Curating participation: arts without a safety net

A step beyond engagement, drawing participation from audiences requires the asking of a lot of tough questions.
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Art for Happiness Image via Beyond Empathy

Participatory work invites an audience to play a role; or sometimes, extends your practice into their lives, living rooms and streets. For artists, curators and organisations, it’s an approach that offers promise, but also requires risk, on all sides.

There are issues of trust and control; how much are you willing to give up? Who’s really in charge? How do you honour individual stories while crafting a broader narrative or achieving your artistic aims? Can you push into difficult territory while maintaining sensitivity and boundaries? How do you manage the practicalities of embedded, process-driven work, operating within object- and outcome-oriented frameworks?

We hear a lot about “engagement”, but it is a hard thing to quantify: in a performance or institutional context, you might measure it from the box office; in marketing, you might count ‘likes’ or shares on social media, or jumps in ticket sales after ad campaigns. But this catch-all feel-good term doesn’t capture the rough and smooth of sparking a genuine, personal emotional connection. A step beyond engagement, generating (and managing) participation (or co-creation) from audiences requires the asking of a lot of tough questions. There are leaps of faith involved, a distinct lack of safety nets and guidelines, and volatile human variables swirling below. 

 While the questions are complex and risks are great, the rewards from participatory projects can be rich too: in delivering meaningful experiences for audiences, and challenging artists and performers to test their mettle and expand their practice. Around Australia, I’ve noticed a groundswell of art, theatre and community development projects which delve deeper and demand more. These are projects that have direct impacts in communities; helping individuals cast their own parts in the narrative of a place, draw connections with each other, and construct relationships and communal history.

 In many cases, the systems and approaches we rely on are struggling to keep pace. But what are some of Australia’s leading institutions, festivals, and artists doing to ‘move with the times’? The Betty Amsden Participation Program has challenged one of the country’s largest institutions, the Arts Centre Melbourne, to develop new processes for commissioning, supporting and reporting on participatory projects. With projects like Play Me, I’m Yours, Raising the Roof and eMOTION, the Arts Centre has headed in a new direction, putting the tools of creativity out on the streets and unlocking the talents of the public: in some cases, overcoming a perception of elitism to serve a new role.

Knowing that genuine participation takes time, artist and curator Paul Gazzola works on long-term projects in communities. His recent Temporary Democracies project spanned three years in Airds, a housing development in South Western Sydney, and drew on the resources (both physical and cultural) of a place in transition. With artist Nadia Cusimano, Paul Gazzola is now establishing the Waikerie Temporary Art Gallery in regional South Australia, revealing the values and perspectives of the community to itself.

Footscray’s Big West Festival brings art home to people, where they live and relax, turning Nicholson Street into a laboratory for new work –  exploring what makes participatory projects successful, and approaching the festival platform with two goals in mind: helping artists develop transferrable works and careers, while growing the appetites of venues and audiences for live art.

Urban Theatre Projects is another one of my favourites. This is a company which isn’t afraid to venture into challenging and confronting territory – over the past 30 years, they have delved into the scars and memory lines of communities riven by violence and loss – working through personal tragedies and celebrating the complexity and diversity of Western Sydney. Also based in Sydney, C3West, a long-term project of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, brings together uncommon coalitions of artists, sponsors and stakeholders to inspire communities through transformational experiences.

CACD practice Beyond Empathy tackles situations of compound disadvantage, embedding artists into communities and contexts that confound traditional social projects. Beyond Empathy is another example of the rethinking of the boundaries of curated engagement. Their focus on the experiences of their communities and on creating culturally ambitious works of art is truly remarkable.

 All of these organisations, plus educators working to train the next generation of artists, arts managers and arts leaders, will be speaking at Curating Participation –  an event that I am facilitating for Deakin University’s Arts Participation Incubator (API) on November 27 at Deakin Edge, Federation Square, from 9:30 to 4:30pm. Curating Participation is designed to bring together practitioners and commissioners to have these conversations and to ask some of these tough questions. Drawing from the experience of some of Australia’s best curators, artists and CACD workers at the leading edge, Curating Participation has the goal of establishing standards and conventions for what is often unconventional work.

SPECIAL OFFER TO ARTSHUB MEMBERS: the first 10 people to email the API’s Project Manager Magda Pakulski  at m.pakulski@deakin.edu.au will receive 2 tickets for the price of one.

Jess Scully
About the Author
Jess Scully was a Situate Provocateur.