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We have now completed our Blue Print 2015-2019. The Company AGM, Annual Accounts and Report were published in March. New developments include:

Voluntary Code of Governance process concluded and submitted for approval

New Board members are: -Sheelagh Colclough from Belfast Fiona Woods from Clare Jim Aherne from Galway Ciaran Cuffe from Dublin.

Mark McCollum, Mary Doheny and Ken Keogh were reappointed. Eleanor Phillips is now the Company Secretary. We are very thankful to one of our founding members, Mick Daly from Clare who has now retired. The Annual Report and Accounts can be viewed here: 2015 [+] Blue Print can be viewed here: Read [+]

Community culture and rights workshop series

Work continues with Rachel Mullen at the Equality and Rights Alliance. We were well received and supported by Stephen and Treacy in Ballyhaunis FRC and 11 activists and artists attended. Other workshops planned are

Sligo in association with Sligo Arts Office and The Model on April 22nd

Cork in association with www.cesca.ie in the Traveller Visibility Group on April 24th Wexford in association with TUSLA in FDYS Enniscorthy on April 29th.

We’ve had conversations in Limerick,

Galway, Dublin and Belfast. Our

intention is to explore how to advance

community culture and whether a rights

framework can help identify practical

ways locally in which to be agents of

change.

Creative Parenting

As a follow-up to our 3 year Happy

Parent work we now seek to establish a

practice site in which to understand

resilience of parents with young children

(0-7yrs) through art/culture practice.

Eurofound as well as UK based Young

and Joseph Rowntree Foundations found

that parenting support is a major gap

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across the EU and beyond ‘play’ we

notice an absence of of discourse about

art/culture work too. Can that change?

We seek to explore how best to call-out

parents inherent creativity with

interventions that are appropriately

human, playful and linked to capacities

for relationship, respect, appreciation

and wonder. These interventions can be

bottom up initiatives by FRCs and others;

organised by parents who self-assemble, identify their shared experiences and needs;

devised in ways that are supportive We’ve selected 4 people from our Panel list to discuss this field of interest. Any FRC should get in touch if interested in attending a day-long seminar in Galway called Opening the Door to Creative Teaching and Learning and organised by Baboró on May 28th Just emailing

blue.drum@yahoo.com

Artist: Steve Powers Love Letter to the City

Panel

In January and February we advertised

on Activelink for people who were

interested in becoming members of Blue

Drum’s Panel. The Panel is a resource

for us of people who we could call upon

to deliver work outlined in our Blue Print

2015-2019. We will also use the Panel

when we recommend people in response

to queries from FRCs. We received 64

applications from across the country.

Community art and cultural rights

Advocacy work continued with the Irish

Government about social, economic and

cultural rights With FLAC we have tried

to define new thinking about community

culture. The failure to grapple with

community arts does not undermine

what the Department of Arts, the Arts

Council and local authorities are doing

but challenges what they are not doing.

We recommend:

1. The Department of the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the Arts Council, and other National Cultural Institutions would promote equality and social inclusion in cultural life through direct engagement with disadvantaged communities and through realising their potential as consumers and producers of arts and culture.

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2. The Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht would adopt a cultural rights framework in the forthcoming national Cultural Policy and the Arts Council would do likewise in their forthcoming Strategic Plan through having regard to equality and human rights.

For more info see www.ourvoiceourrights

We also have a dedicated ‘cultural rights’ evidence room of documents, like the following, that we find helpful: Read [+]

Community Culture Strategy and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht

In February we met with Minister Humphrey‘s and her officials.We stressed the pressing need to establish greater equality and social inclusion in the arts and culture field and to deepen the fulfilment of cultural rights. The Community Culture Strategy represents a clear sighted and action based initiative which would help bring a coherence to the capacity of local, regional and national practice to address the central issue of arts access and participation on a carefully planned, long term and incremental basis.

PICAS Conference, Belfast 2015

Community Culture

We’ve also held conversations with

Creative Communities in Limerick and

some individuals in Galway with a view

to finding new ways to reset community

arts. We see Family Resource Centres as

an important national catalyst in this

conversation. Ed was also invited to a

PICAS workshop organised by

Community Arts Partnership in Belfast

on March 6th and there is interest there

too. All in all there is common ground

for the emergence of an all-island

platform to foster community culture

and encourage co-creation and co-

operative approaches to community

resilience.

Conference Report (Feb 2015)

In February Eleanor Phillips attended a conference ‘Public Assets: small-scale arts organisations and the production of value’ hosted by Common Practice in the Platform Theatre, London, in February. Common Practice is an advocacy group working for the recognition and fostering of the small-scale contemporary visual arts sector in London. They have produced two interesting papers: ‘Size Matters’ by Sarah Thelwall, which argued for a more sophisticated understanding of the concept of value, and ‘Value, Measure, Sustainability’ by Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt which argued for different ways of measuring the artistic contributions of small organisations.

The conference’s aim was to “address the ways in which it is possible to assert a non-financialised ethos within the

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current funding landscape of the arts". The morning presentations, in particular

Common Practice London (Feb 2015)

Kodwo Eshun, looked at the values created by small organisations. He suggested that concepts become subcultures through enduring friendships which go on to create their own language and lived attitude. These communities of concepts need spaces rather than clubs and galleries in order to realise their ideas. He looked at the organisations which provide spaces for caring within their arts provision such as crèches, and meeting rooms thereby suggesting that “care” rather than “value” should be the overarching term used by small arts organisations. An audience member pointed out that those doing the ‘caring’ are predominantly female both in small arts organisations and in society in general which also points to their lack of value within society or markets.

After lunch we took part in a break-out session, titled “Rural perspectives on

small scale arts organisations” which was chaired by Ian Hunter of Littoral, http://www.littoral.org.uk/. The group felt that rural or small town organisations were more resourceful and more inclusive as a natural outcome of the involvement of the immediate community. It was also noted that it is much easier to meet with local policy makers. It was felt that the dangers came from the larger or national funders who seemed to see rural as a place to simply “decant” the urban art experience.

The afternoon included three further presentations offering examples of organisational practice from outside the UK. Maria Lind presented the work of Tensta Konsthall, Sweden, focussing on its networks and collaborations, suggesting that it was easier to make international collaborations due to the competition between organisations within national borders. Jesús Carrillo spoke of his work at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofìa and the difficulty of maintaining an approach akin to activism within the changing political environment in Spain. Lise Soskolne from W.A.G.E. in the USA meanwhile presented detailed argument for the need to pay artists working with non-profit organisations. Overall main issues were not new ones:

instrumentalisation of the arts and the benediction given to “creative industries”,

top down ideas of social change.

Part of the problem is that we have no mechanisms for working in common and we end up talking in a closed loop of ideas and conversations that cannot on their own instigate change. I would have

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liked to have seen more conversation on solidarity with fellow citizens, the power of art to connect people and ideas, to unearth the lesser heard voice, to see the world afresh. Surely from shared conversations around the marketisation of social services and the cuts that the global neo-liberal agenda has brought to so many small organisations and individuals we can find common purpose and the means to act for the common good including the arts? You can watch any the conference presentations: Here [+]

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Issue 9 / Mar 2015

We are pleased that Carmichael House has welcomed us as members and our new contact and address details are: Blue Drum Agency Location: Carmichael House, North Brunswick Street, Dublin 7 Tel: +353 (01) 8771446 [temporary] Mobile: +353-83-3063066 Eleanor +353-87-2334931 Ed Email: blue.drum@yahoo.com Web: www.bluedrum.ie funded as a support structure by