Community Organizing in an Era of Precarity: Forging Creative Solidarities

Imagine community arts organisations screening outdoor 'pop up' movie screenings in abandoned neighbourhood spaces; community centres providing space for wood working and cooking workshops; neighbourhood hubs offering courses on community radio programming alongside workshops about starting your own business: these are all examples of 'artistic social enterprise initiatives' that seek to create alternative and sustainable forms of social and economic organisation. Supported by precarious and piece-meal public, private and philanthropic funding, artistic social enterprise organisations are examples of diverse community economies (e.g. community enterprises, cooperatives) currently working with a range of people to foster entrepreneurialism and job training. While these organisations program diverse activities in communities across the UK, critics claim that these strategies do little to address deeper structural inequalities within mainstream economic development and urban regeneration initiatives. On the other hand, many grassroots artistic social enterprise groups are said to offer a foothold for resisting austerity in marginalised communities. Furthermore, analysis of them may illuminate novel strategies for engaging underrepresented communities/people in local regeneration and economic development planning.
This research programme builds on community economies research, an area of analysis that explores alternative economic development models. Engaging social enterprise groups in three diverse U.K. regions - South West England, urban Scotland and the remote Scottish Highlands and Islands -- this research programme examines how artistic social enterprise groups negotiate contradictory pressures on their work and generate change. It assesses and tracks how arts-based community development organisations share strategies for promoting social and economic development as well as promote artistic production. This project maps and examines the reach and purpose of creative strategies that seek to challenge patterns of inequality. It will develop a more nuanced understanding of the potential of artistic social enterprise for encouraging social and economic sustainability. This research will benefit a wide range of audiences: scholars researching social enterprise and community economies; social enterprise practitioners; social policy and cultural policy researchers; artists practicing community-engaged work; urban regeneration planners. In order to maximise the impact of the project, the following activities are planned: the production of academic papers for journals and conferences and a book on artistic social enterprise accessible to both practitioners and researchers; the creation of an on-line 'Artistic Social Enterprise Hub,' a space for artists and social enterprise practitioners to upload and discuss innovative community economic development models, examples of arts practices and strategies for enacting alternative business strategies; a 'Knowledge Exchange and Strategy Forum' that will bring together social enterprise groups to share good practice and critically debate how their strategies traverse communities; the production of briefing papers and best practice booklets on artistic social enterprise activities with a range of artistic social enterprise practitioners; research visits to Australia to work with community economies experts and to facilitate a public discussion with the Sydney chapter of the Community Economies Research Network; the production of innovative digital stories to share education about arts-based community engagement and development that I will post on the on-line Hub; public workshops about innovative artistic social enterprise strategies with artists, scholars and community stakeholders at the University of the Highlands and Islands and the University of Bristol. This Future Research Leader award will build new national and international collaborations and foster interdisciplinary scholarship.

This research will engage artistic social enterprise groups (e.g. community enterprises, cooperatives) in three diverse regions of the UK: South West England, urban Scotland and the remote Scottish Highlands and Islands. It will investigate the way artistic social enterprise groups respond to and shape local and regional economies, how innovative ideas and techniques travel across different social networks, and it examines the role of artistic practices in generating social well-being and economic resiliency amongst marginalised communities. Thus, there are a myriad of non-academic beneficiaries and users for this research from scholars to social enterprise practitioners, from artists to marginalised community members.

Social Enterprise Organisations: Social enterprise practitioners in Scotland and South West England have expressed enthusiasm about the research and its potential contribution, and have been instrumental in framing its research questions. They will be able to use outputs at all stages of the research to inform and formulate their own meaningful and relevant social enterprise strategies. For example, the Development Director of the Kinning Park Complex, an organisation programming a diverse range of artistic social enterprise activities, particularly values the national and international, university and community knowledge exchange that this programme will catalyse.

Government bodies: in the current context of retreating state support, artistic social enterprise groups are programming innovative, community-engaged projects to sustain marginalised communities. Mobilising a diverse mix of businesses and organisations in their projects, they offer new understandings about promoting social and economic sustainability, civic engagement and urban renewal. Therefore, this programme would benefit cultural policy researchers examining regeneration strategies and organisational capacity building such as Creative Scotland, Arts Council England, the Scottish Arts Council and the UK-wide Department for Culture Media and Sport. It would also benefit policy makers and planners implementing economic development and regeneration strategies at the local and regional scale (Glasgow City Council, Bristol City Council, the Highlands and Islands Region).

Grassroots Voluntary Groups and Third Sector Organisations: This programme explores the contradictory politics that artistic social enterprise groups can become entangled in. Sometimes they reinforce exclusionary gentrification processes as they partner with urban regeneration schemes. However, they can also illuminate strategies for implementing inclusionary and cooperative local economic development models. This research will reveal the novel methods employed by these groups and will invite activists to share social justice strategies. Hence, this programme will benefit voluntary organisations promoting grassroots community development including the Poverty Alliance, WestGap (Glasgow-based Anti-Poverty group), Glasgow Solidarity Network.

Artists: Individual artists and arts collectives who work in social justice-oriented projects in the targeted regions will benefit from the artistic social enterprise case studies. The programme illuminates practical and helpful best practices for community art practitioners from new artistic methods to strategies for participatory planning. For example, the programme will highlight the innovative work of arts collectives implementing projects that address the race, class and gender dimensions of public funding cuts, gentrification and austerity, as well as their strategies for promoting care and social inclusion (e.g. the Precarious Worker's Brigade, the Strickland Distribution and Arika). It will also benefit a wider range of artists working with galleries and arts institutions including the Transmission Gallery, the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, Spike Island Gallery, Eigg Box and Centrespace.