Rural Arts Research Articles

Brigalow bondage: Rural women and the arts

‘The arts’ is a field of activity and power which has traditionally been associated with ‘great men'; women have typically been represented as having only tenuous links with the field. However, in regional and rural areas, women are by far the major arts participants, organisers and educators, and tend to operate not as individuals, but as members of arts groups. Possibly as a corollary, while arts in rural areas recruits substantial community participation, the activity apparently receives little media coverage or support from governments or corporations, relative to other recreational activities. In this paper I will discuss ‘the arts’ as a social practice, with its own internal rules and logic, and explore the social location of arts beyond the metropolis. To this end I will outline the results of my research to date in the field of arts in Central Queensland, drawing on policy statements and on interviews with (mainly women) rural art practitioners. The paper examines whether the logic of the field of arts changes when it is moved from the city to the bush, and discusses to what extent this can be attributed to the social position of women in rural communities. It attempts to engage with social relations in regional Queensland, and the incommensurability of the public and private spheres. That is, women arts practitioners are actively engaged in a public activity—dealing with funding, public relations and policy implementation—yet are perceived (and, typically, perceive themselves) to be operating largely within the private sphere. This suggests that modes of representation have greater material effects than empirical ‘realities’.

Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1852

In June 1849, a writer who had just moved to a new community described its buildings as completely devoid of architectural taste. Is there no way of instilling some rudiments of into the minds of dwellers in remote country places? the writer asked the editor of the Horticulturist, a popular magazine devoted to improving rural art and taste. Andrew Jackson Downing, the editor, replied by ordaining this correspondent an apostle of taste and charged him with the responsibility of providing examples of architectural and landscape design worthy of imitation by other Americans. This was Downing's mission as well. Apostle of Taste is the first full-length biography of Downing, the horticulturist, landscape gardener, and prolific writer on architecture who, more than any other individual, shaped middle-class in the United States in the two decades prior to the Civil War. Through his books and the pages of the Horticulturist, Downing preached a gospel of that promoted the modern or natural style of landscape design over the formal and geometric arrangements that were the hallmark of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century gardens. Together with his longtime collaborator, architect Alexander Jackson Davis, he contributed to the revolution in American architectural from the universality of the classical revival to Gothic, Italianate, bracketed, and other romantic or picturesque styles. Downing celebrated this progression from classic to romantic not simply as a change in stylistic preference but also as a reflection of the nation's evolution from a pioneer condition to a more advanced state of civilization. In this compelling biography, illustrated with more than 100 drawings, plans, and photographs, David Schuyler explores the origins of Downing's ideas in English aesthetic theory and his efforts to adapt English designs to the different climate and republican social institutions of the United States. Schuyler traces the impulse toward an American architectural style in Downing's work, demonstrates the influence of Downing's ideas on the appropriate design of homes and gardens, and analyzes the complications of class implicit in Downing's prescriptions for American society. Schuyler's excellent study of Downing's writings and career, complete with excellent illustrations and an extensive, annotated bibliography, will serve as one major starting point for future studies.--Winterthur Portfolio

Notes and Queries

As part of research into the local history value of Rural Community Council (RCC) documentation, I would be interested to hear from anyone who holds archive material relating to the activities of RCCs since they were formed in the 1920s. This could cover not only items produced by the RCCs themselves, but also their allied concerns and organisations: for example, the development of the mobile library network, early rural adult education, support for parish councils and village halls, rural arts and crafts, the relief of the rural poor, and the setting up of Old Peoples Welfare Councils, Citizens Advice Bureaux and the like.

The Economic Impact Of Rural Festivals And Special Events: Assessing The Spatial Distribution Of Expenditures

The spatial distribution of the expenditures associated with a rural arts and crafts festival was examined. Of the nonresident expenditures associated with the festival, the mean percentage spent in the community by the survey respondents was 69.7%. Importantly, however, 77.9% of this spending was to thefestival booths, many of which were not operated by local residents. More specifically, of the $43,689 spent by the survey re spondents, $32, 719 (74.9%) was to entities outside the local economy. While the generalizability of these results is limited, the findings imply that research which fails to correct for nonlocal spending may significantly overestimate the economic benefits of festivals to the host community.

Utstillingen"Med egin hand" – "folkekunst" sett med nye øyne og i nytt lys

The exhibition «With my own hand» - «Folk Art» in a renewed view and new lightingThe comprehensive collections of folk art in Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum) in Oslo were presented in a new «basic» exhibition in 1993. The concept of «folk art» in Norway is mostly understood as «rural hand craft» or «rural art», produced in the country districts for the rural milieu, mostly for the more well-to-do social classes, before industrialism started around 1850.

The arts in Africa, the visual and the aural

For the purposes of this paper the title Arts in is interpreted as the Arts of indigenous Africans only. Of all the people living south of the Sahara, over eighty per cent, four out of every five persons, still live in the country and not in towns or industrial areas. Consequently, about four-fifths of all African arts can still be classed as rural. As with folk arts the world over, African rural arts play an important part in creating public opinion and upholding social disciplines. The arts of the urban minority cannot yet be considered to be the norm but rather the abnorm, and should be treated separately. Unlike their rural relatives, African town dwellers enjoy a highly disorganised social and ''family life, regardless of the nature of local political control, either indigenous or expatriot. Sociologists have found for example that the various anti-social activities of both Negroes and Africans are equally high in places as diverse and as far apart as the island of Jamaica, Accra, Lagos, Kampala, and Johannesburg. Urban arts of the present day do not yet have the same integrating effect upon African social life as the rural. In normal circumstances, Whites throughout Africa appear to prefer various aspects of the urban arts which are closest to them and which they find entertaining. They tend to encourage, almost exclusively, imitation of Western urban habits and recreations. They have not as a rule the slightest contact with African folk arts which are considered by them to be primitive and pre-civilised. This paper should therefore be read in this context.

Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands, A Book of Rural Arts, by Allen H. Eaton

"Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands, A Book of Rural Arts, by Allen H. Eaton." Parnassus, 10(6), p. 29

Book Review: Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands: A Book on Rural Arts

Book Review: Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands: A Book on Rural Arts