Are you working in rural areas?
On December 13th, we are invited to DG EAC (European Commission's DG for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture) to discuss how the EU funding programmes can be more open and suited for cultural and artistic projects undertaken in rural areas. If you are familiar with producing art in a rural context, please share with us your challenges and ideas, as well as the arguments to defend the value of the contemporary performing arts in rural areas.
Dear IETM
My residency place BIRCA www.birca.org is placed in a rural area - on an isolated island Bornholm in Denmark. I have placed it there beacuse I like to work in the quiteness of nature and it benefits the artists so much. The focus for creativity is immense, and the possiblities of thinking new and in alternative ways are very open.
I have still not solved how to get the local community more involved when we do showings of the artistic works.
We do have some more costs for transportation - it goes for the rural but even more for the island.
My certumstances is ok since the island is also a big turist place (which islands often are). I have initiated a project called Island Connect with Mallorca and Croatia, where we exchange residencies for local artists and we have an idea to work on the theme of tourisme also.
I would love to talk about the benefits of taking art into nature and the exchange that happens.
Dear Susanne,
Thank you for your response. Indeed, how to make the local community more involved seems to be a topical issue for many of those working in rural areas.. We have collected some good practices during our last meetings; it might be interesting for you to have a look at the reports of our past sessions on the art in rural areas:
- Satellite in Wales: Fields of Vision. Other voices, rural places, global stories
- IETM Porto: Artistic creation outside the urban areas
- IETM Brussels: Meanwhile in the Countryside
Thank you and keep in touch.
Dear Elena,
I have worked as an artist in rural Wales for 24 years now...it has been a wonderful and generative process, and largely under resourced. I think this is often to do with the perception of rural areas from the more Metropolitan centres, centres that often hold the power over where and how funding is distributed. There are often assumptions that rural culture is conservative, slow to change and that contemporary ideas might not have relevance. My experience is that the rural is undergoing dynamic change both socially, economically and politically, and has for a while. There is evidence of new farming practices, creative industry, new demographies and new creative networks, ofen small scale, but significant. Artist practices here are diverse in my experience and the performing arts have increasing relevance in places that are experiencing social and environmantal change. The Arts can obviously be a part of reflecting these changes, but also to be proactive to create different and less harmful ways of being together; particular to the rural, art as place making, 'being community', and with reference to the materiality of the rural, the other than human, other life forms, the land and weather. These processes need time...
I think it is time to be strategic with EU funding for rural areas, there are many models of good practice, of participatory and dialogic methods. There are artists and organisations who are trying to develop creative resource not just for themsleves, but for their neighbours, local families, rural people and places. The resources needed are maybe less to do with funding capital projects, than they are to support mediums of connection, collaboration, and different ethics of agency for rural voices and materialities.
Simon Whitehead
Thank you, Simon, your contribution is a great food for thought!
Many of the larger funding and support organisations as well as many toering agents and even artist companies themselves have a limited perception of whta the arts in rural areas consist of. As a programmer in a large Arts Centre based in the centre of a wide rural catchment, I'm often offered shows that have been designed for 'rural touring'; this is despite having all the facilities and expertise of of a large urban venue. Similarily, it's becoming virtually imposible to persuade mid-scale high-production value theatre to our theatre. It seems that they presume we are either 'just a tin shack in the hills' (though there's nothing worng with those venues), or that it will be impossible to reach us or to put together a tour of our region. I feel strongly that audiences in rural areas deserve to have access to the wide range of work including large high quality productions and new writing and smaller scale work. At present we are expected to be content with 'live screenings'; although audiences love these, and it saves them having to travel to see them, it does nothing to hep create the skills of the future, as all expertise and labour is sucked into a couple of metropolitan institutions.
Dear IETM, we had a discussion within our organization and this is few arguments and proposals :
- Culture is inherent and necessary in the construction and expression of humaneness. Culture, as part of the construction of each and everyone identities, needs to be present, shared, and enhanced everywhere equally. On this point, EU is at a good place to bring this equality between all the territories, inside the members of the EU.
- Culture can contribute to social harmony. The will of being recognized for what we are is intrinsically human. Though, we observed over the international political scene distension between few people stem from a certain elite mostly representing the biggest cities, and the rest of the population who feels unheard, unrepresented and sometimes even despised. In this context, culture, and more specifically cultural rights can be a powerful ground to create dialog between people, to “hear the unheard”, to exchange, to know people beyond sterotypes, and be benevolent.
- Culture is a condition for territorial attractiveness and habitableness. Indeed, some institutions, in a context of budgetary restriction forsake rural areas. It results in a lack of infrastructures and territorial engineering. As a consequence, some rural areas are cleared out (while some other, wealthy because base on a strong tourism model - in ski station for instance - are in expansion), school close, doctors are missing.
- Culture permits territorial development. Indeed, culture is actually everywhere (because it is inherent to humaneness) and many people can be mobilized. It is then a base to bring people together and build some territory’s projects in cooperation, across sectors – tourism, economy, education, social sector...
