Making Meaning Differently

Policy Briefing - Community governance in the context of decentralisation

Steve Connelly, Gordon Dabinett,

Stuart Muirhead, Kate Pahl and Dave Vanderhoven

Films and artistic advice: Steve Pool

April 2013

Contents

Section  1.   Introduction ............................................................................... 1  

Outline of the core argument .................................................................... 1  

Structure of this report .............................................................................. 3  

Section  2.   Methodology ............................................................................. 4  

Overview................................................................................................... 4  

Literature review ....................................................................................... 4  

Colloquia................................................................................................... 4  

Telling Cases............................................................................................ 5  

Section  3.   Literature review ....................................................................... 5  

The social science account of representation and its problems ............... 6  

Seeing ‘representation’ through an arts and humanities lens................... 7  

i) Representation and the making of meaning ...................................... 8  

ii) Aesthetics.......................................................................................... 9  

iii) Modal choice and multimodality ..................................................... 10  

iv) Values, authority and embodied practice ....................................... 12  

v) Literature discussion ....................................................................... 15  

Section  4.   The telling cases and the colloquia......................................... 16  

The colloquia .......................................................................................... 16  

Troyeville ................................................................................................ 17  

Rotherham.............................................................................................. 19  

Manor Farm Youth Group ................................................................... 19  

Rawmarsh School Council .................................................................. 20  

Sheffield.................................................................................................. 20  

Kingston.................................................................................................. 23  

Multistory ................................................................................................ 24  

Section  5.   Guidance for practice.............................................................. 25  

Seeing representation differently ............................................................ 26  

New ways of engaging ........................................................................... 26  

Reflective practice .................................................................................. 26  

References .................................................................................................... 28  

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Making Meaning Differently

Policy Briefing - Community governance in the context of decentralisation

Section  1. Introduction

This final report is intended to assist DCLG in supporting local government and communities to better understand informal processes of representation as decision-making powers are decentralised. Specifically we provide guidance on how to enhance the capacity of communities, local authorities and their partners as they develop innovative forms of community governance. These forms include neighbourhood community budgeting and local neighbourhood planning, enhancing the role of town and parish councils, and exercising the new community rights with respect to building, bidding and challenge. Our aim is to demonstrate how arts and humanities perspectives can provide both insights and means for enhancing democratic processes.

The guidance is backed by conceptual and case-based material, which draws strongly on ideas derived from the arts and humanities and links these to the ideas drawn from the more familiar social science approaches to governance, which tend to inform research and policy making in this field1. The basic rationale for this is that the arts and humanities offer different ways of thinking and acting which can support the kind of innovations needed to deal with longstanding challenges in local governance, some of which are set out below. These challenges are intensified by the current combination of policy imperatives towards decentralisation and the budgetary constraints at all levels of government, which jointly drive the search for new approaches to community involvement in governance and the coproduction of services.

Outline of the core argument

The detail of the argument, the literature and case-based evidence which support it, are given in later sections of the report. Here we set out the basic argument to guide the reader through the remainder of the document.

In order to achieve effective and legitimate governance and co-production, communities and individuals need to be engaged more broadly and deeply with local authorities and other partners than previously. This often proves difficult, with many initiatives marred by either insufficient engagement (pejoratively seen as ‘apathy’) or the participation only of a small group of

1 A very broad collection of disciplines, the ‘arts and humanities’ perspective can be characterised as one which “explores forms of identity, behaviour and expression, and seeks out new ways of knowing what it means to be human in different societies” (from AHRC’s current Strategy, The Human World: The Arts and Humanities in our Time' (2013-2018), p. 4.

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people, often from a limited demographic background, (equally pejoratively seen as ‘the usual suspects’). Both the problems with engagement and the commonplace, pejorative descriptions undermine decentralising initiatives’ legitimacy in the eyes of communities and local authorities. We see this as fundamentally a set of problems with representation, its practices and limitations: of so-called ‘community representatives’ who are not seen as obviously representative; of the effective non-representation of marginal people and viewpoints; and of conflict with the long-standing claims of elected councillors to sole representative legitimacy.

Our argument is that part of the problem is the dominance which formal types of representation have on our understanding, expectations, and practices, and hence on the judgements which flow from these. We argue for a more expansive understanding which engages better with people’s everyday experiences. This would inform and justify new practices of interaction between government and the public which could help avoid the obstacles such as ‘apathy’ and the ‘usual suspects’ and provide a framework through which to consider representation and legitimacy anew.

This alternative understanding of ‘representation’ draws on a long tradition within the arts and humanities which sees:

‘representation as an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged by members of a culture’

(Hall 1997: 15)

The crucial shift here is from a narrowly ‘political’ understanding of representation as the process of giving ‘voice’ to interest or demands, to the much broader one of creating meanings of all kinds within a ‘culture’, a group with shared life experiences. Practices of representation are fundamental to the ways in which communities and individuals create and sustain identities, develop norms of behaviour, and develop and articulate ideas. Such practices can take many forms. Some of these are language-based, but many of them are not, as representation can take place though a range of other forms of expression, many of which are loosely thought of as ‘arts’: drawing, dance, drama and so on. We therefore emphasise that the relationship of art to representation is not purely instrumental or ancillary (e.g. as a useful way to get the ‘hard to reach involved’, or simply ‘fun’ to make people feel good) but is fundamental, particularly with groups who might be less comfortable with more formal, spoken or written forms of representation. It is part of how people represent themselves – to themselves, to each other, and (if it is made possible) to the state. The ways in which they do this, their ‘modal choice’ that is, the forms that they choose to use to represent ideas carry meaning as an important part of the representation and the message.

These processes of representation, in the broader sense of how people continuously make sense of their lives and their communities, are closely linked to the ‘political’ processes of representation. The point here is that

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communities don’t have stable, fully-articulated, and conscious needs and wants which are simply transmitted to the state through the formal representative system. The process of working out what these are and how to articulate them is bound up in the everyday processes of meaning- and sense-making. It is from these that representation may emerge, in the sense of a community voicing to the state its desires and demands and articulating its own capacity to act. But this also depends in part on the capacity – the ability and willingness – of local authorities and other formal institutions to ‘see’ non-traditional forms of representation as representation, and accept them as both meaningful and legitimate. This has profound implications for people and institutions of ‘formal’ local governance.

Structure of this report

This report is based on:

• a review of relevant arts and humanities and social science literature, focusing in particular on research carried out as part of the AHRC-led Connected Communities programme;

• the extensive prior practice and academic experience in the fields of local and community governance of all members of the research team;

• original empirical work comprising two colloquia and engagement with five ‘telling cases’ of innovative forms of community involvement in governance.

A brief description of the methodology (Section 2) is followed by the development of the key concepts and ideas, which inform our argument through a review of the literature (Section 3). Some of the language used may be unfamiliar to some readers, given the aim of introducing a different and distinctive theoretical perspective to understanding governance. We have thus tried to frame it in ways which make the argument comprehensible to the non-specialist. The section starts with a brief discussion of the traditional and more contemporary understandings of representation from political science, as a way of setting out why current trends in governance pose a problem for understandings rooted in this discipline. It then moves on to discuss a range of concepts drawn from across the arts and humanities.

