Artists engaging communities: Ready to work with people?

I have two pieces of advice for artists engaging communities, whether we call it community art, socially-engaged art, public art, social practice or something else. They are both about people, the first person being ourselves.

Artist engagement with communities is never just about policies and infrastructures. Open studios, public art pieces or after school art programmes are pointless if people are not motivated to use them. There is a trend that artists are taking people — living and breathing with needs and aspirations — increasingly into their considerations.

But just as expressive arts therapists have to go through a process themselves before working with clients and patients, I believe that artists working with people also need to prepare and maintain something about themselves.

The first writer I quote saw this over half a century ago:

It’s not only the transformation of the public consciousness that we are interested in, but it’s our own transformation as artists that’s just as important. Perhaps a corollary is that community change can’t take place unless it’s transformative within us…means that every prejudice, every misunderstanding that we perceive out in the real world is inside of us, and has to be challenged.

(Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life by Allan Kaprow, edited by Jeff Kelley, published 1993, this quote from an essay titled Impurity dated 1963)

Hm…this quote is not meant to scare ourselves. Transforming oneself can be a daunting prospect, but we are all on that path. We are never too late to begin introspection, and there is always more to discover and reflect.

Second:

Art that is rooted in a “listening” self rather than in a disembodied eye challenges the isolationist thinking of our culture because it focuses not so much on individuals but on the way we interact.

(Connective Aesthetics, written by Susan Gablik in America Art, 6(2), 1992)

Alright, now listening is a good place to begin, and this is not just for beginners. Believe it or not, any artist can stop listening no matter how experienced and good we may be with people. There will always be some situation when a person stops listening. The problem is that it is difficult to get a person that has stopped listening to listen. That is why I love working with people I trust to shake me up when that happens.

Final words: If you don’t feel the challenge of the self or the need to listen, then you probably need a shakeup from a trusted friend or partner. Or find a critic.