Participatory Art Project Research Articles

The politics of co-production and inclusive deliberation in participatory research

ABSTRACT This research engages in a methodological analysis of a participatory art project employing PhotoVoice with refugee and local community youths across two distinct sites: Istanbul and Johannesburg. The project aimed to facilitate inclusive deliberations among the youth, thereby promoting capacity building, reconciliation, and peacebuilding initiatives. Our focus is grounded in the concept of co-production as a practice and principle of inclusive deliberation within the research design, addressing a spectrum of issues from participant-driven research agenda setting, to the design and execution of the research, the selection and creation of photographs, and their dissemination. By offering a critical examination of how inclusive deliberation manifests in co-production research, we highlight the potentials, complexities, and tensions it generates. We argue that while co-produced action research embodies transversal politics, it does not necessarily disrupt the entrenched power dynamics and politically driven hierarchies within the public sphere.

Engaging with the voice of the other through echoing: insights from participatory art

ABSTRACT Involving the voice of others is a major concern for organisations. However, these attempts have often focused on giving voice without attending to different abilities to speak or internal power dynamics. Consequently, integrating others’ voices constantly risks appropriation. While some approaches have focused on individual motivations to ethically engage, post-individualist studies on inclusion have argued for considering embodied modes of relating. I contribute to this literature by offering the concept of echoing to analyse practices of engaging with the Other’s voice. Echoing interlinks three dimensions: post-individualism, corporeal generosity and the shared world. With the empirical case of participatory art projects, which produce artworks based on the Other’s stories, I will demonstrate how ethical encounters build on (a) disrupted transmission of the voice, integrating multiple actors and taking on the form of a response, as well as (b) practices of world-making, which continuously co-produce the shared world of this encounter.

Rehearsing catastrophe: cultivating affective responses to climate change through eco-somatic performance with babies and mothers

ABSTRACT This article considers the related concepts of ‘rehearsal’ [Harney, Stefano, and Fred Moten. 2013. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Brooklyn: Minor Compositions] and ‘catastrophe’ [Stengers, Isabelle. 2015. In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism. Translated by Andrew Goffey. London: Open Humanities Press] as activism, focussing upon eco-somatic drama processes engaged through In Your Arms (IYA). This participatory arts project for babies and their primary caregivers was co-created in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, by a four-person artist ensemble, ten pre-crawling babies, and their mothers. Multi-modalities were used, including improvisatory movement scores, natural props, sound-making and listening practices. The article suggests new ways to consider drama activity at a micro-sensorial scale, offering practices that cultivate environmental attunement and care from the very first months of life.

Out of time: The experience of contrasting temporal frameworks in participatory art

Abstract Participatory art turns the artwork into a process of engagement and co-creation, and it thus involves forms of time-based coordination that influence the experience of creating participatory art. In this paper I argue that participatory art is underscored by two contrasting temporal frameworks. One is the framework of long-term durational approaches that have been internalized among artists as an ethical and political obligation toward participants; the other is the short-term temporary framework that typically comes with project funding and steers the project toward delivery of target outcomes. To show the tensions to which these contrasting temporal frameworks can give rise, I analyze the development of a participatory art project in Copenhagen’s South Harbor. Specifically, the analysis emphasizes how tensions arose in respect to delimitations of project aspects such as who constitutes the creative team, what is the task before us, and what is our expected contribution to the community. By emphasizing the tensions arising from contrasting temporal frameworks, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the experience of creating participatory art, and to problematizing the question of time for participatory art.

Out of time: The experience of contrasting temporal frameworks in participatory art

Abstract Participatory art turns the artwork into a process of engagement and co-creation, and it thus involves forms of time-based coordination that influence the experience of creating participatory art. In this paper I argue that participatory art is underscored by two contrasting temporal frameworks. One is the framework of long-term durational approaches that have been internalized among artists as an ethical and political obligation toward participants; the other is the short-term temporary framework that typically comes with project funding and steers the project toward delivery of target outcomes. To show the tensions to which these contrasting temporal frameworks can give rise, I analyze the development of a participatory art project in Copenhagen’s South Harbor. Specifically, the analysis emphasizes how tensions arose in respect to delimitations of project aspects such as who constitutes the creative team, what is the task before us, and what is our expected contribution to the community. By emphasizing the tensions arising from contrasting temporal frameworks, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the experience of creating participatory art, and to problematizing the question of time for participatory art.