The empirical material generated during the project – derived from the colloquia and telling cases – is introduced in Section 4. This gives practical, real world flesh to the abstract concepts, both in order to clarify the literature and our ‘core argument’, and to provide tangible examples of engaging communities in governance.

The report concludes (Section 5) with guidance for practice. These suggest ways in which the conceptual shift we suggest can be put into operation.

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Section  2. Methodology

Overview

As noted above, this report draws on a combination of literature, empirical research (to some extent drawing on broader current research activity) and the prior experience of the team in both research and community development practice. The overall strategy can be considered as multiple iterations of a review and reflect cycle, necessitated by the commitment to bringing together and working for a synthesis of social scientific and arts and humanities theorising on representation. This was also supported through repeated conversation with other experts (both from academia and practice) to prompt and develop our own thinking.

Before, during and after each telling case, we had discussions to work through the findings, our learning and its application. We submitted an interim report and gave a presentation to colleagues from DCLG to capture some thoughts and also to consider the impact of our findings for our audience. We also produced a series of short films to convey some of the details from our telling cases that are not best suited to textual forms. Finally, we have drafted this report and created a bespoke DVD which can be used like a website, to summarise our thoughts thus far and stimulate further debate.

Literature review

The literature review draws on our varied knowledge and understanding as experts in the fields of literary theory, representation, multimodality and everyday creativity, (Pahl), interpretative social and political science and community development (Connelly, Vanderhoven) arts practice (Pahl, Pool) community theory, ethnography and social anthropology (Muirhead, Pahl) and urban and regional planning (Dabinett). In addition, Muirhead undertook a review of the Connected Communities (CC) research reports that the team considered relevant, paying particular attention to the arts and humanities in this process.

Colloquia

An initial colloquium brought together artists, local authority representatives and community practitioners from across the Sheffield City Region to engage with the project team and help us shape the direction and focus of the study. We presented the remit of the project, as outlined by the AHRC, and also indicated where we viewed the project as developing. The views shared here assisted us in recognising both the synergy and the divergence between political and artistic forms of representation. The contributors also discussed their own framings and understandings of representation and where they recognised themselves as either representing others, or representing themselves to others. This helped us in identifying key areas which we wanted to investigate within the literature and within the specific ‘telling cases’ that we worked with.

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To follow-up on this and prior to the final presentation to AHRC/DCLG on 12th March, we held a second colloquium to report back to these same contributors on the progress we had made throughout the project. Again, we used their feedback on this day to inform and shape our final presentation and report.

Telling Cases

We augmented our analysis with five ‘telling cases’. Our aim here was to explore how arts practices have been deployed in a range of different settings and to provide a critical reflection on how these have been used to enhance community governance. The telling cases are not intended to be exhaustive or representative in a statistical sense, but illuminating.

Troyeville - Johannesburg, South Africa is a vibrant multi-racial area, renowned for its mixed population as much as its artistic community, who through investment in art infrastructure have created ‘bits of fastness’ in the otherwise chaotic city.

Rotherham Children and Young People’s Services. The work in Rotherham focused on two young people’s groups (Rawmarsh School Council, Manor Farm Youth Group) and aimed to explore ways in which alternative forms of representation can inform local government.

Multistory – West Bromwich. A community arts charity that devises and delivers socially engaged community art projects to effect positive change.

Lowedges/Batemoor/Jordanthorpe Local Integrated Services project - Sheffield. Here a range of state agencies led by the local authority are experimenting with ways to integrate services for elderly and vulnerable adults which involve the community in governance and promote individual and community resilience.

OneNorbiton Neighbourhood Community Budget project – Kingston-upon-Thames. Here a new community governance organisation has been created - a community commissioning board - as part of the national Local Integrated Services (Cabinet Office) and Neighbourhood Community Budgeting (DCLG) pilots.

Section  3. Literature review

The central argument of this briefing is that the arts and humanities provide a lens from which to understand the mechanisms by which people come to know and understand the world. This lens can help identify ways of encouraging and developing new frameworks for practice, particularly in relation to representation and encouraging and developing more people to become active in communities and to recognise the diverse nature of these engagements. This is not to deny the importance of social scientific approaches to governance, and in particular the emerging field of ‘interpretive policy analysis’ (Wagenaar 2011), but we argue that to some extent these

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foreclose possibilities for engagement. In this section we set out the basis for this argument from the social science and arts and humanities literature, drawing in particular on authors from the fields of literary theory, aesthetics, philosophical and relational theories that illuminate everyday life and practice with a focus on representation, multimodality and embodied practices.

The social science account of representation and its problems

In political science, representation has traditionally been seen as the process by which someone ‘re-presents’ the interests of, or speaks on behalf of another (Pitkin 1967). Pitkin emphasised the ‘re’ to highlight the necessary aspect of the relationship between representative and represented, which is to re-present something relevant that already exists. In the classic, ‘standard account’ representation has traditionally been considered to be dependent on a strong, visible relationship between represented (constituents, electors) and representative (Mansbridge 2003; Pitkin 1967). While the exact nature of this relationship has been deeply contested, in practice these assumptions have been given institutional and legal form in the familiar processes of elected representative democracy i.e. ‘the Westminster model’ of an elected assembly, whose members gain their legitimacy to represent their constituents from their electoral majorities, and to whom they are accountable through the ballot box.

However, this simple, powerful and extraordinarily influential model fails to capture the complexity of representative processes met within modern governance (particularly as decentralisation multiplies the settings in which individuals represent others in decision making processes). Even so-called ‘participatory’ processes involve people acting on behalf of others. As Plotke put it:

‘the opposite of representation is not participation. The opposite of representation is exclusion. And the opposite of participation is abstention’

(Plotke 1997: 19)

The problem facing researchers, practitioners and decision makers is how to unravel the potentially contradictory practices that constitute legitimate ‘re-presentation’. Here the standard account is unhelpful, as it conflates the definition of representation with one criterion for judging its legitimacy. In this account to be a representative at all is to be a democratic and legitimate representative, thus making it impossible to ‘see’ other forms of representation as representation, or explain how apparently illegitimate (or at least undemocratic) representation can exist (Rehfeld 2006).

Recent political science re-theorising of representation has tackled this problem on a number of fronts, sharing a common approach of divorcing the concept from the notion of legitimacy - representation is considered to be an empirically observable set of practices, regardless of whether they produce legitimate representatives or not. For Rehfeld (2006) the key issue is that

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being a representative rests on ‘audience’ not on electors – to be thought by people who matter to be a representative is to become one. Urbinati and Warren helpfully summarise much of this recent work, stripping back representation to basic components of accountability and authorisation, regardless of the institutional forms through which these are delivered (Urbinati and Warren, 2008), while Mansbridge (2003) and Disch (2006) argue that an even wider range of relationships between people and their representatives can exist, to the extent that any of us can be represented by an ‘agent’, without our knowledge or consent. In Johannesburg, Friedman et al. 2003 go further and argued that being ‘pro-poor’ in policymaking is not enough. They argue that in doing so policymakers both construct ‘the poor’ as a homogenous group and promote the assumption that these implied singular set of unified needs can be conveyed by a single representative.

