of Belgrade. We propose to work with the 6 municipalities of Grocka, Lazarevac, Obrenovac, Barajevo, Surcin, Mladenovac and Sopot (the GLOB-SMS Consortium) in order to stimulate and support the development of local and regional cultural infrastructures across the Belgrade City Region.

We want to contribute to the development of regional infrastructure and in doing so establish a wider gateway to Serbia and the Balkans as a whole for innovative arts and cultural regeneration practice.

We see a future time where the GLOB-SMS consortium is able to demonstrate significant growth in its tourist derived income, its economic activity from its cultural sector and a burgeoning creative industries sub-sector who are rooted in the communities, traditions and folklore of the GLOB-SMS consortium. We see the GLOB-SMS Consortium branching out to wider national and international market places and in doing so, demonstrating that the future of economic regeneration is dependent on a lively innovative and generative creative sector.

We see the GLOB-SMS Consortium removing their dependence on the presence of single regional or capital city, but that they take their energy, initiative and spirit of development from the communities and spaces on the periphery of those cities. We see the GLOB-SMS consortium demonstrating that the creative city has reached the end of its conceptual lifetime. We argue that it is the creative networked communities of those communities ‘on the edge’ which will provide the lead, inspiration and vision for the development of culture for the next 20 years.

PASCO: animating communities through the creative industries (future possibilities)

The PASCO (Performing Arts Scene in Obrenovac) project has had significant effects on the cultural infrastructure in the Obrenovac municipality since the project started in 2009. Due to generous support both locally, Buskerud County in Norway and the KS funding programme of the Norwegian government, PASCO has had demonstrable economic, cultural and social impact on the region. The Aspire Trust, together with its Serbian and Norwegian partners had a critical role to play and this post discusses what could be provided in the short term in order to maintain the project momentum and continue to build cultural capacity.

There are three important processes we believe could be undertaken to embed the work of PASCO in Obrenovac and further afield:

* Accrediting practitioners as qualified community artists – a process which will give them credibility and visibility nationally and internationally;

* The provision of professional development programmes (both accredited and unaccredited) for teachers who are looking to develop their own skills in the field;

* The development of enterprise and small business start up skills in the region, particularly focused on the development of the cultural sector and creative industries.

Details of these proposals are as follows.

Accredited Courses: Foundation Degree in Community Arts (FDCA)

The FDCA places a significant emphasis on developing collaborative skills in interdisciplinary arts practice through drawing on, extending and focusing professional arts skills and applying them in a range of community contexts.

Designed by Aspire and accredited by the University of Chester in the UK, the course provides the knowledge, understanding and work-related skills required to play active and proactive roles in the community arts industry. Students reflect on their work and develop the interpersonal and intrapersonal skills required to work as arts practitioners and team members.

Modules are offered at either Level 4 within the UK Higher Education Qualification framework and can be offered at two levels (Level A for beginners Level B for those with more experience.)

Module titles at Level 4A include:

Workshop Skills Workshops form the foundation of all community arts practice. Gaining an understanding of the different approaches to running workshops, the theories that underpin the workshop process and how they can be applied in different contexts is essential to the work of the community artist.

Creative Process Successful community arts projects rely on a finding a concept which can be developed and realised through the integration of a number of art forms. At the core of this process is a creativity that permeates the progress of the project enabling a variety of practitioners and participants to make their contributions.

Research Skills Gaining as detailed a picture of the landscape and environment as possible, both past and present, will provide a firm foundation for community arts projects. Developing and interest in finding out and the skills with which to do it form a significant part of the community arts process.

Project Development Like any other activity community arts projects require good management and administration. Clearly defined aims and objectives need to be planned, budgets and timetables identified and information communicated to all those involved in the safe delivery of a programme.

Module titles at Level 4B include:

Workshop Leader Practical experience of running workshops for as many different kinds of groups and in as many different situations as possible is the best way to learn how to become a workshop leader. Starting with the aims and objectives of community groups, working to a plan, improvising if circumstances arise, being able to recognise and correct errors are all part of the process.

The Creative Practitioner The work of the creative practitioner in the community is to respond to the aims and objectives of that community. Responses could be based on a single art form, but community arts projects that are based on a combination of art forms have more chance of attracting a range of people to participate, and therefore have a greater likelihood of being inclusive.

