Shaping Rurality

On Friday 12th July 2024, 35 creative practitioners from across Devon and Cornwall gathered in Bodmin for the third event in Visual Arts South West’s How Can I Stay? (I don’t want to not want to stay) programme. The day, titled Remote Working, comprised a series of breakout discussions and activities which initiated conversations about the reality of working as a creative practitioner in a rural place.

Remote Working was organised in partnership with Flamm, a visual art festival held in Redruth last October, showcasing the work of local artists and highlighting the town’s network of cultural organisations. The next iteration of the festival is due to take place in Bodmin in 2025. Remote Working served as a precursor to the next Flamm, both mapping out Bodmin’s cultural hubs and investigating perceptions of the area’s current creative strengths and weaknesses.

Participants were able to attend two of three breakout sessions during the day:

• Rural Geography (how this relates to your practice) led by artist Patrick Lowry
• Where Do You Start? led by artists Rachael Coward and Katie Platts
• Collaboration and Cross-Disciplinary Practice in Bodmin led by intoBodmin founder Fin Irwin.

Artist Oliver Raymond Barker also offered an activity which ran throughout the event, inviting participants to describe themselves and their practices through a series of reflective writing and photography prompts.

The day began at The Beat (Bosvena Events, Arts & Theatre), a former chapel converted into a contemporary multi-use events space. The breakout activities then led participants to various locations across Bodmin, including the community and arts organisation intoBodmin.

Patrick Lowry’s session, held at The Beat, focused on the relationship between participants’ practices and where they lived, as well as exploring their sense of connection to the wider arts community across Devon and Cornwall. As an artist who has lived and worked in Cornwall for 30 years, creating large-scale, often site-specific, installations such as Metro: Red River Line at last year’s Flamm, Patrick was well positioned to facilitate such discussions.

After initial introductions, Patrick began the session by asking participants how comfortable they felt with the term ‘rural’. Did they feel as though they live in a rural area personally? How did this vary across the group, and therefore across Devon and Cornwall? This seemingly straightforward opener became one of the day’s most persistent themes – so much so that artist Sovay Berriman, who was recording conversations for a special Flamm podcast episode on her MESKLA channel, commented at the end that the event could have simply been titled ‘Rural or No?’.

Rurality, it turns out, is a surprisingly slippery thing to pin down. On the one hand, rurality is quantifiable; according to the gov.uk website, areas are rural if they fall outside settlements with a resident population of more than 10,000, putting 30 towns and cities across Devon and Cornwall as non-rural areas. On the other hand, the perspectives shared across the group highlighted that rurality is more complex than this – more an experience than a statistic – and usually imposed upon an area by lack of public services.

One public service in particular cropped up repeatedly throughout the day: public transport. A participant observed that even in Exeter, one of the largest urban areas in Devon and Cornwall (second only to Plymouth), exhibition opening events are often held at midday at weekends to enable audiences to return home on public transport afterwards. So while it may seem as though rurality is geographically pre-determined, in many cases it is public service infrastructure, or lack thereof, that creates the feeling of remoteness that is so frequently associated with rurality.

A few doors down from Patrick’s session at The Beat, Rachael Coward and Katie Platts’ session took place at intoBodmin. Rachael and Katie, both artists living and working in Cornwall, brought complementary perspectives to the question of ‘how can I stay?’, with Rachael having moved to Cornwall in 2014 for university and stayed (aside from a brief stint in the South East), and Katie having grown up in Cornwall and studied in Bristol before returning. Between them they have an extensive array of experience working across the visual arts, with their combined résumé including curator, arts educator, facilitator, project producer, and technician.

Their session explored the process of establishing a creative career in a rural place, with a particular focus on the early career stage; inspired by their own varied journeys, they asked participants to create a map showing the evolution of their art practice or career. This resulted in a wonderful mixture of rivers, mountains, whirlpools, trees, towns, and abstract patterns, intricately drawn, painted, and labelled to represent each participant’s unique lived experiences.

The activity opened up a space for conversations, just as branching and winding as the maps, wherein participants reflected on the many small moments and decisions that had shaped their lives, leading them to where they were today. Rurality threaded in and out of each story, with the elaborate maps highlighting the messiness of creative careers – often slotted together from many moving parts, weaving people into the places and communities where they work. People who had spent time living and working both rurally and non-rurally felt that perhaps this more informal way of piecing together a living was more common in rural areas than urban ones, with jobs more frequently arising through chance happenings or conversations.