Closer to practice in the UK, Marion Barnes and her colleagues have shown how in a range of modern partnership governance settings the process of creating representation has ‘called into being’ the represented public – constituencies form around issues, rather than being pre-existing and ready to have their views channelled through an elected representative. This last point is crucial – ‘informal’ (i.e. non-electoral, often scarcely-noticed, relatively non-organised) forms of representation are increasingly important in the interactions between state and citizens (Barnes et al. 2008). In another setting this is echoed by Connelly (2011) who showed the complexity of the informal processes by which the ‘community representatives’ running neighbourhood regeneration organisations create and sustain their legitimacy.

Conceptually the point is that formal processes are only a special case of representation, particularly valued in representative democracies but far from the only form of representation which takes place (Rehfeld 2006; Barnes et al. 2008). The rest, ‘informal’ representation, takes place in settings which stretch from the well-organised, such a neighbourhood forums, through to informal interactions between front-line local authority officers, through to casual encounters between community leaders and members of ‘their’ communities. But there is more going on: vital components of representation are the myriad interactions within a community which take place before the state, or a formal ‘representative’, ‘touches’ the community and visible representation takes place (Pitkin 1967).

Seeing ‘representation’ through an arts and humanities lens

While acknowledging their importance, contemporary social science does not have a well-developed account of such interactions and their relationship to more visible and familiar kinds of representation2. Certain ways of

2 Though see Vanderhoven (2010) for innovative first steps into this field. Also note that while this report brings together an argument and evidence about these processes, at a conceptual level this is still ‘work in progress’ and we cannot present a fully-fledged account here.

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representing tend to be privileged – through the spoken word, particularly in rather formal settings (such as meetings, or letters and petitions) – and other ways in which people express themselves are not even recognised as relevant to representational processes. In contrast, these are fields in which the arts and humanities have very well-established bodies of theory, which start from a different understanding of representation and its location at the heart of everyday life.

i) Representation and the making of meaning

The starting point is to consider the insights from linguistic and cultural theory that the creation of meaning through interaction is the central characteristic of society, and of the importance of the representation of reality as a necessary aspect of these interactions. To reiterate Hall’s words, ‘representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged by members of a culture’ (1997: 15). He writes that various representational systems – pre-eminently but not solely language - use signs to symbolise objects, people and events, in both real and imagined worlds. Representation is not a simple mirror whereby the world is reflected, but rather, meaning itself is produced within representational systems. These systems are culture-specific ‘codes’, which shape and construct the way representations are conceived of and understood within any particular society or sub-group which shares a common culture. Representation is therefore something active and emergent and constantly part of a cultural process.

Pearce (2011) discusses the processes and levers of influence that sit within the community and how the juxtaposition of the ‘powerful’ state and the ‘powerless’ community can often be limiting and unhelpful. She highlights that often those who exercise the other forms of power in society (the non-state related forms) either choose to be on the periphery, or are forced to take a longer view of how their action may enforce change.

This draws attention to the importance of the process of performing representation. For example, Thomson et al. (2011) suggested in their CC report that the real effects of a community arts project are likely to be taking place throughout the process. This recognises representation as being part of the end product of these arts projects, but it also encompasses the affective and embodied representations that are woven through the process. One argument that runs through the Thomson et al. paper is that community arts performance can create a space where local knowledge and storytelling can become significant. A new identity can be formed, free from larger socially constructed identities that disadvantage these communities. This advantage also has the ability to reach beyond those taking part, to the multiple audiences of those who view the performance. Ultimately, according to the argument of Fraser (2000), this gives the opportunity for the community to reclaim identity and ascribe meaningful value and significance to their own representation of themselves. This is further explored in the following

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sections, initially using the lens of aesthetics to understand how meaning can be understood in this context.

ii) Aesthetics

Aesthetics as a term and as a concept is one with a complex past. Aesthetics was born originally as a discourse of the body and in its original usage by the German philosopher, Alexander Baumgarten, the term refers not in the first place to art, but, to the whole region of human perception and sensation. In further sections we will go on to describe the importance of the body and ‘embodiment’ but here we want to focus on our broader understanding of aesthetics, as a term that can help us understand and envisage the meaning underpinning arts practices.

This field takes as its premise a situated concept of the arts, which relies on a dialogic understanding of meanings within sites. Here, the concept of conversations within sites and spaces, that then unseats relations of power, provides an understanding of local communities that is relational. This perspective engages with the flow of power that runs through arts practice. We draw on these fields when thinking about change within communities and consider how an arts practice approach to creating change can open up new possibilities within communities.

‘The peculiarity of aesthetic discourse, as opposed to the languages of art themselves, is that, while preserving a root in this realm of everyday experience, it also raises and elaborates such supposedly natural, spontaneous expression to the status of an intricate intellectual discipline.’

(Eagleton 1990: 3)

Eagleton (1990) is beginning here to elaborate on how aesthetics can both be a practical tool for viewing expression and meaning, but can also be an extremely challenging discourse with social, cultural and political connotations. Rancière (2006) talks of two ‘politics of aesthetics’: the politics of the ‘becoming life of art’ and the politics of the ‘resistant form’ and he argues that these always exist together. In the first politics, the aesthetic experience resembles other forms of experiences and as such, it tends to dissolve into other forms of life. In the second politics of aesthetics, the resistant form, the political potential of the aesthetic experience derives from the separation of art from other forms of activity and its resistance to any transformation into a form of life. In these two forms, the aesthetic can often merge with other forms of representation on one hand, or it can very deliberately make a statement on the other. What we would like to argue, is that both these forms of representation should be made visible and seen as legitimate.

Rancière (2010) then moves this notion of aesthetics to something that it is shared in the ‘fabric of common experience’. This perspective rejects partitioning of times and spaces, sites and functions. This then creates a

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permeable space, one that can be awakened and take on new life in various ways. Rancière is concerned with invisible worlds that are unseen and argues that aesthetics moves beyond the sensible and offers a transformative and creative space of action. He talks about the freedom of the aesthetic, and its link to the hope of change, which implies a more nuanced engagement with spectatorship and an exploration of other ways of learning and knowing are possible. There is a great opportunity to connect these debates with organisations concerned with democracy and participation.

When making meaning, people make aesthetic as well as modal choices to then shape their representations (Rowsell 2013). A modal choice is simply the form in which an individual or a group of individuals choose to express themselves. Young people who are not traditionally heard in communities, such as girls from the British Asian communities, might employ different aesthetic choices from the mainstream, but use these effectively to make representations about racism and lived experience in new ways (Hull and Nelson 2009). When we talk about ‘art’ we see art being used in the everyday, in a way that can be both inherent or deliberate, and aesthetic practices shape these processes.

