{"id":4021,"date":"2024-04-26T03:47:19","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T03:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/?p=4021"},"modified":"2024-05-06T01:56:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T01:56:00","slug":"reclaiming-arts-culture-in-community-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/2024\/04\/26\/reclaiming-arts-culture-in-community-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Reclaiming Arts &#038; Culture in Community Development"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The Dilemma<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Since becoming involved with the Greater Blue Mountains Creative Arts Network (GBMCAN), and becoming its president in 2022, I have become increasingly distressed by the way in which the arts and culture sector is not integrated into the idea of community development. Instead the Arts has become captured by the ideology of neoliberalism\u2014the glorification of market forces, individualism and prestige maximisation via wealth and\/or fame, at the expense of our shared sense of community.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Australian Values<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenewdaily.com.au\/opinion\/2024\/04\/27\/the-stats-guy-what-are-the-core-australian-values?ahe=3b0b4e899464e20e84cbb8e99900687e5ae89cf3d0face2bde30c1fc90afe999&amp;acid=1876342&amp;utm_campaign=Saturday%20News%20-%2020240427&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=Adestra&amp;lr_hash=\">Simon Kuestenmacher<\/a> suggests &#8220;v<\/span>alues obviously vary from one person to the next and our collective values transform somewhat as a new generation comes of age but there is a set of values that are deeply embedded in the collective Australian psyche. As a migration nation, we must constantly retell our national myths to ensure folks fresh off the jumbo jet understand how Australia works.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">What are the values that marks us as Australian? We&#8217;ve never been cursed by the mantle of being a major power, like the US, nor an Empire like the UK or France. Our non-Indigenous origins are humble &#8211; convicts and rejects of England and Ireland, and then those escaping the horrors of European wars and their devastation, and then those of SE Asia, the Middle East and Africa. As we face the colonial reckoning with our past injustices to our First Nations people, the following are the values that we seek to bind us together.\u00a0 We must protect them at all costs. They are under sustained threat by the dark forces let loose by neoliberalism and social media algorithms.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Mateship<\/strong>\u2014 helping one another and resisting pretensions at identity &#8216;snobbishness&#8217;, whether that is based on wealth, job title, education, family lineage, religion or ethnicity<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Fairness<\/strong>\u2014when things don&#8217;t pass the &#8216;pub test&#8217;, and we call for a &#8216;fair go&#8217;, and this has to include gender and ethnic equality and respect<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Authenticity<\/strong>\u2014a well tuned bullshit detector that saves us from gross political or religious grandstanding and gaslighting<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Resilience<\/strong>\u2014&#8217;she&#8217;ll be right mate&#8217; &#8211; pulling together in times of collective troubles.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;\">I have previously (<em>The Regenesis Journey<\/em>) suggested that we need one other core value to add to this list as we look into the future:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Caring for Country<\/strong>\u2014a deep sense of spiritual responsibility for the more-than-human world, as encoded in First Nations knowledge systems and a sense of family kinship with Country in its multiple levels of meaning, set against the demands of mining, urban settlement, agribusiness and tourism.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Historically, these shared values have been strongly contested by racism, especially towards First Nations peoples (to justify the land grab) and xenophobic nationalism, but Australia continues to seek to redress these through embracing a distinctly multicultural identity and various attempts to acknowledge that the bedrock of our cultural identity lies with the 65,000+ continuous living culture of First Nations peoples. This marks us out from the cultural wars gripping the US and Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">As we face such challenges as climate change and rising need for community resilience; widespread anxiety and depression and domestic violence; homelessness and intergenerational wealth inequality, we see how they are tearing at the social fabric of our society. We must reclaim an emphasis on community development\u2014enveloping frontline services and the arts if we are to sustain our social cohesion in these times.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>George Monbiot \u2013 Neoliberalism as Meta Deception<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;\">Why, when there are so many real conspiracies to worry about, do people feel the need to invent and believe fake ones? These questions become especially pressing in our age of extreme political dysfunction. This dysfunction results, I believe, in large part from a kind of meta-deception, called neoliberalism. The spread and development of this ideology was quietly funded by some of the richest people on Earth. Their campaign of persuasion was so successful that this ideology now dominates political life. It has delivered the privatisation of public services; the degradation of public health and education; rising inequality; rampant child poverty; offshoring and the erosion of the tax base; the 2008 financial crash; the rise of modern-day demagogues; our ecological and environmental emergencies.