I imagine we can even do much more but these are avenues to begin with...
I hope these discussions with the commission will be rich,
Marie
Dear Elena,
thanks, yes, rural areas & regional development through arts, culture and education have been my close fields of interest since over 10 years. Previously, as a Head of the cultural house in the village community of Oleśnica, Lower Silesia (South West Poland) we were able with my colleagues to implement with local inhabitants over 70 projects related to capacity building, empowerment, cross-sectorial interactions, trainings of skills and competences. Main ideas and challenges were related to decentralized concepts of creative cultural organization in the rural areas. Two projects of our projects: "Bridging Generations" and "Colorful Bus Stops" were recognized as 12 Best Innovative European practicies of audience development by Economia Creativa (report). With of cooperation of the European Network of Cultural Centres (I’m a Board Member of ENCC) and with ECoC Wrocław 2016 we have organized a an international Open Space conference meeting in 2016, dedicated to international and local stakeholders, cultural operators and managers, related on daily basis to small-scale cities or rural areas. The ideas generated we leading us to create a non-published yet, a Crowd-sourced Manifesto called “Culture for Shared, Smart, Innovative Territories”, co-created in cooperation with more than:
200 cultural operators from
16 European countries, representing
75 cultural organizations and local authorities.
whole list of the participating institutions can be found here.
….......MANIFESTO……………………………
PARTICIPATION
-Wider promotion of participatory processes through culture in Europe;
-Enhancing the role of communities in the local governance and fostering cooperation between them;
-Supporting participative leadership on all levels (neighborhoods, rural areas, communities, counties, regions, etc.);
-Building bridges by round-table debates between stakeholders, cultural operators and local authorities;
-Creating a European Council of Cultural Expertise on smart territorial development.
FINANCES
-Developing innovative and sustainable financial models for culture;
-Supporting creative economy and as priority supporting: reintegration of European values/dimension, arts and civic education through Arts;
-Proclaiming stronger financial support for the cultural sector, achieving at least 1% of EU overall budget and adequately reaching desired budgeting for culture in the European States.
INNOVATION
-Organizing continuous programs for fighting the digital divide as key priority;
-Promoting creativity and innovation in the rural & urban development through culture and being oneself updated on the level of social and digital innovation;
-Rethinking traditional forms of presenting data and implementing several new formats;
-Embracing new types of audiences, e.g. digital co-creators;
-Implementing decentralized concepts of cultural activities, which are predestined to create horizontal networks of local partnerships, both in rural and urban areas;
-Preparing adequate plans to the local situation, accordingly to the strategy defined as "Tailor-made" cultural center, or any cultural organization.
SPACES for CULTURE
-Supporting the idea of “culture freeing resources”, since culture itself can create spaces for people to encounter;
-Considering “common spaces” as a laboratories for cultural evolution by building up on historical elements, and creating the unexpected;
-Finding ways with civil society to facilitate processes where the ‘unexpected can happen’.
INCLUSION
-Ensuring social inclusion and relations through culture, and by such attempts counteracting labeling categories of 'center and periphery';
-Creating policies to encourage the existence of independent advisory groups in cultural centres or in any cultural organization;
-Organizing European programs NOT FAR from the people;
-Analyzing changing conditions of the cultural activities implementation, in order to respond more effectively to the needs of the civil society.
COOPERATION
-Bridging gaps between cultural centres by building cross-border data highways, and sharing insights, strategies, good & bad practices;
-Organizing real-time meetings of stakeholders as a crucial tool for enhancing and reinforcing cooperation;
-Empowering local and international networks of stakeholders from diverse fields, by e.g. organizing ‘in situ’ research projects, responding to the needs of stakeholders, delivering economic, quantitative & qualitative data in order to approach more efficiently public bodies or policy makers;
-Addressing particular policies, based on the researches, in urban and rural areas and identifying the strategical aspects of joint cooperation, remembering about one general strategy: to speak to each other!
-Making partnerships both with an alike in size, region & activities organizations, and with exactly the opposite: from another part of World, diverse in scope and strategies;
-Developing potential sustainable policies for European Capital of Culture programme, which could be considered as networks of social participation LAB's, especially on territorial development, since each year much effort and means are spent by ECoC's to involve inhabitants into cultural activities, and such know-how can easily 'evaporate' when there are no clear policies of sharing the insights between ECoC's.
ACCESSIBILITY
-Regenerating cities and urban-rural linkages by integrating culture at the core of the urban, regional and rural planning;
-Supporting urban-rural exchanges by visits, seminars, projects, etc.
-Organizing artist residency programs for national and international artists to activate community life and to re-discuss views, ideas and imaginations what is the meaning “rural” and “urban”.
-Supporting the essence of the decentralized models which is “mobility”, a key competence which should characterize any cultural organization, both in rural and urban areas.
