The work of the FAST45 knowledge alliance indicates that Institutes of Higher Arts Education (IHAE) are often perceived as disconnected from their local communities. This narrative investigates the relationships of art universities to their local communities. We have collected positive examples of collaborations that connect Institutes of Higher Arts Education and local communities. We further identified benefits from collaborations for institutes of Higher Arts Education, communities and individuals. Moreover, the text highlights common problems in regard to the present lack of cooperation.
The short film is a creative interpretation of the topic “Arts Schools and their Local Communities”. It is a future scenario of an art academy that is integrated in its local community.
Written by the FAST45 team Film University KONRAD WOLF:
Lena Gieseke,
Johanna Hartmann,
Lea Minow,
Sylvia Rybak and
Marcel Bückner.
Our work indicates that Institutes of Higher Arts Education (IHAE) are often disconnected from their local communities. This narrative investigates the relationships of Institutes of Higher Arts Education to their local communities.
We have collected positive examples of collaborations that connect Institutes of Higher Arts Education and local communities but also highlight common problems.
Specifically, this narrative discusses:
How Can Institutes of Higher Arts Education & Local Communities Grow Together?
When we asked stakeholders in various fields about existing problems with Institutes of Higher Arts Education and the art sector, one common answer was the disconnection of art from society.
This perceived disconnection is rooted in complex dynamics. Among others, the problem seems to be entangled with the perceived inaccessibility and elitism of Institutes of Higher Arts Education, the art establishment itself, and international networks, industry cooperations, and reputations that are often more valued than connections to society.
The most obvious way for Institutes of Higher Arts Education to engage with society is NOT through academic discourse or globalized activities…
The local communities of Institutes of Higher Arts Education are people with a shared identity or interest in the region where the art academy is located.
The Institutes of Higher Arts Education and its community thus have a shared geographical location, they are from the same “neighborhood”. The local community can be heterogeneous, i.e. consisting of different individuals from the same area (e.g. different ages, education, ethnic background, etc.). The group members have a common goal or a shared interest that leads them to engage or interact with each other. A local community can also consist of local people primarily coming together because of one shared identity aspect for example age or gender. A local community can, for example, be a group of people of the same age regularly meeting for gardening or working on creative projects. Another example is a group of neighbors coming together to improve the village square or beautify the school building.
In the following, we present some thoughts from our interview partners in the FAST45 project that describe relationships between Institutes of Higher Arts Education and their local communities…
Flo Kasearu is an artist and co-founder of Naked Island artwork production platform. Flo Kasearu was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 11th of Mai 2021.
Ankna Arockiam is a PhD student at the Royal Conservatory of Scotland in Glasgow. She is founder of a south Asian women’s singing group, and co-founder of the platform Shared Narratives. Ankna Arockiam was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 29th of April 2021.
Flo Kasearu is an artist and co-founder of Naked Island art work production platform. Flo Kasearu was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 11th of Mai 2021.
There is a diverse range of possibilities for Institutes of Higher Arts Education to improve their relationships with their local communities.
We have collected various inspirations for how art academies can become more accessible to locals and how fruitful collaborations between Institutes of Higher Arts Education and local communities can develop.
Similar to Pollak et al. (2000), we differentiate between collaborations, which involve project-based or long-term collaboration with community members; and audiences, which refer to visitors at art university events from local communities. Both aspects are essential focal points within the relationship between Institutes of Higher Arts Education and local communities. However, it is important to differentiate between these two terms as they operate on different levels.
Collaborations between Institutes of Higher Arts Education and local communities are necessary to improve the often neglected involvement of art academies with their social surroundings.
Such collaborations usually involve specific parts of the community – for example, schoolchildren, local minority groups, groups with special interests, or people living with special conditions, e.g. chronic illnesses – where both sides collaborate in the form of, for example, events, workshops or projects. A common method for successful collaborations is participatory design and co-creation, where community members become co-authors of artistic projects. Such participatory methodologies aim to highlight the voices of community members.
A further fruitful approach for Institutes of Higher Arts Education to establish closer relationships with locals can be the organization of or involvement in projects and events with social benefits for local communities.
We collected promising project ideas and examples, hopefully inspiring and supporting new collaborations and projects between art academies and their local communities.
Early arts education is important for our society since it enables children to get in touch with arts and culture. Furthermore, it can also help Institutes of Higher Arts Education reach potential students who otherwise would not have much knowledge of Institutes of Higher Arts Education and the possibilities of artistic studies. Hence, the involvement of art representatives in schools can further strengthen the accessibility of Institutes of Higher Arts Education.
Ankna Arockiam is a PhD student at the Royal Conservatory of Scotland in Glasgow. She is the founder of a south Asian women’s singing group, and co-founder of the platform Shared Narratives. Ankna Arockiam was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 29th of April 2021.
An interesting example from Germany.
One example of the cooperation between early arts education and Institutes of Higher Arts Education in rural areas is a project called “region 4.0” based in Germany.
The Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in Germany is part of a local innovation network region 4.0.
The project region 4.0 is situated in a rural area 100 km from Berlin.
As part of this project, the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF collaborates with local schools and teachers to develop participatory and visual communication projects. Children and teenagers from the local region present various local innovations in videos or podcasts. They are moderators, interviewers or reporters. The teenagers develop storylines in cooperation with experts from the Film University. Through such an experience, they are empowered to become local communicators of the innovations. The goal of region 4.0 is to support identity-creating innovation culture in the rural region.
Did you become interested?
Read more detailed description of the project (in german language).
An inspiring example from Berkeley, US.
Another example of early arts education from the US is the Girl’s Garage project.
As described on the school’s own website, “Girls Garage is a nonprofit design and construction school for girls and gender-expansive youth ages 9-18. They provide free and low-cost programs in carpentry, welding, architecture, engineering and activist art to a diverse community of 300 students per year. Integrating technical skills, unconditional support, and community leadership, their programs equip youth with the personal power and literal power tools to build the world they want to see” (Girl’s Garage, 2022).
Art universities can also initiate projects related to social work and social contexts. These could, for example, arise from collaborations with local NGOs, prisons, hospitals, elderly care homes and many many more.
For these purposes, a transdisciplinary collaboration with social work faculties can be beneficial (Wehbi et al. 2016). Art students and teachers can benefit from the critical and theoretical perspectives within the social science of a socially engaged art project, while social work students and teachers can utilize artistic approaches as a catalyst for social change. Researchers from Canada proposed a course structure that integrates a collaboration of master students with arts and social work. Within this course, the students would critically discuss socially engaged art projects and embed them into a theoretical context. Only after this stage of exploration and reflection, would they develop a project proposal (ibid).
Furthermore, local communities potentially benefit from art academies’ collaborations with local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) as these projects usually focus on social dimensions in their respective region.
An interesting example from Budapest, Hungary.
An example of such a collaboration is the MOME Movement in Budapest, Hungary.
At Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design the “MOME Movement” has announced a contest, which accepts applications from Hungarian non-profit organisations which require support in their visual communication.
