Reflections on Untraditional Creative Partnerships

In today’s overly pragmatic neoliberal climate of technological and social rationalisation, worker ‘flexibility’ and employability competencies, and market-oriented competitiveness, the stories Zipsane shares in his article entitled Untraditional Creative Partnerships – Seven Wonders of Arts and Culture in Education gives one hope. These are stories where municipalities, foundations and social service agencies come together with arts and cultural institutions to engage pedagogically with the human aesthetic dimension to encourage social or environmental change. Zipsane lays before us a feast of imaginative inter-generational interaction, community-government inter-play and commitment, socially responsive/responsible practice coupled with and focussed on the development of lifelong and life wide, aesthetic abilities and visions.

Equally important, Zipsane’s article provides a platform from which to explore critical questions around politics, community engagement work, learning and education and the arts in contemporary society. Although there are numerous critical and creative ideas in Zipsane’s article in this short piece I discuss but three that particularly resonated with me: longevity and sustainability, funding and partnerships and politics and pedagogy. I explore these through my own multiple identities as a Canadian, an arts-based adult educator in Leadership Studies at a university, a board member of a Foundation that funds community, adult education and arts-based activities, a past NGO staff member, and a researcher of arts and cultural organisations and politicians/politics. Although I separate the areas of discussion, you will see much overlap, the by-product of linear writing colliding with the circular world of ideas, although I recognise it could also be my own ‘block and paste’ approach to thinking and writing. In particular, woven into the woof and weft of my various reflections are important questions of power and control. This must be raised by those of us working in countries outside the Nordic region – or the European Union for that matter – where governments seldom share the clearly unflinching commitment to community change and non-formal adult education, equality, equity, and the arts and culture experienced by Zipsane.

Longevity and sustainability

Critical to public and community service organisations and bodies as well as funding agencies, particularly foundations, are issues of longevity and sustainability. The inter-related questions continually asked are how, for example, to create the synergy that comes through time and commitment; how to maintain enthusiasm for a project; how to outreach further and to whom; and how to broaden ones own knowledge base and impact. Zipsane illustrates how different agencies working together provide new or extended knowledge about different communities, or particular groups in society, and why and how this collaboration enables both or all to respond more adequately to diverse needs. He provides one example in particular of the coming together of museum educators who know how to actively and creatively engage participants with partners who have access to and knowledge of the complexity of, for example, dementia, enabling a crucial adaptation of past pedagogical practice and broadening the scope of work. This is an important point, I would argue, as it can encourage museum educators to seek out other specialised groups thereby belaying fears of having to have all the knowledge – and even the ability to deal with ‘difference’ - themselves (Hooper-Greenhill, 1999; Marstine, 2006). Linked to this, Zipsane alludes to the fact that ideas for community work developed ‘inside’ an organisation or agency, whilst extremely important and clearly very imaginative, are often too dependent on the drive of a particular staff member. Individual dependence means successes tend to hinge on the leader who holds a group together. If this leader steps down, moves on or simply runs out of ideas, the group or organisational dynamic can fizzle (Gaventa, 2004). For Zipsane, working across sectors or with outside agencies not only feeds in to and sustains this inside, individual energy but also institutionalises and collectivises the work, thereby better maintaining longevity and sustainability.

This understanding or re-conceptualisation leads me to reflect on my work over the past six years as a Foundation Board Member, an ex-staff member of a community organisation and researcher of arts and cultural institutions in terms of traditions of funding and support and the questions of partnerships, politics and pedagogy.

Funding and partnerships

Project funding is the practice most often found in funding agencies in Canada. Community cultural agencies develop creative, stand-alone projects and apply to have them funded. These projects run for a short period of time, generally - well almost always - the length of the funding cycle. Most often, project funding is not seen as a partnership between the government or funding agency, and the organisation or group. Project funding or support is important because it allows an organisation or group to develop and undertake pilot projects, to move into new areas such as engaging with people with dementia, and/or to develop new audiences in the case of arts and cultural organisations, all wonderfully illustrated in Zispane’s examples.

