Twenty-three years ago last month, I had the privilege of becoming the leader of a community arts organisation. I had been working in community contexts for years before, but this was different. This was an almost unique opportunity to help not just define where art and social purpose met — but to make something happen, where our creativity had to prove itself, in the lives and places of people too often left out of the cultural conversation. To make a New Belfast.
The great, foundational platform of Community Arts Forum, established in 1995 by Martin Lynch and later guided by Heather Floyd, had arrived at a very unique, succinct and elegant way of describing everything that was community arts – Access, Participation, Authorship and Ownership. I was enchanted not only at the simplicity, but the universality and profundity those 4 words allowed. Those 4 words became everything to me, professionally and artistically, over more than 25 years. They still guide me today and test my work but they also offer a frame of reference as to how our world has caught up with that vision and perhaps ignored the valuable insights they offered.
In the years since, Access has come to mean something far more complex than many may first have imagined, but others may have also tried to narrow the definition too. It’s not just about opening doors – it’s not just accessibility (which is also central to its meaning) – it’s also about elbowing your way into a discourse and trying to change the structures that decide who gets a key to the door in the first place.
In these next months of blogs , I will try to reframe those four powerful and interconnecting words into a series, to re-examine a quarter of a century of creative determination – from above and below – and where we find ourselves today. It’s a small reflection of policy and outcomes in my own corner of the sector….
Read the rest of the CAPtain’s Blog below…
