Saw this fantastic show on PBS back in June 09 in Canada and have been waiting since for it to reach our airwaves. Hosted by Daniel Levitin and Bobbie McFerrin, it’s been split into two parts for Oz showing, the first part at 9.35 tonight on ABC1

I can’t recommend it too highly – it pulls together most of the research that points to why making music is an essential part of being, or rather becoming, human; in particular the function of music-making in facilitating our capacity to enjoy co-operating with others.

This is a must see.

For the past thirteen years, Quebec has had an annual ‘Journées de la culture’ (3 day) event designed to raise ‘public participation and engagement’ in culture-making. It appears to have been enormously successful, if measured by the numbers of people who engage on the day.

Finally, after a feasibility study confirmed the obvious (commissioned in 2006!), the Canadian Arts Summit (an association of big end arts organisations) has decided to support a similar event across the nation.

September 2010 will see coast-to-coast Culture Days. Having discovered that ‘a vibrant arts and cultural sector contributes directly to a healthy and stable society’, the (relatively) big end of town has decided to take action.

You may detect a mite of cynicism in my response, for which please forgive me. It appears to be a strategy designed to introduce ordinary folk to the ‘behind the scenes’ mechanics of art making, not so much to inspire them to get into it themselves but rather to deepen their appreciation of the contribution Artists make to life as we know it.

In other words, an innovative approach to audience development.

Which is perfectly fine.

My fear is that these three days out of 365 may come to be viewed as the be all and end all of community arts.

The population at large is not just the market for arts commodities, even though it may be entirely reasonable for the producers of these commodities to see them so.

From a public policy perspective, the concept ‘active participation’ (a phrase constantly repeated in the ‘Culture Days’ rhetoric) should mean far more than a single moment of interactive experience.

It should embody the understanding that cultural action needs to be a mass movement – that a ‘healthy and stable society’ is one in which collaborative creativity is an ongoing and ordinary part of daily life, from cradle to grave, in which everyone engages as a matter of course.

Yes, we honour the Artists and their efforts, but we also (must) do it ourselves. That is the real challenge for public policy-makers.

On 27/5/10, Kate Ellis, the Minister for Early Childhood Education and Child Care, announced that the Commonwealth Government is developing the country’s first Outside School Hours Care Learning Framework.

I can find no details about what the content of this Framework will be, beyond the report in The Australian on 28/5 that ‘children in before- and after-school childcare will be forced (the reporter’s considered word choice) to play outside more and engage in games that involve interaction instead of watching movies and playing video games’.

Further into the article the reporter writes that ‘while the curriculum was yet to be established, Ms Ellis said it would emphasise play-based learning, physical activity and social development’.
Ms Ellis is also the Minister for Sport (and Youth), so it’s hardly surprising that, at least according the obviously jaundiced Oz reporter, she has chosen to describe the initiative in sporty terms.

I am wondering how engaged arts activists have been in contributing to the development of the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care (see the CmwlthGov’s mychild.gov.au website for a brief mention of this initiative).

Apparently, the development Ms Ellis announced is a part of this wider framework.

The reason I wonder about how impactful an arts perspective is being is because both intuitively and rationally (I’ve spent a lot of time researching this topic) I’m convinced that creative play (song, dance, storytelling etc) is foundational to our learning to become, and to enjoy being, social animals.

It seems to me that all those who work with children should have learnt the skills necessary to stimulate children’s creativity, should be competent in a range of processes that facilitate enjoyable and fulfilling creative play and should appreciate the importance of these activities in childhood development.

Furthermore, the curriculum should mandate creative play.

I’m hoping that there is already a bevy of activists on the case because, to my mind, this just might be the most important arts initiative a society might undertake.

For those of like mind, here are some websites that connect to national agencies with responsibilities in this area.