We therefore argue for a valuing of the everyday as an aesthetic category that shapes representation. In terms of creating action within communities, art theorists such as Rancière (2010) warn of the dangers of dismissing ‘the vast majority to shadowy silence or inchoate noise’ (Corcoran 2010:7). Instead ‘art may create a new scenery of the visible and a new dramaturgy of the intelligible’ (Corcoran 2010: 19). This valuing of the unseen is a process that also requires a process of listening to the world of common experience to re-frame political engagement. The through line from art to politics is thus articulated, for Rancière, within the everyday and often within the visual arts. For example, we found evidence that visual arts and non linguistic forms can help young people explore and express difficult feelings, those that they struggle to articulate verbally (Macpherson et al. 2011 – CC Study). Therefore, practically, aesthetics matter and these forms of representation often take on varying cultural forms that must be recognised and engaged with.

iii) Modal choice and multimodality

The field of multimodality develops from the writing of Gunther Kress (1997, 2010). Kress uses the examples of language to make his point about modal choice. As languages are different across the globe, shaped and defined by cultural meaning, then so are modes of representation. Humans make signs in which form and meaning stand and these signs are made with very different means, and in extremely different modes (Kress, 2010). It is essential to pay attention to the mode of the representation as these meaning-making systems are intrinsically shaped by individual and community culture and experience.

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The process of representation is located within everyday life and interactional processes and when individuals make meaning they do so by drawing on a number of different modes (Kress 1997). In other words, the choice of the how something is represented is central and meaningful. Individuals and groups have particular connections with modes of expression, and these may be visual, gestural, aural and other forms of artistic representation. These modes go beyond the written, go beyond the voice, and open up the vista to diverse forms of representation.

Leander and Blotz (2013) argue for an understanding of meaning making that is grounded in diffuse and embodied experiences of the world. This unbounded nature of communicative practice can include multilingual and digital forms, often unrecognised within traditional governance structures, but recognised within contemporary society and local spaces.

Hull and Nelson (2009) talk about the online, narrativised self through exploring digital stories by young people. They described the ‘intuitive sense of the meaning making affordances and aesthetic properties of the mode of the visual image’ (p. 221) in young people’s digital stories – which were designed to create change in their communities. They argue that this is a kind of ‘imaginative vigilance’ that reconfigures the multimodal textual architectures of individual life-worlds and social communities. Often young people will communicate through informal modes and methods, using personal and meaningful forms of expression, such as music, to represent themselves. To capture these forms, or even to recognise them as forms in themselves, gives individuals agency.

The ‘Keeping in Touch’ CC report (Dovey et al. 2011) is the first iteration of a series of questions that look to support the development of a digital communications strategy for communities of interest or place. They highlight the need to build on people's everyday practice, demonstrating the importance of this everyday to the sustainability of any project. They state that their respondents did not talk about community strengthening but about connecting to people, sharing information and joining in events and activities. Community life was described in terms of activities, encounters, collaborations and meetings. This weaving together of modes builds a map of how people engage with their community, one that is linked to their own experiences and ways of knowing.

Rowsell (2013) looks at individuals’ felt connection to mode and how modal choice can be traced back to their own histories and pasts. By identifying parts of the habitus in text making processes, moments of agency can be uncovered (Rowsell 2013). Habitus, as defined by Bourdieu (1977, 1990), describes ways of being, doing, and acting in the world across generations, time, and space. Rowsell, like Pahl (2002, 2004), argues for a theory of meaning making that sees texts as inscribed traces of social practice (Rowsell and Pahl 2007). Therefore, text making is strongly linked to identities. It is rooted in ideological dispositions of power. The role of the meaning-maker is

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to make sense of these modal choices in an ideologically laden world. We have used this thinking as a tool to understand the importance of how individuals express their views and the reasons for using that particular form of articulation.

We draw on the arts and humanities when thinking about questions of voice, value and identity to inform ways of understanding legitimacy as well as listening structures in communities. We consider how people come to be identified with particular value systems and acknowledge the often intuitive and non-rational forms of meaning making that go alongside more visible forms of representation and may lead to local decision-making.

We have also drawn on particular understandings of how people in communities come to have a voice and get listened to. This rests on concepts of representation as contingent, in process, and fractured by identity and infused with narrative, tellings, re-tellings and articulations that are not always clear (Georgakopoulou 2007). Processes of representation are sometimes articulated and heard, but often not, particularly when people do not share the same languages, modal registers or aesthetic frameworks.

This links to the work of Denzin (2003) who describes cultures which draw on epistemologies of performance for governance structures. Performance foregrounds cultural meanings and becomes a way of articulating experience and shaping critique of situations that are problematic. Denzin explores performance as an act of intervention, a method of resistance, a form of criticism. Performance becomes public pedagogy when it uses the aesthetic; the performative then comes to foreground the intersection of politics, institutional sites and experience. In this way performance is a form of agency, a way of bringing culture and the person into play and can be used as a mechanism to publically express views.

iv) Values, authority and embodied practice

The concepts of authority and legitimization were explored by Blencowe et al. (2011) in their CC report. They explore the term of ‘immanent authority’ as a specific type of power that can be examined through the lens of community creation, vitality and empowerment. There is a focus here on pluralism and the need to understand what constitutes objective and formal knowledge and where there is scope for conflicting views on what comprises and enacts community life. This leads to the authors arguing that future research on community empowerment should focus on the production of this authority and should have the capacity to include studies of community performance, narration, history, imagination and community-led design. We have endeavoured to address this challenge in this project, to try and recognise some of these aspects, and to communicate how these link across the telling case groups that we have worked with.

Siebers and Fell (2011) in their CC report explore the relationship between the concepts of ‘community’ and ‘future’ from a philosophical perspective.

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They highlight that ‘the active orientation on the future is at the heart of the present life of the community (2011: 7). This temporal perspective attributes greatest meaning to the aspirational notion that there is more value in communities imagining what ‘can be’ rather than what ‘will be’. Understanding aspects of what has went before, and what may still come, helped us to develop our own thinking on the role that community and arts representation plays across the telling cases – especially in relation to attributing meaning to artistic and embodied practices that seek to enact change.

Within our project we have examined community empowerment and the importance of aspiration that are revealed through community arts performance. This recognises that authority and power (and subsequently representation) can become monopolised by a few supposedly correct ways of thinking, or ways of seeing. What we seek is to challenge is this view and make other forms of representation visible.

Embodiment is a concept that assumes the experiences of the individual are shaped by the active and reactive entity that is their body (Parr, 2005). This is one central part of why non-formal and non-linguistic modes of representation are so important.

‘Our first and foremost, most immediate and intimately felt geography is of the body, the site of emotional experience and expression. Emotions take place within and around this closest of spatial scales.’

(Davidson and Milligan 2004: 523)

This bodily experience, in conjunction with the emotional, personal and social processes and meanings that imprint the individual, are central to understanding and interpreting individuals’ experiences and interaction with representational processes.

A constructive view of embodiment is expressed by Phelan (1997), who describes the acts of live performance as being art with real bodies. Phelan sees this performance as having an integrative, healing potential with direct relevance to the cultural moment in which it is being enacted. To supplement this link to both human feeling and cultural connection, Callard and Papoulias (2010), working within the field of memory studies, record the increasing interest in “affect” alongside “embodiment” in the humanities. This approach rejects the Cartesian mind/body duality and moves beyond just cognition, to an area of feeling and meaning. This development stresses immediate engagement and connection with the world that has the potential to re-frame how individuals interact with the world around them.

