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Developing forms of Democratic Evaluation

What is the nature of engagement between the artist and the participant?

What is the place of the artefact / product in the arts education arena?

Roz Hall

The nature of engagement between artists and participants is, I would argue, shaped differently according to the different priorities that inform, and are reflected in, different approaches. I would also argue that the nature of engagement is crucially significant in terms of its potential impact on the development of a creative process. The nature of engagement could be understood to shift according to many details of an approach. One such detail, which seems to me to be of essential significance, is how the artist and participants understand each other's roles and thereby locate themselves in relation to each other. This is informed differently according to the priorities of those involved in the work, from the outset, and the consequent aims of the work.

In this paper I outline the way in which my location, as an artist / researcher, had impact on the nature of engagement, and therefore, on the development of project work. I will explain how, through an action research process with young people, an emphasis was placed on the development of forms of democratic evaluation. I will also explain why I think its important to develop forms of democratic evaluation, and what it facilitates, and how this challenges the traditional place of the artefact / product in the arts education arena.

The work that has informed the presentation I'm giving today, was, from the outset, aligned with a certain ethos, in both its academic and practical contexts. Those contexts were the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, at the University of Central England, and Jubilee Arts in West Bromwich(1). The Arts Council of England, and West Midlands Arts funded project; Young People, Digital Technology and Democratic Cultural Participation; explored the development of forms of cultural participation, using photography and digital imaging, with young people in informal contexts. As such the research sought to represent the experiences of young people who were mainly overlooked in previous research in the field.

Much research in the field had focussed on the experiences of young people with privileged access to digital technology at home or through formal education.(2) Such research informed the prevalent vision of young people as engaged with, and by, new media and posits the idea that all young people are competent users of digital technology. This ignores the experiences of many young people. The research was not a critique of the ideology which clusters around young people, digital technology and education, but an attempt to undercut it through research with young people who have not necessarily had such access as would enable them to identify skills in digital technology informally.

The process was one of action research, within which groups of young people developed distinct forms of cultural participation with the researcher over a sustained period. The project was an action research project, and I was the researcher. As such I understood myself, and located myself, as one who was finding out, rather than as one who knew.

This is not to deny the impact of my own experiences, understandings and priorities, on the development of the research, as they would clearly have had impact on many decisions, but to underline the extent to which the research was defined and shaped, and not just informed, by participants.

During early work at the Bull Ring indoor markets it seemed to me that I had facilitated a space in which young people were engaged in a creative process. That process, and the nature of that engagement, was that they were engaging me. They engaged me through their production and the dialogue that surrounded it. They were engaged by the opportunity to do so. The participants' understanding of, and familiarity with, the context for production, was, I think important in establishing engagement in this way. I think it was also significant that their location was not necessarily fixed, as a pupil, or even as a participant, but as someone with a working or casual relation to the space. Their understanding of the context meant that they were the source of practical information (e.g. where to get the cheapest batteries.) In this context; where the participants' experiences and understandings are generally recognised, sometimes shared, and often valued; young people utilised those experiences and understandings, with ease and confidence, to inform, and as the focus for, their production. During the initial stages of work at the Bull Ring I was struck by the absence of occasions on which any young person asked me what they should do. My experiences in more formal settings, including youth groups, had led me to expect this question, but I very rarely had to implement any of my strategies to overcome that question at the Bull Ring.

Establishing such a relation between myself and participants meant that the focus and development of both the practice, and the research, was informed by what young people identified as pertinent for themselves. Perhaps it is not difficult to grasp why evaluation might emerge as an area for interrogation through such practice. By locating myself as one who is finding out, my role, in relation to the visual outcomes of the work, seemed clearly to be about reaching an understanding of the work made.

One year at the Bull Ring indoor markets two boys called Steve and Jason worked with us over several sessions, to make an animation. The work begins with a portrait of the two boys. It then transforms into an image of the same scene, but with Steve's head on both bodies. In the next image Jason's head is on Steve's body, then Jason's head is on both bodies, and then the original image appears again, then the words 'bad boys' appear at the top of the image.(3)

On viewing this work it would be easy to locate it as a playful exercise in cutting and pasting. However, having worked with these young men, on viewing the work it seemed resonant to me. The way in which their arms are posed in the image is, for me, the detail that makes me look again at the image. I'm aware however, that this detail is one that has resonance, for me, because of the extent to which my understanding of their animation was informed through the dialogue which surrounded production. However, I see the gesture they are making as a clue to the experiences that informed the making of this work. These young men were cousins and I worked with many other members of the same family over four years of workshops at the Bull Ring. Without exception the young people from this family were scrutinised by the market police who persistently questioned them about their presence in the markets. On one occasion, a police officer caused a young woman from the same family deep humiliation by asking her, in front of other participants, repeatedly, 'and what is your surname?' as if this was proof enough of her being guilty of something. Physical familial similarities seemed to lead to such conflict, for these two boys, on a day-to-day basis, and as such the animation they made is a meaningful exploration, and significant representation, of their experiences.

