1 The Idea
In recent years artists, curators and commissioners have increasingly
used contemporary art to shed light on the decline of traditional
rural structures, or have chosen to intervene with participatory
practises to alleviate some problems associated with the dominance
of the urban over the rural. Village Convention: Contextual
Arts in Rural Environments was a three-day international convention/workshop
focusing on the particular issues related to contextual art
practice and production in rural environments. It addressed
issues around the vitality and sustainability of village life
in the context of modern pressures on the community, and to
strengthen the debate about how contemporary art can contribute
to village life. The aim of the convention was to support
and create an international professional network amongst practitioners
addressing the rural as a context for contemporary art production.
The convention provided an opportunity for artists to share
information, develop national and European networks and to
discuss issues arising from personal experiences of rural
art production and to set this in a European context.
2 Development
2.1 Collaborators
General Public Agency devised and organised the Convention
in collaboration with the European cultural organisation myvillages.org.
It took place at Ditchling Museum in Ditchling, East Sussex,
UK.
2.2 Participants
A list of about 40 participants was drawn up and invited,
comprising mostly of British and European practitioners, but
also of relevant curators and commissioners.
Local artists suggested by the Arts Council were also invited.
See the list of participants at the end of this document.
2.3 Structure
The Convention was a practitioner-led and non-hierarchic meeting
of like-minded spirits.
It was centred around three workshops focusing on:
· The Representation of the Village/Villager
· Village Business: Informal Economy and Social Exchange
· The rural as a location for contextual art practice
Each issue was introduced by two artist presentations, which
served as case studies and illustrative material.
In addition two keynote speeches by internationally renowned
researchers gave a theoretical overview of the issues at stake.
In between the workshop sessions both guided walks by artist
Jo Roberts and less formal walks through Ditchling and its
surrounding countryside provided informal opportunities for
discussions, collaborative thinking and peer-to-peer learning.
A dinner on Saturday night allowed for a more intimate atmosphere,
making it easy to connect between and establish new networks.
The event closed with a Public Event at Ditchling Museum,
to which local artists, regional curators and commissioners,
local authority officers, rural representatives, and, of course,
all villagers were invited. The Public Event functioned as
an informal place to meet and exchange with the participants.
2.4 Fundraising
The core grant was given by the Arts Council of England (£12,000).
Smaller sums were granted by the UK Royal Netherlands Embassy
(£1,500), All Ways Learning, a SE England-based organisation
promoting professional development for the arts (£1,000),
and the Austrian Cultural Institute London (£500). The
Goethe Institute offered to cover for two flights from Germany
to the UK.
2.5 Location
Ditchling Museum was found to be the ideal location. Director
Hilary Williams had recently commissioned artist Jo Roberts
to do a project to explore the village's history, which was
shown at the Museum a few months earlier.
The decision to stage the convention in Ditchling was informed
by the village’s history as home to the Guild of St
Joseph and St Dominic, an early 19th century artistic community
founded by Eric Gill, the celebrated typographer, sculptor
and engraver.
Ditchling is closely linked to the intentions of the Art and
Crafts movement who has established a very distinctive model
of cultural production at the beginning of the 20th century.
The issue of the rural as a place for art practice was locally
and historically rooted and urged for a contemporary reconsideration.
The welcome session and introductory keynote talk took place
in the museum, as well as Sunday's Public Event. In between
we hired the school hall for two days for the workshops and
breakout sessions.
2.6 Marketing
The Convention coincided with the Brighton Festival. Ditchling
is only 8 miles from Brighton, and the Convention was listed
in the Fringe Festival programme. The Public Event was also
advertised in Art Monthly.
2.7 Local Strategy
The decision was taken to arrange for all the catering to
be arranged locally, in accordance with the belief that any
initiative should always benefit the local economy first.
The organisers and all participants, numbering over 40 people,
were all accommodated in local B&Bs, and were ferried
around in private cars and local taxis.
3 The Event
41 participants (including the organisers) descended on the
small village of Ditchling on Friday 20th May 2005. A welcome
session in Ditchling Museum was followed by an introduction
into the subject matter by the internationally renowned writer
and researcher Francois Matarasso, who gave a summary of the
rural arts debate by providing many examples of its historical
development and its present state.
Over the following two days a variety of different approaches
were represented through a series of talks, workshops and
artist presentations, including "A Village Does Nothing",
a film by Austrian composer and film maker Elisabeth Schimana,
"One Stop Shop", an informal-economy project in
Ireland by UK-based artist Amy Plant, and a presentation by
curator Adam Sutherland from Grizedale Arts, a rural residency
and commissioning centre, about his complex relationship with
the village he is working in. All throughout the two days
informal walks made it possible to breathe a bit of fresh
air, clear the head, or engage in passionate discussions about
the rural arts.