There was also a notable trend of participants sharing experiences of having moved to a city, lured by the promise of a bustling art scene, only to find their voices drowned out amongst the sheer volume of creative activity. Similarly, some commented that they felt stuck on the outside of cliques in these larger conurbations, as opposed to the sense of belonging they felt now in their rural community. The sessions were therefore an important reminder of the companionship and community that prospers in rural places, despite, or maybe even because of, the sense of geographical disconnection highlighted in Patrick’s session.

Fin Irwin’s session shared this exploration of geography and mapping, but on a more local scale. Fin led a walking tour of Bodmin, introducing members of the group to the town’s key cultural hubs and venues such as intoBodmin, Discovering42, and St Petroc’s Church. intoBodmin, of which Fin is founder and co-director, is a community and arts organisation responsible for coordinating a wide range of projects with, and for, Bodmin residents. One of their largest projects, and one that sparked the creation of the organisation, was the establishment of a community arts space and café in The Old Library. This is where the tour began, winding along Bodmin’s high street as Fin highlighted a couple of retail spaces that intoBodmin had previously used for projects. The group then passed the Shire Hall and cinema to reach Discovering42 – a recently opened art, sustainability, and science museum. Everyone enjoyed a quick play with the exhibits before the tour concluded with a visit to St Petroc’s Church, one of intoBodmin’s most remarkable venues, used frequently for live gigs.

Many members of the group were not familiar with the town and its cultural organisations, and perhaps there was a preconception that its arts scene wasn’t as bustling as other parts of the South West (such as west Cornwall, which got a very good rep over the course of the day from several Penwith-based practitioners highlighting the area’s large number of cultural organisations and creative offerings). Fin was an excellent tour guide, emphasising the growing number of CICs in and around the town, as well as the success of projects such as BodMAXX, which offered free and accessible creative activities for the people of Bodmin between 2021 and 2022.

Fin was also honest in sharing some of intoBodmin’s less successful ventures, reflecting on why he felt they had not worked. One key reflection which resonated with the group was the importance of knowing your audience, particularly in a financial capacity, and not offering programme that directly competes with other local organisations. Those who had worked in city-based arts organisations noted that it is much harder to build up big audience numbers in rural areas – an observation echoed in the recent Cornwall Creative Census, where 32% of respondents reported a limited customer base as their main barrier to growth. Perhaps this shifts the focus of rural organisations from audience size to quality of audience engagement – in many ways a more meaningful aim, and one that is suited to smaller, more intimate, rural communities; as Fin commented, it is important to do things with communities, rather than to them.

Despite the different structure and focus of each breakout session, there was one theme that emerged in every one: connection. Participants repeatedly highlighted the lack of connection as the most affecting downside of being a creative practitioner in a rural place, generally attributing this to the aforementioned poor public transport, in combination with a geographically vast art scene – Cornwall and Devon span approximately 150 miles east to west, as opposed to, for example, Greater London’s 36 miles.

While this was generally a shared sentiment across the group, there was some variation in how intensely it was felt, which was seemingly geographically determined – many people in west Cornwall reported feeling more connected than those in north Cornwall and west Devon. There was some nuance even within this, however, as demonstrated by an interaction wherein one participant commented on the abundance of creative opportunities in Cornwall compared to their home in Devon, only to be countered by someone from Cornwall who thought there to be more opportunities in Devon, highlighting that perceived opportunity differs based on each practitioner’s interests and needs.

Social media was highlighted as an effective way of keeping connected, bypassing the physical barriers of distance and transport, while also allowing individuals to curate their experience based on these specific interests and needs. At Rachael and Katie’s suggestion, a resource sharing board was created (see the bottom of this page for a list of resources) at The Beat and participants were invited to add resources they felt were of particular value, or that spoke to themes in the day’s discussions. A number of social media accounts were added to this, such as CAMP, VASW, and Creative Kernow Associates, all of which regularly share opportunities, events, and news from the sector.

While these online resources are important, particularly in rural settings, some non-social-media-users highlighted that we can’t rely solely on these methods. Tools like this are best used to complement other means of communication and connection, as opposed to being used in isolation – a sentiment that many organisations, particularly those aforementioned, embody well, having both a large online presence alongside regular ‘real world’ events.