The journalist, Gelly Márk Levente describes in an article for the online magazine Hyper&Hyper: “They primarily seek to give a hand to organizations pursuing public interest activities, which, for budgetary or other reasons, don’t have a visual brand identity yet. […] the MOME Movement initiative shows how young talents can do charity work and provide real help to organizations that are working for a better world. At first, the movement was running as a student-founded grassroots initiative. By now—without losing its momentum—it grew into an academic course to design brand identities.”
Article by Gelly Márk Levente in Hyper&Hyper (February 19, 2021)
When applying participatory design and co-creation methods, artists and designers develop and co-create with individuals who will be directly affected by the results of the project. They become co-authors of the final outcome and work on one level with the experts. Their knowledge, experiences, and perspectives become a central part of the creation (Sanders and Stappers 2008).
Co-creation can also happen between artists and local communities (Cumbula et al. 2013). Methods of co-creation and participatory art can be implemented in various settings, e.g. designing a new outdoor space of a building in collaboration with the inhabitants, creating software together with end-users or creating an accessible health service together with immobile patients. Such an approach is valuable for the artistic work of students, as “ideas grow together based on needs, based on things that matter within those contexts” (Sean Gregory, April 23rd 2021). Participatory approaches and strong communication with local communities are also valuable components “to ensure that those voices are being brought into the conversation” and to reflect what messages “the artists are communicating through the artwork” (Silke Lange, May 4th 2021).
Co-creation can thus contribute to community well-being (Fancourt and Finn 2019, APPGAHW 2017, Wiseman and Brasher 2007) and community empowerment (Dogu et al., 2021, Johnson and Monney 2021).
Sean Gregory is Vice-Principal and Director of Innovation and Engagement, for the Barbican and the Guildhall School in the UK. The FAST45 Knowledge Alliance interviewed Sean Gregory on the 23d of April 2021.
When Institutes of Higher Arts Education collaborate with a community using participatory approaches, it is crucial to reflect on the power dynamics within the participatory project (Webhi et al. 2016). This can for example include questioning the role of the expert.
An inspring example from Auckland, New Zealand.
One example of a co-creation project is the Design for Health and Wellbeing (DHW) Lab in Auckland (Reay et al. 2016). The Design for Health and Wellbeing (DHW) Lab in Auckland, was originally a collaborative project between AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies between the AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies and the Auckland District Health Board (Auckland DHB) inside of and the Auckland District Health Board (Auckland DHB) inside of the central-local hospital.
The lab aspires to be a “design space in which designers, students, patients and hospital staff could work together to identify and address contemporary healthcare issues in innovative ways” and was created together with members of those groups. It can be described as a co-design (and co-designed) space (Reay et al. 2016).
An interseting example from Olaszliszka, Hungary
Another inspirational example took place in Olaszliszka, Hungary, where design students asked the kids of the local kindergarten how they wanted to play, and as a result, redesigned and rebuilt the playground incorporating the children’s wishes.
HELLO WOOD is a Hungarian architecture studio designing and executing smaller and larger scale projects. As a socially responsible project, they often collaborate with locals in their design process, they are present at every stage of the project and they organize workshops for university students to share their philosophy.
Co-creation practices also bear challenges and opportunities for misuse. For further readings on the critical analysis of co-creation we recommend Walmsley (2019).
When exploring co-creation and community empowerment researchers of the Izmir University of Economics challenged the human-centred approach to co-creation. They suggest expanding the idea of co-creation not only between humans but between all living systems. This new perspective of approaching nature as a co-creator and co-designer raises environmental awareness within the creative process and empowers local communities on an ecological level. This approach is also discussed as “Biodesign” (Dogu et al. 2021).
Such multi-species approaches to co-creation can possibly lead to co-creation projects between Institutes of Higher Arts Education and local living organisms such as local plants or animals. The idea of the local community is thus expanded to the non-human.
Besides cooperative projects helping Institutes of Higher Arts Education and local communities grow together, art university buildings may serve as venues, event spaces, or open spaces for the whole local community. Furthermore, art universities can also stage events in their local area and thus become a community space instead of the disconnected art bubble it is often perceived as.
In the following, we have collected some examples of what such events can look like and how art schools succeed in welcoming local visitors into the arts education space.
Art events can have a potentially revitalising effect on rural areas which suffer from factors such as depopulation, ageing populations and/or socio-economic decline. An example of this is ‘Shiosai’, a bottom-up community art festival, which has been taking place in the village of Mitarai, Japan since 2017. The festival has a highly revitalising effect on the area and contributed to the strengthening of the local community (Qu and Cheer 2021). Such art events have the potential to be supported or initiated by art academies in collaboration with local communities.
In 2020 in a rural, increasingly depopulated town in Estonia a summer school with 100 international architecture students was organised by EASA, the European Architecture Students Assembly. This event led to positive experiences being reported by both the local community as well as the students. Jiří Tintera, the town architect in this municipality, who is also a teacher at the university in Tallinn shares her reflections on the summer school:
Jiří Tintěra is an architect, municipality architect, and senior lecturer at Tallinn University of Technology. He was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 27th of April 2021.
Discover more about the mentioned student network that organizes the summer schools and their mission
The European Architecture Students Assembly (EASA) is a non-profit network of architecture students.
The network organises summer schools for students, which take place in different locations all over Europe. As described on the EASA website, the students live together as a self-maintained “utopian community”, with the purpose of experiencing alternative education. “EASA gives a chance to experience architecture in a way that universities are yet not providing. Bringing students to a certain context, defined by the location and theme of the assembly, where they have to raise architectural questions themselves and investigate them through the eyes of all European cultures simultaneously. Being their own educators, students then elaborate the answers and bring them to reality.”
In 2020 the summer school’s name was “Apathy Residency” and took place in Valga, Estonia. The goal of the summer school is described on the EASA website as follows: “Apathy residency is a local EASA event mainly targeted towards building a stronger architecture student community in the Baltic region. The residency welcomes everyone curious about space and holds several workshops, lectures and activities on the topics Valga has to offer.”
For more information
The campus of the art university itself has the potential to serve as a space for creativity, festivals, and public exhibitions. As people come together in one space, networking and interaction take place naturally and this can even lead to the creation of new local communities. For example, new interest groups may form.
The spaces within Institutes of Higher Arts Education have the potential to become exploratory spaces of exchange – not only for students and teachers but also for other local community members. In this frame, Institutes of Higher Arts Education have also the possibility to communicate their identity to communities. This is an opportunity for art universities to highlight their image as open, educational, and creative spaces while countering the image of the Institutes of Higher Arts Education as elitist and inaccessible.
The university building and the university campus can also promote a community feeling within the local community itself. Festivals at those campuses are a way of reaching diverse audiences and creating feelings of connection and belonging, potentially forming new communities at these venues.
CJ Carr is an AI specialist, hacker, co-founder of Dadabots and metalhead. He is based in Boston and Sacramento, US. He was interviewed together with his colleague Zack Zukowksi by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 5th of Mai 2021.
Art in public spaces has specific qualities, which often cannot be achieved in the context of a gallery or an art institution – particularly the benefit of engaging citizens, and achieving high levels of accessibility (Deutsche 1998), the revitalization of abandoned public spaces, and the strengthening of the local economy (Seifert and Stern 2005).
As an inspiration for art schools, read more about a transnational, public art project.