Buser and Arthurs (2011) in their CC report, echo this call to understand affect and emotion, and the role this plays in motivating artists and activists to engage. They argue that investigations into emotional and affective experiences could help draw out notions of place, community and identity within activist/performative environments. Work by Pink (2009) and Ingold

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(2011) explore using sensory and ‘in place’ modes of anthropology, examining the lived experience of people within communities. This acknowledges that the process of working with people in communities involves an embodied and engaged practice in itself.

The form in which those stories are presented could also be framed via accounts of representation drawn from performance studies. Brecht (1978) and Diamond (1998) both highlight the fact that no theatrical or stage representation is ever literally “realistic”, even if it aims to reproduce reality, and that different techniques of production may use the same story to produce different impacts. Any account of the impact of community theatre must consider whether seeing their represented past on stage made the audience feel proud, angry or motivated to change things, as this will affect the larger social impact the performance produces. This will also help distinguish between the effects produced by being part of the representation, and those produced by being part of an audience watching narratives which intersect with their experiences. There is therefore a relational aspect to these performative and embodied forms of representation and one that depends on the filter of the audience (and this audience includes policy-makers as well as those who are being represented on stage).

Our study also recognises that there are different kinds of ‘doings’ and to value ‘everyday interactions, practices and feelings’ as key elements in diverse representational practices which might fall under a broad heading of social participation (Jupp 2008: 341). Much of these doings, the actions of the telling cases, are expressed in an embodied way. These deliberate choices of representation include expressions that are enacted through bodily expression and action.

We also actively wanted to explore the emotions that are present within the research. These emotional experiences are concerned with the association between feelings themselves and the representations and accounts of these feelings that are experienced through the body and within particular spaces (Davidson and Milligan, 2004). To be able to do this, a more nuanced approach was used in the research, using and examining artistic methods of expression that contribute to more personal understandings of lived experiences (Parr 2005). We felt that examining representational processes in this way was essential to recognise the meaning of what was being expressed:

‘the process of valuing things in the world is inseparable from the emotions and feelings they induce in us; without these emotions and feelings there would be no value.’

(Milton 2002: 100)

This links to recent works, from across the social sciences, in the fields of emotions in both governance and the policy-making process (Durnova 2013;

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Hunter 2012; Gottweis and Prainsack 2006). Often taking a cue from feminist approaches but also more recently non-representational geographies of affect, some accounts challenge straightforward descriptions of the working of the state and other agencies, showing how spaces of interventions often frame much ‘more than’ (Horton and Kraftl 2009) policy rationalities, producing ‘enlivened’ (Smith et al. 2010) accounts of encounters between citizens and the state and its agencies. This move in analysis sits alongside a new mood within governmental practices themselves which explicitly seek to capitalise on emotional interactions or govern through affective, non-rational behaviours, raising questions about the role of the state and its relationships to citizens. Examples would include new interests in ‘emotional intelligence’ within education (Humphrey et al. 2010), new paradigms of ‘co-production’ and localism in public services and community or neighbourhood interventions that we look to speak more directly towards.

v) Literature discussion

Alternative representational forms require modes of listening and engagement to make sense of them. Artists provide a lens for seeing things differently but also arts practice disrupts taken for granted practices that assume that representation can only take place in particular places and in particular ways, and makes these a more meaningful and encompassing. This enables the process of representation to be taken beyond the process of voice that is well documented in the social science literature, to a more nuanced area of meaning making. Using the theories from aesthetics, multimodality and everyday and embodied practices we see that creating agency for communities involves harnessing their representational forms. And by seeing representation as performed and constructed it is possible to recognise and engage with these forms in meaningful ways.

Creating representations of life is something people do, bringing aesthetics into the moral space as well as the beautiful space – using intuitive insights (Hull and Nelson 2009). Art can be located within the everyday, making it central to lived experience. The use of this art by individuals and communities may either be overtly political and focussed on enacting change in formal structures of governance, or it can be more incidental, an expression that is not deliberately politicised, but still just as important. Representation can be taken for granted but it is important to listen more carefully to people’s modal choices and their meaning making processes, online or off-line, material or immaterial. This is not just the output of an arts representation (a show, a piece of art, a dance, some imaginative text) but it is also the processes of how this was produced. The story of the production is significant, both in terms of the motivations behind the process, but also the very real connections and meanings that are made throughout.

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To appreciate the importance of connection and dialogue between those representing their meanings, and those who have to translate these meanings and incorporate them into policy and practice is central, and we look to use our telling cases to illustrate some of these connections.

Section  4. The telling cases and the colloquia

The central thrust of our argument here is that new perspectives on representation in practice are possible through recognising arts and humanities theory and practices that are at play in community processes. The principal shift is from an understanding of representation as voice that is grounded within social science theory, to the broader conception of representation as meaning-making. Much of the literature explored above shows what this means in practice. We emphasise though that these are not disconnected: that in the ‘real world’ everyday practices of representation (meaning-making) are the basis of dialogue (i.e. representations) between community and state. Everyday representations may carry voice, but may also portray emotional engagement with issues and places, be deployed through different ‘modes’ and may echo resistance or consensus and carry aesthetic qualities. If this enhanced understanding is to have any utility in linking ‘the state’ and communities then the former (local authority officers, councillors, civil servants etc.) will need to ‘see’ these unfamiliar forms of representation and learn know how to interpret and engage with them. In this section we draw on our engagement with communities through the cases and the colloquia to illustrate and elaborate on these ideas, presenting examples both of communities making sense through representation, and innovative ways in which the state has engaged with these.

The cases are arranged in a rough ordering of the level, or ease, of engagement of the state with the community in question, from the case in which the state was virtually absent (Troyeville) to that in which the local authority and community were working most closely together in familiar ways (OneNorbiton). (More description of the cases can be found in the DVD.)

To accompany this section we ask readers to watch the related films as the two modes communicate different things, and so should enhance the reader’s/viewer’s understanding by juxtaposing the immediacy of engagement through the films with the more abstract analysis in the text. In this we also demonstrate the importance of multi-modal communication, and provide an opportunity for readers/viewers to reflect on how they interpret different forms of engagement with the complex realities of local community settings.

The colloquia

In the first colloquium the community activists and arts practitioners emphasised the central issue for the research: that communities engage in a wide range of different practices to represent themselves in different ways. In particular they strive to interact with the state, and often use ‘artistic’ means to

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do this. However, their common experience is of the state’s failure to see or hear their representations, or of successful engagement with front-line staff, which then goes no further and is made ineffective. The central message was for officials and councillors to be more open both to other forms of representation and also to value these differently – to change the criteria which led them too easily to label representations as illegitimate.

The dialogue also brought out an important, unresolved struggle around this issue, common to arts and social science academics as well as practitioners. For both, there is a crucial question of how to judge whether a representation should be taken seriously, be persuasive: a question framed by social scientists and the more political activists in terms of legitimacy, and by arts theorists and practitioners in terms of authenticity. Given the need to find non-electoral criteria for legitimate representation in the neighbourhood governance context, this could be a fruitful avenue for further exploration – can the artistic concept of ‘authenticity’ help establish whether a particular community representation should be taken as legitimate? We also questioned the function of such deliberations and concluded that, at least in part, this struggle was part of a strategy to reduce uncertainty in complex judgements and informal selection processes.