Office of Early Childhood Education & Child Care (within the Dept of Education, Employment & Workplace Relations)

Early Years Learning Framework

National Quality Standard

National Childcare Accreditation Council Inc. (responsible for the implementation and administration of the Quality Assurance systems for family day care, outside school hours care and long day care across Australia)

Early Childhood Australia Inc. (national umbrella organisation for children’s services)

I’ve recently come across four books that look as if they will be well worth a solid examination by those involved in grassroots cultural action/policy making (those that have time to read, that is).  I haven’t had the chance to get my hands directly on any of them, but given what I know about many of the authors/editors/contributors, I’m sure that they will all offer useful new perspectives.  They are:

Baeker, Greg (ed) Rediscovering the Wealth of Places: a municipal cultural planning handbook for Canadian communities (2010) Municipal World ISBN: 9780919779914

Brault, Simon No Culture, No Future (2010) Cormorant Books ISBN: 9781897151761

Lynne, Elizabeth & Goldsmith, Stephen (eds) What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs (2010) New Village Press ISBN: 978098155935

Stige, Brynjulf, Ansdell, Gary & Pavlicevic, Mercédès Where Music Helps: Community Music Therapy in Action and Reflection (2010) Ashgate ISBN: 9781409410102

Greg Baeker is a very active Canadian cultural policy consultant who‘s done a heap of work with local governments.  Among the contributors is Colin Mercer, well known to many Australians from his time as Director of the Institute for Cultural Policy Studies (1987-95)

I wrote about Simon Brault when he published this book in French.  Now the English version is out and, given his focus on the importance of amateur arts-making, I hope it/he will inspire some rethinking of where the emphasis should be in the public support of arts activities.

Jane Jacobs was one of the great understanders of urban neighbourhoods.  Her 1961 classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was, and continues to be, an inspiration to grassroots activists and progressive planners.  It’s great to know that her approach is influencing the thinking of new generations.  Among the contributors is Arlene Goldbard, a passionate articulator of the need for local engagement.

I had the privilege of partnering with Brynjulf Stige on a community music symposium a couple of years ago and was very impressed.  He is, along with the other two authors, one of the key advocates for what they call community music therapy, which socialises processes that have traditionally been private and individual.

There has probably never been a liberation struggle that has not had a musical backing track.  And in many cases this has been superbly documented – for example, Rhythm of Resistance – Beat of the Heart and Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony (South Africa) and The Singing Revolution (Estonia).  The function of music as the holder of a people’s identity along with its capacity to bolster courage in the face of adversity are well known, and once more is raised in this Al Jazeera piece on the music of the Palestinians

The ways that a group gather, prepare and consume food offer unique insights into their values, that is, their culture.

Not surprisingly, there are strong connections between their arts and their attitudes to food.  Many anthropologists believe that the preparation for and celebration of the hunt formed the basis for early human music and dance, and harvest festivals appear to be ubiquitous across human cultures (to say nothing of drinking songs).

Current concerns in western societies about junk food, the decline of social eating (particularly within families) and the rise of the slow food movement, point to a growing awareness of the importance, not only of a healthy diet but of process – the rituals of sustenance may be as important as the content.

This recent article from Ari Le Vaux, while offering a very personal view of food, is predicated on an important insight – one that I believe is as applicable to art as it is to food.  The most satisfying is that which comes with a story, and the best stories are the ones in which the teller is also the protagonist.

Researchers have confirmed that yet another piece of common observation is really so. Country folk sing and dance together more than city folk.

And along with this revelation, comes another reminder of the definitional hoops we are constantly being expected to jump through. This time, it’s the faintly dismissive phrase ‘informal arts’, which, in the North American lexicon, lumps together all that happens away from the gaze of cultural institutions.

Three days ago, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts released ‘Come as You Are: Informal Arts Participation in Urban and Rural Communities’. This is Research Note #100 in the NEA’s ongoing search for evidence.

Whether it be ‘formal’ or ‘informal’, the analysers have yet to make the distinction between ‘witnessing’ and ‘making’ or between individual and group – both spectra that I would have thought to be of far more interest and potential impact than attendee dress codes.

Still and all, I guess it’s useful to be reminded that relatively sparse and/or isolated communities aren’t just waiting around for Opera Company to arrive.

The March 3 edition of Arts Watch pointed me to the recent discovery by the LA Times that making music has more profound effects than listening to it. Given that we know that babies aren’t made by watching blue movies, it is perhaps surprising that this revelation is deemed newsworthy.

I guess the not inconsiderable investment in making us believe that ‘the arts’ is all about the epiphanies we can experience through witnessing the performance of the Artist is paying off.  Our own paltry efforts are implicitly trivialised in comparison to the excellence of the expert.

