Cultural Commoning and Civic Conversation

So how can these conceptual connections and shared historical origins help us to imagine and create more equitable and culturally democratic policies? From my perspective they remind us that policies for arts and cultural participation should be not just about provision of public cultural spaces or about audience development in the educative sense. These policies should consider how participation in cultural commoning brings the capitals, norms and values of the participants together as common-pool resources. As debates about free museums policies and their visitor demographies suggest, it is not so simple as “build it” or “make it free” and all will come. Commons are made. They can also be enclosed, so that those who do not identify with these attributes or who do not have the same capitals, are left outside or excluded. Commons are also threatened by private interests. Rees Leahy argues, for example, that the cultural policy efficacy of museums is related to tensions between the governance of bodies of work - collections - and the production of social bodies.27 And so generating public good and social improvement through museum participation is always in tension with the protection and curating of works of art.

Parks remind us how the everyday negotiation of shared spaces is important and valuable to both people and places, and that public policies should promote forms of participation valued by all. The next stage in the history of their role in urban cultural policy must see a shift to statutory duty of maintaining access to these common-pool resources and protecting them from private enclosure.

The People’s Parish - Singing Our Own Song

David Francis and Mairi McFadyen

TRACS (Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland) is an organisation which brings together the main traditional art forms of music, dance and storytelling, and seeks to position them as a resource for contemporary life and creativity. TRACS is in the early stages of a major project, The People’s Parish, which aims to enable people to shape and share the story of their own community, and to find meaning in it by combining local stories and traditions with local creative voices.

Our starting point is acknowledgement that the world is in a state of profound crisis but that, by digging where we stand - echoing a guiding principle of cultural commoning that our cultural life first and last is local - we have the means to start addressing that crisis. Our vision is of a revived and enriched civic life, with flourishing communities, characterised by their members’ sense of well-being, good health, civic engagement, radical democracy, social justice (equitable distribution of wealth, power and privilege), and respectful relationships with nature and each other.28 We envisage communities bound together by a sense of place; by a connection with what makes a place different from another – local details, landmarks, geology and geography, resources (the natural dimension); by a connection with the ‘layering’ of a place – of what has happened in the place before the present day and how the resonances of past events persist into the present (the cultural or human dimension). As a recent study put it: “The nature of inequality, distinctive histories and our individual experience intersect in the stories that grow up around places. Those narratives of place in turn shape our responses to individuals in those places”.29 The renewal of the social and civic fabric is both goal and means. And it is urgent.

In order to flourish in the present and in the future, communities also need a relationship with their past, their collective memory. It is our contention that two of the chief ills of our time are alienation and loss of meaning. Culture, nature and society constitute the lifeworld of the individual, which he or she interprets to find meaning. Meaning - its assignation, communication and interpretation - is the central element of culture, the product of individual minds responding to and navigating reality. A community is any group capable of sharing meanings.

One way of addressing the problems of alienation and loss of meaning is by identifying, exploring and sharing aspects of cultural memory linked to place. Within cultural memory we are interested in the possibilities of the ‘folk voice’, the overlooked and vernacular voice, as opposed to official accounts and the perspective of those with political and economic power.

The traditional arts are a collectively created and re-created expression of the people’s encounter with geographical, historical, psychological and social circumstance, including the processes of settlement, relocation and dislocation. And so they offer a unique way of understanding the heritage, character and identity of a place.

By identifying, exploring and sharing the folk aspects of cultural memory, local communities can enlarge their cultural capital and claim cultural equity for it. Tangible and intangible assets, developed in many cases by unknown hands and minds, and which may have been hitherto undervalued, can be given value and have their value recognised both inside and outside communities.

We propose, therefore, that communities develop resources and tools for exploring the folk voice within the cultural memory (“singing their own songs again”30), using it to share knowledge of the past, and to explore and express its creative possibilities for social, educational and economic benefit, for example, through cultural tourism. The pivotal point of any project is the piece of work which will stand as the community’s expression of how it sees itself and how it wishes to project itself to the world. Like Georges Rivière’s ‘Eco-Museum’ concept, the work generated by the People’s Parish will be “a mirror in which a population could seek to recognise itself and explore its relationship to the physical environment as well as previous generations; also an image offered to visitors to promote a sympathetic understanding of the work, customs and peculiarities of a population”.31

In light of this we propose local networks of engaged individuals and organisations, supported by skilled field-workers. The field workers can map the local traditional arts ecology, negotiate with, guide and work with local groups and in communities to identify strengths and weaknesses, initiate projects which explore tangible and intangible material, and work creatively with the knowledge developed.

