new CRACL publications – CIRCUIT

Posted on April 26, 2019 Posted in Circuit, reports, UncategorizedTagged Becky Coles, Circuit, Nicola SIm, Pat ThomsonLeave a comment

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Circuit, the large art gallery – youth sector programme run through Tate London – has just published a collection of eight commissioned research papers. Two of them come from CRACL members.

Nicky Sim reports on her PhD research (a collaborative doctorate with Tate, supervised by Pat Thomson and Emily Pringle). Nicky examined the partnerships between galleries and the youth sector. She notes, towards the end of Natural Allies or Uneasy Bedfellows?:

Sections of the youth and community work field can offer insight into more inclusive ways of working and can potentially support gallery practitioners to retune their understanding of their accountabilities (Graham, 2012b). Galleries need to cultivate space for these insights to be listened to and utilised in order to avoid the scenario where (in the language of a youth work practitioner) youth work expertise exists as a “sideshow” to gallery expertise. Youth workers frequently exercise knowledge of young people’s hyperlocal social fields, and cultivate an ability to connect with young people within these fields. These are traits that few art institutions naturally possess, but which are essential for developing meaningful relationships with young people. By working more consistently together, youth and visual art practitioners have the potential to reimagine the parameters of gallery-based informal youth provision and to reassert the position of creative, open-access and democratic youth work in civic space. But any localised, temporary examples of collaboration will only be able to gain traction as replicable and sustainable models of practice if they are supported by a much wider and more integrated collaborative field – at both regional and national levels. (p. 64)

Becky Coles and Pat Thomson have been following some of the young artists engaged in Circuit programming, looking to see how Circuit fitted into their lives. They say

Some young people were orientated to being paid artists, curators and creative professionals. Among our participants, they came from the more privileged backgrounds. They could live with their parents and be financially supported; they had better knowledges about how to build experience and networks and how to develop a professional identity suited to roles in the arts and creative industries. They used Circuit to:

develop practical knowledge of the arts and their potential place in it
gain symbolic capital from their association with a gallery
and to find contacts in the art world.

Other young people, feeling themselves far from this competitive professional world, accepted that they would not make money from art and subsidised their lives as artists with other work. Some chose to take work, for example as a teacher, which took them away from their art practice. Others chose time to practice their art over professional work and lived a very frugal life. Neither group could afford to rent studio space. For this group, Circuit was a way to remain in contact with arts organisations and with communities of artists.

A third group, those with least family resources, wanted to find less prestigious but stable work in the arts, in marketing or community programming. A few planned their career strategy at university and
joined Circuit while still in formal education, as part of an attempt to gain experience and knowledge. However, others left university without a plan
and joined Circuit as graduates to find out more about the arts jobs market and to find work. They worked in bars, shops and call centres while trying to find stable paid work in the arts and were not always successful in finding it. Eleven interviewees left full-time education before or during the research either because they had graduated or did not complete their course. Only six of these eleven were earning their living doing the kind of work they wanted.

The research raises questions for galleries about what role they ought, or might take to help emerging young artists build careers and lives. (p 5-6)

This research is now in its fifth and final year, so there is more to come about these young artists.

Circuit longitudinal research – some emerging results

Posted on April 4, 2017 Posted in Circuit, longitudinal research, UncategorizedTagged Becky Coles, Circuit, research2 Comments

Becky Coles and Pat Thomson report some emerging research results.

What did Circuit mean to the young people who engaged with it most deeply? We set out to answer this question by following twenty-one young people from Circuit’s ‘core’ or ‘peer’ groups in four galleries. We asked about their everyday lives and their experiences of work, education the gallery and art practice, through five ‘waves’ of interviews over two years.

One of the exhibitions some of our participants were involved in at First Site.

As might be expected, our participants came from relatively well educated and well-off backgrounds: seventeen had a parent who was doing at least skilled manual work, administrative work or running a family business and seven of these had a parent doing highly paid work; thirteen had a parent with a degree and four had a parent with an Art degree; seventeen participants were themselves studying or had studied an arts subject at college or university. Yet there was considerable variation in how privileged these young people were.

It is generally agreed among those who research employment in the cultural and creative industries that getting jobs is hard, so it is not surprising that six of the young people in our study had been unsuccessful in getting the work they aspired to on graduating from University. For those who had families they could live with, this was less of a problem than for those who did not and who became reliant on gruelling regimes of badly paid work and insecure housing.

A majority (16) participants wanted careers in the creative and cultural industries and nine wanted them specifically in the art world. But while three were doing vocationally oriented degrees and six were planning how to negotiate career paths while still in education, others had been blocked from doing so by a lack of financial resources or a lack of awareness or knowledge. An equal number – six – were not following a plan but working their way up into paid positions, starting with voluntary work. Achieving financial security in the future was a significant concern for some participants (six), all of whom came from less well-off backgrounds or lacked a family they could live with. While four expected professional work in the arts to provide security, two hesitated to fully commit to the precarious and competitive work structures of the art world.

