Use Or Ornament

[s.a thorne]

HELLO! just starting becoming involved in community arts, just wandering if you could answer Use or ornament? What is the significance of community arts?

[Steven Durland]

I'd like to think that, like any kind of art, community arts can be both useful AND aesthetic. In fact, I think it is precisely the qualities of successful aesthetic achievement (I use that clumsy phrase to replace "ornament" so I can be referring to visual art or theater or music or whatever) that make art valuable in a community setting. To my mind, people who believe that community arts are just tools for social work are selling both art and the community short.

[josieliardon]

Dear Steve

I have successfully been registered. Yeeppeee!

Can I ask if u can clarify "Useful" ? Why is using arts for social work short changing???? I am currently pioneering and working with several arts specialists in developing a prorgram which utilizes the arts as a meaningful too for at-risk kids who fail in the main stream education system in Singapore. I do not see this synergy as short-changing.

Hope to have yur reply. I think most people are asleep at this time in yur time zone. Its about 10.30 am this side of the world.

Warmest Regards
josieliardon

[Steven Durland]

Good morning josieliardon...

When we talk about art being a useful tool for addressing various social situations, my concern is that too often we overlook the transcendent values of great art and settle for the diversionary value of giving communities art of lesser quality.

While a poorly written and poorly acted play may still keep kids off the streets and out of trouble, if we settle for that level of achievement we're not truely giving kids the benefit of art, we're just keeping them busy. Sports, television or video games might do as much.

Which is my roundabout way of saying that good community art should also be good art period. A bad painting will cover a hole in the wall just as well as a good painting. So we can certainly say the bad painting is useful. But its usefulness only makes it a good wall patch, not good art. And we're then left to answer the question of what is more desirable to look at, a bad painting or a hole in the wall.

[josieliardon]

Dear Steve

I totally agree with your remark but bad arts exist whether or not its use for social work purposes. But can professional artists really, truly give/produce bad art ? Is that why community arts/youth arts is not recognized as professional art making by many ????

josie

[Steven Durland]

Hi Josie,

I think ANY artist is capable of producing bad art. I think good artists recognize and learn from their mistakes. I think this is particularly important in community arts. A bad painting only messes up a piece of canvas. A bad community artwork is messing with peoples' lives.

As for why communty arts aren't recognized? No simple answer. But I suspect that in part it's because the concept is new to many people. Heck, those of us who DO recognize community art are still trying to understand just what it is and how it works and what the important criteria are, and asking questions about good and bad and use or ornament, etc. So I suspect it will achieve more recognition over time.

What kinds of issues are you encountering with the program you're developing?

[josieliardon]

Dear Steve

Like any other new programs, getting the right people interested in the program through sponsorship is difficult to come by. Justification of why we need the financial support for the program may not be as difficult as the moral support by our arts council. They have different perspective on this as u mentioned, its a very new idea (they think its therapy). It takes time for people to understand the concept.

Their main agenda is Audience Development in the arts through Arts education in schools and public performances Helping students connect with the real world or other relevant life-skills through the arts is as unheard of. (Very few local artists here has the necessary skills to do that). We learnt teaching methods. thats about it in the teachers college.

THe school education system in Singapore has also produced more academically intelligent students who lack creative thinking and critical thinking. Further more, the system has alientated a large (very large portion) of students who cannot cope with the main stream system.

Now, the ministry (of education) is re-looking for a new way of imparting skills to students. Well, here is a hint of hope for us. Slowly but surely.

I have to document the program by showing that arts can help. Its not the ONLY answer (sports & recreation can too).

josie

[Steven Durland]

I was in Japan briefly in the late 80s and I recall a politician there arguing that while the Japanese education system was producing highly skilled workers for the booming economy, it was ignoring creativity. He argued that the younger generation was not being exposed to creative problem-solving methods that would be essential for addressing social and economic problems in the future.

It seemed like that particular politician was a least a step ahead of the politicians who can only see arts programs as busy-work to keep kids out of trouble.

[Takiyah]

I think that community art is essentially a utilitarian endeavor. By that I mean that in my experience community art has been for a reason...; a use, albeit "art for arts' sake". I do not think that utility and aesthetics have to be a trade off...what is useful can be beautiful in that sense. Still, my point is that community art is what it is and does what it does because it constantly finds itself balancing its utility...

[Steven Durland]

Inside the balancing act between utility and aesthetics, what criteria do we use to judge the success or failure of a community artwork?

[Takiyah]

i believe that "inside the balancing act between utility and aesthetics" in most instances we use criteria that does not sufficiently acknowledge that aspect of the work. box office returns, spreadsheets and audience counts do not address that balancing act. i have found that most of the community based artists i have worked with, then, find themselves caught between a sense of need and obligation to do the work as well as constantly trying to justify what they do with the aforementioned measures and others that are are equally innapropriate. What might be more...advantageous and holistic would be to design models that truly gauge and acknowledge the tensions buried inside of community artwork. perhaps we could begin with a conversation about ways to measure learner gains,sentiments produced as a result of the work and what was sacrificed in order to do the work. A part from the learner gains , however, we are left with things that are ephemeral and at times. transient. in this case, then we are back where we started with each of us judging our "success" or "failure" with a subjective set of personal criteria that can (and i believe. does) change from experience to experience...

