Community Art Power

244 Pages·2016·5.47 MB·English

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Community
Art
Power
ESSAYS FROM ICAF 2011
– FOR PETER AND ANNELIES –
Community
Art
Power
ESSAYS FROM ICAF 2011
ICAF Community, Art, Power
Contents
06 19
Introduction
Eugene van Erven
19
Come Together:
A Report From the In-Between
Alexander Roberts
28
Power and Community Arts
54 70
Kevin Ryan
43
Random Combinations,
0044 Deliberate Music
Michael Romanyshyn
54
For Joy, Against Death:
Community Theatre in Argentina
Edith Scher 94
70
Peace Industry Propaganda or ‘Troubles Porn’?
Matt Jennings and David Grant
85
Why I Stopped Making Peace
140
Merlijn Twaalfhoven
94
Same Difference:
Learning Through International Partnerships
Neil Beddow
198
28 43 107

Memoria Cross-Over Arts:
a German, Polish,
Peruvian Collaboration
Ulrich Hardt
129
85 Theatre For Everyone
Maria Schejbal
140
A Field Ready to Leave Home:
Notes From the ICAF seminar
Jan Cohen-Cruz and
Eugene van Erven
107
0055
181

Debajehmujig
Ron Berti with Joe Osawabine
C
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n
198 t
e
n
t
s
Something Is happening Here!
129
Big hART’s Ngapartji Ngapartji in Rotterdam
Kerrie Schaefer
214

All In This Together:
Art, Community and History’s Lessons
François Matarasso
181
214
ICAF Community, Art, Power
06
Introduction
Eugene van Erven
07
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ICAF Community, Art, Power
he day before I sat down to write this intro-
Tduction, we learned that the Netherlands
Fund for Cultural Participation awarded
the International Community Arts Festival (ICAF) a new
grant to cover the next two years; this, while in the midst
of severe budget cuts in the arts that have affected many of
our colleagues. Despite the European economic crisis – or
maybe because of it – we have been given the opportunity
to organize a sixth edition of our festival in the early spring
of 2014. This brings with it a huge responsibility. We have to
demonstrate that we are indeed the interface between Dutch
community arts and the rest of the world; that we are capable
of productively bringing together some of the most inspiring
ideas and practices in our field and can open them up to a
wider audience. This book and its companion video are a first
step in that direction.
Those of you who are familiar with the reports of
previous ICAFs will notice a marked change. Whereas the
08 earlier books were largely descriptive and impressionistic,
this one consists of thirteen essays that cover a wide variety
of topics in personalized, culturally specific styles. This
choice grew from an urgent need, felt by both our visitors
and ourselves, to reflect more deeply on our practices. It
is also the result of a new festival component, the ICAF
seminars, which consisted of a series of discussions that
took place on four mornings, and which were facilitated
by Professor Jan Cohen-Cruz from Syracuse University in
the U.S.A. Together with a number of invited guests she
explored the ‘power’ of community arts from different angles.1
While transcribing the video tapes of this sometimes heated
conversation, it struck me that all these ideas would make a
lot more sense if they were accompanied by in-depth back-
ground pieces.

1. Earlier editions of the festival traditionally ended with a ‘final debate’ on Sundays. To
my mind, these remained rather superficial because everyone wanted to have a say, which
prevented deeper conversations. By inviting designated speakers into an inner circle I
hoped to generate more profound discussions, at the risk of excluding an outer circle of
largely muted spectators seated in the semi-dark. In his essay, Ron Berti criticizes this
choice for which I, and not Jan Cohen-Cruz, am responsible.
The first piece is an upbeat account of our festival by a
young artist, curator and journalist from England, Alexander
Roberts. He completed a traineeship with us at ICAF,
creating podcasts for our website and writing an article for
the British Totaltheatre magazine, which we reprint here.
As you will notice, Alexander was particularly taken by the
Murga, an anti-xenophobic activist performance practice in
public space that originated many years ago in Argentina
and before that, at the turn of the previous century, in Cádiz,
Spain. He was equally impressed with the community dance
work of Paloma Madrid, a Swedish choreographer who had
come to Rotterdam to create a piece in someone’s apartment
together with five novice dancers, including an 80-year-old
woman. Thanks to Alexander Roberts’ promotion of this
work, Paloma’s Dance for Apartment will now soon continue
in Iceland.
Paloma’s project, which she had developed with
Bottkyrka Community Theatre in Stockholm, was one of five
artist-in-residencies, another new ICAF feature intended to 09
introduce new community arts practices to the Netherlands.
The other four included an exchange around musical theatre
and video art between our company and Favela Força from
In
Rio de Janeiro, a collaboration between Imbali Visual Literacy tr
o
d
from Johannesburg and the ‘Women’s Studios’ in Rotterdam u
c
t
(which resulted in fabric design and a fashion show), a street- io
n
corner visual arts intervention by Soft Touch Arts from /
E
Leicester (England) in one of the rougher neighbourhoods of ug
e
Rotterdam, and a two-week project with at-risk youth facili- ne
v
tated by Dance United Yorkshire. A documentary focusing a
n
on this last residency’s work in the Moerwijk neighbourhood E
r
v
in The Hague, is included as a bonus track on the DVD that en
accompanies this book.
The second article explores key words like ‘power’
and ‘community’. Its author, Kevin Ryan, is one of the driving
forces behind the East Midlands Participatory Arts Forum
(EMPAF), a network organization in the UK that first
visited us in 2008 and that re-appeared in 2011 with a twenty
ICAF Community, Art, Power
person delegation. Kevin, who directs Charnwood Arts in
Loughborough, is also a seasoned visual artist. At ICAF, he
offered a workshop in which festival visitors could serve as
self-reporters and collectively create a book about the event.
In his text, he argues in favour of the term ‘collaborator’,
which he finds more fitting than ‘participant.’ He then turns
to the many pitfalls and opportunities that community artists
might experience when dealing with ‘the powers that be’.
Like Kevin Ryan, Michael Romanyshyn is a veteran
community artist. He is a musician and theatre maker who
worked for many years with the legendary Bread & Puppet
theatre in the U.S.A. This company, which was founded in
1963 by German sculptor and dancer Peter Schumann, has
been an important influence on community arts worldwide,
but particularly in the Americas and Europe. Romanyshyn’s
highly personal tale tells the story of his coincidental
connection with Archa Theatre in the Czech Republic and
the amazing intercultural musical trip that resulted from it.
10 The Allstar Refúdžjí Band, which he directs, brought down
the house on the opening night of our festival and later
inspired a Dutch spin-off: Orchestre Partout. This band of
asylum seekers, led by Ted van Leeuwen of 5eKwartier in
Haarlem, won this year’s ‘Golden C’ award for best innovative
community arts project in the Netherlands.
Next in line is Edith Scher. At our festival, she and
her partner, guitarist Daniel Mir, had conducted an inspiring
interactive workshop in which she demonstrated the way she
creates large scale scenes with choirs in her own neighbour-
hood, Villa Crespo in Buenos Aires. In Rotterdam, Edith’s
participants included members from the Stut community
choir in Utrecht, the cast of our own Senior Citizens Revue
as well as performers from the Community Company of
the Glasgow Citizens Theatre. I knew that Edith Scher was
completing a book for the Argentinian National Theatre
Institute, covering the rocky history of community theatre
activities in her country, dating back to the days of the Videla
dictatorship. The essay she wrote for this book, passionately and