The Researcher Community Arts work is being practiced by individuals and organisations locally, regionally and nationally. A starting point for both finding employment and creating work has to be a sound knowledge and understanding of what work has happened recently and is happening at the moment.

Further details are available upon request.

The MPPACT Programme: Methodology for Pupil and Performing Arts Centred Teaching

The involvement of teachers from Obrenovac in PASCO has been another essential element in the project’s success: we would suggest that should other municipalities develop their own PASCO type programme, that accredited CPD programmes for teachers could be established early on in the process.

Aspire together with a number of other European partners have designed and delivered the MPPACT project: the Methodology for Pupil and Performing Arts Centred Teaching Project. MPPACT was designed and developed by a range of experienced educational partners from around Europe and co-ordinated in the UK by the University of Winchester. Other project partners were: VIA University College, Viborg, Denmark: the European Performers House, Silkeborg, Denmark; the Hellenic Theatre / Drama & Education Network, Athens, Greece; the Directorate Of Secondary Education Of Eastern Attica, Greece; the University Of Peloponnese, Greece and the University of Cyprus.

The purpose of the programme is to foster new teaching practices that engages with contemporary social realities and their reflection in the classroom, and recognises a new broader role for the teacher as pedagogue and works from pupils own creativity, imaginations and criticality.

It does this through the application of arts based disciplines which can develop new means of learning for children and adults, can provide new forms of knowledge and can be instrumental in catalysing personal and social transformation. The emphasis of the programme is on the creativity, imagination, resourcefulness and inspiration that teachers bring to their classrooms and how this can be enhanced, developed and celebrated.

MPPACT’s objectives are:

1. To evolve an integrated arts-based approach to teaching through the sharing of disciplines;

2. To foster educators abilities to revive pupil’s motivation to learn, using participatory performing arts practices and exploring young people’s own creativity and criticality;

3. To develop new practices that foster a ‘co-intentional’ synergy between pupil and teacher;

4. To develop a training course offering an alternative classroom strategy for achieving a critical understanding of relevant social issues;

5. To support and document the process and publish its outputs through web, DVD and printed media.

Further details are available upon request.

Informal Courses

We recognise that full time or long programmes may not be suitable for some artists or teachers so would also recommend providing short, focussed interventions for practitioners as follows:

The Creative Entrepreneur: A week long course will provide participants with the skills to become a provider of websites, photographic services, corporate and community video, and graphic design. It will provide the learner with the essential skills they need to successfully create websites for online businesses and develop their abilities as an all round producer of media. During the project, participants will create their own online portfolio for their own website which they can then use to promote themselves and their services. The course consists of the following modules: WordPress and e-commerce; Photoshop Essentials for Graphic Design; Making promotional videos; Photography: product, portraits, websites; Creative Writing.

Visual Artists in Early Years: a 2 day programme which introduces Early Years practitioners to working with visual arts skills in order to develop creative practice of both practitioners and very young children between 3 and 5 years old.

Rhythm and Things: a 2 day programme of training and skills development in singing, musical composition and percussion for Early Years practitioners; and a parallel 2 day programme of skills and knowledge development for musicians who wish to work in the Early Years sector, taught by Early Years practitioners.

Creative Writing in Schools: a 4 day programme which develops teacher’s creative writing skills in order for them to develop their own pupils writing abilities.

Film in a Day: a day long programme which introduces learners to the skills of film-making, both in front of and behind the camera. Each learner ends up with their own copy of their own film at the end of the day!

Cultural Leadership and Enterprise Programme (CLEP)

CLEP would aim to provide knowledge, skills and expertise to new business developers who are working in the field of culture and the creative industries in Obrenovac and the surrounding municipalities in the fields of creative and cultural leadership and enterprise.

CLEP would provide leaders in the fields of creative industries and culture a programme of activity which will contribute to developing a sustainable cultural and creative sector in the region. This will include the fields of film, media, theatre, dance, music, visual arts, web design, graphic design etc.