EDUCATION
-Organizing conferences, seminars and debates in order to share know-how concepts on sustainable Territorial Development;
-Bringing strategically rural and urban areas together, by developing systemic programs, solutions & tools to educate, support regional leaders, able then to encourage local animators to act, respond to social needs, and improve competences of local policy makers;
-Supporting experts and leaders from local communities to support activating participation and social change;
-Enlarging knowledge on what culture is, especially by separating arts, and entertainment from culture.
ARTS
-Supporting art as social change, with a special focus on the community arts and Artists;
-Supporting freedom of artistic expression, which as an important ‘experience’ for keeping the democracy.
OUR MESSAGE:
We should use the resources that we already have to support Territorial Development, remembering to create new narratives and enabling new creativity. Taking part in national and international meetings is crucial to exchange on these major topics. We should constantly been building networks to inspire each other and to be productive, e.g. to prepare recommendations and papers for policy makers on all levels. Also there should be created an efficient strategy on perpetration of recommendations on local, regional & international level. Stronger endorsement, advocacy and recognition for culture by emphasizing its complexity, impact & importance on the European level is essentially crucial. Such approach should result on higher expenses on cultural sector from the overall EU budget and then subsequently giving more support to Arts & artists, who are having very direct impact on societies, are fostering creativity, democracy, civic participation, are supporting grassroots initiatives, inspiring to reach new qualities and enabling to re-discuss what is supposingly known.
……………………………………….
I was able to share in February 2018 many of above, during the experts consultation meeting towards New European Agenda for Culture, organized in Brussels by DG Education and Culture of the European Commission.
There should be recognized a crucial role of art and artists in development of social creativity and civic education, about common strategic policies towards cities & regions development, social inclusion and leadership empowerment (especially in the rural areas), participatory processes and needed consultancy on all levels.
Following relevant links to some important and broadly known reports are suitable addition to the contextualization process: framing rural areas and regional development into ongoing crucial debates and published globally strategical documents of diverse scopes, but all of them giving culture and creativity "the leading part".
THE 2030 AGENDA FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT by UNITED NATIONS (2015):
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf
European Commission "The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor" Edition 2017:
http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC107331/kj0218783enn.pdf
EU Briefing 2017 "Arts, culture, and cultural awareness in education":
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/608807/EPRS_BRI(2017)608807_EN.pdf
UNESCO GLOBAL REPORT ON CULTURE FOR SUSTAINABLE URAN DEVELOPMENT:
http://www.unesco.org/culture/culture-for-sustainable-urban-development/pdf-open/global-Report_en.pdf
International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts IETM on rural development and arts (I was a bit involved into this one since participating into IETM Satellite Wales 2018):
https://www.ietm.org/en/system/files/publications/report_0.pdf
Three more observations/recommendations:
1. There is a pure lackness of the national network of cultural centers, which could be a catalyst of change for the sector, and could basically support the dissemination of the local stakeholders opinions, or to support strategic & systemic solutions. Presently (in Poland) we are having few regional networks, which are very diverse, acting mostly without funding. Such situation is affecting much the civic society, which is rather passive when being unable to influence local/regional/national policies.
2. There is a potential in development sustainable policies by ECoC's, which could be considered as networks of social participation LAB's (incl. regional involvement). Each year much effort and means are spent by ECoC's to involve inhabitants into cultural activities, and such know-how can easily 'evaporate' when we are not having a clear policy of sharing the insights between ECoC's (which can be e.g. supported by Structural Funds to create a stronger and more coherent impact on many levels).
3. Stronger endorsement, advocacy and recognition for culture on EU level (by emphasizing complexity, impact & importance of culture), resulting by higher expenses on cultural sector from the overall EU budget and then subsequently giving more support to Arts & artists, who are having very direct impact on societies, are fostering creativity, democracy, civic participation, are supporting grassroots initiatives, inspiring to reach new qualities and enabling to re-discuss what is supposingly known.
Happy that you will join tomorrow’s meeting in Brussels!
Hope that you might use some of the above information.
Being very curious for the next steps.
All the best,
Piotr Michałowski
Thanks a lot, this is very helpul. We are planning to get in touch with ENCC to see whether we could find some synergies in our work on the topic.
Thank you Elena.
From our experience it is important to create the conditions for the development of durational projects that allow a sustainable and significative encounter between locals and outsiders.
It is important to allow people/ projects to come back to the same places, to reapeat, to linger, instead of projects that come and go.
At the same time, it would be important to cross this kind of support of territorial policies that allow people to chose to live in rural areas. I don't know about other countries reality but in Portugal the countryside was historically emptied... People need now extra motovations to come back, because in many areas there was a desinvestment in infrastructure and public services.
It is also important to be aware of a diversity of voices and projects in rural areas, to support that diversity .
Dear all, many thnaks for your super useful input. We have had the meeting in DG EAC - your contributions have definitely helped us to prepare. The meeting has been rahter a starting point and an initial exchange on the state of the arts. We are planning to undertake further actions and will keep you posted.