Our broader preliminary analysis, as presented at the second colloquium and included below, was validated by the community-based participants. It ‘rang true’ and spoke to their experience, their concerns and their understandings of how representation ‘worked’ (or not).

Troyeville    

In this uniquely multi-racial inner-city neighbourhood, we observed a community which was largely self-organising – a diverse range of initiatives have been entirely citizen-led, with no state involvement. This partly reflects decades of weak or absent connections with formal democratic structures. The apartheid state gave no space for democratic community involvement, and following the ‘transition’ to democracy the mainly African National Congress-voting population of Troyeville had no means of ‘elevating’ their concerns through formal political channels. Until recently, the ward included an adjoining neighbourhood dominated by huge migrant worker hostels, which guarantee that local councillors are from the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party – a minority on the overwhelmingly ANC-dominated city council. Further, local state planners have consciously not engaged with the Troyeville community, even though there are city policies in place which purportedly encourage public participation in a broad range of planning and service delivery issues. As a result of this long-standing disconnection, Troyeville residents have developed alternative means to ‘be heard’ and ‘be seen’ in the city. Art and politics are inseparable – community activists are largely involved in arts practice, and much of what they do is ‘political’ and oriented

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towards community development and representing the community in new/positive ways.

One fundamental meaning-making process is evident in the way the community represents itself through its built environment. In a city in which most residents live behind walls – in the wealthy suburbs for security, in the townships to mark property boundaries - Troyeville has fewer walls and even the relatively wealthy have little protection from otherwise ubiquitous private armed response security companies. Underpinning these manifestations lie a set of values and conceptions of the ‘other’ that are re-presented in physical form. Living in the city without high walls is a direct challenge to the widely felt fear of crime that makes security ‘essential’ for those who can afford it. This is more than just a way of living: it carries meaning for the residents and is a statement to the rest of the city that a different way of living based on collective surveillance of open streets rather than private protection in walled homes is possible. It creates different forms of public space with interaction on busy streets that generates a collective attachment to place.

Rare in the suburbs but commonplace in the townships, residents have created restaurants, shops, cafes, a cinema, art galleries and other local amenities. There are a number of community-based projects in the area, such as childcare centres, youth groups, food-growing and dance projects. Most have been achieved without state involvement and formal funding strategies or business plans. Individuals and groups have emerged to pick up different issues that the state cannot solve and have been largely self-funded.

These creative and social activities have been central in giving previously marginalised groups a voice and have provided a space for the community to deal with conflicts – striking examples of a community taking a creative approach to its own governance. Thus, for example, a group of women came together (through funding to support World Cup 2010) to create employment opportunities by learning how to make mosaics to sell to football fans. They were employed to help a local artist to prepare a large mosaic to commemorate the massacre of striking miners by armed forces in 1925. The women were recruited from a local charity supporting victims of domestic violence and conflict. Women reported regaining a sense of humanity from the project, because they had the opportunity to talk to other women who had had similar experiences and find mutual support. ‘While their hands were busy they talked, really talked…’ The artist was so impressed by their engagement, ‘it was one of the most moving experiences I have ever had, at work…’ He widened their role, extended their contracts and they made the mosaic collaboratively. Prompted by making an image of a violent repression, the women spoke of hidden details from their lives and in the process they were heard by others that understood.

Another conflict-solving example is a food-growing project which started as a way of occupying young residents in a tenement block, plagued by rather familiar problems. ‘We [adults] are outnumbered three-to-one. They [kids]

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bored, people get upset with noise, tempers are lost… it was madness’. Since engaging the young men in particular, graffiti is non-existent, relationships between residents are not as fraught, food has been grown and a group of young people have learned how work together and be more self-sufficient in ways which go beyond simply growing food.

In the chaotic and sometimes risky environment of Johannesburg creative practices provide a form of governance that enable people to come together. As residents find ways of managing conflicting perspectives, their practices expose the artistry (Schon 1992) in governance.

Rotherham

Manor  Farm  Youth  Group  

In the case of the Rotherham Children and Young People’s Services youth groups, a youth worker from Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, an artist and a University of Sheffield academic worked with young people from the former pit village of Rawmarsh on a film-making project. Unlike in Troyeville, arts practices provided the means of channelling ‘voice’ in ways that involved ‘outsiders’ including the local state – but as in Troyeville, the context was one in which the community as a whole, and these young people in particular, are marginalised and many have little sense of being represented in local governance. The issue is partly about ‘re-representing Rawmarsh’ (which suffers repeatedly from negative representation in the local and national media) and partly about engaging young people at risk from Far Right organisations, which locally are threatening to provide alternative routes for people to channel their frustration and reassert their identity. Beyond this, the young people themselves took the opportunity to develop through the arts a language to speak to decision makers about the issues that concern them.

The film emerged from a two-month process of discussion and negotiation with the youth group – initially about politics and ‘voice’ and then about how to express their voice to those in power. It took place in a setting in which the young people could choose whether or not to engage, could move in and out of discussions, and could also choose to start other activities, such as dancing. The process as a whole, from inception through to the showing of the film to the young people and DCLG embody aspects of sense and identity-making through to shifting government practice.

It exemplifies the importance of process in representation. The film could not have been created quickly as a standalone idea – it emerged from the dialogue and different stages in the young people’s expression. In part the issue here is the importance of human relationships and the development of mutual trust in enabling representation to occur. We see the young people choosing different ways to express themselves, in a sequence in which each ‘modal choice’ builds on the one before. Thus they started with music and dance – the least obviously ‘intelligible’ but powerful in expressing emotions

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and reinforcing a collective identity, and one in which the young people feel comfortable. Shadow puppetry was their choice to start expressing their ideas more explicitly: chosen because although unfamiliar it was secure, in that they could use their voices without their faces being seen. Making a film of the area and the play was a way of reaching out, and making their voices heard; a film for which they finally wrote the text ‘captions’ which give the clearest expression of ‘voice’ but were only possible because of the preceding creative steps. Representation in the political sense then happened through the showing of the film to DCLG thus demonstrating the intimate connection between the processes of artistic representation and a political process. Moreover, these events further shaped the young people’s capacity to express their needs and take collective action – they are now a group seeking ways to get a youth centre for the area. One can also see changes in state practices here: the civil servants were willing and able to engage with these unfamiliar forms of representation and begin to make sense of them.

There is also a more subtle lesson here, which is crucial to changing practice. Going beyond accepting and engaging with unfamiliar and powerful representations there is a need to seek the meanings, the messages, embodied in the choice of mode of expression. The choice of a medium in which young people don’t have to show their faces implicitly yet powerfully conveys something meaningful about their lives and their relationship with authority.

Rawmarsh  School  Council    

As a contrastive example we also present a film made by Rawmarsh School Council, which was shown to the local MP and the headteacher of the school. Here, the film making process was about the School Council, elected as representatives of the school, using film to express the need for the senior management to take seriously their request to wear trainers in school. By making their voices heard through the film, a dialogue was opened up between the school council and the senior management team, and a political process of engagement developed with the local MP. Here, elected representatives (the School Council) made a film as part of a process of dialogue and engagement. The choice of medium to present the message was again a key part of this process.