CLEP will be structured around the following programme:

Business Start-Up Weekends – for those who are interested in starting up their businesses but have yet to take the first step

Entrepreneurship Bootcamps – for entrepreneurs who need additional focused advice and guidance on specific entrepreneurial issues

Enterprise Learning Programs – a suite of activities which provide specific skills to business developers who are interested in specific areas of expertise e.g. fund raising, Intellectual property, project management etc

Enterprise Clubs – social events in which members of the PEP network are able to share experiences, expertise, advice and contacts

Mentoring – Building A mentoring Network – for all leaders who want to learn at their own rate and in their own time, e.g. through on-line mentoring services

Sectoral Start-Up – workshops which focus on specific sectors e.g. film, graphic design, theatre

Business Networking & Other Events – opportunities to meet other business leaders from other sectors and other countries to share knowledge, contacts and expertise.

Future posts suggest long term strategies and possibilities.

PASCO: animating communities through the creative industries (the Aspire role)

The PASCO (Performing Arts Scene in Obrenovac) project has had significant effects on the cultural infrastructure in the Obrenovac municipality since the project started in 2009. Due to generous support both locally, Buskerud County in Norway and the KS funding programme of the Norwegian government, PASCO has had demonstrable economic, cultural and social impact on the region. The Aspire Trust, together with its Serbian and Norwegian partners had a critical role to play and this post discusses how that role was played out and what specific approaches were taken to achieve that success.

The Aspire Trust: a brief introduction

Aspire is dedicated to touching lives through creativity. Whether 3 or 93 years old, we offer a range of stimulating, innovative and challenging arts based programmes which will help people tell new stories, create new opportunities and learn new skills.

We were founded in 2002 as an Education Action Zone (EAZ) in the Wirral, UK to help students in schools in deprived communities increase their educational attainment, attendance in school and attitudes to learning. It was so successful that when the EAZ funding ended in 2004, the Trust continued as an independent social enterprise and registered charity. From its local beginnings in Wallasey, the Aspire Trust has grown into a truly international enterprise with links in India, the Middle East, Nigeria, and across Europe: most notably in Serbia, the Balkans and South East Europe.

What does Aspire do?

The methodology informing our core activities is based on community arts based practice: a form which has been proven over many decades, in many different cultural contexts to have significant economic, social and cultural effects on local communities and economies across the world. Whilst visible in the UK, the USA, Australia and many other countries across the world, it is also frequently prevalent in many parts of the world although its adherents and practitioners would not necessarily name it ‘community arts’ as such.

Its identification is made more difficult as its practice is hard to pin down and determine with any degree of clarity; it is a concept which many people find hard to understand, sometimes equating it with amateur arts, arts activism or arts therapy.

However, we are quite clear about what we mean by ‘community arts’: it is arts practice which has a social purpose, uses high quality participatory techniques and is presented in a wide range of public spaces. It uses creative and collaborative arts practice to identify the things that matter to people, to engage them in connecting them to their communities and the wider world and to tell tales that need to be told.

There is necessarily a fundamental connection between professional artists and communities in this process and that connection is characterised by people working together for a common good – whether this be cultural, social or economic. It is not just about professional practitioners doing something ‘for’ or ‘to’ people; it is not just about teaching and learning new skills and it is not just about developing products and services which reflect particular issues that a community may face – although it may involve all of these things to a lesser or greater degree.

Rather, Community Arts practice emerges from the combination of social purpose, purposeful participation and production and promotion in public spaces: it is not a definable product or service which can easily be packaged up but a phenomenon which arises when a combination of people, places and politics coalesce at a particular point in time, space and history.

It is this methodology and approach we introduced to the PASCO project in 2009 and which we would suggest has been an important element of the success of the programme since then.

How did Aspire contribute to PASCO?

Aspire contributed knowledge and expertise through the following elements of the PASCO project:

Web design (Morning Movers) and Marketing workshops (October 2010)

Advice and Guidance on production of Christmas Show (December 2010)

Production of 2 short films made by PASCO participants (PASCO Film School, December 2010)

Delivery of workshops in performing arts for disabled people (December 2010)

Course design and delivery of the Autumn School, Buskerud (October 2011)

Shadow Theatre and Puppets workshops (May 2012)

Workshop on Partnership and Collaboration (November 2012)

Performing Arts workshops for UK based site specific production, Treasured (May 2012)

Cultural Exchange in Liverpool with students from FYR Macedonia (October 2012)

Furthermore, the results of other elements of the programme can also be viewed online:

Morning Movers short documentary film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky209K2JdqQ

Visit to Liverpool as part of the Treasured project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJWiwDoSilg

Short film: Kuda Ide Ovaj Zivot (Where Is This Life Going?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYrTC_zTbVM

Short film: The Book of Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HpzRJXtck

Thursday Beatbox short documentary film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuajksxYFN4

Short film: Anti-Dream Candy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WXrKYeDlxk

How did Aspire contribute to the success of PASCO?

