The Relationship is the Project
The Relationship is the Project Book Report
This is THE handbook for creating work with communities, a must-read for anyone working in this space. It is also just full of great writers that exemplify Australia’s socially engaged practice and offer a vision of how creative practice could and should be led.
CHAPTER 1 - First Peoples First
This is the first chapter of a book I have been excited to read for a long time.
This chapter was laid out simply ways that a First People’s ally can start to think about how to work in community without being patronising or paternalistic.
“Things to keep in mind"
Know yourself and your culture. What beliefs/practices are you bringing into this work? Understand your own culture and cultural practice. If applicable, recognise your white privilege and how your whiteness operates internally and externally.
Understand the unique history and culture of place. Each First Peoples community is different. Spend time learning and understanding the local context.
Work yourself out of a job. Create opportunities to strengthen and support local mob to take over your position.
Don't think you know best. Communities have the answers to their own problems.
Learn from the past. Listen and learn about what has gone before. Support community aspirations and existing projects rather than reinventing the wheel.
Do not speak for First Peoples. Always know your place as a supporter and an ally, not as a leader in the space.
Make a long-term commitment. The longer you work with a community, the greater your understanding and the more effective you will be.
Take time to build trust. Communities have experienced many workers come and go, with a range of positive and negative experiences. There have also been many disappointments due to broken promises and policy failures. Take the time you need to prove your worth.
CHAPTER 2 - Intersectionality
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
This chapter by Alia Gabres takes the term ‘intersectionality’ coined by Black Feminist writer Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and relates it to arts practice and institutions.
It shows how some identities are marginalised
This includes those not thought of as ’mythically normal’
Identities can overlap to multiply discriminations (ie being disabled and black)
Self-awareness of privilege is a recurring theme so far in this book.
Dr. Lilla Watson
Ends with a great quote from Aboriginal Artist and Activist Dr Lilla Watson:
If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together
Chapter 3 - The Art of Collaboration
Like the title of the book declares The Relationship is the Project and this chapter outlines how collaboration is a kind of relationship. As in any good relationship three factors are key: Trust (ethical behaviour by all parties), language (how we talk about each other in the collaboration) and time (time is the key for establishing the other two factors, it is also often undervalued).
In this chapter Eleanor Jackson discusses the importance of being vulnerable and letting go of control, acknowledging power imbalances and being honest about yourself and your collaborators.
Chapter 4 - Ethics and Self-Determination
This Chapter by Tania Cañas describes the difference between Self-expression and Self-determination, and how it relates to collaborations between communities and artists.
the ever-continuing struggle to seize back their creative initiative in history through a real control of all the means of communal self-definition in time and space
- Ngũgi wa Thiong
Ngũgi wa Thiong
This chapter made me think of the topic of black tokenism brought up briefly by the character playing Margaret Sloan-Hunter in the tv show Mrs. America. It is not enough to represent community using the privilege that we enjoy. We must strive to develop the opportunity for self-determination and true autonomy.
Chapter 5 - Access and Inclusion
I was lucky enough to be part of a workshop that Caroline Bowditch held for Polyglot Artists at the Abbotsford Convent in February this year. It was a great experience and it was equally great to read this chapter on access and inclusion in the arts.
Caroline outlines Social Model thinking that recognises people are disabled by barriers that society creates not by their condition or impairment.
Dissability results from an interaction between a non-inclusive society and an individual.
-United Nations
A remedy for the injustice that is disregard for the needs of a great number of the population may be found in universal design principles.
Ron Mace
Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialised design.
- Ron Mace
More about universal design can be found here: Centre for Universal Design Australia
Chapter 6 - Creating Communities
Chapter 7 - Creatively and Culturally Safe Spaces
Lia Pa’apa’a
Chapter 8 - Platforming for Community: Going beyond surface representation
Adolfo Aranjuez
Chapter 8 - Cultural Safety: An overview
Ruth De Souza and Robyn Higgins
This chapter gives an overview of cultural safety and how it can apply to arts institutions and arts practice. The practice of cultural safety education comes from advocacy by Māori nurses. It was taken up by the New Zealand nurses association and asks people to examine their inherent cultural biases and how they might affect their practice.
This chapter also highlights the Australia Council statistics that highlight the inequity in the Australian Arts industry. The principles of cultural safety include critical self-reflection, engaged communication, minimising power imbalances and decolonising practice. Through a lifelong commitment to these principles, we can get onto the road of a more equitable arts landscape.
Colouring in Kingston
I came across this project today called Colouring in Kingston. It has been created by Kingston School of Arts students Izzi Toovey and Josephine Miller. They are digitally recolouring childrens’ drawings and presenting them on Instagram.
It is especially interesting as I am seeking ways of collaborating with participants in this post COVID world. Playable Streets has created Playable Web as a platform for somewhat similar collaborations. Kidstruments and Exquisite Stories are two works that we are currently presenting based on works that had been developed pre-COVID.
One thing that we have found has been the most tricky part of these collaborations are the instructions! Here are the instructions for Colouring in Kingston. They are clear but quite a large document.
It will be interesting to see how this sort of collaboration evolves and develops in the future.
A picture by 10 year old Josh (right), and the digitally coloured version created as part of Colouring in Kingston.
The images are being used to create posters for Kingston Council to ‘spread messages of health, wellbeing and our environment’
Melton Growth Project Creative Development
Emily Tomlins and I started our creative journey on the ‘Growth Project’ for Melton Council. This is a very large community collaboration project that will culminate in an interactive installation in October 2021.
It was great to start throwing ideas around and talking about the big themes of the project including urban sprawl, community connection and agency.
After a morning of throwing any and every Idea out into the zoom-room, we settled on some questions that we can pose to the participants that will begin the conversation for the project: What do you like about your area now, and what do you imagine it will look like in the future.
We want to keep it as open as possible to allow for the most unprescribed answers and therefore creating the most unexpected results.
We discussed the installation taking on many different forms but ultimately we want the participants to have a say in how it develops.
Collaborative Instruments
Check out this article from Red Bull Music Academy on the history of collaborative instruments!
Collaborative Instruments: An illustrated history of remarkable instruments devised for two or more players https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2018/07/collaborative-instruments
Inspiration, musings and cool stuff from the world of music, technology, art, design and probably other random stuff!
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