Creative Transformations

Lead Research Organisation: University of Ulster
Department Name: Sch of Art & Design

Abstract

"The project is designed around 3 interrelated strands of workshops and looks to identify the key drivers and steps to sustained and sustainable creative practice in community and individual transformations in a society emerging from conflict. Whilst this project exists within and draws on the context of an evolving post-conflict society, the research findings will be equally applicable to other critical contexts.
Strand 1 will be carried out in collaboration with the Prison Arts Foundation. It brings together prisoners, officers and prison administrators to engage in a creative exchange about the prison environment through visual images and spatial design. Participants will be encouraged to articulate how they would like to see the environment changing to affect a transformation of self by social inclusiveness, re-building of collective confidence, and re-taking of civil responsibility - working towards rehabilitation and social re-integration of the prisoners.
Strand 2 will be established in collaboration with Community Arts Forum and the organisation "Healing through Remembering". These groups will help to identify participants. The aim is to test and advance knowledge about creative processes which assert subjective identity in the context of history and memory. Methods will include the interrogation of the role of objects and photography, and the use of creative means of processing, such as story telling, creative writing, and visual manifestations.

Strand 3 will bring together the experiences of Strand 1 and 2 with other projects that have successfully demonstrated creative transformations as a result of cross-disciplinary grass roots organisations (already known to the Interface Research Centre) who have worked with creative practitioners (artists/designers) to achieve a stated objective. This workshop aims to identify the conditions, skills and knowledge that support and sustain creative processes.
The project aims to reflect findings against the context of a Northern Ireland Government Policy initiative called "Unlocking Creativity" (2000, 2001, 2004) whose mission is to "develop the capacities of all our people for creativity and innovation, and so promote and sustain the social, cultural and economic wellbeing of Northern Ireland". Hence an important outcome of the project will be a policy feedback report that sets findings within context of policy; and potentially identifies:
? New territories for creative practice
? Conditions for sustained creativity
? Relationships between social creativity and funding structures.
"
 
Description We documented a number of case studies across Northern Ireland that use creative practice within community engagement projects, concluding with a series of recommendations:
1. Funding
Funding (type, extent and process) impacts on all areas of creative practice. However, there is concern amongst the individuals and groups represented by the case studies, that the current cocktail of funding models does little to intelligently support this area of activity i.e. people centred, engaged, participatory creative practice. Given the importance of this type of practice in achieving Creative Transformations, a rethink in current funding models is therefore recommended:

A diversity of appropriate funding models should be developed, prototyped and tested that:
- are able to accommodate the requirements of projects grown in and from communities,
- are suitable to longer-term, complex processes in the public domain,
- allow for observation, reflection and feedback loops, integrated into the project, rather then added on retrospectively.

Funding schemes should provide incentives for groups in corresponding and overlapping areas of interest to work together, to share and transfer knowledge and skills.

Funders with common or complementary areas of interest and commitment should collaborate on shared schemes and portfolios of projects.


2. Evaluation
The case studies illustrate the diversity of evaluation techniques used: formal, informal, ad-hoc, considered, internally and externally facilitated. There is often a sense that there is insufficient time and resources to carry out evaluation. This might be the case for smaller scale projects, but there is also evidence that some groups have begun (sometimes by chance) to recognise the value of reflective practice and build it into their mechanisms. Such groups have moved beyond a form of evaluation that simply confirms 'it is good', to one that asks 'how could it be better?' But rigorous evaluation is also required to provide the much needed evidence of the impact and value of this work.

A range of appropriate, diverse and flexible forms of qualitative (and quantitative) evaluation needs to be developed and refined, through collaboration between creative practitioners, communities and stakeholders, funders and researchers. Such evaluation should then be used to inform the further development of innovative and effective funding models.


3. Categorisation, Promotion and Memory
This area of creative practice in communities has been sparsely documented and represented. It would seem, however, that one distinctive characteristic of creative practice in Northern Ireland is to be rooted and heavily informed by engagement with communities. If that is the case, then we need to do more to promote the fact that creative practice is strongly related to community and that in turn, community is strongly informed and formed by its creative practice. We recommend that:

Forms of documentation are promoted that adequately and creatively capture this engaged, participatory and processed-based work.

Appropriate archiving strategies are developed that build the memory of and support the further development of such practice.

Effective and alternative circuits of debate and display are proactively built to aid the validation of such practices on their own terms.

The appropriateness and value of defining this work by such terms as 'community art' or 'art' is critically examined.


4. Time, Management and Sustainability.
As creative projects in communities move out of the workshop or the community centre, and into the public realm they increase in complexity. Projects that engage with environments or result in public performances increase their visibility and simultaneously increase their liability and the need to consult and negotiate with others. This type of work is as much people-focused as it is project-focused and as such has to be managed with an array of skills. Whilst projects may have clear start and finish dates, ensuring people's engagement requires 'lead-in' times and debriefing periods. This 'extra-effort' typically goes unfunded and undervalued yet ensures sustainability and value for money.

Grass roots organisations need support in developing basic financial, risk and project management skills. Lack of skills in these areas can affect an organisation's creativity and potential to seek funding.

Lead-in and de-briefing periods to projects need to be more clearly marked out, understood and funded.

We need to increase our understanding of how projects can develop and support strategies for sustainability, i.e. sustaining their value and longevity to the communities they support and who support them.


5. A role for Universities?
Currently strategies are developed top-down or bottom-up - both offer limited scope, application and benefits. There needs to be reconciliation between community requirements and government initiatives to foster initiative, inclusiveness, ownership, sustainability and maximise benefits for all involved. Universities can offer a site for reflection and reconciliation, where ideas can be tested at low risk and informed by current discourse. We recommend that:

Universities should be recognised for the expertise and capacity they can offer practitioners, communities and decision makers through up-skilling, knowledge transfer and research.

Training opportunities could be provided to better support community activities in the form of focused short courses /continuous professional development, summer schools, workshops, masters programmes, PhD programmes, conferences and symposia.

Academic researchers should become valuable collaborators, capable of working within a diversity of community contexts and connecting with the range and diversity of stakeholders, thereby complementing and adding to the existing expertise developed within communities.



6. Places for Play
Even though this publication discusses creativity in terms of its transformative and hence societal value, it still asserts the right for creative processes and moments to exist outside value systems, 'measurables' and outcome driven initiatives. Thus the final recommendation is that:

The systems, processes and mechanisms that claim to support creativity be scrutinised for their ability to allow places for play.
Exploitation Route we presented the outcomes to a wider range of stakeholders- community groups, funders and academics. More significantly it has continued to influence the work of Morrow who's own research has developed to become an engaged and pedagogical form of community-based practice.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Education,Environment,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
 
Description The process of the research brought together a network of people from community arts, academia and policy level who built trust in and knowledge of one another areas and who have continued to call on and collaborate with one another over the years.
First Year Of Impact 2008
Sector Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Environment,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural,Societal