As well as finding events to attend and communities to join, another challenge is accessing them; the financial, time, and energy costs of travelling are often enough of a barrier to discourage people from attending events altogether. Several strategies were proposed to address these barriers. Offering travel support was the first highlighted, with one participant emphasising the significant impact of the no-questions-asked travel bursaries and pre-arranged taxis from local stations provided for this event, making attendees feel more comfortable about making the journey. Tiered ticketing was proposed as an alternative way of addressing financial barriers, especially for organisations running paid events who are unable to offer travel support. Fin spoke highly of this method, saying that in his experience it usually pays for itself, with those opting for higher ticket prices covering any shortfall from the lower priced tickets. Aligning event schedules with public transport timetables was also suggested, benefiting both organisers and attendees by preventing disruptions from late arrivals or early departures. A final recommendation was to provide designated quiet spaces at events to help mitigate the physical, and sometimes social, impact of extensive travel followed by immediately joining a busy social environment.

A number of other ideas explored broader ways to counter this feeling of isolation. Many of them highlighted the importance of showing rather than simply telling; the concept that direct experiences can be more impactful than simply having access to information – in doing so emphasising tangible, interactive ways for people to connect and engage, rather than simply informing them about opportunities or the existence of a community. At Patrick's suggestion, attendees were invited to add their location to a physical map, visually demonstrating the geographic spread of the community in order to find others based nearby. A digital version of this map could further enhance this visual representation, allowing practitioners to see their peers' locations at a glance. Events like Flamm were celebrated as an impactful way of bringing community members together, regardless of whether they identify as part of the art community or not. These sort of gatherings (of which more are on the horizon – see Redruth’s upcoming Harbour Festival) allow participants to directly experience venues and meet one another, creating connections more tangibly than through online interactions. This was echoed in the earlier discussion about social media; while undeniably vital for sharing information, social media often feels more like telling than showing – in-person invitations to events or sharing of opportunities will resonate more deeply than an impersonal online listing. While hand-delivered personal invitations are an impractical marketing strategy, combining in-person outreach with social media marketing is an effective way of meaningfully reaching, and connecting with a wider audience.

During his tour of Bodmin (another effective example of showing rather than telling), Fin shared a wonderfully elaborate metaphor that encapsulates how intoBodmin views its work. In this metaphor, intoBodmin is a garden and The Old Library a big tree at its centre. Their events are a flower bed, with some blooming annually and others perennially. Skills training programmes, such as for volunteers, act as a nurturing greenhouse, while workshops and activities form a productive vegetable patch. Evaluation, crucial for growth and improvement, is represented by the compost pile, where experiences are broken down to enrich future endeavours.

Perhaps this metaphor can also be applied to Devon and Cornwall. It is clear that the area has a great number of both creative individuals and organisations – a healthy selection of trees and shrubbery – but that there is some disparity in the conditions they find themselves growing in: some are prospering in sunnier patches, while others are struggling in the shade. Events like Flamm grow in the flower beds, offering opportunities for cross-pollination and collaboration, while creative development programmes provide sheltered spaces – greenhouses – where creativity can be nurtured away from external pressures. The extensive selection of workshops and activities offered by practitioners along the peninsula make up a nourishing vegetable patch, and the leftovers from all this vegetal activity – the learnings from all the group projects and individual practices – are mulched down at events such as Remote Working. This process of reflection and evaluation – of composting – is crucial, breaking down collective experiences and using them to shape future soils. By supporting participants in developing connections, sharing resources, and reflecting on what it means to be a creative practitioner in Devon and Cornwall, Remote Working helped identify what is needed most to continue strengthening and growing the cultural community. In all, it was an exploration not just of how rurality shapes creative practitioners, but how they, too, shape rurality in return.

Resource board list

• a-n
• Artquest Art Worlds
• Artquest
• CAMP
• CAST newsletter
• Cornish Freelance Task Force Facebook
• Cornwall Council Cultural Mailing List
• Cornwall Scrap Store
• Creative Kernow Associates Instagram and Facebook
• Cuppa Culture meetings
• CVSF (including training grants for VCSEs)
• Krowji Studio Finder
• Local college education
• Lorna Jones Fundraising
• Makers Cornwall Facebook
• Tate Collective Producers
• The White Pube funding library
• Visual Art South West (VASW)
  

Acknowledgments
Anna Harris is an artist, curator, and podcaster based in West Cornwall. Since graduating from Fine Art at Falmouth University in 2022 she has worked on projects at Tate St Ives, CAST, and the Eden Project, as well as assisting with the production of Flamm. She has exhibited work across the UK including at Newlyn Art Gallery, Oxford University, and the Royal Cornwall Museum. In 2021 she founded the Down to a Fine Art podcast with artist Izzy Eastick as a platform for informal and critical discussion focusing on the creative community in the South West.

Anna worked alongside Flamm producer Tonia Lu to coordinate and chair Flamm x VASW: Remote Working