A friend recently compared starting over as a community arts practitioner to Snakes and Ladders: sometimes you’re progressing steadily, and then you step on a snake that sends you 15 squares back. ‘Oh yeah, you shouldn’t have mentioned that to her. That shit goes way back.’
Other times, a good chat can lead me up a ladder and offer shortcuts. ‘You need to talk to so-and-so. She’s exactly the kind of person you’re looking for. And she’s been wanting to start something like that for years!’
I have been a university lecturer, I have run Riverland Youth Theatre and I continue to be a playwright. Through these big career changes, community has been the connective tissue in my practice. I use art as a tool for community building, placemaking, individual and collective wellbeing.
My practice is one of service but it has been shaped by three big restarts, none of which have been entirely of my own choosing and all of which have been flavoured with grief. I am all too familiar with the exhaustion that comes when every meeting is a first one, every relationship is new and you’re still checking Google Maps to get anywhere.
My way of navigating these restarts has been a recipe I’ve been developing for years. It changes depending on what I’m cooking with, where I am and who I’m working with. But as I’m currently undertaking a fellowship with Create SA that is all about being a community artist starting over in a new community, I’m making an effort to record some of what I’ve learned.
This recipe is very country-focused – it’s for working in small towns with big needs – but I hope it might be applicable to others. These days, losing an arts organisation or an employer is one of the defining features of Australian arts careers and it could be argued that every artist and arts worker needs a good recipe for picking up and starting over.
Ingredients
- Tea – Or your beverage of choice, and plenty of it, because you’re going to meet a lot of new people.
- Humility – However good you are, however certain you are that your art can fill a gap, plenty of people just won’t care, or they won’t trust you. And why should they? You’re new.
- Open lines of communication – Some of my biggest faux pas have been as simple as emailing someone who would have preferred a face-to-face chat. Not everyone likes (or owns) a computer, so catch people while they are walking their dogs or in the supermarket, and attend community meetings ‘just to say hi’. When you meet a new person or group, ask them how they would like to be contacted and write it down.
- A good calendar system – I try to colour code first-time meetings in green because I know they can take it out of me. I don’t want too much green on a single day and I need to leave space between meetings to follow up.
- Old friends – It’s all about the new relationships, of course, but existing relationships are still vital. Find ways to have those conversations with old friends and collaborators. You’re going to need some familiar voices in your ears. Some gut checks. I send a lot of voice messages as I drive.
- Questions – Your own but also the questions of others, because understanding need is the basis of all community projects.
- The right language – It’s all about clarity. You’ll need to manage expectations, and be clear about how you articulate roles, possibilities and timelines, not to mention what is possible and what is beyond the scope of the project to fix.
- Resilience – This is one I never feel I have enough of but then, I wouldn’t have lasted 20 years as an artist if there wasn’t some in the pantry somewhere.
A method (of sorts)
1. Start with a pantry stocktake
What have you got at your fingertips? Who and what are already in the community? Who or what isn’t? Where is the need? This step will take months, or possibly years, of having an open door, making those cups of tea, listening, and moving slowly and with humility.
2. Follow through and follow up
This is where you will need your multiple methods of communication. I’m usually a ‘just to put into writing what we chatted about’ kind of emailer but recently I also purchased a bunch of greeting cards by local artists to send out to people to thank them for their time after good chats.
3. Listen for hidden problems
Many community members will not necessarily know how art can help solve community dilemmas but that is your job as an artist. Hear the questions. Acknowledge the issues and present art as a tool for problem solving and collaboration. Much of the work happens in the pause between listening and saying, ‘Um … do you think something like this might help?’ Then imaginations might start to race.
4. Sprinkle in some easy wins
Going back to your pantry stock take, what is something you can do for the group that is simple, deliverable and doesn’t need a grant? How can you thank the community for letting you in and sharing their knowledge? Is there an after-school group you could help out, or a craft group?
Ask also what constitutes success? How can relationship building be measured? When I ran a preschool music session, the win was how long families stuck around after we finished singing. Forty-five minutes of people staying to chat and share war stories meant I was doing something right.
5. Start to mould responses
Taking the questions, the need and the relationships into account, start to mould responses. These will be of irregular shapes and sizes. Some ideas will be huge and take years to bake. Others might be ready in time for lunch. Little morsels of art. The key is clarity and expectation setting.
Check in regularly with those around you, asking questions like ‘Is this starting to look like something?’ or ‘Is this what you were imagining, because this all started from our conversation in Mog’s café and it’s your creation as much as mine, so I want to be sure that it feels right.’
6. Remember, it’s a one-off recipe
It’s important not to compare yourself to others but hopefully, you’ll start to find some familiarity. In the beginning, it’s easy to remain hypervigilant for weeks on end, so watch for those moments of ease appearing. It could be realising, ‘With this person, I can bring my whole self’ or simply, ‘I’ve got a bit of a routine for my Wednesdays now’.
For me, five months into my new role in South Australia’s Mid North, I’m starting to discover some little blobs of possibility, uneven and rough.
I’m starting to find that familiarity in places and build a sense of the community’s needs and possible future collaborators. There is still plenty of doubt, but there are some wins and there’s a little ease too. I’m remembering that I’ve cooked in kitchens like this before, and my knife skills are sharp.
Starting over as an artist in a new community is bloody exhausting, but the chance to create something new is delicious.