‘카운터 모뉴먼트’의 비물질적 특성과 국내외 사례연구

The purpose of this study is to understand monuments as an expanded form of participatory art projects aimed at healing collective trauma, based on James Young's concept of ‘Counter Monument’. Although the counter monument is a form that deviates from the material and sculptural framework of traditional monuments, it fulfills the original purpose of the monument, which is to ‘represent and preserve memories,’ and at this time, collective trauma brings about formal, media, and expressive changes in the monument. Accordingly, this study explains James Young's concept of counter monuments and the examples he indicates. Furthermore, it will analyze domestic cases that show collective trauma as non-material representations, focusing on interviews with the author and testimonies of participants. These ‘expanded monuments’ are a special way of mourning that seeks to ‘reinterpret within the meaning of the present’ the events that came as a big blow to the Korean society. At the same time, it has a very special meaning with 're-historicizing' those events within a new sense of cultural solidarity.

Promoting student well‐being: Exploring participatory arts in a higher education institution

AbstractThe proportion of students studying in higher education institutions who are experiencing mental health needs is increasing and becoming a serious concern. Using participatory arts projects may be key to enabling students to maintain well‐being despite the pressures inherent in their student role. Therefore, this study aimed to ascertain whether such a course could be feasibly developed within a university setting, and to examine how esthetic experience influences university students' well‐being. To understand the differences in students' esthetic experience and well‐being before and after engaging in participatory art, this study implemented an intervention and collected quantitative and qualitative data. A total of 39 students volunteered to participate in the study. The results revealed that esthetic experience predicted student well‐being, as the more students had an esthetic experience by concentrating on a particular artwork, the more effective it was in terms of enhancing their well‐being. In addition, there was a significant difference between the pre‐ and postintervention, where students' esthetic experience and well‐being improved after completing the art activities. These findings have implications for our understanding of university students' well‐being, as well as the importance of considering participatory art, on its own, as a target for intervention.

Belonging-in-Interaction: Expressing and Performing Translocal Belongings Through Language and Arts Practice

Abstract This paper explores belonging, in a context of mobility. For newcomers to a country, their belongings are multiple and uncertain, as they retain links with the place they have left while attempting to attain legitimacy as members of the new society. We ask how recent migrants to the UK who are adult migrant language learners express and perform their understandings of belonging in a participatory arts project. In so doing, we uncover how the participants’ belongings, as they emerge in interaction, both shape and are shaped during the phases of co-production. We take into account the range of communicative resources including but also beyond language, deployed trans-semiotically in participatory arts practice. This trans-orientation allows insights into the interactive character of belonging in the process of preparing the arts performance that might otherwise go unnoticed. We conclude that our perspective on belonging-in-interaction presents a challenge to dominant discourses relating to social integration for new arrivals, where a narrow focus on the learning and use of the main societal language is a prerequisite for belonging.

The Reception of Participatory Art. The Case of Documenta Fifteen

"Documenta fifteen in 2022 was par excellence the space for participatory art, so this edition can be seen as a touchstone for it. The research of the phenomenon of participatory art is based in this text on the one hand on the curatorial texts of ruangrupa, the collective that ensured the artistic direction of this edition of the documenta, and on the personal experience of the author as a visitor of the exhibition. Among the many issues raised by participatory art, the present text focuses on the aspect of reception of art in the case of the projects presented at documenta fifteen, and by extension, reflects on the experience of the receiver and the artistic value of participatory art projects. Keywords: participatory art, documenta fifteen, lumbung, reception of art, evaluation of participatory art "

Hostile Terrain 94, Installation, and Meditative Explorations of the US-Mexico Borderlands

In the fall semester of 2021, we organized and curated the participatory art project Hostile Terrain ‘94 at the University of Alabama. The project, conceived and developed by the Undocumented Migration Project, consists of ∼3,200 toe-tags carrying information of deceased migrants found on the US side of the US-Mexico border in the Sonoran Desert. They produce a map of tremendous death. The project allowed participating institutions to make their own decisions regarding how to coordinate the creation of the material and staging and curation of the final exhibition. Apart from its importance as a way of engaging a public with the often-unseen consequences of US border policy and policing, it is also an experiment in collaborative art making. What kind of experience did we want to structure for those taking part in creating the materials? How were we going to stage the encounter with the finished materials? We discuss organizing the creation of materials, setting up the installation, and the period when the project was open to the public to highlight two elements that were of special importance in the process: the subject position engaged by the project, and the meditative practice proposed by the installation.