In the context of the transnational Play Mobile Project artists travel to more rural areas and create art in public spaces, for example, installations or performances, which are meant to attract the attention of the local community. Artists also invite locals to participate in collaborative art practices, for example, participatory theatre pieces, which are performed in different parts of the villages at the end of a project.
The project website describes sums up the idea behind Play Mobile Project:
“The idea of the Play! MOBILE project is to encourage cultural participation in micro regions of Europe. We believe that community art practice; creation of modifiable site-specific installations and the development of a participatory game as a platform for interaction between artist-artefact and public, offers a sophisticated and inclusive way for capacity building and development of new audiences.
By turning public spaces of visited settlements into playgrounds of contemporary art, we are aiming to present an alternative way of cultural consumption, a methodology to present contemporary artworks without the necessity of having all the satisfactory infrastructure. Therefore, the international team of artists – together with local youngsters from visited towns – will create a site specific interdisciplinary and participatory game, which will be adopted to the different small settlements of partnering countries, thus bringing contemporary art closer to its audience” (Play Mobile, n.d.).
Another inspiring example from Brooklyn, US.
Another inspirational project is the Laundromat Project from the early 90s in Brooklyn, US. It started a movement where art was placed in local laundry shops, in order to engage the community with art.
The Laundromat Project brings art into local laundry shops, to make the community more engaged with art. The project started in the 1990s in Brooklyn.
Journalist Emily Noko describes the project in an article for Next City as follows: “The Laundromat Project has actually never been a laundromat. The first public program, a fabric mural workshop, took place inside a Bed-Stuy senior center. Then the Create Change Artists-in-Residence program allowed artists to stage projects in laundromats across the city. “It ended up freeing us to actually think about the whole city,” Ilesanmi says. “Even since we pretty much haven’t looked back.” In 15 years the Laundromat Project has supported artists in all five boroughs through both fellowship and residency programs. Community-centered arts programming has happened inside libraries, community gardens, public plazas and in partnership with local cultural organizations.”
Both Institutes of Higher Arts Education and local communities can profit from collaborations. Future art universities should think of themselves as parts of local communities, which collaborate with other actors of the same network with goals for mutual benefit. This approach to formulating art universities’ identities has the potential to bridge the gap between Institutes of Higher Arts Education and local communities.
Community well-being is broadly defined as “the combination of social, economic, environmental, cultural, and political conditions identified by individuals and their communities as essential for them to flourish and fulfil their potential” (Wiseman and Brasher 2008, 358).
By this definition, community well-being can be linked to the arts. Why? While outcomes of artistic processes are open-ended and cannot be reduced to predicted benefits, studies have shown that art has the power to enhance health and well-being on the individual and the community level. This includes i.a. health prevention, mental health, belonging, economic well-being (Fancourt and Finn 2019) and resilience (Qu and Cheer 2021).
Outlined below are the most prominent results of arts and community engagement.
Interestingly enough, a survey conducted in the UK has found that people who reported depression and intense emotional loneliness would be more likely to engage with the arts. This indicates that art is often used as a medium for emotional regulation and soothing (Tymoszuk et al. 2021). Furthermore, art in community contexts can encourage and support interpersonal relationships where people increase confidence in each other, in themselves and groups and thus develop a sense of belonging to the community. This can contribute to the decrease of social isolation, facilitate social action and thus contribute to personal and community well-being (Johnson and Monney 2021, Fancourt and Finn 2019, Birchall et al. 2018, APPGAHW 2017).
Moreover, art practices in communities have the power to bridge existing gaps within communities and enhance integration and connection. Examples for (re-)creating such connections range from integrating people with dementia (Skinner et al. 2018) into the community to connecting different generations (Anderson et al. 2016), community members with and without disabilities (Smart et al. 2018, Spiegel et al. 2015) or police officers and community (Smigelsky 2016).
A project focussing on integrating people living with dementia in Toronto, Canada.
The Canadian National Ballet School started an online video dance program for older adults. The aim is to provide a “safe and accessible dance program that engages older adults in meaningful dance activity. Programming is designed for individual dancers, as well as for organizations in a variety of settings, including community spaces, retirement homes, long-term care centres, and more”, as the project website outlines.
The interdisciplinary researchers Skinner et al. (2018) address questions around how such dementia-friendly activities can be provided, by examining the effectiveness of video-streaming arts-based programmes with regard to social inclusion. They refer to the Sharing Dance Older Adults project as a case study. The study includes the perspectives of people living with dementia as well as community partners in a range of settings to better understand the contextual factors influencing the factors, which lead to the success or failure of a dance programme for people living with dementia and carers.
Read more information
An interesting project focussing on connecting different generations in Western Canada.
Anderson et al. (2016 ) describe the Intergenerational Theatre Group Project in their research paper:
“In response to publicity about the benefits of professionally led drama programs (Noice, Noice, Perrig-Chiello, & Perrig, 1999), the seniors’ association in a western Canadian city approached a university drama professor about initiating an older adult drama program. In 2001, the professionally led older adults’ drama performance group began. Six to 10 participants regularly performed Shakespeare- or fairy tale–inspired vignettes featuring well-known characters as older adults in settings such as a retirement residence. In 2006, university students joined the older adults. Older adults and university students participate in weekly ‘rehearsals’ that begin with theatre games, singing, and improv to create a playful atmosphere. Then, participants work together to develop ensemble-created plays. They reminisce about objects brought to the group by staff and tell personal narratives. Vignettes from a number of stories are worked into a meaningful storyline. The group hones the plays in rehearsals and 15 to 20 performances a year.”
The researchers conclude: “Participating in this intergenerational theatre group reduced ageism and improved intergenerational relationships. It increased older adults’ and university students’ well-being by building social networks, confidence, and self-esteem and developed a sense of social justice, empathy, and support for others.” (ibid)
Dive deeper into the case of the Intergenerational Theater Group by reading the study by Andersion et al. (2016).
A project in Toronto, Canada focussing on connecting community members with and without disabilities.
This article describes how service providers use a set of practical strategies to create an inclusive leisure space in Spiral Garden, an arts-mediated outdoor summer day program for children with and without disabilities.
An nationwide circus program promoting social solidarity and inclusion.
Researchers Spiegel et al. (2015) discuss in their article the concept of social circus programs, especially in regard to health equity focusing on the example of this project. The article shows possible social aspects of performance arts, provides an example of how governments may collaborate and also identifies the challenges of such projects.
The researchers describe that “Police–community relations have catapulted onto the national stage after several high-profile instances of alleged police brutality. Blame and hostility can be barriers to positive police–community relations. Playback is a form of audience-inspired, improvisational theatre designed to promote connectivity and empathy through storytelling.” (ibid.)
The art intervention brought together police officers with formerly incarcerated individuals and increased positive attitudes towards the other group in both directions.
Read more about the Playback Theatre for Police–Community Relations
The arts thus potentially have a strong impact on the community level as they have the power to strengthen the social fabric of a community. For example, the arts can serve communities as they “connect people and build interrelationships among our creative fires and imaginations outward through race, class, and gender” (Scher 2007, 5). This can foster tolerance and empathy and “open boundaries among cultures, […] disciplines, generations, and faiths” (ibid., see also Johnson and Monney 2021). Community art projects thus can actively contribute to challenging discrimination in communities (Wiseman and Brasher 2007, 3, Scher 2007, 5). Community arts can further increase agency for all people of the community and especially those otherwise subject to social exclusion and “can positively affect health and wellbeing because they can enable individuals and groups of people to develop narratives of action in response to social change” (Mulligan et al. 2008, 50) in a complex, globalized world.