Sheffield  

The Lowedges, Batemoor and Jordanthorpe project – managed by Sheffield City Council and originally a Cabinet Office Local Integrated Services pilot – is aimed at the effective and democratic integration of service commissioning, design and delivery. A project within the city’s wider suite of ‘Learning by Doing’, its development is very ‘organic’ and incremental, guided by a broad aim but with very few preconceptions about what institutional forms are required. It is consciously experimental, and also consciously experimenting with how to learn from the experiments, working alongside members of the

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research team in ways inspired by a synthesis of humanities and social science methods (action research methodology and realist evaluation approaches). A small component of the project is also using ‘the arts’, including drama and dance, to stimulate community involvement, which is the principal subject of the film.

The unfamiliarity – and ‘artiness’ – of the dance event was challenging to most of the officers involved, apart from two senior officers who championed the approach. Afterwards this scepticism was significantly reduced, and the event was seen to have yielded sufficient gains. It built trust and opened up avenues for future work with a previously unengaged TARA – who were onlookers not directly involved in the drama – and also demonstrated the power of dance to engage individuals who would not involve themselves in more formal ways of engaging with the local authority. Follow up interviews also showed how it broke down the isolation of some of those involved, and how in meeting and thinking about how to engage people in meaningful dialogue, they found themselves thinking about a wide range of relevant issues, shared ideas, found new confidence and practiced speaking out. More generally, the event can be seen as a way in which the community started to make new sense of its green open spaces – as places in which new, enjoyable activities could take place over which they had a measure of control, rather than being (as at present) barren spaces between homes which are the responsibility of ‘the Council’ and little valued by the community. This new representation is perhaps a precondition for a more hopeful future, in which local authority and community can work together more productively (and cheaply) in managing these spaces. One can also clearly see here how the experience of working in this new way shifted officers' assumptions and their practice of engaging with the community.

This is very typical of the project as a whole. Its first phase, which has been increasingly influential on other service provision in the city, was driven by concerns for adults aged over 85, considered ‘at risk’ but not currently supported by the local authority or NHS, and in particular aimed to reduce the number of unscheduled winter admissions to hospital. The strategy focused on one-to-one work, with community support workers going into individuals’ homes to jointly create a ‘winter plan’ to ensure people know how to access support if necessary. The outcomes were often apparently ‘small’ things like shopping in snow or changing a light bulb, but they reveal a side to peoples’ lives that are usually hidden: loneliness, isolation, cold. These details re-present people’s needs meaningfully and for many officers this new person-centred focus has been an emotional journey into what are quite often desperate lives. As a result of seeing the meaning in these representations within an action research setting, officers have had an opportunity to try to enact necessary changes in practice and policy and now understand the need to integrate services, but with greater emphasis on the needs of service users’ perspectives. For the older people, this engagement has not only enabled

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them to express their needs – and have them met, often in very simple, inexpensive ways – but also has had significant benefits in reducing isolation and giving them a sense of both agency and belonging.

Two further aspects of the project emphasise how in the contexts of developing new forms of governance, widening participation and creating coproduced services, that arts and humanities methods have much to offer. The first is the value of action research as an approach to creating a learning organisation. Outside of social science for much of their development, methods such as action research, action learning and inquisitive enquiry are mainstays in the arts and humanities toolkit.

When the process started, officers were keen to describe the major task ahead of them as better communicating their role to the wider public; so the public would appreciate the issues facing the council. As they went out into the community of LBJ, officers were surprised by the impact that connecting with people’s lives had on them. They developed an increased awareness of how departmental and sector boundaries hindered the potential to solve some enduring problems. Senior management have given officers a licence to experiment with new practices in order to find solutions to such problems. Using an action research approach has enabled officers to learn how to intervene more effectively, particularly with partner organisations, where allocation of resources is beyond their own line management control. The alternative would be for individual management teams to provide a blueprint for solving issues. Our experience of this process suggests that the organisations were not fully conscious of the nuanced needs of service users from a multidisciplinary perspective, so any restructuring of services would have been inadequate in the early stages.

A structure that enables learning, reflection and redesign, implies learning for all participants. However, the assumption is often perpetuated in the early stages of interaction that change belongs to the ‘other’. Be it attitudinal change in residents that seems to demand a new communication strategy or forms of governance that expect newcomers to know how to behave, implementation tends to reveal the shortcomings of these early depictions of the problem. Getting the design right first time is unlikely given the need to work across sectors and the wide range of management permissions and policy shifts that may be necessary.

The second aspect is the power of narrative in representation processes. A conspicuous feature of the project has been the representation of individuals in the community through the stories of their problems and the (sometimes) successful intervention by the project in solving these. These stories have been reiterated many times, and have become representative of the community as a whole, its problems and of the project approach to integrated solutions, making easily-communicated sense of a complex and messy process. These narratives have become powerful in the sense of mobilising action, and in particular in tackling the problem identified in the colloquium of

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the ‘blockage’ of communities’ representations within the state’s policy-making processes. In LBJ we have observed these representations of individuals and the project being repeated far from the ‘front line’, building the case for integration as well as promoting specific actions to tackle problems.

Kingston

The OneNorbiton project has much in common with the Sheffield work in terms of aims and context: it too is a pilot for service integration, with very significant local authority involvement, which has been set up within the context of national pilot schemes (the LIS and latterly DCLG’s Neighbourhood Community Budgets.) In contrast, however, the innovative approach taken has been to establish at the outset an independent community-based organisation which is intended to take on the role of commissioning services. Of all five of our cases it is the most grounded in a traditional approach to governance, in that although innovative in its aims it has started with an institutional change, reflecting common assumptions within central and local government that creating new organisational forms are the most appropriate way of addressing the desire to decentralise commissioning to community-level. The value of this approach is that it has very quickly achieved the creation of a genuinely community-based organisation. What has become apparent, however, is that this does not in itself solve issues of representation and legitimacy, and the community members themselves are now addressing these issues from within the constraints of the new structure – conscious that they have neither electoral legitimacy nor are they (demographically) representative of the Norbiton community, and so questioning the possibility of taking on the commissioning role. The group is largely made up of the kinds of people who usually get involved in such organisations – articulate, confident, and familiar with the ways of local government – and while this enables it to function it also poses for them very real problems in reaching out to the more marginalised (poorer, minority ethnic) communities in the neighbourhood.

The case lends itself to a social scientific analysis, exactly because of its familiarity as an approach to governance innovation. However, an arts and humanities lens, and the contrast through this lens with the other cases, brings other insights which are very widely relevant. Firstly, it draws attention to the absence from this case of any use of ‘the arts’ as a tool for community engagement, and to the relationship between this and the presence of a narrow range of people in the new organisation. Further, this absence is rooted in cultural assumptions about appropriate forms of representation and governance shared by those involved, which (so far) has locked them into reproducing methods of working very reminiscent of formal (local authority) processes and which effectively exclude the less articulate and confident. Secondly, close observation of these methods of working – in particular of meetings – shows how even in the most conventional settings (as seen in the film) there are complex processes of representation going on.

