We Confess

Blue Print #4

discourse paper: we confess *** Summer 2011 Author: Ed Carroll

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introduction 2011 marks Blue Drum’s first decade. The Arts Specialist Support Agency that supports Family Resource Centres (FRC’s) and Community Development Projects (CDP’s) nationwide. Now it seems like a natural time for us to look back, and to look forward, and in so doing to reset, what we have called our thing. The paper is separated by three peculiar questions, posed by Gottfried Leibniz in the 1600’s, that are there to alert you to our predicament, which is about working through questioning. So we ask: why is there some thing and not nothing after a decade of our work? Why is that some thing as it is and not different from what it is? Herein we give an account of what we have done or failed to do and put forward a brief analysis of our current context.

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why is there some thing and not nothing?

It may be useful to remind ourselves how Blue Drum began. It was developed by people who cared about community development and art practice. It grew out of an acknowledgement that community bluedrum@ireland.com

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development workers found some thing beneficial in deploying art and culture.

Since its inception that some thing we offered was passed down through the years by a committed staff that at different times made their distinctive input: Jim Cathcart (5yrs), Ann O’Connor (3 yrs), Gillian Keogan (5yrs), Mark McCollum (2 yrs), Siobhan Larkin (2yrs), Margaret Kerrigan (1 yr), Olivia Deegan (1 yr) and Iris Lyle (1.5yrs). We have also called upon Jenny McDonald, Peter Hussey, Marie McNamara, Emer Dolphin and Joni Crone to lead specific project work.

We have developed a range of capacities like finding interesting ways to support, exchange, inform and train our constituencies such as  The Big Picture (2006)  Blue Notes (2007-) and Blue Prints (2009-)  ‘Arts in Mind’ training series (2006)  Outside the Frame seminar series (2008-10)  Building Healthy Communities (2002-2004) bluedrum@ireland.com

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  

Beacon of Light Project in Portlaoise (2008) Life Force (2007-2009) a suicide prevention project Artizen School for Ideas (Initiated 2010 )

Sometimes, as when we appeared before a Dáil Éireann Select Committee (2008), we showed capacity to punch above our weight.

We also dealt with our difficult moments like the loss of two-thirds of our funding to support 170 Community Development Projects.

We also acknowledge that there were times when the dynamic between staff and directors got tough and together we had to work our way through it, often losing ground and contact with our primary constituency and our work. We lost staff and we lost directors and sometimes the circumstances were regrettable.

Following the difficult decision to make staff redundant in October 2009, the Directors also acted by creating a space for a 'comma', a pause. In other words, despite the potential loss of funding, we chose to avoid making a full stop and winding bluedrum@ireland.com

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up the company in a context that was quite challenging.

The McCarthy Report was published in July 2010 and it recommended major funding cuts to programmes embedded in communities across the country. It sent shock waves through those who were concerned for the future of government funded work at community level. Those shock waves are still evident today. Since then there have been protests and lobbying by community collectives because people felt that the armature that had been developed since the 1970’s was under threat.

For Blue Drum, who had met with the FSA in October we knew we would receive funding for the first quarter of 2010 but had no clarity beyond it. It was not until Christmas 2009, that we received notification that the Family Support Agency would review an Action Plan 2010 which had to be submitted by 15 January 2010.

In January 2010, we appointed Gillian Keogan to a liaison role with bluedrum@ireland.com

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our constituency. In February 2010, we agreed with Ed Carroll, who had been a director of the company since 2003, to take on an executive function for an interim period to oversee the development of a new contract with the FSA and to work on our behalf to reset the organization. On 30th April 2010 we received important feedback from FSA Board about the review process and which gave us an agreement in principle to proceed for the rest of the year.

In July 2010, we received written confirmation of our position and funding for the year. It is a fact that Blue Drum is the only agency working at national level from community development to community arts. There are also peer organisations in the field e.g.

Mayfield Community Arts Centre in Cork, Cork Community Arts Link, North-55 in Buncrana/Derry, Community Arts Forum in Belfast, CREATE and The Common Ground in Dublin.

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why is that some thing as it is?

Family Resource Centre’s complete an annual data collection data base called SPEAK (Strategic Planning, Evaluation and Knowledge Networking).

All data input is stored and SPEAK is installed in every FRC located and training if provided to data operators.

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Feedback from SPEAK reports indicates that there is some thing in the FRC work that is constant over time.

Look to the West to Clann Resource Centre in Galway website clannresourcecentre.com with its energy of community-led and volunteer based arts and cultural work. Look towards the East to Fatima Groups United website fatimagroupsunited.com. SPEAK statistics have reported an increase in time given to it - from 1,184 working days in 2006 to 1,957 working days in 2008. The work also secured funding of €168,980 for 74 initiatives and employed 43 people. And it attracted more participants – from 1,841 to 3,096 people in 57/58 initiatives.

SPEAK confirms that this some thing is active across the country. It is clear what factors help and hinder the work i.e. funding, collaborating artists and workers and healthy partnerships. The reported benefits are (i) building community identity through expression, (ii) connecting with other organisations, (iii) engaging the far away, and (iv) promoting confidence and empowerment. Others who don’t have experience also want to learn how to deploy this some thing.