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Joined-Up Policy and Action<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">I am not an artist, but as a sociologist and self published writer-thinker, I have had a long professional career in various aspects of public and social policy, including working as a social planner in urban development, acting as Director of NCOSS (NSW Council of Social Services), being on the Board of the then NSW Housing Commission, and subsequently working in the university and government sectors on the social impact of technological innovation and change, <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">As we grapple with intransigent global social media companies, and the looming crisis of managing the impacts of AI, the need for joined-up policy thinking becomes ever more apparent. It is time we recovered the transformative power of arts and culture in community development, echoing its long traditional role in keeping First Nations culture alive across millennia, including in the face of colonial conquest and its devastation by the people of my cultural background, in the the name of &#8216;civilisation&#8217;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Current efforts by BMCC through their placemaking projects and activation of the Hub through the Festival of New Works, goes some of this way, but because it does not seem to be done in<em> partnership<\/em> with community organisations and the local business sector, it can fail to strengthen ongoing capacity at the community level.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong>The Whitlam Legacy and the Keynesian Consensus<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Initially built on the assumptions of Keynesian economics, whereby the State played a significant role in the provision of services (housing, health care, transport, utilities, employment protection legislation and welfare safety nets), Keynesianism shaped the great flowering of human-rights informed arts and cultural policy, along with legislative reform that was delivered by the Whitlam Government (1972-1975).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The arts and cultural legacy of these years was based on four policy principles:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">to promote a standard of excellence in the arts<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">to widen access to, and the understanding and application of, the arts in the community generally<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">to help establish and express an Australian identity through the arts, and<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">to promote an awareness of Australian culture abroad.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">In just a few years, Australian society was fundamentally transformed from a cultural outpost of the British Empire under Robert Menzies, to an assertive Australian society with its own identity. The assumptions of the \u2018White Australian Policy\u2019 gave way to the proclamation of a Multicultural Australia, with the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) making it unlawful to unfairly discriminate against someone on the basis of their ethnicity or national origin or to incite others to do so. With &#8216;white&#8217; society challenged by university student &#8216;Freedom Rides&#8217; (led by Charles Perkins), finally in 1967 Australia\u2019s First Nations people were finally recognised as \u2018people\u2019; as citizens to be counted in the national census, which eventually led in 1992 (Mabo v Qld) to the legal dismantling of \u2018terra nullius\u2019, the fiction by which the British claimed all of Australia as a land with no people, and therefore no legal impediment to the British Crown\u2019s claim to all land and sea rights. This colonial attitude of seeing First Nations peoples as sub-human has left a lasting legacy of racism that continues to this day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The legacy of this racist dispossession of land, language and culture has been intergenerational trauma, youth crime and suicide (rage and despair at social exclusion), and structural poverty. This is now being countered by a post-colonial reckoning that is challenging current and past practices. The arts has played major role in this post colonial reckoning, advancing First Nations voices and perspectives\u2014witness Archie Moore&#8217;s acclaim for &#8216;Kith and Kin&#8217; at the Venice Biennale.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Alongside the funding for the arts, was a change in the funding of community services to address issues of social disadvantage and urban services. Traditionally the preserve of church-based institutions and governed according to their different religious codes, the Whitlam government introduced direct funding to secular community-bases services, incorporated as NFPs, cooperatives or associations, which saw the flowering of extensive community activism in the delivery of a new range of services through neighbourhood centres, childcare services and women\u2019s services.\u00a0 This also included funding for community arts projects, with their emphasis on harnessing the power of the creative arts for community development, wellbeing and social cohesion in a rapidly changing world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">This emphasis on community benefit has been progressively whittled away by the growing influence of neo-liberal economic orthodoxy, with its emphasis on the marketisation of society and the related emphasis on individualism. Through this the Whitlam era link between community development and arts and culture has been lost through policies of contracting out specified services to providers, and an increasing emphasis on narrow regimes of accounting for outcomes.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong>The Neo-Liberal Consensus<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Following the stagflation crisis and oil shock of the 1970s, which triggered the collapse of the Whitlam Government, the economic consensus shifted to the ideology of a greater reliance on the so-called free market as more efficient and innovative, than government in delivering essential services and infrastructure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Known as neo-liberalism and associated with Thatcher\u2019s Britain and Reagan\u2019s US, this new economic orthodoxy saw the selling off of public assets to the private sector, increasing de-regulation of labour laws, and the shifting of public investment in education and health to subsidies for private providers in those sectors and reduced income, company and asset taxation, in favour of tax subsidies to the private sector. This accompanied the globalisation of economic activity, an emphasis on free international trade, and the increasing financialisation of the economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The result has been the transformation of housing from shelter to a financial asset with the innovative financial products that triggered the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. Although private sector businesses, the banks that were too big to fail without crashing the entire economy were bailed out by government (public money), the banks were then free to continue their financialisation of the economy. This has led to\u00a0 the rise and rise of the renter class, those whose incomes are derived from asset management on the stock market, rather than direct employment or investment into productive activities in the manufacturing and services sectors. