Legacy Paper #4 Sandy Fitzgerald
Artist: Chris Reid City Quay Text, December 2002, City Arts Centre
Sandy Fitzgerald is a founding Director of City Arts Centre and Olivearte Cultural Agency Ed Carroll: Good morning Sandy and thanks so much for taking the time to take some questions. I’ve explained the context for the Legacy Event in October and this interview will be part of a series that we are doing to prepare participants for that deliberation. So, when you look back on the history of community arts, and its evolution, what stands out for you as significant today? Sandy Fitzgerald: The thing that I feel and regret quite a lot is the fact of not having archived not just personally but also in relation to the whole sector. I'm really sorry it didn't happen very much. Archiving also brings us onto this exercise because you’re trying to collect and to remember when the strength of a lot of things has been lost or dissipated. It's a real shame because there was a lot of strength of momentum and energy in all of that work and I guess it didn't get the recognition in the time and it can’t get the recognition in history because we don't have a lot it. If we don't have our history then it’s harder to plan for the future.
Ed Carroll: What is your understanding of the legacy decades-on from Grapevine and City Arts Centre that was transformative but was not able to fully accomplish what it set out to do? Sandy Fitzgerald: Well I think it's important to try and remember where it came from because the big momentum for all this is not just art and cultural. My generation came out of the Sixties and the hopes for change. It was very political changing society, changing everything. We got a lot of criticism in the Grapevine for doing activities that were not strictly art practice. The programmes had clothes design, hair cutting, Tai Chi, which was very new at that time. We had food and lots of things that were part of the centre. Everything that we did came from a philosophical perspective. Let’s talk about hair cutting. It wasn't hair cutting for hair cutting sake. We were looking at peoples’ natural hair state – no chemicals or commercial products – and was very different to the commercial setup of a hairdresser. Similarly with clothes, it was about do-it-yourself clothing and showing how to make your own clothes. Then we got into food; we were investigating vegetarianism, microbiotics, which at that time was also very new. Everything had a purpose that was rooted in a set of values that wanted to bring about change. It was something vital and people who were there at that time were there for a reason or were there to discover a reason. All of this happened in the Seventies before community arts rooted in Ireland. We didn't really come across Community Arts until about 1978 or 79. Ed Carroll: How did community arts as a movement come to Ireland ? Sandy Fitzgerald: It all of it came through the UK and some UK-based organisations. I think it came from magazines because we were very interested in the alternative scene and publishing. We had some contact with some of the alternative people in the UK like Albany Empire and Another Standard. So once it was uncovered this community arts thing, it opened up very quickly and we realised, oh my God, there's a whole movement going on outside Ireland, which at that time seemed very isolated. Ed Carroll: Was community arts in Ireland a photocopy of community art in the UK or did it have its distinctive features that came from its own context. Sandy Fitzgerald: I think the Irish context was very important and different and when we did the first conference North Star in 1984, Jenny Harris remarked, ‘it’s so different to the English scene because it was a real strong feeling of solidarity and energy’ whereas the English scene was quiet fragmented: at one end, in the UK, it was a very extreme socialism, Marxism basically, and some people didn’t want anything to do with that and there was a lot of debate and reaction to it. Some people were very politically involved and committed to local causes, in the Trade Unions, in the working class struggles and some people were interested only in creating a new art dynamic. My impression was it was fraught in England for some
time. So when Jenny came over she found some fresh air. The Irish scene was not based on ideology at all. Ed Carroll: What was the motivation for the 1st 1984 conference in the North Star Hotel and the founding of Creative Activity for Everyone? Was it about distinguishing itself from the UK i.e. that there was something different and distinctive in this context or was it a group of people trying to build solidarity and energy in order to gain traction for this type of work. Sandy Fitzgerald: I think that it was the latter - the solidarity and the energy. As I said there wasn't a lot of ideology. Actually the Northside City Workshop was the most ideologically driven, which was part of the NCCCAP. Mick Rafferty was one of the main leaders there and he was very much a committed Marxist so all of his practice was informed by Marxism. Whereas none of us were informed by this. We were interested in it and we knew about you but we were not Marxists or even maybe socialist! Ed Carroll: So what were you? Sandy Fitzgerald: I think we were counter culturists who were part of a broader church coming out of the Sixties. Those who came to the North Star Conference all wanted change and they were all informed by a world-wide counter-culture movement. But I wouldn't call them ideologues and so what glued them together was the possibilities for freedom of expression. Ed Carroll: Was it important that community development and youth work were also emerging strongly as new ways to deal with poverty and disenfranchisement? Sandy Fitzgerald: Yes absolutely, it was very important and that was the thing that was undercutting the debates, the meetings and workshops. It was definitely to do with disadvantage because a whole lot of us came from those backgrounds and we had a strong feeling of solidarity. So there's no question that community development informed everyone who was part of the movement. Ed Carroll: Looking back now at what rolled out from that time and especially in the way people started working in very isolated ways because of competition for funding, can we speak of a legacy of solidarity or is it more the legacy of disconnection? Sandy Fitzgerald: I think you have to look at it in a wider context here because there were efforts to neutralize the community arts movement. We had a very heated discussion at the first North Star Conference about being called Community Arts by the Arts Council because people felt it would mean we would be controlled, which is what happened. What people wanted was to apply for the normal funding streams within the Arts Council and by doing so to change the policy and the funding orientation of the Arts Council. The view was that if that happened the