The Contribution of Participatory Art Projects to a Good Quality of Life in Mountain Regions

The Contribution of Participatory Art Projects to a Good Quality of Life in Mountain Regions

Making invisible care visible. Ethics and aesthetics of care in participatory arts practices in times of COVID-19

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic emphasises the importance of care for our societies, yet underscores the inferiority of relational caring practices. During this time, we studied the participatory work of artists working with older adults using participant observations, in-depth interviews and visual ethnography. In this article, we present a case study of one arts initiative, a theatre company engaging seniors in the Netherlands, using ethics and aesthetics of care as sensitising concepts. The findings reveal that this work can promote relational forms of care. This study makes visible how different forms of care can be identified in a participatory art project.

One Piece at a Time: Building Community and a Mosaic Mural

This phenomenological study explored the experiences of community members who worked with a social work community practice class to create a participatory mosaic mural in an ethnically diverse and rapidly gentrifying area of a small city in New England. Community members in this project included people working in the community at agencies and schools, artists with studios in the neighborhood, residents, and business owners. Seven community members participated in the study and completed hour-long semi-structured interviews. Analysis revealed three primary themes: (1) artist and community match, (2) what it takes to make it happen, and (3) mural legacy. This paper contributes to literature investigating the value of participatory art projects as a strategy to build collaboration and connectedness utilizing critical service learning and creative placemaking approaches.

Retelling Cinderella: Cultural and Creative Transformations

Retelling Cinderella: Cultural and Creative Transformations

Change must come: mixing methods, evidencing effects, measuring impact

ABSTRACT In recent years, impact has become an important evaluation metric for creative practice researchers. It is no longer enough to claim that creative practice has intrinsic rewards, the assumption is that it will also affect change in some form or another. Yet, the means for evidencing impact are poorly understood, while the relatively short lifespan of a creative project can mean that there is often little opportunity to evaluate the long-term effect (or impact) of creative practice. To explore this gap, a case study of DeClick, a participatory arts project in the Netherlands, was employed. This study shows that by adopting a ‘theory of change’ approach, not only does it set out clear intentions for the project, but an analysis of underlying assumptions that link activities to impact leads to effective activity design and provides evidential methodology for evaluating project success. Subsequently, a mixed-methods approach is shown to evaluate impact in a way that values participation in creative practice as a meaningful experience. The approach explored through the case study acknowledges the challenges of evidencing long term impact. But also shows it is possible to evidence ‘pathways to impact’ using a social return on investment model for impact evaluation.

How participatory arts can contribute to Dutch older adults’ wellbeing – revisiting a taxonomy of arts interventions for people with dementia

ABSTRACT Background A growing body of evidence suggests the positive impact of arts on health and wellbeing. The mechanisms underlying the impact however, remain overlooked. Methods 38 Semi-structured interviews were held with 30 older adults and 10 artists, involved in five participatory art projects in the Netherlands. Case-based framework and cross-over analyses were done on the basis of Cousins et al.’s taxonomy. Results Participatory art initiatives contributed to the wellbeing of older adults in a complex interplay with the artist, art form, group of participants, material aspects and continuity of activities. A welcoming environment appeared a consistent underlying mechanism for participants to grow on a personal and artistic level, connect with others and feel supported in their psychosocial wellbeing. Conclusion This article demonstrates the important social function participatory art can have for older adults, and argues for the importance of a thorough consideration of the context wherein underlying mechanisms and outcomes emerge.