Participants who did not aspire to careers in the arts or creative industries either felt no need to plan because of the family support they could rely on – two, for example, felt free to become totally absorbed in their art degree for its own sake – or they saw professional roles as incompatible with their independent art practice or entrepreneurial ambition. Two quit education, favouring the informal support structures of the art world and creative industries. While twelve participants had their own ongoing art practice, two also said they could not call themselves artists because they did not make a living from their work. Although four had used their art practice in paid work at the gallery, no participants expected to make a living from making art.

It was a pleasure and a thrill for participants to do something for other people and to feel part of large and powerful institution. Circuit made up for the lack of professional work available to them. Eight found Circuit a comfortable place to socialise, particularly when they were going through difficult social experiences elsewhere. All but one however, had also felt obliged to do some Circuit voluntary work they didn’t enjoy or weren’t sure about because they felt committed or indebted to Circuit.

Circuit also helped our participants find out about career pathways, learn workplace skills and integrate into art-world sub-cultures. Seven had made decisions about their education based at least in part on discussions with people at the gallery. Circuit also helped participants work their way into jobs. Five went on to get professionally paid work in a gallery on the basis of their work with Circuit. Two, however, had tried to do this and failed. And six others had found regular non-professional paid work at the gallery, or occasional work as they were needed, which provided them with income and a continued connection with the art world.

We are following up the participants in a few months to see what they are doing ‘post Circuit’.

circuit conference

Posted on March 11, 2017 Posted in Circuit, Nottingham ContemporaryTagged Circuit, conference, Nottingham Contemporary, paul hamlyn, TateLeave a comment

Conferences. We all get to go to them and sometimes we present. Sometimes we even organise them. This year Nicky Sim got to organise a very important conference – the first of a series of wrap-ups of the Circuit programme. It was held at Nottingham Contemporary on March 10th.

Circuit is/was a four-year programme funded by Paul Hamlyn. It brought art galleries and youth organisations together to provide cultural programmes and festivals for young people who might not typically be engaged with an art museum.

We are connected with Circuit in two ways – Nicky has conducted ethnographic research into ‘partnership’ through a TATE – Nottingham AHRC funded studentship, and Becky Coles and I are doing a longitudinal study of 21 people engaged in the ‘youth’ programming/curating collectives. So Becky and I were there, as well as Nicky of course.

The conference theme addressed the possibilities, risks and challenges of developing democratic practice between young people, youth organisations and galleries. (Young people are defined as 15-25)

The attendees came primarily from the ‘youth’ and ‘gallery’ sectors with a few other people, researchers and arts administrators, added in.

The proceedings were a mix of presentations and discussions with some time for ‘table’ conversations.

Some of the learnings of Circuit were clearly on show, both as displays and in the discussions. Youth Collectives have taught galleries that

successful programming for young people is inter-disciplinary – film, music, visual and performing arts together
young people need to see themselves represented in gallery activities
there has to be something for me, something that is relevant to me
activities have to offer something – personal development, the opportunity to socialise, new connections
activities have to be free and accessible.

Difficult questions were raised and some of the more obvious tensions emerged – the terms ‘young people’, ‘diversity’ and ‘hard to reach’ were an ongoing issue. The hierarchies of power within galleries, the continued attacks on the youth sector and informal education, the possibility of institutional critique becoming a programme of concrete activity challenged all of us.

Becky and I were both pleased to discuss the gallery as a ‘gig’ economy and the parlous state of employment in the arts in general and for young adults in particular; this is a major issue emerging from our research.

conference line drawings by @askthefaces, a Nottingham based artist

Nicky and Rachel from Circuit did a great job in organising the conference. Nicky’s commitment to ensuring that a wide range of views were on the table was enacted through the programme. The process and the topic were congruent.

I’m sure all of us left with some key things to think about and even perhaps with a concrete action in mind.

starting our circuit research

Posted on November 21, 2015November 25, 2015 Posted in Circuit, story, UncategorizedTagged Circuit, longitudinal research, Rebecca Coles, TateLeave a comment

Rebecca Coles, the researcher on the project, explains the thinking behind the research:

Our Circuit project draws on an approach known as ‘qualitative longitudinal research‘. It asks how young people forge lives and subjectivities in response to circumstances patterned differently by location, class, gender, religious and ethnic and cultural processes. It follows the changing meanings and significance that these give to experience and events over time and the interplay between intention and imaginative possibility and social structural circumstance (Thomson, 2011). Researchers engaged in this kind of research also consider the roles of particular institutions (McLeod & Yates, 2006). By engaging in recurrent interviews discussing the past, present and future, it aims to follow the details of how these processes take place over time: their slow accumulations and tipping points (Farrell, 2006).

14693758856_61de497d8c_k — Circuit Tate Liverpool

We will meet around 20 members of the Tate’s Circuit programme, in galleries across the country, five times over eighteen months.

We hope to produce some general findings about the experiences of these members in education and work and in relation to home, family and relationships. What kinds of people are they becoming? What are the affordances of the art gallery for these different young people?

