The Arndale of Community Work
I completely understood where she was coming from. The job of community work is very practical and everyone is overstretched anyway – why devote energy and time to making this happen if there is no apparent outcome? Why should her centre help us in some research project, that has no benefit. She understood CN4M very well. She was in favour of CN4M – they have provided funding for her volunteering programme, but didn’t see why users of her centre needed to know that.
I admitted to Janet that actually there was no “outcome” of this, that we weren’t looking to provide a service or offer solutions. I didn’t know if the art work would be enjoyed or ignored. I didn’t know if CN4M had any relevance to local people and I wasn’t setting out to promote CN4M. If awareness of it was created then that would be good – but why? I wasn’t sure.
Talking to Janet struck a lot of chords for me. She could have made an appointment to see me at another time, but she dropped everything to spend half an hour with me. She was evidently very busy and told me a number of times – so I felt bad that she’d dropped everything. I tried to say, I could come back another time, but she insisted. As I’d interrupted anyway, she may as well stop. I saw myself in many situations doing the same, when people appear out of the blue – it’s a not wanting to disapoint people and also a slightly matryred attitude (guilt tripping creates a sense of power?). She wanted to help but as I say, and she was very earnest in questioning the project – which I found very helpful….
Janet pointed me at the Wythenshawe Forum centre, who would have more space and seemed more recognised as an exhibition space (I used to cycle there as a child to swim) – its now a large indoor precinct run by Wythenshawe Trust. The Forum has a leisure centre/gym, library, theatre, walk-in health clinic, café, education, and child care centres….all under one roof, and all overseen by a security company. Unlike the outside, this felt new, vibrant and busy – a bit like the Arndale centre of community work…A friendly receptionist phoned Bob, the manager of the centre who very welcomingly offered to host the artwork – this centre seemed inappropriate for Andrew’s game – but ideal for Joes long pasting tables…..
Tree of Life
At last today I met someone who challenged me about the project. So far everyone has been so positive – like no one has been phased about the fact that artists were doing something without taking into account who the audience might be or whether they are addressing particular issues – or whether they are ready to work with certain groups.
Art in communities is often about people getting stuck in and getting pleasure from making things and spending time together doing it and then a sense of pride when that work, however good or bad, is shown off to friends and family. Our project isn’t going to achieve that end. The art we are involved with is about stepping back and looking at the situation of community work and networks, and commenting upon that. Bringing the work into the environment on which it is focusing, has a tradition in site specific work, art as environment, more than it does community art.
I’ve been expecting hostility, suspicion and frankly “stop wasting our time” since I began, because community development grew up hand in hand with community art. But apart from a few artists, working in the community centres, who at first may be a little territorial about their spaces (and fair enough) almost without exception, community centres and their workers have been really positive and accepted my somewhat vague descriptions of what the project is about.
Janet, manager of The Tree of Life Centre wasn’t able to offer me the space I had hoped to simply walk in and secure – a table in the corner of the café. The centre wasn’t really open, but I wandered in, and Janet kindly stopped her fundraising, offered me tea and showed me around the furniture and clothes shop, cafe and activity space(church). She wanted to understand exactly what my project is doing – and what exactly was the point of placing art work in her centre. What would the centre users get out of it? What was the objective of it? Why would anyone be interested, or need to know what CN4M is? What she was saying is that ordinary people access her centre to either have a meal, buy cheap furniture, or take part in a club or group, and then off they go – she knew that actually people wont be interested in the art work, let alone “engage” with it, and they certainly wont understand CN4M or want to. Andrew Wilson is making a board game, which in the playing, describes CN4M’s function. She was asking why people would want to know that anyway? Surely if they needed to find something out, they would ask her, and she would point them on then to the ward coordinator (council worker for that area) not CN4M, who are based in town anyway, miles from her community.
ctd
network as rhizome
I’ve started to a attend the reading group at Salford Restoration Office. Artists get together weekly to read philosophy articles and look at work and possibly make work together at some point. Its like a brain gym for me. We were reading Deleuze and Guattari from One Thousand Plateaus. It was really relevant to the thoughts I’d been having about networks that are seen as theoretical defined structures – like CN4M and how networks actually work – like a rhizome ………spilling and spreading and improvising new streams, nodes and amalgamations across the ground, unlike a heirarchical structure of say a tree.
Good when two things come together – the reading feeding the project like that in an unexpected way.
Centres
As well keeping up to date with artists’ progress, I’ve been getting out and about researching some community centres. It’s an area I am familiar with as I spend a lot of time in a community centre where I’ve been running an open studio for some years.
It was interesting to look at all the different types of location and the variety of buildings, where voluntary and community projects are based. There are a few distinct aesthetics going on, though not I guess deliberate – and as you look at all the associated materials, websites, leaflets and speak to individuals, the ethos or character of each place emerges. So there are the places that are make-do-and-mend and there are those that are lottery backed and corporate feeling.
I’m hoping that each can play a part, and contribute to the story of the project – so we have a spanking new library, a semi-updated skills training centre, church halls and places on the brink. The journey to and from to see all the work will be part of the experience of the project….
Now I am hoping to coordinate the timing of the show with all the venues.
Arent Artists Busy 2
I hear that Simon Grennan and Chris Sperrandio have held a meeting with the Geographic workers – who I discover have just a month to work their notice. Sounds as if funding for CN4M, in its current form, is collapsing as new agendas kick in through local Government. As CN4M embark on their re-branding, Simon and Chris set out alone to experience the CN4M geographic hotspots.
Jo Lewington has gained trust at one or two factories. Its surprising that not all manufacturing has gone east. Manchester is still home to a number of textile manufacturers and Jo is exploring these environments in her research into physical repetitive actions and movement and how these echo all our lives’ patterns. So a different approach to the theme of economy than the new Learning Skills and Employment network of CN4M might be taking, but possibly one that will resonate with the workers of the factories and wider, as Jo’s durational work evolves.
William Titley meanwhile has attended umpteen meetings with the Sustainable communities networks. Some of the meetings are poorly attended, and he identifies “heroes” – the volunteers who turn up time after time and are so committed to making it work. I say maybe it’s a kind of dying breed and he sees them as warriors, specially the people who have worked all their lives in community projects. There’s nostalgia there as well from some participants – a wish for things to be as they once were. For more solidarity, more trust, less change – he’s brought these thoughts together in an object – the old fashioned dustbin, with a lid – and he’s focusing on this as a sculptural work. But for now he’s taking part in a mountain marathon and is thinking as he runs………
