Essay. Community Based Art.

Do you live in the Area? Community Based Art as a framework for dialogue and Social Inclusion.
Irene Jiménez

‘In this fraught historical moment the situation of art may seem a relative minor concern. There are however, a number of contemporary artists and art collectives that have defined their practices around the facilitation of dialogue among diverse communities‘ . Grant H. Kester.In the above quote the author highlights modern contexts in which art is produced and redesigned in a time when for many it is not relevant in comparison with many of the other social, economic and political issues that bombard us on a daily basis. Nevertheless, new forms of art have become increasingly relevant, especially in localized community work. It is clear from current debates that art hasnot only changed in form but also in its practices, becoming more and more a medium for social inclusion. Studying these new practices and uses of art is important, not only because of the changes that they can provide to art theory, but also because they can inform and enrich other areas, allowing them to become more efficient and versatile. This has had an impact on the way in which artists areapproaching their work, as Kester explains: ‘artists have adopted a performative, process based approach. They are “context providers” rather than “content providers”' . In this statement the author gives the most active participation to the artist. The artist still is the main character, the leader of the project who becomes a facilitator for others to express themselves, and although this isevidently a very valuable asset one of the greatest changes in art is the fact that communities themselves are now the ones producing the art. Authors like Kester, Bishop and Beyer have explored the ways in which communities and artists have come together in producing a diversity of art manifestations and how these new practices also create social change.
We are more concerned with practices wherethe community is the one producing the art in any of its forms (video, paint, music, dance, etc.), since these new roles, filled by people that have been distant from traditional arts production, result in new models for organisations, entities and methods of addressing societies´ problems in the fields of education and social inclusion. They also have benefits in terms of employment, economicpotential, and the creation of areas of new development for the communities where they take place. It is in this framework that the present study is conceived.
This paper is written in the light of my personal experience as a video development worker at Station House Media Unit (SHMU) in Aberdeen, Scotland, where social work is carried out on a permanent basis through programmes including, but notlimited to, training in video and radio production and graphic design. SHMU describes itself as:
a dynamic Community Media Unit that supports residents in the seven regeneration areas of Aberdeen in radio and video production, traditional and on-line publications, music production and digital access. The organization also has an employability and training arm. As a community-managed, needs-ledorganization, shmu’s mission is to support its communities to reclaim the media.
SHMU is by its nature a place of convergence; a space where members of the different communities it targets are encouraged to speak and listen, to learn and apply. But it has also responded to further communities´ needs by widening its projects into the local prison and also into several academies in the areas, wherethe training courses are part of the regular academic curricula of the students.
I will refer to the structure, dynamics and profile of SHMU in more depth in a subsequent chapter. What is pertinent here is to specify the importance of this media unit not only as a model of an organisation that challenges traditional methods of social inclusion but also as a project that has benefited from a...