The Sunday Public Event saw a small exhibiton set up in Ditchling
Museum featuring documentation of the participants' projects,
a concert by local artist and Convention participant Elle
Osborne, village produce from all over Europe brought by the
participants, and guided tours of the village by artist Jo
Roberts. The Public Event served as an opportunity for locals,
arts commissioners and Arts Council officers to meet and greet
the participants and find out more about the Convention and
its outcome.
4 Outcome
4.1 A New Network
The Convention established a new informal practitioners network,
which was immediately adopted by the participants.
4.2 Case Studies Archive/'Bibliobox'
All participants' work will be represented as case studies
on the myvillages.org website archive, and the practitioners
will be contactable through the website.
The material provided by the Convention participants forms
the starting point for myvillages.org’s new project,
the Biblio-Box. The Biblio-Box contains information about
and documentation of previously implemented village-projects
and is designed for travelling: It travels from village to
village and there - with the help of local hosts – offers
information about contextual art projects in other villages
4.3 Poster
General Public Agency are now in the process of developing
a small publication/poster that will summarise some of the
issues discussed during the Convention (funding permitting).
This will be a well-designed publication featuring some of
the participants' projects, with an emphasis on policy-shifting,
demonstrating that Rural practice can be inspirational and
provocative.
All talks and presentations have been recorded on video with
the possibility of publishing them on DVD alongside the publication.
We've also conducted short interviews with all the participants
straight after the workshops as a means to brainstorm and
collect fresh impressions and ideas; this resource could be
published separately either on DVD or on a website.
4.4 Village Convention II
For myillages.org the Convention has been of great use to
articulate their position in the rural arts debate, and it
has helped them to map the issues that are of particular interest
to them. The Convention was a great opportunity to find and
contact relevant artists, curators and commissioners.
Myvillages.org are now looking to stage a smaller and more
focused seminar-type Convention, probably at Grizedale Arts,
Cumbria, to further the debate and instigate new rural arts
commissions as part of their 'ourvillages' programme.
Andrew Hunter (Wysing Arts) suggests
An interdisciplinary conference where an established artist
network is brought into
contact with practitioners from other disciplines such as
town planning (or food retailing or public) transport would
be interesting (though difficult to chair).
Several participants offer to host the next village convention
in their region in 2-3 years. Possible locations are Swabia/Germany,
or Allenheads Contemporary Art in Northumberland, UK.
4.5 Trade Exhibition
Both General Public Agency and myillages.org have subsequently
been invited to take part in an exhibition about informal
trade networks in Leitrim, Ireland, in November 2005.
5 Feedback
5.1 The Convention
Numerous participants reported that the Convention helped
them greatly in articulating thoughts and arguments. It seems
everyone enjoyed spending a long weekend away from his or
her usual work.
Talks
Especially Francois Matarasso’s comprehensive introduction
to the UK’s rural arts situation was seen as an essential
factor to the Convention’s success.
Artists Presentations
Everyone enjoyed the artist presentations and would have liked
to have more of those.
Walks
The walks were a welcome respite from the sometimes heated
discussions during the workshops, offering a less formal and
more relaxed forum for exchange and learning.
Location
Even though some of the participants’ B&Bs were
not closely situated to the Convention’s venues, the
overseas participants enjoyed meeting locals and getting an
impression of the English countryside. Staying in small local
B&Bs ensured that nobody lost focus of the issues at hand.
5.2 Thoughts Confirmed
Several participants reported that they felt encouraged in
their belief that the countryside is a place for reflection
away from the hectic production circle of the city:
"I still think the rural environment offers significant
advantages for artists practice. The city, with its constant
sounds and dynamic, can be distracting. In a more at ease
surrounding all the attention can go into the work."
Karen Guthrie summed up the discussion that took place about
what it means to work in a rural context:
"In our group we spoke about the notion of going back
to the countryside. There was almost an unquestioning assumption
initially that that was what we are all doing by working in
a rural context. In fact, very few people originate from villages,
and are experiencing that feeling. But perhaps what it gives
rise to is the metaphor of going back, as maybe something
to do with the desire or a need to regress slightly, as an
artist, into a state of some kind of naivety, maybe some state
which gives you access to an audience and a context to make
work in that is in some way therapeutically different from
the urban one. … It's just that in a small population
in a rural community you were often not going back to a place
as much as going back to working amongst very intimate members
of your family, for example, your mother, your mother's friends,
your school friends. And perhaps that made you more vulnerable
as an artist. And that was something that people often enjoyed."
Bianca Visser, too, reported back on her ideas about the
specifics of rural environments:
It is mainly a matter of space. Urban public space is ruled
by so many regulations that it is nearly impossible to organize
a spontaneous act on the street. In Holland, for example,
you are not even allowed to draw with chalk on the pavement
without having gained previous consent by the council. Not
to mention how difficult it is to shoot a film outside. This
means that artists have to stay inside the studio or exhibition
space. This does not stimulate experimentation. The studio
is too isolated a place to try out new ideas….
