On Community Arts

I describe myself as a ‘community artist’ because my arts practice has been built around co-creation and collaboration. I’m interested in what can be achieved when we make enough space in our noisy lives for others to engage with us. Sometimes, I explore this through theatre, but just as often, I use my artistic practice in meetings, in conferences, in workshops and in my writing.

I describe myself as a ‘community artist’ because I have always wanted to use my knowledge and talents to help amplify the voices that find it very difficult to get heard. I want to help them to be the authors of the script, not the object of the documentary.

I also call myself a ‘community artist’ as a badge of honour. Community arts declared that all human beings were inherently creative at a time when this was considered threatening nonsense. Community arts called for diversity at a time when the cultural world was delineated in stultifying monochrome. Community arts pioneered methods of participation and engagement that have since been widely adapted in a range of creative disciplines. It did not act alone. But it was a vital element of an important continuum of cultural change.

I have never seen my work as oppositional to that of other kinds of artists. I have been lucky enough to work alongside great choreographers, musicians, architects, writers, theatre makers. But in Bolton, I worked alongside local authority officers who were a decade ahead of their time, in Derby, I worked with a visionary health service administrator, in Northern Ireland I worked with ex-combatants who were able to foresee a future that held more possibility than our past.  It takes many kinds of human ability to create long-term change.