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Accompanying this has been the \u2018great wealth transfer\u2019 that has witnessed the exponential increase in intergenerational wealth inequality, which is saddling young people with educational debt, locking them out of the housing market unless they have access to the \u2018bank of mum and dad\u2019, and eating away at the social fabric of our society. When economic commentators talk in averages, it hides the extent of this problem and provokes political rage in those with lived experience of this rise in<strong><em> wealth<\/em> inequality<\/strong>, which is more significant than <strong><em>income<\/em> inequality<\/strong> per se.\u00a0 But of course, higher income accumulatively allows a rise in asset wealth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The social wage compact of the Hawke-Keating government, which saw neo-liberal de-regulation matched by compensatory funding of social services, medicare, education and childcare, has been whittled away through further privatisation, and the failure to index welfare support to keep pace with the consumer price index to ensure recipients lived above the poverty line. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Once an informal support for struggling insecure artists, the \u2018dole\u2019 (unemployment benefits) no longer performs this function. Now policed by heavy regulation and punitive measures, along with the Youth Allowance, the \u2018dole\u2019 currently provides an income far below the poverty line, plunging its recipients into homelessness, despair and an epidemic of mental illness. So much so that Parliament&#8217;s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee, with advocates like the influential Independent, David Pockock, is recommending that such welfare payments be raised to 90% of the aged pension (- $72 per day).<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong>Arts and the Neoliberal Consensus<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Under the neo-liberal consensus and the intensification of the ideology of<strong><em> economism<\/em><\/strong>, whereby the concept of \u2018society\u2019 gave way to that of the \u2018economy\u2019 as the measure of life, arts and culture was re-branded as the \u2018creative industries\u2019. The worth of arts and culture was now measured by its economic impact, as it sought to find its place in this new cultural framework of economism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><em>Culture is now saturated with a market\u2010oriented mentality that closes out alternative ways of thinking and imagining.<\/em><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Jim McGuigan, \u2018Neo\u2010Liberalism, Culture and Policy\u2019, International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 11, 2005, Issue 3<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Thus the philanthropic organisations who have formed \u2018The New Approach\u2019 to improve the public perception of Australian culture, claim that \u201cCulture in Australia employs around 400,000 workers and represents A$112 billion of economic activity. But it has negligible political clout compared to industries like agriculture, mining or gambling.\u201d Continuing this location of arts and culture within the ideology of economism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Under the neo-liberal consensus of marketisation, the Arts is split between the \u2018top tier\u2019 of marketable \u2018products\u2019 in the visual arts, music, theatre and film sectors and a struggling sector of casualised, insecure, self-employed creatives. As art historian, critic and writer, Tai Mitsuiji notes: \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><em><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">As an art critic and art historian, I\u2019ve spent the past decade swimming in these waters. . . \u00a0like a badly written joke: shaped by the 1%, populated by the shrinking middle classes, picketed by anarchists and run by unpaid interns<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The current Albanese Labor Government seeks to redress historic underfunding of the arts under successive Conservative governments, through its Revive policy program of restoring core arts funding; establishing Creative Australia, Music Australia, Writers Australia and a Creative Workplaces centre to support arts workers; establishing a First Nations-led body dedicated to First Nations work; sharing the National Gallery of Australia\u2019s collection with regional and suburban galleries; and improving incomes for authors. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">However many of its policies are still shaped by the reigning neo-liberal economic orthodoxy, and the emphasis on consumer-driven growth, and goals such as making Australia a &#8216;renewable energy super power&#8217; to sustain such growth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Absent from this vision is the role of the arts in community development through cross-sector integration with non-arts policy areas such as health, housing, education and community justice where they have a demonstrated ability to contribute. The policy to keep unemployment benefits and youth allowances well below the poverty line continues. Instead, we see the continued promotion of a greater professionalisation of the arts sector by acknowledging arts workers as legitimate workers, addressing issues around professional payments and conditions for arts workers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Along with creeping credentialism in the arts and culture sector that followed the university takeover of arts practice, which has in turn been impacted by the progressive corporatisation of the university sector as bastions of neo-liberalism, the arts and culture sector has been de-coupled from any capacity to act in partnership with community development as a strategy for addressing issues of community wellbeing and social cohesion in a society of increasing wealth inequality and the linked issues of rising mental illness.