James Macpherson (Edgehill University)
This paper aims to give a critically and professionally informed view of the place of participatory practices in street arts within public funding ecologies in the UK. The installation Bees: the Colony is offered as a practical embodiment of the tensions at work in the creation of publically funded contemporary interactive work.
Interactivity and participation have historically been integral to street arts but in recent years have been monetised through an increasingly instrumentalist cultural policy. Whilst the sector has clearly profited from the investment, De Roeper states “Government funding bodies…often have a cultural and social agenda that is politically mediated” (2008: 53). The current effect of this in the subsidised sector is to value the forms that supply any arts experiences to audiences in areas of low engagement “precisely for their capacity to deliver on this non-aesthetic, non-artistic level” (Belfiore, 2010: 350).
The paper uses published literature, interview material and documentation of the case study, an interactive installation/performance: Bees: the Colony. This professional project, which was funded by ACE and toured extensively to outdoor festivals in 2014/15 to audiences in excess of 50,000, is available for delegates to experience. The paper considers the pressures exerted on artists through funding structures and how these might be reframing relationships between artists and participants/audiences to prioritize ‘tick box’ statistical contact with creativity through engagement. How might both artists and funding bodies mitigate the effects of this “extrinsic motivation” to avoid it “crowding out” (Frey, 2012: 27- 34) artistic integrity in these precarious times?
Audience, Experience, Desire 