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One issue arising from SPEAK is that priority must be given to the means in which the work is validated and distributed i.e. its impact. More than once, we have spoken about the idea of showcasing a national collection of art works/artifacts produced in communities and of establishing a platform for the holding of such works/artifacts. We have posed the question: what happens to the work and its memory that was produced since the 1980’s? The question of the work’s impact is also about its validity. Who validates? On whose behalf does validation take place? We all know instinctively the value of the work needs more refinement than, for example, adding a sense of community, or integration within communities, or exploring challenges within communities, or contributing to self confidence and personal development.

In summary, SPEAK data confirms lots of activity but nothing about is value or worth. We have an evaluation challenge to bring forward new perspectives about how to value the impact of the work. And a data challenge to gather and add up the data and represent an FRC national picture of the level of activity.

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why is that some thing not different from what it is?

As a provocation to ourselves we could imagine receiving a letter from a fictional funder.

It is difficult for us to justify further investment in Blue Drum.

While we remain very supportive of your work, we have to be very specific in terms of our brief aka anti-poverty / combat disadvantage / supporting family units / excellent art practice. We

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do not want to be in danger of undermining our own objectives.”

How could we respond? We may dogmatically assert that some thing in our area of work is acknowledged and valued in youth work and community development. That some thing proffers a set of languages and a way of being together that can affirm a community and view every person as having his/her own creativity and right to collectively make some thing of their life. That some thing is fun, it can also weave social connectors and make democracy live in ways that are less serious but more intimate, personal and owned. That some thing is percolating out there.

But dogmas are wilting and encrusted. The fact that there is some thing and not nothing is not simply an argument to be won nor a right to be guaranteed. We have to find a way to nurture it especially in a time when our experience of ‘community’ and ‘democracy’ is all mixed up. We desire our space to have more and our safety too yet we are also experience mean-spiritedness, savagery and fear. It is a strange time bluedrum@ireland.com

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and any certainty or assumption (i.e. dogmas) about why some thing is important or valuable has disappeared. We have problems we have to deal with and we don’t have the solutions. But can we make that predicament our virtue? Can we address the way we talk about our some thing as if it is our possession?

We speak about community and FRC’s and CDP’s in a way which presumes ‘unity’, ‘totality’ and enclosure and are surprised when others protest, contest or witness against us.

To try and get close to our experience again we know that community development and youth work are closeted from each other and this is a problem. But it is important to make note of a partial truth. This armature – FRC, CDP, and youth work - is a front for people who care about their communities and have organised themselves to make a difference. And community arts work is in the middle of all of that work and often helps to lighten the process.

John Mulloy who works in Galway Mayo Institute of Technology and who produced the first edition of Blue bluedrum@ireland.com

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Prints, often criticises our area of work for the manner in which it is becoming an extended arm of government meaning that control rather transformation is the order of the day. He challenges us to seek out in the work of FRC’s and CDP’s those actions that are about 'protesting' and 'contesting' the reasons why some families and their communities are precariat. The response-ability for collective action is eroding. We think he has a point?

No matter how we proceed in 2011 we have to be aware that concepts of communities are notoriously ambiguous and that our desires must be constantly cleansed of the ideas of totality that they themselves create.

How can we propose to work in ways that can transcend ourselves and our shortcomings – including the blind spots we don’t see and the places we hold the power to close the door on others work? One possibility is to make a connection between the fractures, gaps and shortcomings that hold us back and the possibilities proffered when we open up and work with uncertainty. bluedrum@ireland.com

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Let’s try not to enclose/define our some thing but to make it more permeable, i.e. look for gaps and holes – to leave an empty place for more discourse and exchange with strangers to us. The work of Blue Drum is about making visible the arts work of FRC’s and CDP’s nationally.

So we propose to reset by learning to be brave and by increasing the trust in what we do among our constituencies, our advocates and Family Support Agency. Why? Sometimes only some thing, even if it happens randomly, can adequately create and nourish us especially in a time of fracture. It is precisely when some thing (re)claims and (re)freshes our being with each other that we can speak and to be heard in the world. It is a spindling act of communication even though the problems associated with that experience may be indissoluble and may not disappear soon. We have to nourish proximity.

Proximity means accessing best practice nationally and internationally. We have to mobilise new stakeholders and new self bluedrum@ireland.com

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organising platforms. Also, we need to engage stakeholders at community level e.g. family projects, funding level (friend raising for thematic work), arts and community activists and peer organisations in ways and means to mobilize new minds and ears.

Almost ten years on, it is still time for Blue Drum to ‘be there’, to be vital and meaningful. But to be that it has to reset itself and invest into the work in ways that will significantly raise the bar.

*** Blue Drum is Mark McColum (Chair) Mary Doheny (Treasurer) Mick Daly (Board) Ed Carroll (Board/Executive) Gillian Keogan (Liaison Officer) Carol Kavanagh (Administrator) Eleanor Phillips (Project Leader) Blue Drum would like to thank artist, Chris Maguire who responded to some of the ideas we were working through in a set of illustrations used herein.

Summer 2011.

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