Contemporary Arts in Rural Development: Lessons from Japan and the UK

The proposal aims to bring together groups of academics interested in rural development, artists, art professionals and policy makers interested in rural and regional contexts in order to explore the contribution of contemporary arts in the social and economic development of rural places.

The proposal builds on an existing partnership between Newcastle University and Tokyo Universities (evidenced with sabbatical exchanges of Gkartzios and Yagi across each other's academic units and a memorandum of understanding between the two institutes) and aims to strengthen this relationship with a common research agenda on contemporary arts in rural development. Both institutes have experience engaging with creative stakeholders. For example, Yagi and Toishi at the University of Tokyo have supervised student research projects the impact of art festivals in the development of rural places. Gkartzios and Yagi conducted fieldwork (while Gkartzios was Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo) on the governance and impact of an art festival (i.e. the Oku-Noto Trienalle) in a remote and depopulated rural area in Japan. Gkartzios and Pollock have established links and research projects (including projects funded from AHRC) with cultural stakeholders in Northumberland and Scotland and both have published on the role of art in rural development (e.g. in the Journal of Rural Studies).

The research proposal bring together for the first time pioneering art professionals and rural development experts to look internationally the potential of contemporary art in rural development contexts. It includes critical contributions from Japan's Art Front Gallery (world famous for its contributions in rural development through the vision of Director Fram Kitagawa organising rural art festivals such as Echigo-Tsumari and Setouchi), England's Berwick Visual Arts, and Scotland's Stove Network. All these stakeholders have significant experience of art interventions in rural contexts through art residency programmes, organisation of rural art festivals, and have established networks with community groups in rural locales.

The proposal will create a dynamic network of those stakeholders who will exchange knowledge and plan a common research agenda through two 'residential weeks' scheduled in the UK and in Japan. The programme of the residential weeks will be drafted by the academic investigators in partnership with the cultural stakeholders. Artists, early career researchers and policy stakeholders will be involved in these workshops. Presentation, discussions and artistic interventions during the workshops will be documented and uploaded on the project web pages and will be further disseminated through the partners' social media pages. The final outcome of the project will be a collaborative and comparative research proposal which will be submitted for subsequent funding to an appropriate research council and lay the foundations for an exciting, transdisciplinary and symmetric research project across the UK and Japan.

There are a number of user groups who will benefit from this research including: arts organisations, community groups and arts advocates; arts and rural policy makers and strategic bodies; participants and the wider public.

The examination of rural arts in relation to rural development will give the organisations involved (England's Berwick Visual Arts, Scotland's Stove Network and Japan's Art Front Gallery) valuable opportunity to reflect on their work and engagement with communities, stakeholders and place, something they rarely have the time or opportunity to do. They will be able to exchange knowledge internationally and plan collaborative activities and artistic exhibitions (such collaborative strategies could be funded for example by the Daiwa Foundation).

This core body of work has the potential to appeal to cognate rural arts organisations many of whom could be involved in the future research project, such as Allenheads Contemporary Arts and Visual Arts in Rural Communities (both in Northumberland), Deveron Arts (Huntly), Rural Arts (Thirsk), Atlas Arts (Skye) and Common Ground UK. Similarly, we will reach Japanese arts organisations such as the Sapporo Art Festival (in Japan's northern island, Hokkaido) as well as emerging collectives associated with Japan's famous 'art island' Naoshima (e.g. the Art House Project) that we have contacts with through the Art Front Gallery (e.g. the Setouchi Art Festival in Naoshima and other islands is organised by Art Front Gallery). The rural focus of the network and its dissemination reports will appeal to arts groups as 'Myvillages' artist initiative, Environmental Arts Festival Scotland, 'ecoartsscotland', PLATFORM, GreenArts, GreenMuseum, and the RSA Arts and Ecology grouping.

We will engage with policy communities active in the field of rural development, for example Action for Rural Communities in England and the Community Development Trust Associations in Scotland - this is in addition to the networks associated with the Rural Development Programmes in England and Scotland. Similarly, we will engage with the local authorities in Japan that host and support art festivals in rural contexts (e.g. councils, the Chamber of Commerce which sponsors rural art festivals organised by Art Front Gallery). Through the policy notes and internet activity we will pro-actively seek to engage with and inform the work of national policy makers, stakeholders and strategic bodies operating in rural contexts such as DEFRA, who have an interest in the role of arts and culture in rural contexts (and with whom the Centre for Rural Economy has strong links), LEADER, the National Farming Union (NFU), the Rural Services Network as well as Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Fisheries (MAFF), Japan Centre for Regional Development, Japan's Fishery Agency and Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) (with whom the University of Tokyo has also very strong links). Special effort will be made to reach out and involve in our activities representatives from Japan Tourism Agency (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport & Tourism) as they currently place a lot of attention on rural art projects that increase tourists from foreign countries.

Alongside this, our network exchanges will inform understanding of arts bodies such as the Arts Council/Creative Scotland, the Japan Foundation for Regional Art Activities, the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Japan Foundation Asia Centre. Internationally, we aim to reach an interdisciplinary audience through organisations such as the World Rural Forum and OECD's Rural Policy unit (and the OECD Rural Conference Series); we have connections here through the Centre for Rural Economy. Through researching and understanding the role of contemporary arts in rural development, our project has the potential to inform policy-making and strategic development internationally.