To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish 'till death do us part.
Community Engagement, Rachel Grant and Stoke-on-Trent; “A Better Place for All to Live, Learn, Work and Enjoy.”
“Culture is one of the best ways there is to break down barriers between peoples, to open doors and to build bridges. Effective cultural relations, where the arts are concerned, are about exchanging the fruits of what our best artists are creating.
The arts shine a strong light on the society from which they spring. And because they do that, they can give us deep insights into what is going on in those societies. They show us what is happening now and – perhaps even more important – they can show us the direction those societies are taking.”
Martin Davidson CMG
Chief Executive, British Council[1]
Chief Executive, British Council[1]
Martin Davidson’s view of community arts seems to me to be fairly idealistic. However this utopic sense of community arts is extremely fitting when considering textile/mixed media artist Rachel Grant’s approach to working within her home community of Stoke-on-Trent.
Having been born in Stoke-on-Trent Grant feels a particular closeness and connection to the city. It was the place her family lived whilst she grew up and after having moved away decided to return to have a family of her own. It was upon this homecoming sadly that the bond she had so heavily felt was not particularly reciprocated. Grant found that Stoke-on-Trent had not essentially changed in the sense of the physicality’s but had severely changed in its sense of community, especially as it appeared to have forgotten her and her family roots. Feeling isolated and very much an outcast Grant intended to re-connect with the city and its people and her art practice gave her the means to do so.
Grant sees the community she works within as hers, ‘community’ in her sense of the word is represented by a specific group of residents that have lived in Stoke-on-Trent for a substantial/long period of time. She feels very much a part of this community especially when considered within the confines of her definition as stated above. It was very difficult however for Grant to make others in her community feel the same way. Her approach to gaining access to the district has been tentative, thorough, long and methodic with visual results that prove this. Her practice is multi-media, she works from photographs taken from her walks around the city as well as parts of conversations she has had with the ‘locals.’ Using words such as ‘socially engaged’ to describe her practice rather than having a ‘community element’ she allows herself a certain freedom; the freedom from having to adhere to Council rules and its understanding and acknowledgment of what a community is, instead she is open to survey her community in her own terms.
The City Council, however, and its views on community became ever more relevant to Grant and the exploration of her role within it since the city began its regeneration program. The City Council has invested millions of pounds trying to “bring added value to Stoke-on-Trent.”[2] In the words of Dr. Ita O’Donovan, Council Manager and Chief Executive Officer of the renaissance, “Regeneration is all about securing visible and lasting improvements to the quality of people's lives – in the places where they live, learn, work and play.”[3]
This is not necessarily a statement Grant agrees with, “My family and I all live in this ‘Area of Major Intervention’ within the North Staffordshire Regeneration Programme and although my home is not under threat, the changes taking place affect my life daily…I like my home town, I like walking the same routes over and over. I don’t like having to go to other towns and I don’t like change.”
As a reaction to this Grant now focuses on the integration of herself and her family into the community through meticulous research, talking to other residents in her area, networking through social events and exchanging stories with any and everyone from the locality. All of these accounts help her to cement a place back into the city and its history. She wants to add something to it, give back in a way, by documenting this regeneration and vocalizing and pictorializing the negative views she personally holds toward many of the plans the City Council has been making, as well as visualizing many of the positives she sees already existing within Stoke-on-Trent.
Grant’s artwork is taken directly from the streets, as previously mentioned, particularly from the walks she takes every day. This collection of visuals and literature are then taken to her studio; through amassing a mountain of information, snippets from newspapers etc she creates her visual works that are then, mostly, put back onto the streets where they originated. For the British Council “The issues surrounding the development of communities, of social regeneration as opposed to purely economic regeneration, are as varied as the communities themselves. Some common themes do exist and the UK’s experience of using arts and creativity to combat social exclusion and develop coherent communities is significant.”[4] Grant’s naturally reflective character, along with her insinuating visuals, means her artworks are not directly there to ‘combat social exclusion,’ instead she provides a mirror along pathways and city walls that reflect her views and position on and in the community. She makes it predominantly for herself, “With the best will in the world this work is really about the link between ME and MY community.”
Grant was given the opportunity to the really examine the history of Stoke-on-Trent, her place within it and its future since receiving a Longhouse Grant in 2006. Longhouse is a key organisation in the West Midlands that supports research projects by artists that focus mainly on the public realm and the issues surrounding them. Grant, therefore, was an obvious candidate for the award, having been sought out by the organisation and encouraged to apply after they saw her speak at a confernece in Coventry about her issues with ‘communities,’ her involvement within locating and displaying her community and the research she had already undertaken to source the information she then worked from.
Although receiving the award from Longhouse, Grant found herself in a position that had various avenues of discussion and exploration, some she followed through and others that only presented themselves on receiving the grant, “back in 2006 when I began my Action Research Commission with Longhouse, I felt the need to try and formalize this relationship with other residents. I sought out interviews, documented them and used direct quotes within specific pieces of work…As time has gone on the nature of my community involvement has become more ambiguous…the ‘community’ remains largely unaware of the part they have played in that piece.”
Grant is married to the city, the community is her family and they are there in every aspect of her life; they are not just present in her art practice. The social inclusion in her work perhaps began as an obvious tool and subject matter when returning to Stoke-on-Trent, however, as she has admitted, it is less important now. Her work is no longer a direct comment on the city; rather it is about her place within it. She would not see herself as a ‘community artist,’ she is an artist that uses her family and her home life as inspiration, a source from which she creates. It is a cycle, Grant takes directly from the city and then re-locates pieces of work around the city, “I am inspired by what is around me and I respond to it, I then display my response in the hope that people respond to my response! In the long run it is about dialogue and the way that art can create that dialogue.”
Rachel Grant, for me, is engaged to her community and creates works out of love rather than creating ‘community engaged’ art works. Her research grant from Longhouse allowed her to become more aware of her approach to the city and allocate time to what really interested her about her involvement with Stoke-on-Trent. Her self-awareness and priorities changes just as drastically as the work she created. In her own words:
“I no longer feel the need to actively contribute my creative skills to the community and I no longer presuppose that my work is going to have any beneficial impact on this community. I turn a blind eye to the pressures of evaluation, audience participation figures and other immeasurable suggestions. Instead I focus on this almost private dialogue between me and my community, judging my ‘measures of success’ through the shared moments my work creates. When someone looks and says ‘I know what you mean’.”
[3] ibid
[4] http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-arts-for-development-social-community-community-development.htm
death of the author
