Connection, Community, Hope

It’s fitting that that this event – focussing on the creative potential but also challenges to working as an artist in rural places – began, for me at least, on a cold dark September morning with a 5.30 am alarm in Bristol, and a connecting train at Exeter St David’s followed by a heron spotting pootle along The Tarka Way. Delegates to the gathering descended on Studio KIND. in Barnstable from across the region, though mainly North Devon and Cornwall. This is the final in-person gathering of a programme organised by Visual Arts South West called ‘How can I Stay? I don’t want to not stay’ and today is built around questions like: How can we foster hope through connectivity? And how can artists living in rural spaces stay part of the conversation?

On my journey down I wonder at this, at how different my experiences are as an art writer living and working close to the centre of Bristol from the experiences of the artists that I’m about to meet. Am I more a part of ‘the conversation’ than I would be if I lived rurally? And what is this conversation anyway? Much of my connection to art events happens remotely, through online events, reading, listening to podcasts, teaching and following the ebb and flow of Instagram posts: the current flurry of Turner prize posts, the upcoming deluge of Frieze art fair posts, and so on. I miss so many live in-person events, performances and exhibitions due to a mixture of a busy teaching schedule, family responsibilities, inordinately expensive train travel and, let’s face it, depleted energy resources. But today, I’m not missing out. Today I have a day of listening ahead of me.

Participants make their way towards Barnstable’s Pannier Market – home to a bright and airy Studio KIND. – arriving full of hope, expectation and, I would wager, a certain amount of social trepidation. The 6 or so tables that fill the room are poised for workshop activities: pens, paper and Post-Its at the ready. I’m keen to gauge early on the feeling in the room. What brings people here? What is it about today’s event that has given them ‘permission’ to extract themselves from their daily lives to devote the next 6 hours to each other? For some, it is a case of wanting to scope out the arts scene having recently moved (or moved back) to the South West. For others, it is the promise of social interaction, some respite to abiding feelings of isolation. They valued, they tell me, the online opportunities that proliferated as a result of the pandemic but they also missed meeting their peers in the flesh. Some were looking for affirmation where they struggled with feelings of demotivation and self-doubt, again, partly intensified by the isolated environments in which they work (I got the strong sense that many were working from home rather than from within established studio facilities where informal meetings with other creatives are par for the course). More than once, I heard people voicing desires to find ‘my people’ or ‘my tribe’. For a few participants, there is a more specific and strategic aim to forge connections in the region with a view to current or future projects.

The babble of conversation soon rises along with the number of bodies in the space. We reach a total of around 24 people at a guess. The ice is well and truly broken by the time the inevitable ice-breaking exercise is set and this feeling of bonhomie continues throughout. The day follows a loose structure of three activities building from brainstorming to more hands-on making. The first of these involves drawing up a series of lists according to the following prompts set by Peter Stiles, local artist and cultural producer:

• Write a list of spaces that are available to you to show work
• Write a list of the special features (historical, geographical etc) that are particular to the place you live and/or work.
• Write a list of your skills (that may or may not be related to your job)
• Write a list of the groups to which you belong.
  

Conversation continues to flow as Post-Its are filled and tables become patchworked in neon inventories. An activity like this can exacerbate inequalities such as perceived access to spaces to show work and feelings like ‘I’m less networked than you’. For some introverts here, it triggers social anxieties when asked to declare their affiliation to ‘groups’. For others there is a suspicion that it could feel extractive; some people deliberately hold back from including particular skills for fear that they would be called on to offer their services! The skills we have, after all, are not necessarily the skills we want to practice, some might very well be skills we’d happily shed. But on the whole, the activity feels like more of an act of sharing, done in the spirit of commoning, of pooling our resources rather than competition or comparison. And perhaps it is a starting point to better understanding our skillsets and what we all already have to offer each other.

At the end of the exercise we circulate, checking out each other’s lists. At this point information overload sets in: what to do in the face of all these ideas, all these options, all these potential avenues through which to generate new work, new projects, new collaborations? I wonder how others are feeling. Some are busy jotting down notes for later, ideas sparking, others look a little more dazed. One person remarks that ‘a little more context is needed, it’s a bit overwhelming’. I suspect I wasn’t the only one to feel at this point: so what now? What can I practically do with this information? A moment of reflection as this part of the day draws to a close and someone suggests that these Post-its would be more useful practically if transcribed into a Google document for delegates to refer to and follow up on later. This seems invaluable if the discussions we have had are to be of use, to go beyond pie-in-the-sky imaginings. Another side of me, however, wonders if I’m getting too caught up in the need to make every activity of immediate, direct and practical ‘use’, to ensure that everyone present feels like the day has been ‘worthwhile’. Then again, sometimes, I remind myself, we might just need to trust the process; the impact of a day like this might make itself known weeks, months or even years later.