practice would be embedded in the Arts Council funding streams and could be seen as legitimate in the same way as other art forms that were being funded. Ed Carroll: In other words that community arts could be located on a spectrum across participation and excellence i.e. what happened in a community context existed in the same way as what happened in the gallery or theatre? Sandy Fitzgerald: Exactly. What happened is that the Arts Council created a separate Community Arts budget so it could restrict and control. Applications could only be made under that strand and you weren't able to apply to the other streams because the work did not fit the frame. So you had all the emerging sector applying to a very small fund and some people got a bit of funding and the Arts Council had ticked its access/participation box. Even the work of the Arts, Community Education Report (ACE) resulted in a net effect that things became more restrictive and moved things further and further towards what the Council considered to be its main work i.e. to fund artists. Ed Carroll: That’s interesting because in parallel there was other fragmentation through the creation of dedicated strands for children/young people, for disability and so on. Why do you think that community arts eventually disappeared as a stream of Arts Council funding? Was it because the Arts Council understood their remit for art and artists rather than for people and publics? Sandy Fitzgerald: Correct, that is what happened and so the discussion at the North Star Conference and the delegates apprehension came to be – a controlling mechanism. In England it was more extreme with Margaret Thatcher whose policies also led to the withdrawal of funds from community arts. What happened on both islands was clearly that within the status quo nobody felt supportive of community arts. Because it looked like it was dangerous and too left-leaning, and empowering. Ed Carroll: Do you think that the community arts sector has to take some responsibility for what happened or was it just a victim of institutional circumstances? Or has community arts reinvented itself under new names and is alive and well but not visible in the way it was previously? Sandy Fitzgerald: I don't see it. I don't see it in this new manifestation. There are people and organizations but I don't see any movement or collective approach. People have tried and people are hoping but I don't see it. Part of the problem is that there is no clarity around what it can be in the reality. It has dissipated and nobody is coming out with a very strong direction that would allow people to say, ‘I like it’ or ‘I don't like it’. What I do see is that people are a bit overwhelmed and tired. Young people are doing what they always do, investing their energy and immediacy in creating the new, which is great. But things pop up and then disappear. One big difference worth considering between then and now is that back then we had two major philosophical touchstones: socialism and capitalism.
With these you had some sort of philosophical starting point for changing the world. People knew what they wanted and what they didn't want within a wider frame. There was solidarity and a tacit understanding of which side you were on, even if you never studied Marx. Yes community arts was left leaning! Now, what does the left mean anymore? You can fit it into anything you want. You can stretch it and bend it. It means different things to different people. Whereas in the Seventies and Eighties you had feminism, you had disability rights, gay rights and so on. Even if people were not politically active or speaking in Marxist terms they still felt part of a very big left-wing movement in general and you found solidarity in that. In Grapevine we were involved in a lot of campaigns and we were very active in supporting nuclear disarmament, feminism, saving Wood Quay and so on. We toured a lot of these things and were very involved in the debate to do with changing society. Ed Carroll: Do you see examples of where community arts is growing as a force field in activism in politics and in the arts as well now and are there places where more synchronized networks are beginning emerge? Sandy Fitzgerald: I have to say no. Community arts still emerges as an interest for people who are curious about it and you have some specifically named community art activity. But in terms of the work it's not like there is a big emergence of community art activity. Today, it is the same discussion that's going on everywhere that went down maybe forty years ago, which is that the established funders are looking for signature art and there are activists and people on the ground doing very different kinds of projects but most of them are very disconnected. Ed Carroll: If you speak about the legacy, are there different parts of the practice that we should look to make new forms of solidarity, of civic engagement because the people are waiting for something to happen? Sandy Fitzgerald: The thing that surprises me is that people seem very reluctant to describe what they are doing in simple terms. They seem very reluctant to pin their colours to the mast and that's partly to do with funding and partly to do with peoples own position. The most interesting work is happening at the periphery; periphery in terms of geographical, of marginalized communities and communities of interest. For me the really interesting thing would be to try and connect all this activity into some form of networking and, again, to build solidarity and mutual support. Now there's lots of interesting work happening at the periphery and it would be great to try and connect it. I have an idea to develop with other people a project called ‘From the Periphery to the Centre’. The idea is to create some sort of a model where people at the periphery have access to or a conduit to the centre and visa versa because people at the center are moribund, are stuck and could benefit greatly from the energy and input from the periphery. The periphery, itself, could benefit greatly from their support because the Centre holds capacity and resources. The periphery has no resources but it's a lot of the energy and innovation and there is an opportunity in these times of great change and
uncertainty, where you find maybe less resistence to ideas like this because a lot of people are looking for new answers and directions and now everyone is retrenching into conservativism. Ed Carroll: Are there any places that come to mind when you speak of the periphery? Sandy Fitzgerald: Yeah, yeah I see them all the time. There's a lot of interesting things happening in Central and Eastern Europe, if you go into Ukraine, Slovakia or Poland there is a new generation that remind me a lot of the Seventies in our part of the world. They are very strong, they're full of energy and idealism. You might not call it strictly ‘art’ but it is certainly culture. I work with people like this in Slovakia and I met it in Ukraine and they are in Russia too. These people are fighting against all the odds and they are doing very interesting work with nothing basically. So the East is really interesting. The South is also very interesting - in Italy and in Spain. These have a different history and a different legacy. In Spain the dictatorship is not that long gone and the main stream still very centralized. But again there are very interesting projects in the South working against the odds, especially governmental agencies that hold all the power and they control everything including arts funding, art centres, everything. But outside of these institutions, activist and community work is vibrant. So, geographically you have the South and Eastern peripheries. Then you have communities of interest. Take, for instance, the whole refugee crisis. In the jungle in Calais, for instance, the refugees have basically set up a state-withina-state. They have everything running that they have built themselves, including art projects and an art centre too. You have artists going and working there with the refugees, with the many cultures and their stories. Ed Carroll: Thanks Sandy. You have given us a lot to think about your final answer gives us a very interesting way to look how to think of networks and connections beyond the island! Sandy Fitzgerald: Ok Ed, you’re welcome.
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