Creative Margins: Building capacity to widen participation in arts spaces and practices

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This network bid builds on a series of meetings at which artists, members of publicly funded Arts institutions, and academics specialising in youth and community work, came together through a shared concern with the persistent inequality in arts participation in England and Wales. Many marginalised groups especially those who also live in poverty are at risk of social isolation, substance misuse, self-harm and civic disengagement. Evidence that involvement in the Arts and arts-based activities can play a positive role in ameliorating these risks has accrued over the past 15 years. Yet, research shows that it is marginalised groups who do not sustain their involvement or benefit from long-term experiences of Arts to enhance their lives. Our meetings led us to ask the question, 'Why, given that participation in Arts has come to be framed increasingly within inclusion agendas, do these often play out in practice, unintentionally, in exclusionary ways?' The network set out to explore what more arts organisations and artists can achieve by attuning to the needs and knowledge of marginalised groups through a multidisciplinary lens. Hitherto, debates about specific approaches to widening participation in the Arts have taken place within fields that have developed independently of each other. For example, the fields of youth and community work draw on arts-based practice to empower marginalised groups, and have developed skills for befriending and working with groups who find themselves on the periphery of society. However, while the Arts disciplines strive to democratise access to the Arts, yet consultations with participants who work in publicly funded Arts organisations, such as national theatres, museums, galleries and arts centres revealed considerable concern about the uneven social participation in the Arts. Lectures on creative media courses in Further Education colleges often teach marginalised young people. While the disciplines of the Arts and the fields of community and youth work have developed independently of each other, there is enormous potential to share different perspectives to understand this complex problem which requires both critical debate and the inclusion of multiple viewpoints.In response, we will create a network to facilitate boundary crossings between hitherto siloed fields that have different approaches and purposes in relation to the Arts. Through a series of regional multidisciplinary, multiagency BarCamp (N=5) style exchange spaces, stakeholders from Arts disciplines as well as those who work in publicly funded theatres, museums, galleries and art centres will come together with academics and practitioners from the fields of community and youth work to critically debate issues such as participation, democracy, enterprise, trust, street work and festivals. Two BarCamps will be hosted by a youth centre and a community centre enabling marginal groups to lead activities. Events will be designed to enable a multiplicity of perspectives through processes of making, attuning, listening and debating. Collectively, we aim to develop new ways to imagine and understand how marginalisation takes place in often-imperceptible ways, and to forge new ways of working that draw on the strengths and creative resources of marginalised groups. A website will enable insights to be gathered incrementally across the BarCamp events and shared publicly. The long terms objective is to create guidance for Arts organisations who are grappling with the Culture White Paper's (CM 9218) expectation for the first time that all museums, theatres, galleries, opera houses or arts groups that receive government money "should reach out to everyone, regardless of their background". The challenge here is to develop new models for effective partnerships that can be adapted in specific local communities based on the values implied, rather than through performative acts such as counting numbers through the door.