[Steven Durland]

So if we accept this idea that quality in community arts is subjective, then it's pretty much the same as non-community arts in that respect, right? By that I mean that success might be in the eye of the beholder. Or perhaps the critic?

Then are funders and others totally missing the point when they want standards for success? Quantifiable evidence of improvement? Repeatable methods? etc.?

I'm not directly challenging you, Takiyah. It's just that we're getting into an interesting area that raises those questions for me. Is there a middle ground between subjectivity and objectivity? Or is that the worst place to be?

[Ann Kilkelly]

I had a potter friend back in the 60's who would put holes in the bottom of all her pots, so that they wouldn't have a function at all. She said she was sick of people not appreciating it as art. "It's pretty, but what can I DO with it," they would say to her. This upset her and made her feel undervalued, as if making something beautiful (at least to her) was enough. Secretly I was very disappointed because I loved her pots and I thought part of their beauty was in their usefulness, their integration into (my) cultural life. But, oddly enough, in those years it felt like being political and changing consciousness meant we had to insist on the value of art as aesthetic. Things seem to have moved around a good bit. I still want my pots to have bottoms and I want art to have a use value too, but I think it's a deeply produced pleasure that art experience provides. I can't tell you as much about what I think is good as I used to be able to, and I do find it very hard to get rid of my "educated judgements," which I know are about what we think is good or bad.

[cjewells]

Hello, all... I just found this site and would like to add my two cents into this conversation. As an artist I’ve always been very subjective about the meaning value of art. I’ve come to appreciate certain forms of art more now that I work at a museum, however, I still yearn for artwork that imparts some kind of spiritual meaning or value.

Which brings me to this dialogue. In the context of community based arts, doesn’t the experience count for anything? I agree that it would be nice for community art projects to be good, but what about the value for the participants? What comes to mind specifically for me is the after school program that I run at the museum. The instructor has had to lower her expectations dramatically (no pun intended) in attempting to have the kids perform in a play. The challenges are myriad: kids with little attention span, kids with reading problems, etc. Basically these are at-risk kids. Just the attendance issues would lesson anyone’s expectations. In the elementary school near the museum, the transfer rate is 100%. These kids are in grades 3 - 5. What kind of expectations in producing "good" art should we impose on them?

[Bob Leonard]

Hi Cjewells

You ask a great question. It comes out of the real situation of making art with "the people who are there." This is an issue in every community arts project. The issue for me is not so much about reducing the expectations but fitting expectations with actual resources. A song exchange in a local bar environment is not the same as an opera produced in a grand opera house, but both can be quite wonderful. (And of course, both can be bad.) If the instructor at your after school program had expectations, say, of casting, rehearsing, and performing a full length play for an audience other than the kids in the program, then I can imagine the actual realities the kids presented would force the instructor to change the kind of theatre experience that would fit these children. That does not necessarily mean reduce expectations of excellence, however. It may ask for different skills from the instructor. Producing and directing a play for a future audience is different than creating the opportunity for theatrical expression right now, with and for those who are here in this room together. The skills implied in the latter are every bit as highly valued as those implied in the former. They are quite different. I guess I think that a bunch of at-risk elementary school kids should expect to experience good art that is accessible and attainable within the actual framework of their presence in the program. I will admit that you do have be really good to pull that off, no question. It may not be grand opera or classical theatre but if the participants are able to give truthful expression to inner imagery, then it will be quite wonderful, on anybody's standards.

[Ann Marie Wierzbicki]

This is a fascinating discussion. I am someone who comes to community art with an initial background in theatre but close to two decades as an educator in the labour movement as my prominent practice. Over the past several years I have become more and more involved in community arts.

I believe criteria for judging success or failure must address both the participants' experience and the aesthetic. Utility would only come into the equation if the participants as a group have a goal based in creating something that has a usefulness beyond itself as a means of expression. Such untility is generally of an activist-political-let's effect change beyond ourselves as a group nature.

If the arts project was conceived and executed with a utilitarian purpose then the act of evaluating success in that regard belongs to the creative collaborative group including artists and participants and perhaps the organization, if any, which sponsored and supported the actualization of the project.

If the project has an intent of presentation to an audience then clearly it is in the interest of all those involved to ensure the presentation is of a quality which they can feel proud to present and to have presented. Here then is where the creative group must come to grips with assessing audiance response.

Community arts has value whether or no it goes out to an outside audience.

[Linda Frye Burnham]

I recently attended a conference of practitioners in community arts and we saw some case studies of projects going on in local organizations, plus some samples of the work they were producing in those projects, performed by local participants (first-time performers). The ones I saw were very rudimentary and clumsy, yet the presentation was vital to this audience; they not only learned a few new wrinkles, but apparently felt validated in their own work. It was sort of industrial in a sense, with almost a workshop quality. The response was overwhelmingly enthusaistic and supportive. I think this bears out Ann Marie's view that there are other valuable aspects to this work besides presentation to a public audience. This event was "preaching to the converted" in spades, but for these folks, this experience is fairly rare. They come from all over the country, work in isolation on no money and almost never get to meet with colleagues. There was something really satisfying about being there together and watching this little exercise. It felt like a pioneer experience.

[Jules]

Steve,

There is a thin book available from CAFE(Creative Arts for All) that may answer your question.
Title - 'Use or Ornament'

[Steven Durland]

Hi Jules,

Can you give us a bit more info on how to locate the book?