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-size: 18pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong>Reclaiming Arts &amp; Culture in Community Development<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Key take-outs from the the US in \u2018Transforming Community Development through Arts and Culture\u2019, a special edition of <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Community Development Innovation Review<\/strong>, Vol 14, Issue 2, 2019, are set out below<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong>Overview<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Culture = the values, beliefs and traditions that inform a society\u2019s way of being. Arts and community development that infuses arts and cultural strategies helps residents reclaim community identity, strengthen cultural resilience, and build power\u2014all key components of achieving equitable community development outcomes. This approach also explores changes and practices to the field of creative placemaking and provides new deep dives, perspectives, and analysis on the implications of this work for broad equitable development goals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Investments have yielded valuable insights and lessons for a wide range of fields of practice:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">from affordable housing development to parks stewardship,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">from the social practice of art to youth development,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">from community organising to public health.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">With new tools and ways of thinking, imagining, and acting, they have helped residents own and express the identity of their communities, build cultural resilience, and change the ways in which neighborhood planning is carried out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">At ArtPlace America (ArtPlace), we believe the arts and culture sector has the necessary tools, knowledge, and skills to deploy in partnership with the community planning and development sectors to improve the place-based outcomes that will lead to equitable, healthy, and sustainable communities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">We refer to this intersection as creative placemaking, and we see this practice not only continuing, but also being an important and critical driver of how the field of community development is evolving into the future. For us, creative placemaking is the intentional inte\u00adgration of arts, culture, and community-engaged design strategies into the process of equi\u00adtable community planning and development. It\u2019s about artists, culture-bearers, and designers acting as allies to creatively address challenges and opportunities. It\u2019s about these artists and all of the allies together contributing to community-defined social, physical, and economic outcomes and honoring a sense of place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">This new and expanded value of the arts to community development has not been limited to the production of diverse and creative cultural materials such as sculpture, printmaking, photography, music, theater, experimental film, storytelling, quilting, beading, interior design, or many other disciplines and crafts. Artists of various kinds have also honed their capacities as facilitators, guides, motivators, and strategic planners, and they have significantly helped many of the country\u2019s leading community development organiza\u00adtions to advance their missions. This growth in smart \u201ccivic practice\u201d by artists augurs well for the future of this kind of collaboration.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">This linkage of arts with community development has brought about unprecedented cultural exchanges among ethnic groups that had not known much about each other, It has generated new ways by which artists can help to pass down ancient traditions from one generation to the next. It has removed barriers to community ownership of key cultural assets and brought new processes for strengthening the social fabric and identity of places. The intentional strengthening of relationships between the community development and arts and culture sectors have brought about positive outcomes in housing, health, and other dimensions of community development.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Changes in the overall culture, leadership, and future direction of the organization came about as a result of the arts and cultural strategies. These included \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Building greater capacity and more openness to risk and experimentation<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Finding new ways to express an organization\u2019s core values and tell its own story<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Specifying different definitions and measurements of success based on those values<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Crafting more effective interactions with community members, partners, and stake\u00adholders.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Trusting the Creative Process<\/span>\u2014<\/strong>Ashley Hanson<strong>,, \u2018<\/strong>Integrating Arts &amp; Culture into an Organisation \u2013 the Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership (SWMHP)<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Similar creative practice to that which I employ when working with communities on theater productions: begin by listening, move on to creating together, and end with a performance\/celebration. I was selected for the position and began by hosting a series of story circles, in which I invited the staff to share stories about what was working well and what was challenging about the organization\u2014ranging from communication between departments, technology, staff capacity, file management, marketing, and more. It was here that I recognized the second gold nugget: a willingness <strong>to take risks. <\/strong>I witnessed the staff becoming more comfortable sharing their ideas as they began to trust me, the creative process, and each other.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Each group was paired with an \u201cartist consultant,\u201d whose role was to help the group artic\u00adulate its ideas and to support any technical needs. After three months of working together, we organized a staff retreat where each group shared its SLPs through creative presentations, including videos, interactive surveys, toilet-paper mantras, and a drum circle. Each project employed a creative process\u2014with staff working together across departments\u2014to address chal\u00adlenges that the organization had been facing for many years.