Community Organizing in an Era of Precarity: Forging Creative Solidarities

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Imagine community arts organisations screening outdoor 'pop up' movie screenings in abandoned neighbourhood spaces; community centres providing space for wood working and cooking workshops; neighbourhood hubs offering courses on community radio programming alongside workshops about starting your own business: these are all examples of 'artistic social enterprise initiatives' that seek to create alternative and sustainable forms of social and economic organisation. Supported by precarious and piece-meal public, private and philanthropic funding, artistic social enterprise organisations are examples of diverse community economies (e.g. community enterprises, cooperatives) currently working with a range of people to foster entrepreneurialism and job training. While these organisations program diverse activities in communities across the UK, critics claim that these strategies do little to address deeper structural inequalities within mainstream economic development and urban regeneration initiatives. On the other hand, many grassroots artistic social enterprise groups are said to offer a foothold for resisting austerity in marginalised communities. Furthermore, analysis of them may illuminate novel strategies for engaging underrepresented communities/people in local regeneration and economic development planning. This research programme builds on community economies research, an area of analysis that explores alternative economic development models. Engaging social enterprise groups in three diverse U.K. regions - South West England, urban Scotland and the remote Scottish Highlands and Islands -- this research programme examines how artistic social enterprise groups negotiate contradictory pressures on their work and generate change. It assesses and tracks how arts-based community development organisations share strategies for promoting social and economic development as well as promote artistic production. This project maps and examines the reach and purpose of creative strategies that seek to challenge patterns of inequality. It will develop a more nuanced understanding of the potential of artistic social enterprise for encouraging social and economic sustainability. This research will benefit a wide range of audiences: scholars researching social enterprise and community economies; social enterprise practitioners; social policy and cultural policy researchers; artists practicing community-engaged work; urban regeneration planners. In order to maximise the impact of the project, the following activities are planned: the production of academic papers for journals and conferences and a book on artistic social enterprise accessible to both practitioners and researchers; the creation of an on-line 'Artistic Social Enterprise Hub,' a space for artists and social enterprise practitioners to upload and discuss innovative community economic development models, examples of arts practices and strategies for enacting alternative business strategies; a 'Knowledge Exchange and Strategy Forum' that will bring together social enterprise groups to share good practice and critically debate how their strategies traverse communities; the production of briefing papers and best practice booklets on artistic social enterprise activities with a range of artistic social enterprise practitioners; research visits to Australia to work with community economies experts and to facilitate a public discussion with the Sydney chapter of the Community Economies Research Network; the production of innovative digital stories to share education about arts-based community engagement and development that I will post on the on-line Hub; public workshops about innovative artistic social enterprise strategies with artists, scholars and community stakeholders at the University of the Highlands and Islands and the University of Bristol. This Future Research Leader award will build new national and international collaborations and foster interdisciplinary scholarship.