MICROCUENCA RÍO MAYO ALTO

As with many of FACT’s endeavours, the Collaboration Programme was launched before a long-term strategy had been developed and this can perhaps be seen as beneficial to the project. Although its origins were in the Video Positive festival, the Collaboration Programme has been fully integrated into the organisation and has lasted far beyond Video Positive itself. The purpose for which it was introduced to Video Positive instilled an ethos of prioritising the local community and ensured the organisation’s relevance to them, but it also placed community arts and the production of artworks at the heart of the Collaboration Programme vision. The Collaboration Programme for Video Positive created artworks that were displayed in the public realm, such as on big screens in shopping areas, and this innovative use of the public art concept, together with increased numbers of visitors to the city, encouraged investment by key stakeholders which included the city’s residents. The Collaboration Programme, as with its parent organisation, has been particularly adept at positioning itself within reach of a number of different funding opportunities across several sectors, and this has enabled relationships to develop with a number of regular funders. For FACT, the Collaboration Programme remains a valuable part of its offer because it provides both the traditional education package that is expected of museums and galleries, but also runs schemes that appeal more widely to the charitable sector. This allows FACT to develop, through its exhibition programme, a “critical context of languages, technologies, philosophies and artistic processes”493 whilst also satisfying the criteria of its regular funders, such as the Arts Council England (ACE).

492

Dunn, interviewed by the author, 20 August 2010

493 _{FACT Centre: Programme and Operations Appendices R1-7 (The Red Book), (Available: FACT} Archive: Box – Centre Business Plans (HIST.25); Folder – June 1999)

However, if community arts have been debated as an opportunity to challenge the entrenched political system, or as an outlet for the disenfranchised, the fact that the money and assessment of the project’s value originates from the system which is being challenged, is inherently problematic. The community arts movement has been described as a “naive, but energetic, activism” which, by being so reliant on external funding, has “drifted into the arms of those groups it set out to oppose.”494 _{Furthermore, Owen Kelly suggests that the} arts are dominated by a belief that “it [is] better to do anything than to risk doing nothing,” but this has engendered an attitude of taking any available money, irrespective of the cost to an organisation’s integrity.495 In many ways this attitude is reflected by FACT, an organisation which was similarly naive in its early days, and it can be seen as having developed at a pace that was dictated by government policy and funding objectives, both of which affect the subject matter it tackles.

FACT cannot be accused, however, of a lack of awareness of the limitations of being so reliant on public funding, and in 2002 it expressed concerns about the effect of short-term budgeting on the Collaboration Programme. It stated that short-term funding leads to a lack of continuity, a potential lack of focus as funding applications make claims that are too ambitious in an attempt to secure funding, and an inability to develop a long-term strategy for future programming.496 These challenges are exacerbated by the conditions placed on art organisations by their funders who increasingly demand evidence that their funding has a quantifiable impact on the people participating in art projects.497 The issue of quality not quantity was addressed in relation to the tenantspin project, and demonstrating that art projects attract a large numbers of participants is particularly difficult as community arts tend to take place outside the gallery and, therefore, traditional measures such as footfall cannot be relied upon.

In 2008 an attempt was made to host an exhibition that heralded the collaborative work that has taken place across Liverpool. ‘The Fifth Floor’exhibition was held at Tate Liverpool,

494 _{Kelly (1984), Community, Art and the State: Storming the Citadels, p.97} 495

ibid. 496

CP-Interactive Project: Using New Technologies to Create Art with People, (Available: FACT Archive, Box – Admin General 1, Folder – Grant Archive 3)

497

and tenantspin provided a broadcast studio that saw debates streamed live directly from the gallery throughout the show.