The value of this approach does not need to be demonstrated from scratch. The field of creative community development has attracted much attention in recent times and numerous studies have concluded that “active forms of engagement - actively creating, exhibiting and participating - have better outcomes in terms of

social capital”.32

Why the parish? It is true that the parish is closely associated in people’s minds with the church. And it is also the case that over two hundred years ago, at the close of the eighteenth century, ministers of religion were asked to write the story of their parish for the Statistical Account of Scotland. But the parish is not only an area of ecclesiastical concern but a civic one as well. The parish was the unit of government in Scotland right up until 1930 and the civic parish boundaries are still used by the Census as a way of classifying and comparing information. The origin of the word is Greek – para, ‘beside’ and oikos, ‘the dwelling’ - indicating that area that is within reach and close to home. ‘Parochial’ comes from the same root though it gives ‘close to home’ a negative connotation. ‘Ecology’ and ‘economy’ also come from the same root, concepts of large scope which suggest that the idea of the parish need not be inward-looking and bounded. William Blake invited us to see a world in a grain of sand. And, in that sense, the life of the parish can refract and distil wider concerns.

But at the end of the day, boundaries are just lines on a map and “boundaries are less important than centres”33 where people form associations and social affinities. The parish boundary and the area it encloses nonetheless provide a useful reference point, and a marker against which to gauge shifts in settlement, the reconfiguration of communities and the orientation and re-orientation of their members.

The intention of the People’s Parish is that, unlike the old Statistical Account, Scotland’s story should be told not by a few professionals or central institutions, but by the people who live and work in each of Scotland’s 871 ancient civic parishes. In short, the People’s Parish aims to produce community generated artwork in any medium and any genre. The result will be not only a local resource but also a multi-faceted and evolving mosaic of humanity and nature in Scotland as a whole in the first quarter of the 21st century.

Cultural Commons: Who Pays and Who Benefits?

Niamh Goggin

As a freelance consultant, working on social investment and social enterprise, my interests are focused on the sustainability of the arts sector and the livelihoods of those working and volunteering in the arts. According to Murphy and Stewart,34 “cultural commoning happens when people come together through personal choice to initiate and grow creative activity and practices through participative and collaborative approaches. It acknowledges the abundance we have around us and offers a pragmatic and complementary approach to sustaining the means of cultural creation in local places.” Noting the reference here to abundance, my question relates to the funding of this creative activity and those who engage in it.

In November 2016, Arts & Business NI and Building Change Trust published a report of research, conducted by Margaret Bolton and me, into financing of the arts.35 The overall impression conveyed by our report is of a sector that has been and is continuing to be ‘hollowed out’. A proportion of arts organisations had, with regret, laid off staff and volunteers, while others have sought to increase the involvement of volunteers. Some organisations reported that they have been forced to reduce marketing budgets and were concerned about the likely effects on audiences. Others indicated that they had been forced to reduce the time spent on fund-raising, or that they had reduced spending on building maintenance.

Arts organisations in Northern Ireland recognise that highly creative and skilled staff and volunteers are their most important asset. However, some of the organisations that we spoke to expressed concern about retention of staff due to very low salary levels and pay freezes that have lasted many years. A few organisations referred to being unable, or finding it very difficult, to contribute towards pensions. One mentioned a staff member who is paid for part-time hours but works full-time; another referred to a need to work evenings and weekends to keep the organisation afloat. One organisation commented that the organisation had cut its fees to artists. The impression given is that both staff and artists are subsidising organisations and masking the real cost of arts provision.

That experience is shared throughout the sector. The Guardian36 reported in 2015, that, contrary to public expectation, most UK galleries do not pay exhibiting artists. In the past three years, 71% of artists received no fee for their contributions to publicly-funded exhibitions. And this widespread practice of non-payment is actually stopping artists from accepting offers from galleries, with 63% forced to reject gallery offers because they can’t afford to work for nothing.

The Musicians Union37 reports that earnings for musicians are low. Income levels compare unfavourably to other professionals who have invested similar amounts of time and money into education and training. Of the musicians surveyed, 56% earn less than £20k and 60% report working for free in the past 12 months. Pension provision is poor compared to that made for employees in other sectors, and even by other self-employed workers in the wider labour market. Whereas 22% of employees and 29% of self-employed workers in the wider labour market have no independent pension provision, this rises to 65% for musicians.

A study, conducted by Queen Mary College, University of London38, showed just one in ten authors can afford to earn a living from writing alone - a drop from 40% a decade ago. A typical professional writer, the study found, earned just £11,000 annually - less than the minimum wage. In real terms, the average earnings of authors are down 8% since 2005, according to the report commissioned by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. In the year in question (2013), 17% of all writers did not earn any money, despite 98% having had work published during the previous 3 years. Also, women were found to earn on average just 80% of the income of their male counterparts.

So, my core question is: If creative cultural products are to be shared for free, who is going to pay for this and who benefits? Public funding of the arts in NI and Britain has already been cut and is about to be reduced even further. And private sector sponsorship tends to be drawn to the larger and prestigious arts organisations.

Will cultural commoning result in the arts becoming the preserve of those academics and public-sector workers paid to support volunteers with the free time to contribute and no need to earn further income? Will arts activity be further concentrated in wealthier areas, that have the facilities and resources to host it? I recognise that much of our cultural commons has been laid down over generations. If we want to preserve, maintain and share that heritage, that will cost time, effort, expertise and money to do so. Charitable trusts, community funding, crowd-funding and volunteer contributions can all help. However, my worry is that public funders may see the exploration of the concepts and practices of cultural commoning as an invitation not to pay artists for their creations and creativity.