Engaging with the arts within communities and the benefits of these practices are discussed with the use of different terminologies, for example, “community arts,” “socially-engaged art,” “community-based art initiatives,” “participatory arts-based research,” and “art activism”. Although the terminologies set varying foci “they share in common a desire to work collaboratively, creatively and artistically with communities in order to explore, communicate and address issues that are important to members of these communities, and a belief that the collaborative art-making process is at least as important as the ‘products’ created” (Johnson and Monney 2021).
Institutes of Higher Arts Education surrounded by and as part of local communities can contribute to the well-being of local communities by opening up to the community and rethinking their identity. Aren’t Institutes of Higher Arts Education a part of local communities? In identifying as part of these communities the collaboration with other parts of the community appears more natural.
Collaborative projects aiming for creating art together can be one of the multiple ways for Institutes of Higher Arts Education to enhance community well-being – an example of this is the Lata 65 project.
An inspiring example from Lisbon, Portugal.
Even though graffiti is the most prominent form of public art, it has a negative reputation, especially amongst older generations.
The project LATA 65 brings together locals over 65 years old with the most respected urban artists and offers graffiti workshops to senior citizens. Their mission is to democratise contemporary art, bring colour to neglected neighbourhoods, and create a bridge between generations and districts from different milieus.
Read the full article on the Lata 65 project by Lisa Goldapple (editor) in Atlas of the Future.
Community art has the power to initiate social change through participatory and co-creative practices.
Through these artistic processes, new perspectives and visions can arise and can be communicated through emotions and intellect alike. This can help people become more thoughtful, open to change, and create new respectful relationships across differences. In this case, art is not a product, but a way of thinking and creating meaning within a community. Insights from a group of community activists and educators show that community art can help create safe spaces where one can find trust and embrace processes of change. Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to slow down, reflect, record the past and envision and shape the future as well as to experience appreciation, healing, and empowerment (Scher, 2007).
Silke Lange is an Associate Dean for Learning, Teaching, and Enhancement at the University of the Arts, London and was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 4th of May 2021.
Artistic input within collaborations with local communities can encourage public discourse on local developments, unrecognized cultural topics, and social aspects. These participatory and co-produced approaches can give a voice to unnoticed and disadvantaged minorities and use the public space to discuss local issues. In this context, historian and art critic Rosalyn Deutsche (1996) distinguishes the audience from the public, where the latter emerges only when citizens participate in the political discussion. “Art that is ‘public’ participates in, or creates, a political space and is itself a space where we assume political identities” (ibid., 289). Furthermore, current research by architect Miodrag Mitrašinović and colleagues (2021) shows that places of “healing and communal coming together” can be created, building the skills and resources of local communities “in order to enable the appropriation of public space for economic sustenance and cultural growth” (ibid.).
An impressive example of artistic intervention in public space.
The project started with the installation of a mobile interview station at the central Wiener Platz, where pedestrians were invited to speak about the district. The content was edited in a journalistic and artistic manner before being projected onto two very big, opposing façades at the Wiener Platz, a central square in the district of Mülheim.
As the projection lit up the district of Mülheim, its people became both, objects and mediators. FAÇADE DIALOGS provided local people with the chance to share their personal voices and discuss relevant topics concerning the district’s developments. They had the possibility to directly articulate their views in the way that mattered the most: in the actual space, they were talking about.
Moreover, stakeholders interviewed by the FAST45 project recognise an ongoing and futures-oriented discourse around the accessibility of the arts and within artistic spaces or institutions. They highlight that increasing the accessibility of the art sector is an urgent requirement and a growing trend. People do want to connect to arts and culture!
Consequently, art schools need to reevaluate arts educational practices and teaching content in order to equip future artists with skills that “enable them to connect with communities and diverse kinds of situations in society.” This includes integrating “particular pedagogical skills into the training of artists” as one FAST45 interviewee highlights. These skills and experiences support students in creating and exhibiting their art in an accessible and inclusive way. If these approaches become common among art school graduates, this might improve the accessibility of art in culture on a larger scale as well.
Although we live in a globalized world, local conditions and needs differ. These must be taken into account if we want to live in a sustainable world in the future.
The FAST45 interview partner Jiří Tintěra shares some of his experiences with different local architectural needs in the capital of Estonia, Tallinn and the Estonian town of Valga, far away from Tallinn on the border to Latvia. Here Jiří Tintěra involves architecture students because he sees benefits for the community of Valga and also in terms of education and practical experience for the students.
Jiří Tintěra is an architect, municipality architect, and senior lecturer at Tallinn University of Technology. He was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 27th of April 2021.
Specific areas have specific needs regarding architecture and living standards including sustainable living. Thus what architecture proves sustainable may differ locally as in the case of Valga. The architects in this town need to be sensitive to the specific local needs and complexities and to develop new ideas on how to approach these needs instead of just building new houses:
Jiří Tintěra is an architect, municipality architect, and senior lecturer at Tallinn University of Technology. He was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 27th of April 2021.
Jiří Tintěra is an architect, municipality architect, and senior lecturer at Tallinn University of Technology. He was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 27th of April 2021.
In Olaszliszka, Hungary, the HELLO WOOD architecture studio carried out a project, which consisted of building a bridge for pedestrians and as a result, upgrading the everyday life of locals. It was also a great design and construction exercise for design students who contributed.
HELLO WOOD is a Hungarian architecture studio designing and executing smaller and larger scale projects. As a socially responsible project, they often collaborate with locals in their design process, they are present at every stage of the project and they organize workshops for university students to share their philosophy.
Initially, the playground in Olaszliszka, Hungary was in an old and worn-out state. The Art & Design students of MOME University from Budapest designed and built a new wooden playground, taking into account the needs and wishes of local children.
In towns or rural areas suffering from depopulation, institutes of higher arts education can be a factor, which pulls younger generations into the area – particularly art students, who move to the universities’ surroundings for their studies and ideally stay after graduation. This can contribute to the regeneration of a population. Art student graduates can also aid economic growth by creating new employment possibilities or attractive spaces for economical possibilities.
The studio based in Miskolc, Hungary is a great inspiration for possible art school projects. Their designers create products that can be manufactured by an autistic community, creating jobs and income for them.
The enterprise website describes the idea behind MAACRAFT:
“MAACRAFT is a design and social enterprise founded in 2012 as the social workshop of the Autistic Foundation of Miskolc. We offer high quality homewares and delicates products, concurrently familiarize autistic and mentally disabled people with the world of working and its joy. By gardening and learning artisan techniques autistic employees can improve their cognitive and manual skills and also gain knowledge about visual culture. The products are designed by the industrial designer, Daniel Szalkai and developed to manufactured products by conductors and professionals. With every puchased MAACRAFT product you support the workshop’s young disabled adults.”