Even at this early stage already themes are emerging. For some the gallery is a safe space in which to take a break from ongoing struggles or to approach them differently: a time “where it is possible to be/do/know/live together differently” (Thomson et. al., 2012). For others it is an occasion to learn skills and to be treated – and even paid – as a professional: a time to experience themselves and be recognised as competent (Henderson et. al., 2007) and to engage in activity where what happens ‘counts’ in its artistic and social aims and outcomes and in relation to a future career.

We also hope the project will diverge from the traditions of qualitative longitudinal research. Rather than produce one description of the passing of time, we aim to compose multiple accounts – stories – with our participants. What stories do they choose to tell about the passing of time and the place of the gallery in their lives?

We have been thinking about time, self narration and storytelling in relation to the research.

Time and stories

Storytelling is a matter of time, on many levels. For Walter Benjamin, a story requires recurrence. A teller takes what he tells from experience (direct or handed down) and makes it the experience of his listeners, who will then share it. Unlike information, which must be new, a story “sinks the thing into the life of the storyteller, in order to bring it out of him again”. A story also requires duration. To hear and remember a story requires mental relaxation and self-forgetting. Stories also contain their own telling of time, different from historical time. Hundreds of years can pass and be of no significance to a story.

How, over time, will our participants build a story, incorporating new events into several re-tellings? How do they experience time? Is it ‘like dominoes’, as one has already put it, or ‘fragile, like ice’, as another has described it? Is Circuit a break away from time, or a way to move things forward? Across what kind of time will participants tell their stories – will all be encapsulated in one moment or will they cover decades? Will they be smooth successions of events or will they jump back and forth?

Self-narration

While writers have long explored the classed and gendered histories of self-telling, today self-narration and self-performance seem to have even greater significance. Unlike stories, which are more lessons than self-reflections, self-narration is a contemporary form of discipline. As Beverly Skeggs (2010) writes, the self today generates its own legitimacy via the display of reflexive techniques of self-interrogation and emotional control. But the psychological depth needed for self-governance is something only some are able trade on. Others are positioned as ripe for transformation.

What do our participants make of being asked to narrate themselves? Is it a familiar form to them? One used in and out of Circuit? Do their stories to assert the power of their ability to narrativise about their own life? Or are they strangled by silence or a matrix of existing discourse which speaks them? Which stories have they already re-told many times and which are emerging only now? Which self-narratives are passed down from others, and from institutions, and of which are they the innovators?

Storytelling

According to Michael Taussig (2011), what anthropologists do, most of the time, is deal in stories. The point, he argues, is not to sift through the heterogeneity of these stories to find some underlying truth but to work with a multiplicitous and fragmented reality. Stories are the point. Taussig writes of his research diary like he writes of stories. A research diary moves ahead day by day, but it can also be read and re-read – it also brings separate moments of time together, anarchic as to the supposed laws of history. It keeps a foot in the immediate and sensuous and in narrative, resisting distillation as information. And yet it is also some kind of material contraption, a comfort which stands in for thought and experience, which stands in for the truth of what happened.

The gamble of this project is that the writing of such a diary can be a collaborative process. Can a diary be shared between those who appear in it? Can we, between ourselves and our participants, generate a shared practice of storytelling?

References

Benjamin, W. (1999) Illuminations. London: Pimlico

Farrell, S. (2006) What is Qualitative Longitudinal Research? LSE Discussion Papers in Qualitative Research. London: LSE

Henderson, S. Holland, J. McGrellis, S. Charpe, S. & Thomson, R. (2007) Inventing Adulthoods: A Biographical Approach To Youth Traditions. London: Sage

McLeod, J and Yates, L (2006) Making Modern Lives: Subjectivity, Schooling And Social Change. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press

Skeggs, B. (2010) The Moral Economy of Person Production Sociologia: Revista do Departamento de Sociologia da FLUP 20 p. 67-84

Taussig, M. (2011) I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Thomson, P., Hall, C., Jones, K. and Sefton-Green, J. (2012) The Signature Pedagogies Project: Final Report. Newcastle: Creativity, Culture and Education

Thomson, R. (2011) Unfolding Lives: Youth Gender and Change. Bristol: Policy Press

circuit longitudinal research

Posted on August 5, 2015August 5, 2015 Posted in Circuit, longitudinal research, young peopleTagged Circuit, longitudinal research, TateLeave a comment

Pat Thomson and Becky Coles have just been awarded funding from the Tate Circuit programme.

Mostyn Gallery:Circuit Victorian extravaganza

Circuit is a four-year national programme connecting 15-25 year olds to the arts in galleries and museums working in partnership with the youth and cultural sector. Led by Tate and funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, it provides opportunities for young people to steer their own learning and create cultural activity across art disciplines.

Our research focuses on fifteen to twenty young people who are involved in the Circuit programme. We will work with them to document their lives over the next two years. We hope to show the multitude of decisions these young people make about themselves, their lives and their present and future lives and the ways in which their contemporary arts engagement is implicated.

Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and Literacies

Category: Circuit