INCLUSIVE ARTS UK 2021
by Victoria Martin

 

Research Question; "How can a remote participatory art project create a collaborative platform to help people feel supported and connected to others?"

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The focus of my art workshops was to explore ways we can support and increase communication with people who have in some way experienced displacement such as immigrants and refugees. Experiencing International displacement could present many barriers for people to overcome, such as homelessness, isolation, mental health, cultural differences, and language.

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My main motivation was to highlight the importance of continuing to create new connections and communities with others during this isolating time, which may be a result of circumstance and/or the pandemic. The aim being that the workshops could help bridge a gap between the loss experienced when one is expected to adapt to a different culture, new ways of connecting with others, and/or new surroundings.

 

By using a remote platform, we were able to create a space where we could all meet, collaborate and learn from each other by exploring themes such as our identity and the importance of creating an alternative community during the pandemic. These sessions soon became a safe environment for us to create art and have insightful discussions on how the materials we used played an integral role in daily life within our own cultures.

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I collaborated with a refugee who traveled to Great Britain through very difficult circumstances 6 years ago. He was young, alone, and had no understanding of the English language but by using the medium of art, he was able to build his vocabulary and connect to others.

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His foster mother encouraged communication by giving him a sketchbook and pens so they could draw pictures to express their meaning. The power this simple act of creativity presents is astonishing, and over time they managed to build up a shared vocabulary by simply using the drawings and pairing them with their own words and meanings. He is now an active artist in his own right with great conversational and written language skills, has successfully finished his college course, and is looking to start a university course.

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Inspiration;

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I have been inspired by many artists and cultural traditions during my art-led research journey. Initially by Joseph Beuys’ ‘7000 Oaks’ interactive art piece outside the Tate, and Antony Gormley's multiple ‘Field’ figures, made using the clay found within their maker's environment, are credited as the motivator for me to use natural materials in my workshops. For me, these materials are personal and represent our identity, culture, the earth, our heritage, and geographical placement.

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I am also drawn to the unpretentious approach and sentiment of Wabi-Sabi (侘寂), a Japanese view centered on the acceptance of imperfection, this ‘tread lightly on the planet’ attitude

appreciates things usually viewed as imperfect or incomplete in nature, simply seeing a greatness that exists in all the overlooked details.

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I like this perspective because it has an appreciation of the minor details and the beauty of broken or unfinished things, much like the work we are doing on Inclusive Arts Practice, where we are looking at ways to participate and collaborate with others, noticing the small inconspicuous details that could otherwise go unnoticed. Our focus is placed on intrinsic value and process over product, the normal hierarchy related to class or material cost is irrelevant. In Wabi-Sabi, everyone and everything is equal; for example; mud, paper, and sticks have just as much quality or value as other materials such as silver or gold.

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Made from simple materials that in other circumstances could be viewed as being too fragile or vulnerable, it supports degradation and corrosion and the addition of weathering or human treatment such as use or misuse, make it more valuable. Again, I see correlations to the diversity of society and community, and the importance of supporting marginalised groups through the medium of art and expression.

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Artist Richard Long has also influenced my view/approach to what art could be, using the environment as our metaphorical canvas by encompassing the ‘leave no trace behind’ ethos. Over the decades his work has created a language of simple geometric forms, marked simply on the surface of the earth using track imprints, water, stones, dust, or snow.

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Following these principles allowed me to consider how I could positively contribute to our outside spaces by adding to the landscape, which is where my idea of building organic structures began. Creating bug shelters enabled me to provide a place of refuge where minibeasts and insects could thrive, and by using materials only found within our environment, means that over time everything I have used would naturally decompose back into nature.

Social anthropologist, Sarah Pink’s research has helped to inform me of ways to effectively engage with others using a remote platform. Her work includes a focus on visual methodologies and the relationship between applied and academic anthropology.

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Her writings on Sensory Ethnography helped me rethink the methods I could employ when working with my group online. It is this ‘movement beyond the text’ to a more multi-sensory participation that is of particular interest, especially given that cultural expressions or meaning could be lost when working with participants that may have language barriers or limitations.

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Moving beyond ‘the verbal’ and learning to read more from an experience than what is simply said or seen, also lends itself well when one is considering using a remote platform, as we are able to pay particular attention to unspoken, non-verbal cues which would normally be lost in such an environment.

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Pink mentions emplacement, as in; ‘the researcher’ is emplaced into the situation when working or engaging with others. This expression interests me given the term displacement

is used when describing a refugee, which is another example of the interconnected nature and juxtapositions that have been present throughout my research and collaborations with others.

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Using a Remote Platform;

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We are all aware of the many limitations of using a remote platform. It inhibits the use of our sensory processing as there are certain elements we can not effectively communicate or pick up on such as non-verbal cues and if you add this to the differences we encounter through language and meaning, you will appreciate that communication sometimes became limiting for us. The only factor that helped when our language let us down was our ability to communicate through the medium of art. Our visual representations of what it was we wanted to convey, formulated an effective way for us to communicate.

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Using an online platform to collaborate with others also has its drawbacks as each person taking part has a different way of connecting. My collaborator used his phone, I have a desktop and our volunteer used an iPad, so seeing each other as well as what we were working on was difficult. A great example of the implications of this way of working was evident in the first few weeks. My collaborator decided what we would make using clay, explaining what it would look like by just using words. At the end of the session, we brought our pieces to the camera and the differences were incredible. My piece was very fragile, made up of small ribbons of clay on top of one another to make the pot, which cracked and split once dried. My collaborator's piece was firm and structurally sound even when it had dried, and our volunteers' piece was aesthetically pleasing to the eye, again it dried beautifully.

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Workshops;

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To begin, our sessions were delayed for two weeks as the delivery company I used to send the materials to my collaborator would not deliver to anyone except the recipient and his college did not have a reception area. This resulted in extended communication via email and telephone calls between us both as we needed to rearrange or confirm delivery times and dates.

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Clay was the common material we used throughout the sessions. During the first three, my collaborator led, he decided the direction we would take by suggesting ideas on how we could use the medium.

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He recounted how clay is central to his cultural heritage, explaining how his grandmother and mother, and family used the material from building structures such as shelters and homes to making essential items such as cookware and jugs and pots, which are used to store food. In my opinion, this was a great way for us to increase communications as we were able to build conversations, getting an insight into our own identities and cultural influences.

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The following three sessions saw us refine our making skills by incorporating other elements taken from our environments such as ash, twine, and sticks, which evolved into conversations about the importance of shelter and building structures. My collaborator explained how in his

culture a shepherd would be gone from the village for weeks and each night would require him to build a shelter from whatever he has available within his environment, invariably these shelters would be made from the clay which so readily available on the land, so we made ‘shepherd huts’. This unexpected topic of conversation was quite serendipitous as the theme worked so well with my initial idea of constructing bug shelters.

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Connections;

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With each engagement my participant and I moved toward a more familiar exchange which was evident in the conversations and the art we made together, it became a space where he felt safe to discuss his cultural heritage, religion and nationalism, and traditions which have been extended to the UK. I believe there are contributory factors which have made this possible; Firstly, the sessions themselves and the extended conversations we had when arranging the materials to be delivered, as they have allowed us to continually build trust in each other and strengthen connections. Secondly, the choice of material we used, clay being such an integral part of his heritage allowed for a rich exchange encouraging him to speak about things in his culture. This is something he thanked me for during our last session as he said it was one of the positives from taking part in the workshops. The material and our subsequent discussions around the uses of the objects we made, allowed him to reminisce about his childhood and family traditions.

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