Collaborations with local communities can open up new perspectives for the students as they gain insights into alternative sectors and work or cooperations with their surrounding communities and public spaces. Such collaborations may lead students to redefine their ideas of success within future employment and change their future plans. Ankna Arockiam, a PhD student at the Royal Conservatory of Scotland in Glasgow suggests in the following quote:
Ankna Arockiam is a PhD student at the Royal Conservatory of Scotland in Glasgow. She is the founder of a south Asian women’s singing group, and co-founder of the platform Shared Narratives. Ankna Arockiam was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 29th of April 2021.
Artists and designers in alternative sectors are of growing importance. More and more art university graduates enter into dialogue with politicians and/or the public sector. Creative skills and transdisciplinary collaboration are relevant in combating the challenges of the future. We will not resolve issues like climate change with old ways of thinking. The future needs openness and creativity! Artists bring both aspects into transdisciplinary teams (Hale and Woronkowicz 2021). While artists are already equipped with creativity, there are additional skills and practical experiences that may enhance artists’ future work in the public sector. Such skill sets can be acquired and facilitated when students work on community projects during their studies.
Jiří Tintěra is an architect, municipality architect, and senior lecturer at Tallinn University of Technology. He was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 27th of April 2021.
Hans Robertus is a design thinking expert. The FAST45 Knowledge Alliance interviewed Robertus on the 4th of Mai 2021.
Marten Kaevats is an architect, urban planner, and community activist, at the time of the interview he worked as Estonia’s National Digital Advisor. The FAST45 Knowledge Alliance interviewed Marten Kaevats on the 7th of May 2021.
One example of designers cooperating with the public sector is the Estonian Public Sector Innovation Team. One of their projects is focused on designing a better mental health environment for schools. The interdisciplinary team consists of public sector representatives from different ministries, graphic designers, government agencies and design student interns. Our stakeholder Daniel Kotsjuba participates in the project as a graphic designer:
Daniel Kotsjuba is a graphic designer working as part of the Estonian Public Sector Innovation Team. He was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 23rd of April 2021.
The skills of artists and designers are becoming more relevant to the public sector. Kotsjuba sees the need for IHAE to better implement those new skill sets in the curriculum:
Daniel Kotsjuba is a graphic designer working as part of the Estonian Public Sector Innovation Team. He was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 23rd of April 2021.
Working on community-relevant projects
Building awareness
Curating empathy
Promoting openness towards new, diverse situations and communities
Becoming aware of local needs and developing communication with people, who are not in the arts, e.g. local municipalities
Teaching strategic thinking
Connecting students to their roots and local traditions
Transdisciplinary communication and project work
Immersion into new, unfamiliar contexts
Training critical and out-of-the-box thinking
Delving into more practical work
Serving as an intermediary and connector
Sharing insights into the collaborative process
Integrating local cultures and knowledges into the activities and curriculum of art university through workshops, teaching and projects builds connections between Institutes of Higher Arts Education and the world’s needs and perspectives. This can be highly inspirational to students, teachers, and processes and help art universities to bridge the often perceived gap between the arts and society. Filling that gap provides Institutes of Higher Arts Education and their students with the opportunity to become part of communities and to have a bigger impact on society. Community-based art education can also help to bring new knowledge into an art university, which is unique to specific communities and not recognised within the institutions themselves (Ulbricht 2005). Exploring artistic teaching practices from various cultures and different backgrounds allows for the expansion of art education beyond formally recognised academia.
One inspiring example is a project, where art educators from Northern Illinois University collaborated with members of a local Latino community in order to create an Aztec-inspired mural (Staikidis et al. 2009).
Researcher and artist Staikidis from Northern Illinois University describes in her research paper (2009) a project, where she and her students collaborated with teenagers and members of a local Latino community in order to create an Aztec-inspired mural. Inspired by the artistic practices of Mayan painters, which integrated mentorship-based, decentralised learning methods, they developed a collaborative model of work where skills and knowledge were mutually exchanged between all members (ibid).
In the context of Institutes of Higher Arts Education currently, partnerships with local communities are often less supported than for instance partnerships with creative industries. Besides this prioritisation, there are various other factors that lead to a lack of collaboration between Institutes of Higher Arts Education and their local communities. In the worst case, this results in a feeling of disconnection between both sides. A desirable future for Institutes of Higher Arts Education and the role of art in society involves addressing these issues in order to establish spaces for fruitful collaborations and new experiences on both sides.
In regions suffering from the consequences of depopulation, ageing and/or socio-economic decline, universities can help regenerate a city as a pull factor for younger generations and creatives. For this to be successful, it is of importance to create attractive employment possibilities in the region for graduates. Otherwise, it is only a short-term measurement as students will leave once they have completed their studies. Development and growth of the cultural and creative sector proved to have a revitalisation effect on surrounding areas in general. Once the process starts it allows for the possibility of more job opportunities for people and businesses to become attracted to the area (Lhermitte et al. 2015).
But – as FAST45 stakeholders emphasise – the establishment of a strong creative and cultural sector with job opportunities that encourage people to stay also needs sustainable support from local authorities. Otherwise, promising approaches are likely to not survive in the long run.
In higher education a clear trend towards internationalisation implying high mobility of teaching personnel, students and researchers have been observed. For Instituted of Higher Arts Educcation international collaborations and exchange is of high importance, for example, in terms of reputation and funding (Wihlborg and Robson 2018). While it can be an enriching factor to bring international people and topics into the local region, the orientation towards the global also has the potential to challenge the local integration of Institutes of Higher Arts Education.
For example, the integration of international students into the local (campus) community can be challenging and requires management and responsibility by local university actors such as student associations, faculty members, housing and university services (Van Mol 2019).
Nicolas Standaert, a professor of Sinology and expert in lifelong learning at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, underlines that it is important to find a balance between the local and the global involvement of Institutes of Higher Arts Education:
Nicolas Standaert is a Professor of Sinology and an expert in lifelong learning at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Nicolas Standaert spoke to the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 7th of Mai 2021.
Establishing collaborations and enhancing the accessibility of art academies needs funding. For art faculties, cultural policies are an important step toward funding. The dean of the Fine Arts Faculty of the Basque Country Arantza Lauzirika is actively seeking to establish a working group to develop a cultural policy within the university. But she faces challenges:
Arantza Lauzirika is dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country and was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 30th of April 2021.
A common criticism we have received from university stakeholders is that collaborations with local councils and municipalities often only emerge if it is related to the economic growth of the region.
When an Institutes of Higher Arts Education establishes collaborative projects with communities, the impact of the projects depends on critical and reflective concepts and methods of execution – especially when working together with marginalized communities. In discussions with FAST45 stakeholders, the need to establish a cultural policy discussing ethical questions of arts in Institutes of Higher Arts Education in collaboration with the community was identified to be of high importance.
Participation and Co-Design aim to mitigate the risk of superficial collaborations. Nonetheless, participatory methods are subject to power dynamics between artists and participants. These power relations can “shape the nature of the project in ways that gloss over social problems and paint (at times literally) a harmonious image of community life as opposed to highlighting social problems and addressing their causes” (Webhi et al. 2016). Teachers and other practitioners, who apply participatory approaches need to be aware of power dynamics, make them a topic and in advance of a project should consider who they choose to be participants, as this decision itself can shape such specific dynamics of exchange.