After a generous and social lunch, the afternoon is built around a task – led by local artist Ruth Bateman and Studio KIND. community engagement director, Sharon Gale – to make a series of zines, one per table, built from large posters that we make together and then cut up into A4 spreads. The brief is broad: make a zine that communicates a sense of hope and connectivity through art practice. The hum of conversation and peels of laughter rise again as people cut and paste using the stack of magazines provided. Across the posters, hands gather in the form of outlines or prints, motifs of threads are interwoven and leaf-like forms float across our pages. Some posters see more critical takes on the brief: one features a cut-out map of the South West. Nearby are the words, ‘Creative Encounters’, and then, with more than a hint of irony: ‘An illuminating career path’ – illuminating it might be; viable without an additional income, only very rarely. This strikes a chord. Given the premise of the day, I appreciate this moment of irreverence pushing back on the desire for enforced positivity which runs the risk of feeling affected or even deluded. Though I’m certainly not advocating for a day spent bemoaning the state of the sector from a rural perspective, I am also hungry for a sense in which tangible solutions to specific challenges might start to emerge, through peer-to-peer support and the instigation of longer-term, meaningful collaboration. I have the strong sense that this was the plan, but it never fully breaks the surface.

A snapshot of the content of conversations generated by the zine-making gives a useful insight into the range of perspectives in the room. One table is bristling with frustrations about the resistance of local councils to invest in the arts because the results aren’t immediate, and because take-up within communities which aren’t used to engaging in arts activities is often slow to get going. People are exasperated by councils that are reluctant to acknowledge the economic growth that arts and cultural events generate for local businesses where cultural tourists spend on hotels, restaurants, shops, cafes, taxis and so on. How do you build this argument, and effectively measure this impact, people wondered? How do we change the perception of the identity of a place, from the inside and the outside? How do we change the perception of ourselves as artists? And is it right that it so often falls to artists to fight this battle, to justify their value in society and to find solutions to systems that are way beyond their spheres of influence?

Elsewhere in the room though this kind of discussion of the political and economic state of the sector is less explicit. People around some tables are largely just enjoying being sociable, making collaboratively, and getting to know each other. At other tables, things play out more quietly; as people cut and stick and share difficult personal experiences of being an artist based in rural areas, struggling to make ends meet, struggling to stay upbeat and to continue to believe in the value of their work. This is where the classic workshop technique comes into its own: busy your participants’ hands to unleash a flowing, open conversation and generate a vital sense of (hopefully lasting) camaraderie.

And in my all too hasty tendency towards a focus on solutions, a phrase that I overhear at some point during the day rings out: ‘trust that these structures work in a multitude of ways’. For organisers of events like these, there is a substantial financial hit raising questions such as: Who are these events for? What are they for? Are they worth everyone’s time, money, and energy? Do they benefit enough people? What about the people who aren’t here? And how do you measure all this? The participants today are all here for different reasons, with different needs. They arrive with different hopes for the day and in different professional capacities. What most strongly comes to the fore for me is the sociability that the space and the facilitators enabled. I wonder, given the slow rate at which collaborations take to catalyse, what kinds of relationships might have been forged today that might emerge sometime in the future. By the end of the day, there is little appetite for group sharing of ‘main takeaways’ – which feels too instrumentalised given the looseness of the day anyway. And so we all drift off at different times, in dribs and drabs, our different home and work lives calling, wondering where else the day – and the multitude of conversations that started here – might take us.

Acknowledgments:

Lizzie Lloyd is a Bristol-based art writer and researcher. Her writing has been commissioned by numerous arts publications and galleries, including Exeter Phoenix, Bosse and Baum, Cample Line gallery, Workplace Gallery and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios for Venice Biennale (2022). She is founder of WITTA (Writing In /To / Through Art) which she runs with Kit Poulson, as well as co-editor in chief of JAWS: Journal of Arts Writing by Students (soon to be renamed JAWS Journal of Art and Writing). And Senior Lecturer in Fine Art /Art & Writing at UWE Bristol.