My experience is that working outside is stimulating. In
small communities everybody knows what is going on and there
is always somebody curious to know what you are doing. This
is the way art contributes to the village community.
She concedes that rural art cannot exist without its representation
in an urban context:
But in the end, the final result is vindicated in the city.
The urban infrastructure provides the devices that are necessary
for generating art.
Andrew Hunter from Wysing Arts, a South Cambridgeshire-based
public visual and applied arts centre, stresses the significance
of exchange between rural and urban, artists and audience:
Contemporary visual art is on the periphery of debates around
social and environmental change. Artists and curators are
prone to talking among themselves exclusively and failing
to engage with 'outsiders'.
All participants consider the email network very useful.
5.3 Future discussion points
Issues flagged up which participants would like to see addressed
in future forums:
· Indigenous cultural practices - what rural people
themselves do.
· The role of the agencies (typically public sector)
that are commissioning and funding artists to work on socially
engaged projects.
· The issue of why to choose to work in the villages.
Why in the first place to go to a new/different context.
· Some people would have liked to see the inclusion
of non-artist villagers.
· Is social/public interaction relevant? Why participatory
practise in the first place?
· Someone suggested a more in-depth discussion about
the relationship between artists and commissioners, and their
respective motives.
I am very interested in discussing the way art and artists
are today being used by authorities as a device to attract
tourism to villages. There is a lot of money involved and
I know many artists are quite rightly happy to collaborate.
I’m not saying we should be against a priori, but we
should define a position. We are being used as merchandizing.
Do we agree with this development? Do these shows demand another
kind of practice? Can we maintain independence in this situation?
6 Organiser's Conclusions
6.1 What went well
· Informal nature of the event
Everyone involved agrees that it has been a very successful
event. The participants all understood the nature of the event;
that it was by and large of an informal nature. Simply the
fact of bringing together so many practitioners working in
the same field made it possible and necessary to sharpen one's
position and agenda. This in turn is good for the rural arts
as a whole (if there is such a thing), and its standing in
the wider contemporary art world gets a boost.
· Introductory talk
The opening talk by Francois Matarasso proved immensely valuable
for the Convention. It was crucial that it took place at the
very beginning of the Convention, allowing everyone to sharpen
their own position and agenda. His resumé of current
strategies in rural arts continues to influence GPA's thinking.
· Learning experience
For both General Public Agency and myvillages.org the experience
of organising the Village Convention was a great learning
experience, and both will make use of this experience in their
future work.
· Accommodation/catering/travel
All participants were accommodated at local Bed&Breakfast
places, much to the delight of the participants from overseas.
All the participants' travel, even though for the most part
not covered by grants, went well and smooth. The catering,
provided by the local tea room, included a set-down dinner
on the Saturday night, which was a great success.
· By making exclusive use of the local facilities,
the Convention has contributed to the village economy.
6.2 Constructive Criticism
· Mixed roles for organisers
A problem for the organisers was that at times it was difficult
to be responsible for both logistics and facilitation.
Some of the co-organisers would rather not have lead the workshops,
because it made it impossible to express their opinion or
to ask what they personally were interested in. In the end
we would have preferred to have someone dedicated to each
role, which would have been more satisfying for anyone involved,
e.g. a professional facilitator. This would have given more
structure to the workshops, and would probably have given
a better chance of controversy, or a more precise outcome.
· A suggestion for an improved structure: “The
other day, I learnt that on scientific conferences they have
one person prepared to give a reply to every lecture. This
person is being given a manuscript before and is therefore
prepared to analyse what has been presented, which helps a
lot for the discussion. It is difficult to find the right
mixture of laissez-faire and structure.”
· Discussions / Issues
Even though the presentations and following discussions were
very interesting, they sometimes remained too abstract. A
greater role could have been given to the topic of the village
economy, as this is something very real that everyone can
relate to.
· Workshop sessions
All of the participants have some experience of working in
rural areas, but none of the participants, with the exception
of perhaps Francois Matarasso and Adam Sutherland, were specifically
rural arts-only specialists. The convention has stimulated
everyone to reflect the part of their practice which takes
place in the rural.
The discussions after the artist presentations were looser
than we had imagined and did not result in specific agreed
resolutions.
This was due to the following:
1) a still very heterogeneous group, with very different interests
and from different backgrounds, practically speaking different
languages, which kept the debate from moving into more specific
issues, and
2) the fact that the organisers are not professional conference
facilitators who could enforce a preset structure/idea (the
workshops, the boards, etc).
3) Language barriers might also have played a part in this.
The Convention was attended by 40 participants from 8 European
countries, with the largest groups coming from the UK, Germany
and the Netherlands.
However on reflection this ‘looseness’ has allowed
a free discussion of similarities, difference and interests.
· Ditchling Museum & School
Ditchling was considered to be a rich and appropriate site
for the Convention. Logistics however were sometimes difficult
due to the double venues of museum and school not being used
to hosting conventions. Were therefore underestimated the
amount of logistics support required.
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