Likewise, the artists involved in community projects should be aware of their position and critically question their own methods. Furthermore, the desire for status and recognition as well as the recurrent assumption that only artists are capable of creativity within a community can potentially paralyze the abilities of all project participants (Scher, 2007).
To mitigate those risks, artists and art schools who are working with a community should be aware that they are not superior. Moreover, they should not patronize community members but develop a non-hierarchical exchange based on mutual consent. It is important to be aware of the impacts that specific modes of exchange may have on both sides (Arenyeka 2018).
Arantza Lauzirika is dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country and was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 30th of April 2021.
The building of the art institution itself can have potentially delimiting effects on the accessibility of Institutes of Higher Arts Education for local community members.
For example, a special and uniquely designed building might appear intimidating or not welcoming to the local community. In the same way, a strikingly beautiful building can separate Institutes of Higher Arts Education members and artists from their surroundings, since the building’s facilities may limit the need for external exploration and even create a sense of superiority.
Access to the arts is not equal among all groups in society. Disprivileged groups in particular often have a more limited access to the arts, even though they would potentially profit the most in terms of well-being. While this is already a severe problem, some even observe a trend toward a growing participation gap. This is apparent in the trend of social facilities such as public libraries becoming dismantled (Neelands et al., 2015). Furthermore, there is a common general assumption “that the poorest in society are significantly less likely to engage with the arts than the wealthy” (Johnson and Monney 2021). This potentially leads to the expectation that communities from economically weaker regions will be less interested in the arts and thus also less willing to cooperate with Institutes of Higher Arts Education.
A recent study draws a more complex picture of the problem. A qualitative investigation in form of arts-based, participatory research conducted by Johnson and Monney (2021) found that identifiable barriers such as long-distance travel costs, entry fees, illness, the mental capacity required for engagement, and the presumption that the (high) arts are designated only for wealthier social groups, holds people back from engaging with the arts. Once these barriers are bridged there is a high chance that people will become more interested and engaged.
An example of a community-university research partnership is the one established between the Hangleton & Knoll Project and the University of Brighton, UK. The partnership applies collaborative poetics as a participatory art method. The project “demonstrate[s] the enormous potential that can be unlocked when universities and local communities collaborate creatively as equal partners” and “suggest[s] that interest and engagement with the arts amongst economically-deprived communities may be much greater than is often reported” (ibid).
An example of a community-university research partnership is the one established between the Hangleton & Knoll Project and the University of Brighton, UK. The partnership applies collaborative poetics as a participatory art method. The project "demonstrate[s] the enormous potential that can be unlocked when universities and local communities collaborate creatively as equal partners'' and "suggest[s] that interest and engagement with the arts amongst economically-deprived communities may be much greater than is often reported" (Johnson and Monney 2021).
The Hangelton & Knoll Project is a community development charity in South East England. They are a well-established and resident-centred community organisation in the area working with various regional partners.
One of those partners is the University of Brighton. The collaboration is mostly focused on research projects, such as an investigation on the accessibility of art.
This partnership is part of the Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP) of the University. Other project partners in this programme are for example a living lab on tackling loneliness or a collaboration with a local harbour on microplastic.
In this programme, they also support students in community volunteering by giving them “recognition for volunteering through accredited modules” or working with PhD students “wanting to undertake co-produced research with community partners” (CUPP Website).
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The first step to bridging the perceived gap between Institutes of Higher Arts Education and society for Institutes of Higher Arts Education is to identify themselves as part of the local community. This leads art schools to realise that they benefit from the well-being of the community as well since their students, teachers, and staff are a part of it.
This step may seem obvious, but if it is not considered, any community collaboration will stem from a disconnected position – one that may even be degrading to the local.
Ankna Arockiam is a PhD student at the Royal Conservatory of Scotland in Glasgow. She is the founder of a south Asian women’s singing group, and co-founder of the platform Shared Narratives. Ankna Arockiam was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 29th of April 2021.
Funding and resources are important aspects to consider when thinking about community projects.
One positive example is the Transfer Department at KONRAD WOLF University in Babelsberg, Germany, which is well funded and supported and hence inspires and motivates teachers and staff to get active:
Susanne Stürmer is the president of Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in Germany. She was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 14th of April 2021.
FAST45 stakeholders have discussed how community projects can be incorporated into the curriculum of Institutes of Higher Arts Education. It is apparent that the future demands artists to take up more diverse roles and that art itself must be reintegrated into society as many agreed that community projects should be an essential part of the future Institutes of Higher Arts Education curriculum.
Moreover, community collaborations should become a relevant part of the culture and identity of Institutes of Higher Arts Education. This way, active social engagement would be integrated into the curriculum as something that is not optional but an essential part of IHAE’s education and culture. That should also be reflected in how funding is distributed within Institutes of Higher Arts Education.
Ankna Arockiam is a PhD student at the Royal Conservatory of Scotland in Glasgow. She is the founder of a south Asian women’s singing group, and co-founder of the platform Shared Narratives. Ankna Arockiam was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 29th of April 2021.
Community Learning or Service Learning is an educational practice, where students immerse themselves into a community. This practice is often used in the humanities. Nicolas Standaert, Professor of Sinology and expert in lifelong learning at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven has experience with such methods and explains how art students can benefit from it as well:
Nicolas Standaert is a Professor of Sinology and an expert in lifelong learning at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Nicolas Standaert was interviewed by t he FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 7th of Mai 2021.
In his article, J. Ulbricht (2005), Professor in the Visual Art Studies and Art Education Division at the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin argues that community learning or ethnography is a valuable practice for community-based art education. One example given is a photography project, which captures local murals, a form of community-based art; or an exhibition, which communicates relevant issues that arise during interviews and time spent with community members.
Another idea of how Institutes of Higher Arts Education can become more connected to society is the decentralization of education so that all universities are not limited to one urban area. This is an important aspect to consider, especially in the field of sustainable architecture as Jiří Tintěra, explains:
Jiří Tintěra is an architect, municipality architect, and senior lecturer at Tallinn University of Technology. He was interviewed by the FAST45 Knowledge Alliance on the 27th of April 2021.
The STEAM education approach is a transdisciplinary learning approach, which potentially empowers students to be curious learners with a focus on creativity and the arts. This educational approach is not yet well known in universities but is common in primary schools. Amongst many fruitful topics, STEAM focuses on collaborations with local communities and approaching education in a community context.
STEAM provides concrete examples and instructions of how learning, studying and active participation can take place within a community. This could provide benefits to not only the community but the participating students and institutions. STEAM can serve as an inspiration for Institutes of Higher Arts Education to reach out to local people and spaces.
We have put together a collection of fruitful and inspirational examples for collaborations with local communities. Dive into the diversity of remarkable projects already taking place at the interface of IHAE and local communities and get inspired!
The Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in Germany is part of a local innovation network region 4.0. The project region 4.0 is situated in a rural area 100 km from Berlin. As part of this project, the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF collaborates with local schools and teachers to develop participatory and visual communication projects. Children and teenagers from the local region present various local innovations in videos or podcasts. They are moderators, interviewers or reporters. The teenagers develop storylines in cooperation with experts from the Film University. Through such an experience, they are empowered to become local communicators of the innovations. The goal of region 4.0 is to support identity-creating innovation culture in the rural region.
At Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design the “MOME Movement” has announced a contest, which accepts applications from Hungarian non-profit organisations which require support in their visual communication. The journalist Levente describes in an article for the online magazine Hyper&Hyper: “They primarily seek to give a hand to
organizations pursuing public interest activities, which, for budgetary or other reasons, don’t have a visual brand identity yet. […] the MOME Movement initiative shows how young talents can do charity work and provide real help to organizations that are working for a better world. At first, the movement was running as a student-founded grassroots initiative. By now—without losing its momentum—it grew into an academic course to design brand identities.”
The Design for Health and Wellbeing (DHW) Lab in Auckland, was originally a collaborative project between the AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies between the AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies and the Auckland District Health Board (Auckland DHB) inside of and the Auckland District Health Board (Auckland DHB) inside of the central-local hospital. The lab aspires to be a “design space in which designers, students, patients and hospital staff could work together to identify and address contemporary healthcare issues in innovative ways” and was
created together with members of those groups. It can be described as a co-design (and co-designed) space (Reay et al. 2016).
In the context of the transnational Play Mobile Project artists travel to more rural areas and create art in public spaces, for example, installations or performances, which are meant to attract the attention of the local community. Artists also invite locals to participate in collaborative art practices, for example, participatory theatre pieces, which are performed in different parts of the villages at the end of a project.
The project website describes sums up the idea behind Play Mobile Project: “The idea of the Play! MOBILE project is to encourage cultural participation in micro regions of Europe. We believe that community art practice; creation of modifiable site-specific installations and the development of a participatory game as a platform for interaction between artist-artefact and public, offers a sophisticated and inclusive way for capacity building and development of new audiences.
By turning public spaces of visited settlements into playgrounds of contemporary art, we are aiming to present an alternative way of cultural consumption, a methodology to present contemporary artworks without the necessity of having all the satisfactory infrastructure. Therefore, the international team of artists – together with local youngsters from visited towns – will create a site specific interdisciplinary and participatory game, which will be adopted to the different small settlements of partnering countries, thus bringing contemporary art closer to its audience.”
Cup4Creativity invited design students from the Budapest University of Technology industrial design to plan and design the space for an art-tech centre, which will serve the purpose of inspiring creativity within local people in the future. The vision is that the art-tech-centre will become a space of art and encounters.
The website urban innovation action (UIA), an initiative of the European Union, sums up the idea behind CUP 4 CREATIVITY: “CUP 4 CREATIVITY integrates passive consumption with creative contribution, lowers access barriers and involves people exposed to digital isolation into community-sourced activities. By sparking dormant creativity, residents of Újbuda also become mentally fit and shielded against contemporary urban stress factors. At the same time, they become connected, encouraged and anchored contributors of the Újbuda community and embrace its social and cultural identity.”
During their architecture studies in the Architecture School in Budapest, students are invited to participate in summer camps, which follow an exchange method, where small villages or rural local communities communicate a need and the Architecture School reacts to this need with an artistic intervention. An example is that a local community asked for a puppet theatre. During the semester a few students designed the puppet theatre with the help of a professor. During the summer a group of students went to the village to construct it. In return, the community provided accommodation, food and materials and additional help.
This is still a common practice, which can apply to a wide variety of local needs and multiple places. More examples of such projects are: include building homes for homeless people in Budapest, i-assistance with the construction of a children’s home centre in Perbál, and building a garden for a high school in Sárospatak along with local children.
Raumlabor in Berlin is an architecture studio with a focus on projects, creating common spaces for local communities in cooperation with these communities (participatory approach). While in Raumlabor there are no IHAE involved, the work of Raumlabor can serve as an inspiring example for creative projects in cooperation with and within local communities. An example of Raumlabor’s work is the Cantiere Barca project in Italy, which is described on the Raumlabor homepage:
“The goal was to develop with the community a process of re-appropriation and exploitation of urban space. Starting from the old social centre, with its very questionable qualities, we developed and build different objects (benches, a stage, a soccer field , hiding-places) to turn this common space into a meeting point for the neighborhood. In the building process the youngsters will learned step by step how to handle woodworking tools. Through the process of realising a collective idea the participants experienced that it is possible to make changes in their living environment.”
FAÇADE DIALOGS is a participatory art project by the audio-visual art collective Xenorama, exhibited in a public space in Cologne in 2015. The projection mapping offered various perspectives out of and on the diverse district of Cologne Mülheim.
The project started with the installation of a mobile interview station at the central Wiener Platz, where pedestrians were invited to speak about the district. The content was edited in a journalistic and artistic manner before being projected onto two very big, opposing façades at the Wiener Platz, a central square in the district of Mülheim.
As the projection lit up the district of Mülheim, its people became both the objects and mediators. FAÇADE DIALOGS provided local people with the chance to share their personal voices and discuss relevant topics concerning the district’s developments. They had the possibility to directly articulate their views in the way that mattered the most: in the actual space, they were talking about.
The enterprise website describes the idea behind MAACRAFT: “MAACRAFT is a design and social enterprise founded in 2012 as the social workshop of the Autistic Foundation of Miskolc. We offer high quality homewares and delicates products, concurrently familiarize autistic and mentally disabled people with the world of working and its joy. By gardening and learning artisan techniques autistic employees can improve their cognitive and manual skills and also gain knowledge about visual culture. The products are designed by the industrial designer, Daniel Szalkai and developed to manufactured products by conductors and professionals. With every puchased MAACRAFT product you support the workshop’s young disabled adults.”
PAN Studio is a creative studio, which develops experiences at the intersection of theatre, technology, games and public art.
Ben Parker, a co-founder of PAN Studio, describes the project Hello Lamp Post by PAN Studio in a blog post on City Monitor: “Hello Lamp Post is our playful, citywide installation inviting people to strike up conversations with familiar street furniture using the text message function of their mobile phones. Most street furniture anywhere in the world has a unique code for maintenance purposes. Hello Lamp Post repurposes these, allowing passers-by to identify an object and ‘wake it up’, prompting it to ask its caller a few questions. By giving specific personalities to specific objects, we are asking citizens to reflect on where they live and what they feel about the other inhabitants of the city.”
Playful City is a non-profit organisation in Ireland, organizing playful events and creating small-scale installations with the aim to introduce more variety into local communities’ lives. The projects themselves are not artistically oriented, but provide a good example of how creative solutions can influence the morale of a local population.
Even though graffiti is the most prominent form of public art, it has a negative reputation, especially amongst older generations. The project LATA 65 brings together locals over 65 years old with the most respected urban artists and offers graffiti workshops to senior citizens. Their mission is to democratise contemporary art, bring colour to neglected neighbourhoods, and create a bridge between generations and districts from different milieus.