Anyway, the LA Times has discovered that ‘if you want music to sharpen your senses, boost your ability to focus and perhaps even improve your memory, you need to be a participant, not just a listener.’

This, in contrast to the now discredited ‘Mozart Effect’: The belief that exposing babies to the recordings of Wolfgang Amadeus turned them into bright(er) beings.

There is now considerable research to show that making music produces physical change in our brains. And there is lots of speculation as to how these changes may (better) equip us for life’s journey. I’m on side with those that think that an increased skill in, and enjoyment of, co-ordinating one’s actions with others is the foundation of becoming active social beings – and that music-making offers precisely that opportunity.

Bill Ivey, U.S. author and advocate for matters creative has been struggling for years to make a new language for arts policy.

Douglas McLennan, the editor of Arts Journal, recently hosted a week-long conversation dissecting Ivey’s concept, Expressive Life.

Douglas begins by asking, ‘are the terms “Art” and “Culture” tough enough to frame a public policy carve-out for the 21st century? Are the old familiar words, weighted with multiple meanings and unhelpful preconceptions, simply no longer useful in analysis or advocacy? In his book, Arts, Inc., Bill Ivey advances “Expressive Life” as a new, expanded policy arena – a frame sufficiently robust to stand proudly beside “Work Life,” “Family Life,” “Education,” and “The Environment.” Is Ivey on the right track, or is “Expressive Life” a dead end?’

The debate is fascinating. As one of the participants says at the conclusion: ‘the dialog here has made important and critically necessary contributions to the process of developing a robust conceptual and intellectual framework for the argument that all individuals have a right to fully experience their creative capacity’.

Thank you Arlene Goldbard for drawing my attention to this debate.

ccdnsw shut up shop last week after failing to renegotiate continued financial support from the NSW state government.

In justifying the decision, NSW Arts Minister Virginia Judge, is quoted in the Sun-Herald as saying:  ‘ccdnsw is an advisory body.  It does not create or program any arts events.  [That is, it doesn’t offer me enough photo opps]  It started 25 years ago [that is, I’m bored] when community cultural activities were not as prolific and as advanced as they are today’ [1985 was a high point for community arts – one could easily argue that it’s been downhill ever since].

The apparent bureaucratic excuse for the withdrawal of support was that ccdnsw failed under the ‘audience development’ criterium.  Apart from providing the justification for defunding, one can only speculate why this criterium was applied to this organisation, especially when their entire focus, at least figuratively speaking, is about getting people out of the auditorium and on to the stage.

Fact is that the concept of community arts is fundamentally subversive.  That is, it stands in direct opposition to the prevailing ideology of marketisation.  The idea that art might be a process in which ordinary people engage (making their own culture) cannot help but be an anathema to those that see the arts as an industry in which specialists produce commodities for sale to passive consumers.  What’s more, the very concept of active engagement has to be viewed as dangerous by power-brokers whose comfortable existence is dependent on an acquiescent public.

ccdnsw, on it website, claims that its ‘primary role and purpose is to be the leading voice advancing social change through the arts’.  The bigger question might be, how did they manage to scam money out the NSW government for so long before getting the knife?

Interestingly, some years ago, NSW did expressly force ccdnsw to not offer training.  No wonder really – the last thing they want is some social change.

It is tempting to speculate that ccd has become a victim of its own success – that Labor has ‘defunded’ it because of the trouble they’re causing.  If only.  More likely is that the bureaucrats have become bored.  After all, ccd doesn’t do foyer like the big boys.

Might not ccd be better off free of the fetters of governments whose fundamental beliefs and behaviours are diametrically opposed to the values it promotes?  Possibly, but bucks are still needed for workers, rent and so on.  We are lucky enough to live in a society that at least nominally, recognises that the state has a responsibility to support (minimal) dissent – just as long as it doesn’t get too entrenched would appear to be the rider.

Seems like ccdnsw’s demise is a done deal.  Scott O’Hara (Arts Hub) and Phoebe Coyne (New Matilda) have written perceptive pieces to no avail.  With qcan’s departure late last year, and the earlier destruction of Artwork magazine, ccd.net and indeed the Community Cultural Development Board of the OzCo, it would appear that the free marketeers are well on the way to achieving their goal.  Makes the title of the OzCo’s latest research tome, ‘More than Bums on Seats’ ring pretty hollow really.