Dilemma’s in social music projects
Notes on partner exchange – Camerino (Italy)
What are the challenges/dilemma’s faced by each partner when organising the workshops? Were you able to overcome it or does it remain an open issue?
The issue of time
The time you have to build a relationship with the artist is an important challenge. You need to take time to define the artist’s role in the project, and also define the role of the organization (you). This to frame “until where you’d go to accompany the artist”. If you don’t have enough time to develop a well-defined relationship where everyone’s role is clear, this can put pressure on all the stakeholders. For Banlieues Bleus their main task is to “be there with the artist, and make sure everything is ok”, but “when you have a lot of projects running, you don’t always have the time to do that, and so small issues can turn into bigger ones…which wouldn’t have if we’d been there to address them right away”.
The issue of time is off course also linked to the role you want to play as an organisation: if you want to be very involved in the artistic process this takes more time.
The issue of choice/responsibility
Another dilemma that arose was: “who makes the artistic choices?”. Is it the artist or is it the organization? Is it the producer/coordinator or the artist? Who is responsible for what? And how do we manage conflicting artistic visions if they arise?
When you as a coordinator have the feeling the artist is wrong, what do you do to correct it? This is not so much an issue of time but indeed of defining the roles, agreeing on who has the final say, who’s responsible for what, etc.
Communication between all stakeholders is mandatory therefore, as is sharing an artistic vision (to a certain extent) and sharing a social vision. This last issue is important, as sometimes the “right” artistic direction of a project is not the “right” social one…
Reflection points:
🡪 both dilemma’s points to an important “tension” in this kind of projects: the tension between the social and the artistic practice. But is more time or clearer defined roles enough to overcome this? Is dialogue alone enough? Is being on the same level enough?
🡪 Even with enough time, some projects cannot work because they’re too ambitious, too challenging, and we are ‘cultural actors’, not merely social ones, so we need to have a result, a showcase, … The process is important, but there has to be a result. A process alone is not enough in our case. That is a constraint but it is also crucial because that is the moment that you share your experiences with a larger group.
The issue of expectations
How do the expectations you have towards a project influence the process? Sometimes your expectations are just not realistic. For example, the process can be great, but the you can be disappointed by the outcome or the result of the project (i.e. the show). Expectations are also linked to how we picture things, how we tend to perceive them. Do we trust the participants enough to feel that they will produce an artistic outcome? Maybe our disappointment stems more of perception than of an actual situation? We are disillusioned that “it doesn’t work the way we expected it to work” and then we can’t even see what we did realise… Failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So maybe “success” is not some objective criterium we need to pursue, it can also be an adjustment of our expectations, a recalibration of our goals to bring them more in line with the actual situation. Also, the issue of “success” is related to how we measure it: do we only look at the result or do we take into account the process as well? Those processes where the artist is more open to input from the participants tend to produce more satisfying results… so the level of “ownership” and “participation” from the participants is an important value to a project.
The issue of ownership
The ego of the artist is sometimes in the way of letting your participants do their thing. The framework has to be clear as are the roles: are you (as an artist) the inspirator/leader of the project or are you a facilitator/coach? It comes down to the ownership issue: who “owns” the project? Is that the artist or should he/she let go and let the participants “own” it? If it is defined from in the beginning it makes it easier for artists to engage. If you have a clear framework in which you have to work, it makes things a lot easier as an artist. If it is clear from the beginning that you are just a facilitator/coach, then you know that you’re merely “helping others to create their thing” and so it is their art, their project, they are the owners. This helps you to put your “artistic ego” aside.
Reflection points
🡪 How important is the result of the project in comparison to the process that has been followed by the participants and the impact it has had on them?
🡪 If you start from the potential of your participants and use it in an open and participatory way, without pushing the project too much in your own direction, the chances of better processes and results increase.
🡪 Where does the project come from? Where is it born? Has it its roots in an identified need among the participants or has it emanated from the minds of some artistic directors?
Process versus result
Even if you put the process on the same level as the result, it is important to work towards a result. It is important for the process, as participants are more likely to do their best and feel respected if they are working towards a goal. So, it’s not really “process vs result”, it is more how you model the process to achieve a satisfying result and how you adapt your result to the reality of the process, it’s a dialogue. The way you present things is important: for example, if you put too much emphasis on the result, it may affect the process as it will put too much pressure on your participants. On the other hand, when you neglect the importance of the result completely, your participants will lose their motivation. So, it’s a fragile equilibrium. “You can have a result without focusing too much on the result”.
Creating fertile grounds
You foremost need good conditions to work in, find a balance between being over-protective and being too bold. This is especially the case if you’re working with children/youngsters in vulnerable conditions. You need to involve all stakeholders in this: the parents, the artists, the youngsters, etc. This exceeds the artistic context: are the parents ok with the time their kids put in this? How does it affect the children on a personal level? Participants have to be in a comfortable zone to get the best out of themselves. For example: are kids more comfortable doing workshops in a school context are is it rather the opposite? There is no standard, it depends on the group, so you need good conditions tailored to your group. You have to accompany them, that’s the most important part.
The risk of over-engaging certain communities/target groups
There is a risk that we are over-demanding certain groups with our participatory projects. For example, in Molenbeek after the Brussels terrorist attacks, Moroccan/Muslim communities were being asked to engage in society on every corner of the street. A Moroccan father cried out “j’en ai marre d’être une statistique”, pointing out he couldn’t sit on a bench or he had 3-4 social workers asking him whether his kids wanted to engage in a theatre play, sing in a band or play football. Is there a kind of “white man’s burden” in certain projects? Are we not playing the new missionaries, elaborating top-down projects to tackle issues we find important, to fulfil our agendas? Do we really engage communities or do we simply impose things on them? We think that certain groups don’t have access to culture, but that is a mistake. We should not underestimate the level on instrumentalization these projects suffer from: politicians using them as a way to whitewash social problems in certain neighbourhoods or seeing them as “crime-prevention” (“if these youngsters are busy in cultural projects, they are less likely to do crime or revolt against injustice”). Are these projects some kind of “panem et circenses”? We should be really careful with that.
Reflection points
A mixture and balance of clearly defined objectives of each project is mandatory: what are your goals both on the level of the process and the result? What is the role of the artist? What results are you pursuing both on an artistic as on a personal/social level? So, there is no ‘recipe’, there is no ‘objective measure to success’ in these types of projects, there is just a list of things that need to be clarified from the beginning and a framework that needs to be established so that all stakeholders know their place and what is expected from them. The success then depends on how you defined the goals and framework and whether reality corresponds to that or not.
🡪 How do you create the best conditions for your project to take place? Are there any basic conditions or does it really depend on every individual case? You definitely have to study the context, be involved in the social environment of the participants and be responsive to their needs and aspirations.
🡪 Who benefits from these projects? Who needs them? Is it the beneficiaries themselves or are we thinking in their place, advancing that we should “emancipate” them through culture as some kind of new-age missionaries?
🡪 Who instigates/develops the projects? Do we do it ourselves and then find participants or do we involve participants from the start and build a project together?
Play Ground partner meeting and exchange in Camerino (Italy)
From 10 to 13 May 2022, the Play Ground partners traveled to Camerino on the invitation of TAM, the Italian Play Ground project partner. In 3 days they exchanged practices and work plans and visited the musical workshops with children in the region.