What’s Bad About Spoonvilles?: Investigating Pedagogies of Kindness and Connection Through Community-Engaged Art Projects in Public Space

When the pandemic struck I felt that art had nothing to offer in such an apocalypse. But after being involved in participatory art projects I saw them as pedagogical vehicles, connecting people through shared experiences and emotions. Many participatory projects were made by the public and placed physically in public space—banners, murals, chalk drawings and collections of decorated spoons under the auspices of ‘kindness’, ‘joy’ and ‘hope’. Commonly these projects encouraged the people to create and contribute something, focussing on connecting people to the artworks and connecting them to a particular community.Alongside the actual site of the physical artworks, they also existed online. Images shared through social connections via the internet often facilitated more participants and an audience for artworks. Ironically some of these facets of the artwork are very personal and private instead of public. These private moments of making and encounter (integral to public art) can question our assumptions about the publicness of public art. We assume that such projects connect, include and benefit the public—but ‘community’ can also exclude—perhaps evidenced by responses of threats or the destruction of the artworks. Besides sweet platitudes, what does evidence bear out?

Hybrid Peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Participatory Arts and Youth Activism as Vehicles of Social Change

This article provides an analytical case study of a participatory youth-led filmmaking project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Using the conceptual framework of hybridity, it critically considers whether and to what extent youth centred, participatory arts projects can facilitate the emergence of a positive hybrid peace. It reflects on three themes—solidarity; creativity as politics; and participation as norm—that speak to the opportunities and challenges encountered during the project. The analysis demonstrates that while participatory arts have the potential to induce a more emancipatory vision of peace, that, and mirroring the warnings from development studies, their effects are not a given and challenges and blockages persist.

“In the First Place, We Don’t Like to Be Called ‘Refugees’”: Dilemmas of Representation and Transversal Politics in the Participatory Art Project 100% FOREIGN?

100% FOREIGN? (100% FREMMED?) is an art project consisting of 250 life stories of individuals who were granted asylum in Denmark between 1956 and 2019. Thus, it can be said to form a collective portrait that inserts citizens of refugee backgrounds into the narrative of the nation, thereby expanding the idea of national identity and culture. 100% FOREIGN? allows us to think of participatory art as a privileged site for the exploration of intersubjective relations and the question of how to “represent” citizens with refugee experience as well as the history and practice of asylum. The conflicting aims and perceptions involved in such representations are many, as suggested by the opening sentence of Hannah Arendt’s 1943 essay “We, Refugees”: “In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees’”. Using 100% FOREIGN? as an analytical reference point, this article discusses some of the ethical and political implications of representing former refugees. It briefly considers recent Danish immigration and asylum policies to situate the project in its regional European context and argues that, similarly to its neighbouring countries, Denmark can be described as a “postmigrant society” (Foroutan). To frame 100% FOREIGN? theoretically, this article draws on Arendt’s essay, Trinh T. Minh-ha’s concept of speaking nearby, as well as the feminist concept of transversal politics (Meskimmon, Yuval-Davis). It is hoped that this approach will lead to a deeper understanding of what participatory art can bring to the ethical politics of representing refugee experience.

Rehearsing for the future: play, place and art

ABSTRACT This paper explores the confluence of art, play and places, presenting three case studies enacted via participatory art projects which asked: How can artistic play change our relationship to place? The research was practice-based via participatory art and presents new, ludic cultural practices in regards to art, play and place. The case studies discuss how participants became liberated from normal adult behaviour in public spaces because of the alibi of art and play, as well as enjoying and interacting with the place differently. The artworks were contextually responsive to the specificities of each place, allowing players an opportunity to develop new, positive place-relationships. It also includes a reflection on the political imperatives of play in assisting adults imagining new futures for themselves. The findings of this paper are useful to those involved in heritage or cultural projects seeking to develop new audience relationships with their specific places. HIGHLIGHTS Adult play can be considered a ‘rebel base for imagination’ that helps with audience development for heritage/cultural projects. Framing ‘play’ as an ‘artistic process’ encourages deeper engagement from adults, and this more effective engagement with place. Conflict-based play approaches allows the politics of plurality and dissensus to occur and as such, is more age-appropriate for adults because such work involves complex themes responding to specific localities. Play gives an opportunity for adults to ‘rehearse our future’ in regards to politics, culture and place, enabling capacity to explore meaning within our lives