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Building Capacity<\/span> \u2013 <\/strong>Paul Singh, NeighborWorks America<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Creative community development occurs when residents, community development organizations, artists, culture bearers, and other partners harness the power of culture, art, and creativity to collectively catalyze social, physical, and economic transformation in their neighborhoods, towns, tribal lands, cities, or regions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The issue of insufficient understanding merits added focus from a capacity-building perspective. Many network organizations that we spoke to shared that their early efforts were limited by preconceived notions of what constitutes \u201cart\u201d or \u201ccreative placemaking.\u201d They initially tended to prioritize artistic prod\u00aducts (e.g., the archetypal mural project) over partnerships with artists that could yield creative ways of addressing a range of problems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">NeighborWorks has identified the following priorities to guide future capacity building activities:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Build network organisations\u2019 capacity to implement creative community development with a focus on advancing more equitable outcomes<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Raise visibility of arts and culture-based strategies and cfreative expfression to increase understand of their value<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Provide the network and broader field with tools for, and training in, creative community development and outcome measurement<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Embed creative practices and collaboration within capacity building efforts<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Lessons on Collaborative Practice<\/strong><\/span>\u2014Alexis Stephens<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The artists took on a broad range of roles: not only bringing creative expressions of local history to new audiences, energizing and activating public spaces, and organizing innovative perfor\u00admances and exhibits, but also facilitating internal strategic planning and ways of working.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><em><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Types of Artistic Practice:<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><em>Studio practice<\/em>: artists create their own work and engage with residents as audience<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><em>Social practice<\/em>: artists work with neighbors\/residents on an artist-led vision that involves some level for community participation and intention of social impact outside traditional audience experience<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><em>Civic practice<\/em>: artists co-design a project with residents; the spoken intention is to serve a community\u2019s\/public partner\u2019s self-defined needs.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><em><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Cultural Asset Mapping and Callouts<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Cultural asset mapping is an exploratory process of identifying the cultural and artistic skills, talents, networks, and histories of an area\u2014including people, spaces, and businesses\u2014to acknowledge and integrate them into planning and development efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">While individual artists and arts groups were being identified as potential collaborators via cultural asset mapping, calls for artists, or through direct contact by interested artists, the organizations also created new structures for communicating with them, sharing opportunities, and consulting with them as a group. Establishing artist rosters, artist directories, and arts advisory committee all became ways that the organizations moved from engaging with artists on a project basis to building long-term relationships that covered multiple opportunities. What matters is the depth of the relationships that are formed and the utility of the guidance provided.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">To collaborate successfully, the organizations had to demonstrate their respect for the artists\u2019 and arts groups\u2019 skills and expertise, educate themselves about integrating these struc\u00adtures into their programming, institute fair-wage pay scales, and assign\u2014and more critically, have a dialogue with artists about\u2014shared language and expectations. Above all, they had to lead with their values, vision for the work, and open minds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Sustaining arts and culture work over the long term is a different challenge from embarking upon it, but the learned ability through experimentation to translate the outcomes of their work and maintain a wide net of partners has helped.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>The Connection between Public Space and Cultural Resources<\/strong><\/span>\u2014 <em>Martha O\u2019Connell, Keir Johnston, Ernel Martinez, and Linda Fernandez Amber Art &amp; Design<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Single arts-based projects do little to transform relationships between community organizations and residents and rarely impact community development efforts over the long term. Experience showed the need for a focus on an arts and culture-based process rather than working toward a predetermined goal of art production, to unearth neighbors\u2019 personal histories, expertise and interests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Defining ourselves as facilitators, translators, and bridge-builders, <em>rather than as public artists, <\/em>revealed that such an approach can:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Expand the capacity and reach of external community development organizations to engage neighborhood members in new relationships and services;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Strengthen the capacity of neighborhood-based community development organiza\u00adtions to build on existing relationships with residents by engaging in ongoing follow-up;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Create a process of discovery and self-determination alongside neighbors;<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Place neighborhood-based artists, who may otherwise have been unknown by the outside community development partner, at the forefront of community cultural celebration.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Culture and creativity are powerful tools for communities to create a positive narrative about who they are and what they want their futures to look like. By telling their own stories, communities gain the power to define their current reality and build agency, as opposed to carrying forward lingering narratives from others in the past. Collaboration that honors cultural identity and creative expression is a particularly effective strategy to build bonds and bridges between people and groups, which are key elements of social that have been shown to impact survival.