Creative voices, activist voices: Stories of creative communities

Last year we were awarded a grant from the Centre for Cultural Value’s Collaborate Fund to explore the radical potential that cultural participation might unlock wider civic activism.

Through a novel cultural sector and academic matchmaking process, we – Fun Palaces and an academic sociologist – teamed up to explore the issues of power and inequality that people might face when engaging in wider activism, or what they saw as barriers to getting involved in making a Fun Palace.

Fun Palaces is a nationwide campaign for cultural democracy; the idea that everyone can shape and contribute to the cultural landscape. Each year hundreds of communities across the country make a local Fun Palaces – celebrating the skills, talents and interests unique to that community.

Over the past decade many Fun Palaces makers have shared their experiences of links between cultural participation and civic activism. Our collaborative project was a chance to further explore and deepen our understanding of that link.

Research question

The main question we wanted to explore was:

To what extent can finding your creative voice unlock your wider civic activist voice and what might be the potential barriers or social inequalities preventing this from happening?

When coming together with your community to be creative, are you better placed to rally against inequality, to solve an issue of (say) the bins not being collected often enough, or to push your local council to address the lack of services?

Our answer is yes, but with some caveats. In particular, the project uncovered specific barriers and social inequalities that might prevent people from taking part in creative activities in the first place and prevent wider civic activism being unlocked when people are engaging creatively with their community.

We spent time talking to people about their experiences of making Fun Palaces. Through individual interviews and group storytelling workshops, we invited them to bring objects representing their involvement in a Fun Palace and/or something related to their wider civic activism/community activities/activism.

People shared a range of objects, including photographs, cardboard boxes, slime, paintings, illustrations, a cookbook, a handmade necklace, bubble recipes, a wig, a (mock!) stick of dynamite, and much more.

Pockets of resistance

This ‘sensory-object’ elicitation facilitated fascinating discussions about how talking while showing or doing something with your hands can break down communication barriers. It also led to discussions about the significance of creative activism on people’s lives, as well as the barriers to cultural participation and activism.

Research participants shared powerful stories about the impacts and their experiences of navigating racism, class inequality, gendered inequalities and ableism – and the barriers these pose to creative and cultural activation.

Continues…

People who had participated in Fun Palaces as children were now running their own creative community workshops. Photo: Roswitha Chesher

While some people who took part spoke of their activist journeys, many did not see themselves as an activist. Instead, they used a plurality of phrases to describe their creative community interventions, such as seeing themselves as an agitator or as leading people astray.

Some framed their experience as being about particular moments or pockets of resistance, highlighting the importance that small moments and interactions can have in making communities better places.

Some of the stories shared document the ways Fun Palaces have been “catalytic events”, as one participant framed it, for people becoming more involved in their communities. For example, one participant went on to join the board of a local grassroots organisation, and others who had participated in Fun Palaces as children were now running their own creative community workshops.

‘Who has permission?’

Fun Palace makers who took part in our research also raised the question of who has the right to call themselves a community activist, or a community artist? One participant expressed this in terms of permission: who has “permission to be visible in our community?”

Many participants spoke of issues of belonging and inclusion being key; that simply putting on a creative event wasn’t an end in itself. Rather, how that event was created – from the bottom up – and what (and who) it involved on and beyond the day really mattered.

Participants also interrogated ideas of handing over space and what this encompasses in practice. As one participant powerfully articulated it: “Is that for me, even though it’s coming to my community?”

People shared powerful stories about these kinds of barriers, and how they navigated them. Our Activist Toolkit brings together some of the practical examples and ideas people shared for making their events more inclusive. And our accessible exhibition housing the findings explores the barriers in more depth, highlighting issues such as the cost-of-living crisis, ableism, racism, ownership and much more.

It is very much a living exhibition with attendees invited to reflect on issues they care about and what their own activism, or moments of resistance, might look like. The exhibition is currently on tour, with creative workshops alongside. If you would like to host the exhibition, please get in touch, we would love to collaborate.