Working with Diverse Audiences - November 2011

A Multi Sensory Approach Workshop

The Working with Diverse Audiences programme explores ways of working with diverse audiences through direct participation in existing and specially developed workshops, reflection and discussion around and sharing best practice. In November Fabrica's exhibition 'Gathering' by Melanie Manchot showed two films 'Celebration' http://www.fvu.co.uk/projects/details/celebration and 'Walk'. During the programme's workshops Second Sight and A Multi Sensory Approach we explored (through discussion, sensory exploration and making) themes relating to Melanie's work, such as how we gather as a community, artists working in a participatory way with the public, how do we behave in public spaces.

Guest Speaker Talk

Our Guest speaker Dr Amanda Ravetz a visual anthropologist who uses video to explore creativity, improvisation and play gave us a thought provoking insight into her working methods, and some of the fascinating people she has worked with to create her films. Click here to see Amanda's Post about her talk Amanda's Talk

Peer Critique

The Peer Critique, was attended by a mix of mid and early career arts professionals, some of whom were working with Fabrica through an exchange with CEMEA (Centre for education methods France). Our in depth discussions ranged from practical points around working within community settings and how to maintain motivation and keep ideas fresh within the constraints those situations can apply, to more philosophical questions around how, as people, we communicate and the importance of listening. 

A Multi Sensory Approach Workshop

Introductions/Bonding

Watching 'Celebration' by Melanie Manchot

Sensory exploration of the exhibition through object handling

Response to discussion about the exhibition through collaborative making

Response to discussion about the exhibition through collaborative making

Response to discussion about the exhibition through collaborative making

End Disscussion

Response to discussion about the exhibition through collaborative making

Photography by Eva Kalpadaki

Second Sight Workshops

Exploring themes within Melanie Manchot's work through object handling and disscussion

Second Sight's audience of participants has increased a great deal recently, which is beneficial to the group as there are more voices involved in each disscussion. In order to insure all those voices have the opportunity to be heard however it was nessessary to divide the group into two. This also provides regular Second Sight Volunteers with the oporunity to lead a group into disscussion, while I work with the other group. Comparing and contrasting the conclusions each group came to about the exhibition afterwards  adds another layer to the debate.  

Two of Second Sights regular and long standing participants, Connie and Gladys have been unable to attend the last two Second Sight workshops. It is becoming increasingly difficult for them to get to the Gallery as they often rely on a friend or family memeber to accompany them on the journey, where as before they came independently in taxi's. As both Connie and Gladys have expressed how much they miss coming to the workshops, I thought it logical that we would go to them, Connie and Gladys agreed. Therefore in March myself and two regular Second Sight volunteers will be trialing a home visit workshop, we will visit Connie and Gladys in thier respective homes and talk to them about the exhibition they have missed. This will be an interesting challenge, how do you give poeple an experience of a work when it is not in the same room? How do you disscuss the work in depthly without the views of so many others in the group contributing? Can the same meaningful (gallery based) experience be achieved?

Audio description of the exhibition 'Gathering' by Melanie Manchot

Group discussion about 'Gathering'

Group discussion about 'Gathering'

Group discussion about 'Gathering'

Photography by Daniel Yanez Gonzalez - Irun

A Potential Participant...

Grandma

My Godmother Jill has started attending Second Sight workshops since her retirement, which has been fantastic. She has told me she enjoys coming and I am reminded each time she does of questions raised about contemporary art, over roast dinners throughout the years, and the subsequent discussions (both enlightening and challenging) we have had around the work of artists that have featured heavily in the press. It is conversations like these in earlier years that are, in part, why I am working in an area that involves interpretation of contemporary art. My Grandma is another person who has similarly sparked these discussions in the past though unlike Jill this has not developed into visiting museums and galleries. Being of a similar age to many of Second Sight's participants I asked Grandma how she felt about opportunities to experience art that are available to her.

N - Do you attend activities such as talks, workshops or tours in galleries or museums?
G - No

N - Do you visit galleries and museums as a general visitor to have a look around?
G - No

N - Why not?
G - I have been to the local museum in Emsworth, but only once as I never know when it is open. I don't go down to (galleries/museums in) Portsmouth because of mobility issues and parking.

N- What would make a trip to a gallery or museum more likely for you?
G - Knowing what the activities are and if I am capable of doing them, I'm not clever enough to paint and I can't anyway because of arthritis in my hands, I can't even knit. Where do they advertise things? Ive never seen anything. I listen to the radio, read a national newspaper and watch t.v. Advertising on local radio might be good!

N - If you were going to visit what would your expectations be?
G - I don't have any expectations in particular, I don't know what they would offer, I'd expect to just go in and see the paintings and leave, and think it baffles me why they (the artists) do that.

N - What would you like to get out of it?
G - I would like to understand what was in the minds of the artist when they painted what they did.

N - Do you have an similar experiences to visiting a museum and gallery, something creative from the past that you enjoyed?
G - I went to West Dean College for two weekends in my 50's, I went with two friends and we stayed there. There were different classes going on all the time, I made a container for flowers, and a ring in the jewelry class - I'm not interested in walking around galleries to look at pictures I don't understand!

(I then presented Grandma with a hypothetical gallery visit that I thought would appeal to her interests, that would remove accessibility issues and draw on her positive experience of going to the college with friends.)

N- If a gallery approached the conservative club (where she goes to do flower arranging and has lunch with friends) and invited you to a contemporary photography exhibition about Margaret Thatcher, and they said they would provide a mini bus for you and your friends and tea and biscuits, would you be interested in going?

G - Yes I would!

This was an interesting interview, there were quite a few familiar points that I have heard from other older people regarding visiting galleries and museums. Access and transport are crucial, and so is advertising in the right way. Equally important, and I would venture perhaps overlooked, is transparency. What sort of work will be in the exhibition? What will I be expected to do in the activity? Can I bring friends, will there be others there? Am I expected to know about this type of art?

This all contributes to the barrier I come across the most when talking to participants or potential participants and was touched upon by Grandma when she talked about not expecting to understand the work, or how the artist came up with the idea, and 'not being clever enough to paint'.
Rather than an expectation of what the museum or gallery will offer them through this visit, it seems there is a feeling from the individual that they have to understand art, to 'get it' and that the expectation is somehow on them. And yet outside of these spaces my Grandma will debate the night away with me, discussing some of the very same issues that have come up during Second Sight workshops, War, Politics, Aging, Community....only in Second Sight those discussions benefited from multiple voices and were generated by a provocative art work. I know that as she has got older and her friends have passed away, Grandma often misses the opportunity to talk to other people about the things she is interested in and feels passionate about.

During this interview there were several points that question museums and galleries attempting to increase their audience to include people like Grandma when it appears she has no interest, engaging with art is not compulsory after all.

Then I return to Grandma's reasons for not wanting to go, practical, fixable things and more complexly a fear of the unknown around art. The barrier here is not a disinterest in specific exhibitions, discussion or a social situation. I am convinced, knowing Grandma personally, that if visiting a museum or gallery was normalized to her, as straightforward as popping to the shop, and as open as picking up a new book and talking to me about it's contents, then she would go, and I suspect go again, as Grandma has a lot to say.