Malcolm McKinnon
Thank you. When we were planning this forum, what we thought that we tried to think of a useful way to structure it. What we've done is we've identified what we think are a number of the key tensions in CEAD practice, some of the inherent difficulties and the kind of issues that have to be balanced in order to achieve successful outcomes, and what we're going to do is structure debate around those and there's five sort of basic areas that we've identified.
The way that the structure of the forum will work is that I'll introduce what they are. I'll then throw to a particular member of the panel and then members of the panel will talk around those issues. When the time runs out, we'll move on to the next one and that's how we're hoping to move through things. We're going to allow 20 minutes at the end for some open discussions and questions around any of those issues. So if people can just perhaps make notes of their questions or their concerns and hold on till the end, hopefully we'll have time to at least get through a reasonable number of questions then.
The first area that we wanted to address was really the tension between the need to produce good design outcomes and the desire to enact good community process. This is often a very difficult thing to do. Another way of talking about it is I guess to weigh on the one hand the sophistication of the urban design agenda where we're talking quite a complicated language of amenity and design and we're dealing with professionals in those areas who speak a language not that far removed sometimes from the complexities of the legal profession or the medical profession, and on the other hand, we're wanting to engage people that are often disempowered groups of the community or people who certainly wouldn't turn up to a public meeting and get up in public and speak in front of a group. So the issue of how we actually give those people a voice is a bit of a crucial one.
So the question really is balancing those demands. How do we do it and are our attempts of doing so always successful? I thought in light of the Liverpool Hospital redevelopment being the winner of this year's CEAD award, that Marily was well-placed to initially address that question. Marily, over to you.
Marily Opperman
Okay; thank you. This dichotomy between good design and good community process is relatively recent among us humans. Good design was developed through many generations and there were no questions that what people were developing was appropriate. So I guess that what we try to do with the CEAD projects are really trying to rescue from our minds this kind of positive interaction between the users and the professionals that took over the development of the spaces.
Also I think that when we're talking about the CEAD projects we are talking much more than spaces and places because most of the time really we are looking into relations and relations, not only the people with the space but the relations between the different groups. One space is always full of different people with different ideas.
How we did the Liverpool Hospital and how we've been doing other hospitals also is that we really put a lot of time on the planning so that through planning we ensure that what people wanted was in the agenda of the general kind of things that we were going to do. Through this planning then, I think that one of the major problems with the good design and community process is how do we assure that what we plan is what we are going to implement? Many times we lose the quality of the planning when we go for the implementation.
That particular slide is when Martha Jabour, with one of the staff from sexual assault, discovered that what she saw on the plans was not what she imagined and in fact the space was much smaller and that's Martha Jabour's work which is windows for the sexual assault area. So I guess that basically is - if you have a vision and if that vision can be a collective vision, then it's possible to have a good process, a good design and a good community process.
Margaret Worth
In the Swallowcliffe schools project we needed to answer to a community desire for a best-dressed public presentation and we resolved the difficulty that, well, the conventional conflict is that community work is amateur work and that professional work is sophisticated. What we were able to do in this case was to, because we have the right people I think, have the students directly involved in designs and the concept for the design, the idea behind it, not just doing it (indistinct) but the idea of an awareness of other creatures that we share the space with.
Then the artist, Julie Blyfield, who's represented in this particular slide, was excellent at managing to translate their images so that they're recognisable and still owned by those students that were involved and their parents and the wider community, but put into a form and presented in a way that was beyond what they would have done by themselves, and made them feel that they've taken a step forward and upward.
John Mongard
I just want to make the point that particularly in the professions of architecture and landscape architecture and planning, there's a kind of a presumption that those people in those areas are actually running the projects and that they control quite often the streetscape projects or the park projects. I think the issue about CEAD is about untangling control or sharing it. I think some designers are unwilling to share control, whether it's to do with money or aesthetics or to do with what gets done. Sometimes that happens also with politicians or even communities.
I've worked in a couple of towns in Queensland where I've basically been run out of town by politicians because they were unwilling to face up to the community desire for change in particular projects where those aims were different from their own. So the whole issue about control and power I think is central to CEAD and I think that's why it's such a good role model because it offers the opportunity to collaborate instead of control.
Malcolm McKinnon
Okay; I just want to keep moving through some of these issues. One of the other tensions that we thought was important to talk about was the tension between - it's really the qualitative issue about artistic outcomes and the tension on - and this is I guess a tension that's perceived differently depending on what perspective you're coming from, but a tension between on the one hand craft and community art processes and product, and on the other hand public art and so-called fine art outcomes.
When I worked at the Australia Council and had some responsibility for the CEAD program, this was definitely always one of the tricky issues in dealing with the Visual Arts and Crafts Fund as opposed to the Community Cultural Development Fund, where their investment in that program, as a kind of strangely co-funded funding program, was quite different. The visual arts and craft people from their normal ivory tower perspective wanted to see obviously quality artists and in fact saw the whole community aspect as a bit of a serious problem in terms of diluting their quality of the artistic outcomes really and it was always a bit of a juggling act to try and get them to the table.
The other question that issue raises is who really has the creative voice and the design power within a project? In other words, who's responsible for making sure that the artistic outcomes are actually good as opposed to embarrassing. David, I wouldn't mind throwing the ball to you to start some discussion on this one.
