Survey of 868 Participatory Artists 2: What is important to your practice?
Note: Artworks is a mid-long term research initiative funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to develop practice in participatory settings. Read Part 1 for my overview of the report.
This report provides an in-depth understanding of artists involved in participatory practices. I really like this report because the questions and answers provided shows that the researchers know the trade. This week I am going to discuss one interesting question:
Figure 21: What is important to practice in community, participatory or socially-engaged settings?
Thinking about your practice in community, participatory or socially-engaged settings, please select from the following words or phrases those which you feel are most important to this practice. Please select a maximum of six.
NOTE: Chinese translation by me, welcome criticism and counter-suggestions. Before you read any further, what would you the reader choose?
- Collaborative合作
- Context-specific合乎場景
- Cross-artform跨媒介
- Dialogic對話
- Empathetic同理
- Empowering賦權
- Ethical倫理
- Excellent傑出
- Expert專家
- Facilitative倡導
- Flexible靈活
- Fun好玩
- Inclusive兼容
- Innovative新穎
- Inspirational啟發性
- Intuitive直覺
- Participant-led參加者主導
- Political政治
- Professional專業
- Respected尊重
- Responsive回應
- Risky冒險
- Safe安全
- Sensitive敏感
- Teaching教導
- Transformative轉化性
- Trusted信任
Here are the results, don’t scroll down if you don’t want your thoughts influenced.
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Here they are in descending order:
- Each person can choose 6
- The number indicates how many % of the people chose this word
What do you think of the top four choices? Creative, Empowering, Inclusive, Fun. I am very glad that ‘Fun’ is right up there near the top, I guess my intuition (and dissertation) about fun is not just wishful thinking.
Answers based on art forms
The below comments are directly lifted from the report to give an idea of the demographic of the choices:
- those working in dance are more likely to select ‘safe’ and ‘expert’;
- those working in literature are more likely to select ‘empathetic’;
- artists working in media/digital/film are more likely to select ‘dialogic’;
- artists working in music are more likely to select ‘teaching’, ‘trusted’ and ‘expert’;
- those working in theatre are more likely to select ‘political’ and ‘risky’;
- those working in the visual arts are more likely to select ‘dialogic’, ‘risky’ and ‘intuitive’
Professional vs Expert
Did any of you choose either ‘professional’ or ‘expert’? The report explained that, even though both words have a similar meaning, professional (33%) is much more popular than expert (3%). Is it due to a possible negative connotation of ‘expert’, that it might sound arrogant? Or maybe it has to do with status and recognition? Expert is a general term whereas professional signifies some sort of certification. So perhaps the respondents were saying that it is important for them to get formal recognition of their expert skill or specialization.
Risk and Safety
I was discussing this list with some local HK practitioners, and we thought about the contradictions or co-existence of ‘risky’ and ‘safe’. The comments I received was that the balance between risk and safety is very important. There is basically no point in this practice, or life in general, if there is no risk-taking. But at the same time, our job is to ensure a certain level of safety.
Risk and Safety is a much more complicated than setting rules or encouraging respect. In House of games: Making theatre from everyday life (1998, Psychology Press), author Chris Johnston discussed “Six Polarities” in theatre games, several of which involve different kinds of risk and safety:
- The Fixed and the Free — Freedom allows for room, but people would be cautious because the don’t know the boundaries. Rules give boundaries that focus efforts.
- Centre and the Edge — Is it safer to be atthe centre or the edge? The centre is often visible and requires commitment, hence risk. It is often safer to be on the edge.
Perhaps, if we were to investigate the idea of risk and safety in participatory art, the survey question would be to ‘name and describe the risks within your participatory practice’.
Just as I have concluded Part 1, this report was generated from findings in UK. It provides a picture of the practice there (you can actually make a reasonable living out of this work?!). Having been in this practice for nearly two decades now, it seems that participatory arts practitioners have more similarities than differences values and method for their work. Am I bias to think that humans across culture share much similarities in their biology and their relationship with people and environment?
Overall, if you are interested, I highly recommend that you go download it and read it yourself at their site.