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>The Role of Organizing and Engagement<\/strong><\/span>\u2014 <em>Jeremy Liu and Lorrie Chang<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Artists and arts collaborations created more meaningful forms of community engagement that influenced the trajectory of these organizations and their projects and disrupted unequal power dynamics in significant ways. The CDI organizations, like all community development organizations, constantly have to adapt to changing demographics, market forces, and other factors in order to remain relevant and responsible; indeed, an increased adaptivity of the organizations and their partners to evolving roles in the community development ecosystem is one of the most tangible outcomes of these six cases.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The creative process of arts and culture has served as a road map for using engagement activities to build community agency and strengthen the social fabric while advancing transactional housing, real estate, project development, and property management goals\u2014otherwise known as \u201coutput.\u201d In essence, arts and cultural strategies created a human-development through line from activity to output to community develop\u00adment outcomes of these organizations that merge people- and place-based goals.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><strong>Transformative Outcomes<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Creative placemaking works best when embedded in a broader program of community development that addresses affordable housing, education, health, and safety. Accordingly, creative placemaking is a key pillar of our new economic develop\u00adment approach, which is called Catalyzing Opportunity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">We often think of arts outcomes in creative placemaking: a beautiful mural depicting historic events, a piece of public art on a transit corridor, or a branding project in a commer\u00adcial center. But we have found that the <em>process <\/em>of creative placemaking, and the level of inquiry artists bring to the work, also uncovers hidden opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">Creative placemaking centered in a civic-practice approach values discovery. It values co-design, and it demonstrates that the achieved outcomes and outputs would not have occurred if this group had not built a partnership and worked together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">We&#8217;ve seen print-makers build collaborative tools that residents use to imagine a vision for growth in their community; we\u2019ve seen theatre directors aim their skills toward the facili\u00adtation of conversation between residents with different beliefs and opinions about public good; we\u2019ve seen musicians deploy practices of ensemble in spaces where dialogue was tense and difficult; we\u2019ve seen heritage holders use story to bring community together for problem-solving a local challenge; and we\u2019ve seen writers collaborating with designers help local leaders make complex issues legible to local stakeholders.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Issues<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Wellbeing is not just an aggregation of individual benefits. Rather, it relates to a much broader notion of who or what prospers in society in relation to each other and the long-term health of society as a set of interconnected systems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">We know that artists are changing lives and transforming communities across this country, but their work as investors in their communities\u2014as people who are committing time, money, and other forms of capital to realize their community\u2019s development\u2014remains marginalized and underfunded.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Advancing a Clear Vision Forward <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">So, no, you do not need special glasses, but you do need to expand your vision to be able to see the power of the arts as a means of celebrating a community\u2019s history and culture\u2014and a critical part of community development. The steps are easy:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Recognize <\/strong>that arts and culture have often been left out of the conversation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Reimagine <\/strong>your own understanding of the roles that arts and culture can play in community development.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Request <\/strong>that your partners consider the role of arts and culture in the course of their project development.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>Reinvest <\/strong>your funds through community-serving institutions with the flexibility they need to be creative in supporting arts and cultural investments.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Help community organizations to <strong>realign <\/strong>their practices where arts and culture can help achieve their missions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Work with housing developers to fill capital gaps that help them to <strong>remix <\/strong>their core ingredients toward greater success.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Spend the time to <strong>reframe <\/strong>the work in a way that centralizes the desired community outcomes over the arts-based activities so that CRA examiners can fit it into their filters.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">A little creativity on the part of lenders can go a long way toward achieving a better vision of what community development can do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dilemma Since becoming involved with the Greater Blue Mountains Creative Arts Network (GBMCAN), and becoming its president in 2022, I have become increasingly distressed by the way in which the arts and culture sector is not integrated into the idea of community development. Instead the Arts has become captured by the ideology of neoliberalism\u2014the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4027,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Firefly-Visualize-a-vibrant-community-gathering-where-artists-and-residents-collaborate-to-transform-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4021"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4038,"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4021\/revisions\/4038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regenesis.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}