Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art: The British Community Arts Movement ed. by Alison Jeffers and Gerri Moriarty

Abstract

Reviewed by: Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art: The British Community Arts Movement ed. by Alison Jeffers and Gerri Moriarty Ben Phelan Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art: The British Community Arts Movement. Edited by Alison Jeffers and Gerri Moriarty. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017. pp. 263. £75.00 hardcover. [End Page 239] This book, as is clear from its subtitle, is about community arts in Britain—its history, its theoretical underpinnings (insomuch as it can be said to have any kind of coherent theory, a fact which the book readily acknowledges), and its legacy. While a contribution to theatre history, this book is as much about film, television, visual arts, and late-twentieth-century cultural politics as it is about performance. The multiple threads that this book weaves are all to its strength, however. The history, theory, and legacy that the various authors attempt to trace are fragmented and lacking an archive, meaning that the history is largely an oral history, constructed of memories by the very people who shaped the history. In chapter 11, Owen Kelly writes, "We think less than we think we do, and our consciousness does not contain a single coherent narrative but rather a number of contending and contradictory impressions that we arrive at retrospectively" (234). What emerges within the pages of Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art is a book that mirrors Kelly's reflection. It is a series of often-contradictory memories, attempting to make sense of a moment in history when it seemed not only that radical revolutionary politics were possible but also that artists (or at least, artists acting as facilitators within communities) would be the very vanguard of that revolution. Editors Alison Jeffers and Gerri Moriarty have divided their book into two sections. Part one is an oral history of community arts in Britain from 1968 to 1986, divided into four chapters covering England, Scotland, Wales, and Ire-land. They did not choose 1986 as an arbitrary cutoff point, however. For Jeffers, community arts began its decline in 1980 when the Association of Community Artists (ACA) became regionally, rather than nationally, focused. Some artists joined the new Association for Community Arts (AfCA), but this organization was open to anyone interested in community arts, while the ACA was specifi-cally a platform for artists to organize. This meant "opening up of membership to include representatives of the funding bodies [which] meant that we had no place to organise when our needs did not coincide with their desires" (37). But it was the end of the Shelton Trust in 1986—an organization that created conferences and publications for community artists—that signaled the "end of any sense of coherent national organizing arts in Britain" (38). Part two is about the theory and legacy of the community arts movement. As an example, Kelly argues that community arts did not end per se. Rather, technological and cultural shifts meant that community artists' work no longer made sense. For instance, Oliver Bennet, in chapter 8, discusses how some community artists, like the ones who created Vale TV in West Dunbartonshire, believed that local television held the key for revolutionary politics. The hierarchical form of television meant that studios held the means of production. Communities, [End Page 240] these artists believed, if given the means to conceive and create their own television, would use that power to create programs that revealed deep social unrest. (It did not work out this way in practice, however. The most popular program on Vale TV was a show about the dangers of dog feces.) Once technology shifted to allow individuals to create their own content—from video to the Internet—communities no longer needed facilitators to assist them in conceiving, creating, and disseminating their own work. What Kelly argues in chapter 11 is that the spirit that animated community arts—an "active view of human beings and society" (237)—is still alive, but "the battlegrounds have shifted a few miles" (238). While I do not agree with every artist and theorist featured in this book, I think that juxtaposing a number of divergent viewpoints is the book's strongest feature. It is an approach...