David Hinchliffe
I think there are many unresolved questions in there and perhaps insoluble ones. Therešs no doubt we have evolved as a community with a much greater sense of empowerment, a demanding, stretching community that is seeking to be involved. How we reconcile that sometimes is another matter. John mentioned before that he has been run out of town by politicians who have been unprepared to yield to the demand of the community for involvement. Yet there are other artists who have been run out of town because the community has demanded of their politicians that they get rid of the works that have been produced by those artists.
So it cuts both ways and we can rely on the public when it suits us. If they happen to support our creative endeavour then we will use the public as a crutch, but if the public happens to have the poor taste of not liking the work we produce, then we should overcome and rise above public opinion. I think that's part of the fundamental problem. Traditionally there has been tension between patrons of the arts and the practitioners. It's only in more recent times that governments, the people charged by the public to look after their interests, have become the principal patrons of the arts. So you have got that added third dimension of public opinion.
So there is that tension between the patron who provides the dollars, the public from whom all dollars originally come anyway, the public who are often - or should be always when community art projects are concerned - involved themselves in the production of the work, and of course the practitioners, the artists themselves. I don't know what the simple answer is. The creative voice is obviously from those who believe themselves to have some innate sense of artistic expression. One of the most revealing aspects, exciting aspects, of Aboriginal culture is that it believes fundamentally that all members of the community are artists. I think that's an exciting concept that our communities need to embrace as well.
As a politician I think the ultimate say is obviously with the community in general and I have to say that in relation to the work that I had to show I was under enormous pressure to run that artist out of the suburb because there was an overwhelming rejection of the work that was done. It created fierce passions in the community and I almost yielded. To my eternal, I think, relief, I overcome those sorts of pressures and said that the work should stay. Obviously it should. But there needs to be a recognition that in an empowered community public opinion is something that should have some say but what I say is insoluble about this question is the extent to which it and the political process should intervene. So I haven't answered the question. I have probably teased out some of the issues.
I have a question for David. You just said "poor taste of the community." I would like to know how you determined that poor taste.
David Hinchliffe
Sure. I was speaking sarcastically. I think if artists find that their work is not accepted by members of the community it's often their own judgment that the community is poorly informed about the work they're doing or about design principles in general. It's extremely difficult to talk about artistic values in an age when art is in free fall. Artistic value is incredibly subjective because we don't have a set of rules. There are no objective criteria or very few. The 20th century is distinguished by the state of anarchy that exists in art, but there aren't rules and we have made a rule in art that there won't be. So how do you identify and measure artistic value? It's incredibly subjective and what I'm saying is, it's just as subjective for artists as it is for members of the community and politicians.
Malcolm McKinnon
I'm looking for someone who's going to have a go at answering this question about who has the creative voice and the power within these kinds of collaborative projects. Techy, I'm interested in seeing you have a go at this question. Who actually has the power?
Techy Masero
In my opinion it's actually the community. The community determines what they would like to see in their environment and then we as artist and politician and organisation should encourage the community to be able to contract, build or whatever what they would like to see and to live with the rest of their life and pass to the new generations.
John Mongard
I think it's interesting the reaction that happened to that bus shelter in New Farm. I don't know if you went and saw it. To me I think the issue or an issue is about authenticity in the outcome. I think CEAD practice has evolved in the last 10 years and we're working on public art projects or public spaces. They're much more sophisticated than they were in earlier times and I think that's because people are gaining more experience. I have a bit of a problem with, I guess, homogenisation of approach and standardisation of what an outcome could be or should be because of a policy or an idea about having a particular outcome.
I see that has happened in many towns around Australia and even if you have a look at some of the CEAD projects we have probably had enough of sculptural seats. I think it's time to move on. It's time to put the art into the structure of the space rather than attach it as a thing on top of it. I know that's a difficult process because some of the projects that I have worked on probably have failed in that same sense. I can only think of some of the more sophisticated art projects that I have seen, for example, some of the artwork or public spaces in Barcelona. They don't have theme bus shelters. The form of the bus shelter is part of the art, it's in the space. I think as we move on we have to get more refined and I guess look at ways of working that don't just create these prototypes that we can find whether here in Brisbane or in Melbourne.
Techy Masero
I think that there's two things in there. One would be yes, we want to come from the very beginning of the planning and we are wanting to do the new things from the new beginnings but also I think that we have to be very real and it would be even unfair to think that only the things that are new are going to be good, otherwise we miss in terms of - normally we are not going to start everything from zero if we have already something.
Margaret Worth
I agree with Techy. I think that the culture of the place which comes out of the relationship between the people and the place is the foundation, the creative power for what then becomes an outcome as an artwork. To take it one step further, who's responsible for making sure that the art is good? It then becomes someone's responsibility. Somebody has got to wear it and their reputation is on the line for it. In my experience itšs the artist who wears it and becomes responsible.
For example, the Tobruki gateway, it's finished now but at this stage of this slide it wasn't finished. This was a public artwork. It was put together by the three artists we had Sherry Rankin and Gavin Malone, and myself. Although it was definitely a public art, an artwork commission it comes directly from the community and the legend of Tobruki that it speaks about. It speaks on many levels but that's a primary one. In that one the creative power was with the people who provided us with the information and the desires and the goals for that work.
| Contents | Introduction | Opening | Keynote Speakers | Local Government | Training | Censorship | Court the Corporates | Cross Cultural Work | International Opportunities | I'm an Artist | Everyone's a Critic | CCD in the Youth Sector | Come on Down - Awards | Musgrave Park Sympsoium | Copyright & Ownership | CEAD Does it Really Make a Difference? |