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‘Representation’ in this sense is not just about who is there, and the explicit issues of representativeness and legitimacy. As in the literature reviewed above, we draw attention both to how the community is portrayed (represented) and also to the aesthetic and performative aspects of a meeting. These do not simply comprise objective presentations and rational argument, but also the manner in which points are made: the language used, the tone of voice, who’s points are addressed and so on all have an equally important role in the process of deliberation. This is a crucial lesson for understanding all governance processes: they are collective processes of sense making and meaning is carried through mode and manner of delivery. These aspects as well as substantive content have to be observed and interpreted if the full nature of what is being represented is to be understood.

Multistory

The Multistory case was rather different from the others, in that our engagement was with them as an organisation which facilitates and supports a number of arts-based community development projects, rather than directly with the projects themselves. They thus acted to some extent like the colloquium participants, providing a sounding-board and an alternative perspective on the arts-governance connection, and also giving examples of projects exemplifying their approach.

One such example is a community arts initiative, Stirchley Prospects, by Place Prospectors in Stirchley, West Midlands, attempted to use the arts/creative interventions as a mechanism to mobilise the existing resources of the local community and identify solutions to problems that are perceived too big or difficult to change. The project started through ‘doing’ rather than talking. Hamdi, in his book ‘Small Change’, writes about how,

‘…skilful practice can trigger the emergence of novelty and organisation… it can help build an architecture of opportunity for rediscovering community, building networks and stronger organisations, and making money – for communication and learning to flourish, and for new partnerships to be explored.’

(Hamdi 2004: xxiv).

This ‘relational model’ starts with practice. By opening a shop on the high street and through visible interventions in the local community Stirchley Prospects attracted community members who had grown tired of conventional routes to community representation to get involved. An event in the local park led to the development of initiatives to improve the lighting and entrance ways to the park and commission a graffiti wall for young people. Citizens were integral and influential members of their projects and were given the space to express their views and ideas in open and refreshing ways. As a result of these small change interventions local people became self-organised, initiating a Friends of the Park group and a Stirchley Urban Resource

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Network, exploring the assets and resources the community already has to inspire change. Place Prospectors united community groups and members and channelled a new way of thinking in the community of Stirchley, to see the ‘bigger picture of change’ and how thinking, acting and networking more creatively can challenge the consensus and make a difference. In the recent Stirchley Festival (http://stirchleyprospects.wordpress.com/) community events created different kinds of spaces for participation and belonging to occur using dialogic arts practice and collective conversations (Kestor 2004).

Section  5. Guidance  for  practice  One of the key issues emerging from all the telling cases and colloquia is that representational processes within communities are far more diverse than formal governance structures can comprehend or engage with. Much is simply overlooked, or (if noticed) treated as ‘noise’ surrounding otherwise legitimate signals (Vanderhoven 2010: 72). What is ‘heard’ (for example by front line staff) is often filtered by departmental or disciplinary boundaries and disappears. The value of informal representation is lost in this process. That groups of people go out of their way to express different values through their actions, and work towards particular visions for their communities, are important details that can be used to understand communities. Seeing such collective sense-making as representation could improve both informal and formal practices of engagement between state and citizens.

It seems important to recognise that people seem to seek the certainty of ‘the’ legitimate or authentic ‘voice or object’ in preference to complex and/or ambiguous ‘noise’. This has profound effects for policy makers and practitioners. In seeking ‘the voice’ to listen to, ‘the group’ is constructed who ought to have clearly representable needs. Finding the legitimate or authentic voice would help enormously to target resources, to be more effective and to make services more democratically accountable. However, such an ideal may be a mirage, and we appear to need to find new ways of integrating a range of voices into decision-making processes. In so doing, it is important to recognise that some voices and meanings will most likely be unrehearsed, complex, contradictory and may be in need of translation. There may be challenging conclusions to draw, but democracy and service delivery would be enhanced.

Therefore, our central messages draw attention to the importance of ‘hearing the noise’ and the need for strategies to be developed that can do this hearing. This approach, and its supporting arguments, are relevant across the entire range of policies associated with decentralisation, rather than being specific to any one of them. Whether the concern is with neighbourhood community budgeting, local neighbourhood planning or exercising community rights, understanding and engaging with the complexity of community representation is fundamental. It will be for practitioners in each specific field and local context to work out how to apply these principles.

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These principles are:

Seeing  representation  differently  

This requires a different approach to what counts as representation, which is relevant to defining and building new relationships between citizens and government:

• Recognising that meaningful and relevant representation can take place in different modes (including ‘artistic’ forms such as drama, drawing etc);

• Giving consideration to what is being represented and why, rather than focusing solely on who is the representative;

• Seeing that the aesthetic and performative aspects of representation are important, alongside the substantive content.

New  ways  of  engaging  

• Experiment with different ways of engaging with communities: use a range of arts practices as ways of supporting groups, particularly marginalised ones, to represent themselves in ways which they feel to be effective and legitimate;

• Recognise the mediating role that skilled individuals can play (visual artists, theatre practitioners, community organisers, storytellers) – it is not necessary for local officers to become expert in community arts practice.

Reflective  practice  

There is artistry in practice, not simply the following of formal procedures, particularly in complex practices like engaging with communities. We need to learn how to learn from the experiences (Schon 1992), so we can develop the necessary skills and competencies:

• Be aware that representation is an ongoing and developmental process that may be ‘political’ and strategic, rather than a single consultation event from which ‘the’ answer may be extracted;

• Action Research is proving to be a powerful tool and could be more readily deployed in discovering how to redesign governance to capture the processes and meaning in governance

• Be self-aware: as with any ‘performance’, audiences interpret and shape the production, and this applies equally to representation. Together, all players co-produce the outcome;

• Engage in conversations, create listening spaces, open up a dialogue and embrace uncertainty as being important in this process.

Resolving the range of representations is always going to be challenging, and involve thinking through how to turn inchoate representations of identity into meaningful representational claims. Given the above, the only practicable approach is for practitioners to exercise judgements of the relative legitimacy

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and authenticity of representations, always keeping such judgements provisional and open to revision and challenge.

We recognise that these changes are not easy and may seem non-essential, but continuing with obviously ineffective forms of engagement carries risks of perpetuating and reinforcing the marginalisation of some groups in society, and undermining attempts to decentralise in a democratic and inclusive way. We argue that the greater risk lies in not learning – and so re-presenting the state as unhearing and/or excluding.

Our policy review has demonstrated the need to engage with people’s lived realities and argued for the need to make sense of a variety of representational practices as part of the process of making change happen within local governance structures. By listening to a more diverse range of representational practices, through a wider range of channels and media, civil servants will be able to engage more fully with local communities and in turn representatives will be better able to support the people they represent, whether they have a formal mandate or not.

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 References  

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• Blencowe, C., Brigstocke, J., Dawney, L., Amaral, A., Kirwan, S., Millner, N. and Noorani, T. (2011) Immanent Authority and the Making of Community, AHRC Connected Communities Scoping Review.

• Bourdieu, P. (1977) trans. Nice, R., Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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