The Power of a Participatory "Rural Art"

Unfortunately, Brotman does not elaborate on the transformation of the professional artist’s own views, apart from a passing reference to ‘civic pride’. I would like to provide an expanded argument as to the benefits, and the related challenges experienced by professional artists. Common to all examples of rural art in Brotman’s paper is dialogue-based and negotiated form, and the evocation of a participatory reality. The artist necessarily emerges with new insights that result from this performative process-based approach (4). Professional artists’ expectations will accordingly be challenged by the uniqueness of each region’s individual members, its cultural, social, economic and political ecologies. What artists stand to gain in partaking of art practice as a collaborative experience is the enjoyment of working with, learning from, and affirming people. What the overtly collaborative ‘text’ or artwork necessitates is an interrogation, through dialogue, of all participants’ incumbent assumptions, and paradigms of operation. What the professional artist stands to gain when dialogue and process are privileged is the fluid movement between ‘self’ and ‘other’. The professional artist learns to value human interaction as a key creative component. In shifting focus from form to participatory text the artist comes to celebrate the polyphony of contributing voices, the absence of a totalizing aesthetic and the possibility of transcendence without synthesis (5). The benefits of this process of producing rural arts thus extend beyond those enjoyed by the community as a whole to include those enjoyed by the individual artist as his/her assumptions of power, knowledge, citizenship and the very parameters of art production are challenged. The mode of challenge becomes more effective when all are included in the process of reflection, a process initiated by the artist-in-transformation, adjusting her strategies and material suggestions as she encounters the views and skills of others. All participants and the object are transformed through the process. Public participation and artistic creation become mutually interdependent. What is exciting about this paradigm is that the polarity between disengaged artist and activist is challenged by the emergence of an artist whose practice and insight is expanded through broadened social and intellectual frameworks.

The power of a participatory ‘rural art’ is, then, the reconnection it offers to all. However, for the benefit of future endeavours, the challenges that come with this collaborative work need to be identified and the flaws that have emerged in attempts to implement such practice need to be documented. Professional artists, by virtue of the dominant values in Anglo-North American cultural education systems are often educated ‘away’ from their communities. In addition, artists have often rejected their communities due to restraints they have encountered in these communities. Thus this alienation from the community can be a deeply entrenched and self perpetuating division. A central challenge is that professional artists regain a trust in communal activity and respect for a process in which a community identifies and works on issues that it deems to be of relevance to its situation. It is important that professional artists learn to engage with community members in an authentic manner, trusting the reconnection process, and equally not downplaying their own expertise. Most notable is the challenge to all partners to suspend their assumptions, learn to pay close attention and to be honest about their respective entry points, limitations, strengths, objectives and assessments. It would seem that the cultivation of compassion would be the very foundation of a successful practice of ‘rural arts’

Brotman reaffirms a conclusion of the Foundation for Rural Living that fostering arts and cultural programmes will help stem the “current tide of youth-out migration and declining quality of life” (p9). The cultural sector in rural areas is indeed limited, under resourced, often lacking in leadership, infrastructure and funding. Partnerships are required between formal and non-formal arts educators, cultural organization, professional artists and concerned citizens who are open to collaboration through artistic enterprise. These alliances need to be forged primarily between local players, but also between neighbouring and similarly positioned communities, between smaller locales and larger centres and across provincial and national boundaries. It is this reciprocal exchange that promotes diversity within both regional and international arenas of cultural production. It is only through such exchanges that we can properly challenge our assumptions of what constitutes the ‘centre’, the ‘periphery’ and ‘relevant’ loci of culture.