But there are also drawbacks or challenges in this. Firstly, groups are continually ‘re-inventing’ themselves, moving beyond what they know or do well in order to be seen to be developing arts-based projects that are fresh and exciting. This means that work must be re-conceptualised and re-packaged each year in order to remain appealing. While there is nothing inherently wrong with staying current and continually developing new, energizing activities we need to be aware that exhaustion can set in when one is continually chasing what community cultural workers call the latest ‘fade’ or dictate of the funding or government agency itself (Clover, Sanford & Dogus, 2011). We also need to acknowledge that the foundational work undertaken by a museum, for example, may be what society continues to need and/or what they do best (Marstine, 2006). Moreover, this situation cannot really be described as a ‘partnership’ since there are questions of power and control to which I will return. This brings me to programme funding, a longer-term commitment to the basic work of an organisation. An example from my own Foundation is the five-year funding of Headlines Theatre, a community cultural organisation that uses popular theatre to explore social issues such as racism and social exclusion, reflective in many ways of Zipsane’s example of role-playing and refugee work. While Headlines Theatre in fact develops new projects each year, programme our funding is committed to the infrastructure required to support the projects: office space costs, stationery, salaries, arts supplies and all the other bobbles and notions that go into sustaining an organisation and its projects. While government funding to public arts and cultural institutions in Canada plays this role, there is a tacit understanding that these organisations will constantly develop new and engaging activities and in order to create and sustain those, find ‘outside’ funding that will warrant the continued taxpayer support. This in fact parallels the above noted struggle of community cultural organisations. Unlike project funding, programme funding is often considered a ‘partnership’. But we need to question if they are truly partnerships?

To respond to this question, we must ask who has the money and therefore, who has the ‘real’ power? When one organisation or group is beholden to another for funding, I would argue no true partnership exists because there is an immediate imbalance of power. That is, the purse strings can be cut at any moment and there will be little if any recourse. We have seen such draconian cuts to institutions and organisations across Canada in the clutches of a Tory minority government over a number of years, which has now become a majority government so worse is yet to come. I suspect England, the country in which I am currently residing and writing this piece, is about to feel this same practice of cuts most uncomfortably in the near the future. Further, what if a government body ‘suggested’ a cultural organisation or institution engage in a particular outreach practice or with a particular group and the institution refused? This may work out just fine but I shall leave this to your imagination rather than bludgeoning you with the more likely scenario in Canada, were this refusal to take place. Having said this I do believe mutually supportive arrangements can and do exist. As noted, my Foundation funds Headlines Theatre and Headlines Theatre in turn helps us to meet our mandate to fund ‘radical and creative adult education practices for social and environmental change’ across the country. Although this cannot and is not viewed as a true partnership I believe it is an example of what Zipsane’s calls ‘untraditional creative partnership’, a re-conceptualisation that moves us away from problematic notions of equality and equity.  

Politics and pedagogy

Zipsane’s article also raises issues for me of politicisation and de-politicisation which, although seemingly at opposite ends of the spectrum, are in fact simply a continuum of the same phenomenon. But let me preface this final section with a clear message so I cannot be misunderstood: Working with children, the elderly and the differently-abled, for example, is vital, critical to society and social change. I commend organisations that undertake this work, and encourage them to continue. My comments in no way diminish this work.

The process of the ‘de-politicisation’ of the work of arts and cultural institutions and other community organisations or agencies often rests - and here I allude back to comments above - on steering them away from engaging in work that would confront deeper, more structural problems of society and thereby, challenge governments themselves as for example, social movement learning does (Hall, Clover, Crowther & Scandetti, In Press). That is, organisations and agencies are easily funded by governments if their projects are more individually focussed (although they could be collect processes) to build confidence, raise ‘public’ awareness about recycling, and/or provide participants with artistic skills, all valuable and laudable activities, by the way. Yet problematically, all too often these activities simply help people to, for example, ‘adapt’ to climate change, but not to encourage them to become environmental activists; to be retrained or reskilled for the ‘flexible’ economy without actually questioning the politics of un-and-under-employment; to be accepting of immigrants without being taught to look deeper into how global corporate or government activities force people from their homelands.

