How to Create Projects With Communities

Engagement and communities have become buzz words in creative projects in recent years, particularly as many funders include this as a priority or requirement. For some artists it’s core to your work anyway but for others this can lead to frustration when you want to just get on and do the creative stuff. But there’s a reason behind it all. Access to the arts is not equal, whether that’s as an audience member, participant or artist and yet art is funded by everyone (lottery players and tax payers).

There have been lots of projects with a token gesture workshop for ‘the community’ that neither the artists or the people it’s supposed to be for wanted in the first place. No one wins in that situation. So something needs to change to move away from this dynamic of engagement activity for ‘the community’ and the ‘real’ art for everyone else. 

Changing how we work with communities

There are some key changes you can make to the process so that you’re creating with communities, not doing things for or to people. The first way of working gives people agency and respects them as equal participants in the arts activity. The second way of working at best makes people passive and sometimes unwilling participants, and in its worst form is patronising and sometimes damaging to vulnerable groups. 

Shifting the relationships

In traditional arts engagement you usually have the organisation or artist creating something over here and then trying to find an audience for it who are over there. The two parties are distant from one another and there’s a transactional relationship between them. Even if your project is free to take part in, you're ‘selling’ it to people to get them involved.

Shifting that relationship sees both parties in a partnership, in one place, having a conversation rather than promoting something at arm's length. Simply changing where the creative activity happens can start this shift- taking things out of an arts space into a community centre, shopping centre or park. If you want to engage a particular community, ask if you can work with them, in their space, on their terms, and immediately the type of relationship changes.

Shifting the timeline

Often a project is created and developed and then work with communities is added on at the end. What does it do if you start with communities? Start your project with conversations with the people it’s for and change the timeline accordingly. If you’re really listening to what people want there needs to be flexibility.

Many communities, particularly those underserved by arts funding and who are therefore often priority groups for funders and projects, are already wise to complete projects being parachuted in and then disappearing and there’s often an understandable mistrust. If you want to work with a particular community for any reason other than box ticking, it needs to be a longer term relationship. Projects that do this successfully work with the same groups or in the same area over several years, building real relationships of trust. If the aim is to build confidence, teach skills, change people’s perceptions or increase arts engagement, this doesn’t happen over 4 weeks of workshops. 

Sharing power and decision making

I often think of engagement work being a bit like Subway (yes the sandwich shop). The aim of outreach and engagement activity is to get people involved and there’s often talk of feeling ownership, being involved in decision making etc. But I think often the choices are a bit like Subway choices. Theoretically you make all the choices and it’s your sandwich, your way. But actually before you’ve even set foot in the door they have chosen the bread options, chosen the ingredients, chosen the order you make those choices in. They’ve also decided the location, the opening times, the price and how it’s marketed. It’s the illusion of choice but it’s token gesture.

There are lots of aspects of a project that communities could be involved in or share the decision making or power in. A lot of it has to do with who’s on your project team. What roles are the community taking on, when and where are their voices heard? How diverse are the paid team making the decisions? Start with whether your community want a sandwich in the first place and then see if anyone’s got a great bread recipe and bake it together. 

Making those changes

How can you apply these principles- of shifting relationships, timelines and power- to your project? Here are some suggestions for activities to get started:

Map the relationships

Draw a diagram of the relationships in your project to see where it stands right now. Who are the different stakeholders in your work or project? (artists, community members, organisations etc) Where are they in relation to one another? Who works closely together and who is at a distance? How and when are ideas or information exchanged? Can you show power dynamics in this diagram? Who is in charge? Who makes decisions? At what point do people get involved? Then once you have this visual of the current situation, how do you want it to change?

The Agency Scale

Battersea Arts Centre runs a network called Co-Creating Change which is about how people work together on creative projects and how artists and communities can collaborate. Their Agency Scale is a tool to work out what % of each aspect of decision making is owned by the artist/ organisation and what % the community takes on- to show who holds power or agency at each stage of the project process.

To create your own version, list the different aspects of the project (artistic concept, budgeting, recruiting the team etc) and assign a percentage to each party (organisation/ artist as one party and community as the other) based on how much decision making responsibility each has. Your totals then give you a weighting of who holds the power in the project and can prompt ideas for if and how you might want to shift that.

Learn from others

Of/ By/ For have created a series of prompt questions to explore involving more diverse communities in your work. Strike A Light have their 7 ingredients for cultural events created with communities. This extract from The Relationship Is the Project has loads of practical ideas and tips for working with communities. Culture Reset have a range of resources including podcasts showcasing community led projects.

Take action

Set yourself three action points or goals to apply to your next project. What could you do differently or be flexible about which would allow you to shift the relationship, shift the timeline or share the power and decision making? Then go out and make it happen.