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eight - Understanding grassroots arts groups and practices in communities
- Edited by Angus McCabe, University of Birmingham, Jenny Phillimore, University of Birmingham
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- Book:
- Community Groups in Context
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 15 March 2017, pp 155-176
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Summary
Chapter aims
This chapter aims to:
• consider the distinctive elements of the amateur and grassroots arts sector;
• assess current understandings of the impacts and experiences of grassroots arts groups in communities;
• question the current critical framing of amateur and grassroots arts activities and groups;
• reflect on the direction of future research in amateur and grassroots arts in communities.
The amateur and grassroots arts sector
The most recent assessment of the scale of amateur arts participation in England came in the study Our creative talent, commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Arts Council England in 2008. The report judged that:
[T]here are 49,140 groups across the country with a total of 5.9 million members. An additional 3.5 million people volunteer as extras or helpers – a total of 9.4 million people taking part. (Dodd et al, 2008, p 10)
Given this scale of informal arts participation and activity at grassroots level within communities, it is surprising how little research there has been on the sector. Cultural policy, and arts and cultural scholarship, has been primarily focused on formal, subsidised arts provision, artists and facilitators, while amateur arts groups and arts participation have been little considered in voluntary and community studies literature. The amateur and grassroots arts sector is diverse, rich in passion, knowledge and skills. While there is much actual crossover between amateur and commercial or state-subsidised culture in terms of shared aesthetic pleasure and social benefit, the amateur sector tends to be defined as a distinct sphere on the economic basis of its activities: that makers and participants are not paid for their creative labour. Holden's useful report The ecology of culture (2015) is a recent illustration of this distinction. In charting the wider cultural landscape in Britain, Holden identifies three spheres of culture: the publicly funded, commercially funded and ‘homemade’ cultural activities (2015, p 2). We should be cautious of accepting this distinction too readily. While the amateur and grassroots arts sector frequently has a different economic underpinning, this is not an absolute or clear-cut distinction, as we shall see, and the idea of its economic difference by no means fully characterises or describes activity in the sector.
seven - “There is no local here, love”
- Edited by Dave O'Brien, University of Edinburgh, Peter Matthews, University of Stirling
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- Book:
- After Urban Regeneration
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 01 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 November 2015, pp 95-110
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Summary
Introduction
“There is no local here, love.” These were the evocative words said by an elderly participant at an arts-led research intervention at Patchway Community Centre at a monthly, volunteer-facilitated older person's tea party. Responding to arts-led research methods (in this instance, storytelling), the participant was evoking an absence of ‘the local’ in her locality. Pointing out the lack of cafes, pubs, amenable parks or community centres that did not have to cover their costs (“it costs money to be local”), she explained how ‘the local’ needs physical space in order to exist.
While we might bristle at the singularity of the description of ‘the local’, in our research, we found participants referring to ‘the local’ over and over again. In this sense, the local, the keystone concept in the current policy landscape of localism, was confirmed when interrogated through arts-based methods. In addition, however, participants also stated repeatedly that feeling local, or recognition of the local, is dependent upon whether or not there are spaces in which to get together to ‘be’ local. Specifically, this research found that the local can be both present and absent, even though the assumption with the Localism Act 2011 and related policy initiatives is that there are ‘locals’ all across England.
Certainly, research is consistently illustrating that localism is geographically, socially and politically uneven (Featherstone et al, 2012; Clarke and Cochrane, 2013; see also Chapter Three, this volume). This chapter, however, goes further to illustrate that the very existence of ‘the local’ is also uneven. Being local is not a private activity; it is one that is performed in spaces that are, to some extent, public. In English culture, the pub is the iconic ‘local’, but local shops, parks, cafes or community centres are also thought of as providing a space for people to get together and ‘be’ local. Without space in which to meet, there is no local. There is a very real connection between both the built environment and community: we cannot disaggregate the two (see Chapters Two and Three, this volume).
Investigating the local in this way was possible through using artsbased research methodologies, and this chapter explores the potential of these techniques and approaches.