Aspire’s arts based methodology is based on community arts principles: arts practice which has a social purpose, uses high quality participatory techniques and is presented in a wide range of public spaces. There are several implications of this practice for artists, teachers, practitioners and participants which we aim to address when it comes to participating or leading a project. These are as follows.

Social purpose

Community arts practice is driven by a social agenda: this may involve attempting to address a number of social ills such as unemployment, social exclusion or cultural intolerance. Whatever the motive, it is the social agenda that provides the ‘call to action’ for community artists, not the cultural agenda implicit in an ‘arts for arts sake’ model.

Participation

Community Arts practice depends on the ability of its practitioners to engage a wide range of people in a diverse range of settings, spaces and cultural contexts. Frequently, they may be working with people for whom school and traditional, didactic ways of teaching and learning are not appropriate. Consequently, they need to understand that their strategies of engaging people in the creative process rely heavily on constructivist forms of learning: forms which are experiential, value the voice and experience of the participant and which are about facilitating peoples expressiveness and creativity, as opposed to instructing them.

Presentation

Without the element of presentation in community arts projects, work becomes too process orientated and means that the audience from whom the work stemmed are unable to comment on or feedback to the artists and participants who were responsible for generating the work in the first place. This issue is constantly referred to in debates of whether ‘process or product’ is more important in the community arts field: our view is that both elements are equally important. Presentation however does not have to happen in traditional platforms of the theatre or gallery; they can also take place in the housing block, the day centre or increasingly on-line via blogs, YouTube, Facebook or other social networking sites. What is critical in this part of the work is that whatever is produced or published to the wider public has to be of the highest quality: not just its production values but with the necessary frameworks around the work which help contextualise the work to audiences who may not be familiar with the background to a particular context.

Partnership working

We aim to build effective partnerships between artists, educators and participants. By ‘partnership’ we mean the development of relationships which are based upon principles of co-constructing, co-delivering and co-assessing unique, challenging and innovative creative arts educational projects in which all participants’ voices are heard. The principles we aim to adhere to behind effective partnership working are available on line at https://www.dropbox.com/s/na92hsteaiu2yef/effectivepships.ppt

Commitment to Professional development

We believe and are committed to delivering practice which extends and enhances teachers own skills, expertise and approaches: if this occurs in a project, then the work has more likelihood of being sustainable in the future. Therefore, where-ever practical, we offer sustainable, innovative and rigorous continuing professional development (CPD) programmes for teachers which focuses on the application of arts disciplines and techniques for the greater purpose of pupil attainment, attendance in school and attitudes to learning. Arts practice in this context is of an instrumental nature, not an ‘arts for arts sake’ practice which values and privileges the voice of the artist over all others.

Programmes in which all partners learn from each other

PASCO programmes have not simply been a model of importing a UK skill set into a particular cultural context in Obrenovac: an essential part of the process for us has been the learning by our practitioners of other knowledges, skills and expertise which our Serbian and Norwegian colleagues have bought to us. The process has particularly added to the richness of our experience and knowledge of Eastern Europe and this has been a vital element in the ongoing success of the project.

Programmes which challenge participants with high quality intellectual resources

Where-ever practical, we have aimed to critically challenge and support new approaches to theatrical and media production by all participants. This entails a pedagogical approach which doesn’t just accept ‘first choice’ material when it comes to creating new work but continues to ‘raise the bar’ for participants and offer new and innovative methods of creative practice.

Offer long term relationships with partners

It has been important for us from the onset to see the PASCO project as a long term commitment by us to all the partners. This has meant that we have been able to build on the work achieved and plan for different opportunities e.g. when funding streams come to an end.

Recast learners in new roles and identities whilst offering them new ways to articulate learner voice

This is perhaps the most critical part of the methodology we use: the need to allow other participants to redefine themselves and ‘find their voice’ in ways which have not been traditionally available to them. This was most noticeable in the workshops run at the Disability Day Centres in Obrenovac and Belgrade in May 2011.

Future posts describe the development of the programme in Serbia and beyond and suggest possible horizons of what might happen next.

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