Paulo Freire (1970) advocated for the total, politicisation of community pedagogical practice, not its neutrality. Scholars following in his footsteps call for educational work that is not only creative and imaginative, but also, re-politicises people and communities, by-passing the competent educational technicians to engage with complex, structural questions and develop political agency to question the practices and motivations of governments at all levels (e.g. Crowther & Martin, 2010; Fenwick, Nesbit & Spencer, 2006). This call comes equally from scholars who engage with the works of arts and cultural institutions. They have made visible the neutral stance of the work of many of these institutions and how it problematically, maintains the status quo rather than deepening democracy and agency (e.g. Clover, Sanford & Jayme, 2010; Keith, In Press; Marstine, 2006; Sandell, 2002).  

But, of course, governments have the resources with which to fight back. The Foundation I serve on has for over 10 years funded, as noted above, radical, politically oriented, arts-based educational work, as clearly does the foundation Zipsane notes in his discussion of the work of his museum vis-à-vis refugees. But the political situations of Sweden and Canada are strikingly different. Last Thursday the umbrella organisation Philanthropic Foundations Canada (PFC, 2012) published an online position paper that draws attention to the further narrowing by the Federal government of what is defined as political activity by charitable and by extension, publicly or foundation funded organisations. The PFC, on behalf of these organisations, stated emphatically:

Participation in public policy processes is a right and responsibility of active and engaged citizenship...for Canadian society as a whole, such [public policy development] efforts are an opportunity to reinvigorate democracy, to engage citizens in a deeper understanding of the choices and trade-offs facing their governments, and to develop and fine tune policy decisions that will ultimately lead to a better society for all Canadians (p.3).

This recent directive by the government is simply part of a larger political process by stealth to shift the landscape of Canada towards conservatism and from there, eliminate or privatise social services and arts and culture. The battle lines have been drawn. Let us hope the pedagogical practices of our arts and cultural institutions are preparing our communities for the fight.

Darlene Clover
University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

References

Clover, D.E. & Sanford, K., Dogus, F. (2011). Adult education philosophies in museums, galleries and libraries in Canada and England: Preliminary findings of a cross-national study. Proceedings of the joint Conference of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education and the Adult Education Research Committee (pp.119-126), Toronto: University of Toronto.

Clover, D.E., Sanford, K. & Oliviera de Jayme, B. (2010). Adult education, museums and libraries: A content analysis of journals and proceedings in the field. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education, 16(2), 5-19.

Crowther, J. and Martin I. (2010) ‘Messy learning? Legitimate peripheral participation in a community campaign’. In B. Merrill and P. Armstrong (Eds) Looking Back, Looking Forward: Learning, Teaching and Research in Adult Education, Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of SCUTREA. Coventry, UK: University of Warwick, pp. 72–78.

Fenwick, T., Nesbit, T. & Spencer, B. (Eds) (2006). Contexts of adult education: Canadian perspectives. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing.

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed, New York: Penguin Books.

Gaventa. J. (2004). Representation, Community Leadership and Participation: Citizen Involvement in Neighbourhood Renewal and Local Governance (PDF)

Hall, B., Clover, D.E., Crowhter, J. & Scrandett, E. (Eds) (In Press). Learning and education for a better world: The role of social movements. Rotterdam: Sense Publishing.

Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1999). The educational role of the museum. London: Routledge.

Keith, K. (In Press). Imagining and engaging difference in the art museum. International Journal for Lifelong Education, 31(4).

Marstine, J. (Ed) (2006). New museum theory and practice, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Philanthropic Foundations Canada (2012). PFC position paper funding of the political activities. PFC: Ottawa.

Sandell, R. (Ed) (2002) Museums, society, inequality, Abingdon: Routledge.