Fig. 2.2.9tenantspin studio at The Fifth Floorexhibition, Tate Liverpool, 2008–2009

However, the exhibition experienced similar issues relating to interactivity that have characterised the history of media art in the gallery, and which are discussed in Section 2.3.1. Interactive exhibitions continue to be compromised by the actions of audiences who have been conditioned to behave in a certain way within the gallery, and interactive artworks continue to pose a challenge to this behaviour. Consequently, whilst The Fifth Floor aimed to “integrate a wider, more representative range of cultural values alongside those values already established in the museum,”498 the entrenched behaviour of audiences within a traditional gallery framework was difficult to overcome. Furthermore, by placing

tenantspin within the gallery and away from the community from which it has grown, the project was removed from its context and imbued with an arm’s length sense of disengagement that diluted its meaning. Similarly, taking snapshots of the work that is produced by community arts projects increases the risks of the outcomes being impossible to interpret and can, therefore, diminish the impact they have. The problem this causes may be closely linked to the ineffectiveness of participatory methods within museums and galleries more broadly, and whilst interaction is considered to be important, it remains inadequately defined. This was again demonstrated in 2011 with FACT’s first exhibition of Collaboration Programme projects, ‘Knowledge Lives Everywhere.’499

498 _{McKane (2009), “The Fifth Floor: Elevating Social Responsibility in the Public Art Museum,” p.56} 499

Fig. 2.2.10 Gallery 1, FACT, during Knowledge Lives Everywhere, 2011

Fig. 2.2.11 Poster for Knowledge Lives Everywhere, FACT, 2011

Although the exhibition falls outside the timeframe of this thesis, it is important to note that the same problems encountered by The Fifth Floor existed at Knowledge Lives Everywhere. Prior to this, Alan Dunn stated concerns that tenantspin continued to struggle to assert a presence in the FACT Centre,500and by remaining outside the gallery, has created a feeling of separation from FACT which is in turn perceived by audiences and participants alike.

The existence beyond the gallery of community arts raises a final question of whether projects of this nature can be truly understood as art, a dilemma which applies to the artists, art organisations and funders who deliver such projects. The problem is exacerbated by the notion of art continuing to be an alienating concept, and whilst progress has been made in recent years, there is still room for further improvement. However, it is interesting to note that the question of whether a collaborative project is art, is of little relevance to those directly involved, and FACT has not shied away from this question themselves. In the exhibition catalogue of Video Positive 1995, Moviola stated that the work produced by the Collaboration Programme:

Has kicked up a whole range of questions and challenges for the festival and often caused an uneasy tension, not least between the work that it produces and the commissioned work exhibited in the rest of the festival programme. However, this disjunction is a positive force as it continually challenges us to ask fundamental questions about what art is, who make it and for whom.501

500 _{Dunn, interviewed by the author, 20 August 2010} 501

That the art world, and particularly its funding structures, fails to account for this in their evaluation requirements, only reinforces the earlier assertion that funding bodies continue to misunderstand community arts projects. Consequently, when Hope and Carrington identify tenantspin as a landmark project that has transformed the cultural landscape of Liverpool,502 it is not an assertion based on the quality of the art that it has produced, but because they recognise the importance of the approach of the tenantspin collaborators and their vehement defence of its core aims.

Alan Dunn also demonstrated this attitude, which infused his work with tenantspin, by stating that it is irrelevant how the outcome of a collaborative project is perceived. Instead, he identified the important factor as being the process of collaboration itself,503 aims which are supported by the prioritisation of processes of engagement that have infused the work of FACT since its inception as Merseyside Moviola. By committing to engagement, however, it is essential that the motives are underpinned by a genuine belief in its value.

We must engage people because we believe in doing so, because they have something to offer the art world and because we trust them enough to invest in them. We trust them with sets of new ideas. People are engaging with institutions because new ideas are of extremely high value and they are engaging because new ideas can be experienced individually, in groups of three in the park, or in packs of bus passengers.504

For this to happen, Alan Dunn states the importance of understanding that there is a place for engagement and, similarly, that there is a time “not to be engaged.”505 This is not without complexity, however, and the frequent adoption of terms such as ‘community,’ ‘engagement’ and ‘participation’ shows that FACT have yet to adequately define the terms itself, and instead yields to whatever is modish at any given time and is, therefore, an important keyword on funding applications.

502

Hope and Carrington (2007), “Alan Dunn, tenantspin,” p.259 503

Dunn, interviewed by the author, 20 August 2010. See also Reiss 2007 504 _{Dunn (2004), “Who Needs a Spin Doctor? Part Two,” p.24}

505

2.3 Media: Moving Image Touring