Hello Wood is a Hungarian architecture studio designing and executing smaller and larger scale projects. As a socially responsible project, they often collaborate with locals in their design process, they are present at every stage of the project and they organize workshops for university students to share their philosophy.
a) bridge, Olaszliszka, Hungary
The initial situation was that the only bridge in the village of Olaszliszka was for cars. There was no path for pedestrians, which made local life uncomfortable and dangerous. During this workshop the students from the University of Pécs built a wooden bridge next to the old bridge, to make locals’ lives easier.
b) playground, Olaszliszka, Hungary
Initially, the playground in Olaszliszka, Hungary was in an old and worn-out state. The Art & Design students of MOME University from Budapest designed and built a new wooden playground, taking into account the needs and wishes of local children.
The Laundromat Project brings art into local laundry shops, to make the community more engaged with art. The project started in the 1990s in Brooklyn.
Journalist Emily Noko describes the project in an article for Next City as follows: “The Laundromat Project has actually never been a laundromat. The first public program, a fabric mural workshop, took place inside a Bed-Stuy senior center. Then the Create Change Artists-in-Residence program allowed artists to stage projects in laundromats across the city. “It ended up freeing us to actually think about the whole city,” Ilesanmi says. “Even since we pretty much haven’t looked back.” In 15 years the Laundromat Project has supported artists in all five boroughs through both fellowship and residency programs. Community-centered arts programming has happened inside libraries, community gardens, public plazas and in partnership with local cultural organizations.”
As described on the school’s website, “Girls Garage is a nonprofit design and construction school for girls and gender-expansive youth ages 9-18. They provide free and low-cost programs in carpentry, welding, architecture, engineering and activist art to a diverse community of 300 students per year. Integrating technical skills, unconditional support, and community leadership, their programs equip youth with the personal power and literal power tools to build the world they want to see.”
The European Architecture Students Assembly (EASA) is a non-profit network of architecture students. The network organises summer schools for the students, which take place in different locations all over Europe. As described on the EASA website, the students live together as a self-maintained “utopian community”, with the purpose to experience alternative education. “EASA gives a chance to experience architecture in a way that universities are yet not providing. Bringing students to a certain context, defined by the location and theme of the assembly, where they have to raise architectural questions themselves and investigate them through the eyes of all European cultures simultaneously. Being their own educators, students then elaborate the answers and bring them to reality.”
In 2020 the summer school’s name was “Apathy Residency” and took place in Valga, Estonia. The goal of the summer school is described on the EASA website as follows: “Apathy residency is a local EASA event mainly targeted towards building a stronger architecture student community in the Baltic region. The residency welcomes everyone curious about space and holds several workshops, lectures and activities on the topics Valga has to offer.”
For more information
In Ecuador, the nationwide circus program “Sonrie Ecuador” was funded and organised by the government in 2011 with the aim of promoting social solidarity and inclusion. Programs are currently being offered to street-involved youth, as well as children from marginalised communities and adults with disabilities.
Researchers Spiegel et al. (2015) discuss in their article the concept of social circus programs, especially in regard to health equity focussing on the example of this project. The article shows possible social aspects of performance arts, provides an example of how governments may collaborate and also identifies the challenges of such projects.
This community participatory research project from Canada brings together different generations to form a professionally led intergenerational theatre group, including both older members of the community and students.
Anderson et al. (2016 ) describe the intergenerational theatre group project in their research paper: “In response to publicity about the benefits of professionally led drama programs (Noice, Noice, Perrig-Chiello, & Perrig, 1999), the seniors’ association in a western Canadian city approached a university drama professor about initiating an older adult drama program. In 2001, the professionally led older adults’ drama performance group began. Six to 10 participants regularly performed Shakespeare- or fairy tale–inspired vignettes featuring well-known characters as older adults in settings such as a retirement residence. In 2006, university students joined the older adults. Older adults and university students participate in weekly “rehearsals” that begin with theatre games, singing, and improv to create a playful atmosphere. Then, participants work together to develop ensemble-created plays. They reminisce about objects brought to the group by staff and tell personal narratives. Vignettes from a number of stories are worked into a meaningful story line. The group hones the plays in rehearsals and 15 to 20 performances a year.” The researchers conclude: “Participating in this intergenerational theatre group reduced ageism and improved intergenerational relationships. It increased older adults’ and university students’ well-being by building social networks, confidence, and self-esteem and developed a sense of social justice, empathy, and support for others.”
The Canadian National Ballet School started an online video dance program for older adults. The aim is to provide a “safe and accessible dance program that engages older adults in meaningful dance activity. Programming is designed for individual dancers, as well as for organizations in a variety of settings, including community spaces, retirement homes, long-term care centres, and more”, as the project website outlines.
The interdisciplinary researchers Skinner et al. (2018) address questions around how such dementia-friendly activities can be provided, by examining the effectiveness of video-streaming arts-based programmes with regard to social inclusion. They refer to the Sharing Dance Older Adults project as a case study. The study includes the perspectives of people living with dementia as well as community partners in a range of settings to better understand the contextual factors influencing the factors, which lead to the success or failure of a dance programme for people living with dementia and carers.
This project focused on creating “an inclusive leisure space in Spiral Garden, an arts-mediated outdoor summer day program for children with and without disabilities” (Smart et al. 2018). It shows how service providers use arts-mediated methods. Spiral Garden is an integrated outdoor art, garden and play program “situated in the ‘backyard’ of a large pediatric rehabilitation hospital located in an urban setting” (ibid.). The activities, staff members and the garden space aim at creating an engaging, fun and inclusive experience for the children.
This article describes how service providers use a set of practical strategies to create an inclusive leisure space in Spiral Garden, an arts-mediated outdoor summer day program for children with and without disabilities.
This theatre project was part of a community-based participatory research by Smigelsky et al. (2016). It was a collaboration of the Memphis Police Department with the theatre organisation Playback Memphis. The researchers describe that “Police–community relations have catapulted onto the national stage after several high-profile instances of alleged police brutality. Blame and hostility can be barriers to positive police–community relations. Playback is a form of audience-inspired, improvisational theater designed to promote connectivity and empathy through storytelling”. The art intervention brought together police officers with formerly incarcerated individuals and increased positive attitudes towards the other group in both directions.
Researcher and artist Staikidis from Northern Illinois University describes in her research paper a project, in which she and her students collaborated with teenagers and members of a local Latino community in order to create an Aztec-inspired mural. Inspired by the artistic practices of Mayan painters, which integrated mentorship-based, decentralised learning methods, they developed a collaborative model of work where skills and knowledge were mutually exchanged between all members (Staikidis et al. 2009).
The Hangelton & Knoll Project is a community development charity in South East England. They are a well-established and resident-centred community organisation in the area working with various regional partners. One of those partners is the University of Brighton. The collaboration is mostly focused on research projects, such as an investigation of the accessibility of art.
This partnership is part of the Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP) of the University. Other project partners in this programme are for example a living lab on tackling loneliness or a collaboration with a local harbour on microplastic. In this programme, they also support students in community volunteering by giving them “recognition for volunteering through accredited modules” or working with PhD students “wanting to undertake co-produced research with community partners” (CUPP Website).
The Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM in the US provides an inspirational resource on how to connect with communities through arts integration and how to bring STEAM outside of the classroom into community settings. It also touches on the different benefits and potentials of those approaches. Approaches practised in STEAM could fruitfully be implemented at IHAE and help to better cooperate with and integrate into local communities.
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