The point about Steve and Jason's work is that we aren't always aware of the issues surrounding and informing participation, in the way that I was witness to exchanges at the Bull Ring. At the Bull Ring, my perception of work was partly informed through random encounters, with, for example, the market police, over which young people had little control. These interactions, however, and the way they informed my understanding, led me to reconsider the relevance of forms of evaluation that aren't informed in any such way. Evaluative criteria, when defined independently of dialogue with the participants, might not recognise what it is that's significant about any one image or process of production. What this implied was a means by which young people could make explicit the significance of the work for themselves through the development of dialogic processes. During the more sustained involvement of the Young, Queer and Safe? Group, I was able to develop more explicit means by which young people could inform my perception of their work.

In the Young, Queer and Safe? project, it therefore seemed important to talk about the visual, to encourage the participants to define what was significant to them about their work. In this way young people reflected upon their work in order to identify its value, both for themselves, and for an audience. However, such discourse was not established simply though my own priorities, but was initiated through project activity. Opportunities for reflection and the development of evaluative debates were stimulated through the project process. For example, the following edited extract from the project diary describes how the production of postcards, to publicise the Young, Queer and Safe? web site, initiated discussions informed by young people's visual experiences; drawing on a wide range of considerations; conceptual, visual, practical and critical:

I showed the group the prints of the three images prepared for potential use as postcards to publicise the Young, Queer and Safe? web site. The postcard made last week had been popular upon its making. We had discussed the image, of Jon, at some length during last week's session.(4) The image was chosen because it was seen to be one that would interest and engage an audience, and thereby initiate interest in the site. We had discussed the way in which it represents the web site, as a physical presence behind a computer screen, due to the nature of the production of the image. We then discussed the implications of the way in which Jon is, perhaps less than comfortably, squashed up against the glass. We agreed that this image might therefore challenge the nature of the social context in which such communication devices as the internet are sought out as a safe place and how this could be also understood as depicting a notion of virtual ghettoisation. We concluded that the image would, at the very least, indicate a not altogether harmonious relationship with the technology.(5)

Platforms for debate were thereby constructed, in terms of young people's priorities, concerns and perceptions, as an outcome rather than a prescribed part of the project process. I've termed this means of evaluating work Process Generated Evaluation. Such discussions place the consideration of the visual within a very real social context. The postcard images were discussed days after a nail bomb explosion in a gay pub in Old Compton Street. The sense of being forced into virtual spaces in order to remain safe was perhaps heightened by this very real sense of danger in non-virtual spaces.

The method of evaluation developed centres on the facilitation of dialogues; whereby young people make explicit their own learning, and what has been significant about it, for themselves; rather than being centred on predefined criteria which may not be pertinent to the participants concerns.

What this method of evaluation acknowledges is the subjective nature of quality, and the extent to which notions of quality are transient. Informed, process generated evaluation, challenges the idea that criteria might be pertinently defined by fixed notions of quality, as are conventionally adhered to, across contexts for production.(6)

I would argue that it is important to recognise the extent to which a notion of quality, as a fixed and naturalised element of educational discourse, is aligned with a very specific set of social and cultural understandings and experiences. I would argue that this specific notion of quality is exclusive in that it acts to exclude those who have no such notion of quality, prior to formal education, and, therefore, no such sense of that notion, as being natural. I would also suggest that similar concepts of quality, as fixed, are pervasive across contexts for production. The notion of quality being aspired to, in other, informal contexts, may be different from that defined by traditional cultural concerns, but can often be witnessed to be just as fixed, and predefined, and, thereby, exclusive.

A notion of quality, as fixed, might be understood as exclusive, if we consider the increasingly fluid and transient experiences of contemporary culture. The contemporary significance of increasingly unique, and distinct fusions of, diverse and specific cultural and social experiences can be understood as challenging any notions of quality as, in any way, ultimately fixed.

Informed, process generated evaluation is responsive to the increasingly diverse and distinct experiences of young people, and acknowledges those experiences as valid. The process of informed evaluation is of contemporary pertinence, as it acknowledges how problematic it is to deny the subjective nature of the visual, for:

...the visual world is not just to be correctly perceived and replicated: it is the source of many disputes we have with one another about the nature and character of the world around us.(Stanley: 1996. p.96)

Notions of quality have been defined and made explicit rather than being assumed throughout this research. This has happened through dialogic forms of evaluation developed through the research. For example, one young man, Roonie, who was involved in the young, Queer and Safe? Project approached me, wanting to make further work, outside of the project. He wanted to make a wall based piece of photographic work exploring his identity as a young gay man from a Muslim family. He developed this work, in adherence with his own notion of quality, which was made explicit through an ongoing reflective dialogue with me.(7)

Informed, process generated evaluation, is responsive to the shifting priorities of young people, acknowledging the transience of contemporary cultural experiences. Roonie's focus for participation was anchored in his priorities, and as such, shifted. Rather than restricting his process to the outcomes that he had initially envisaged, Khoosra developed in order to address those priorities that he identified through the production of the work:

Roz: So are they what you envisaged making?

Roonie: From my original idea I think they just changed so much; if I was to still carry on working on them, I reckon they'd probably change dramatically. ..The image that I started with, at that point in time was the perfect image, it was like, yes, I must do it like this, and it developed; it started off about a gay issue, for me, but now it's, I don't really think it's about, to me, it's not even about being gay any more. There's a bit of that in it, because that was the original idea, but it's more towards being about being British and Asian. ...I think its developed a lot because at that point in time when we started off, the gay issue was like the major thing, but I think it takes time, and I got used to it, you know what I mean? But being British and Asian is like still there, do you know what I mean?

The focus of the work shifted as Roonie's own priorities and concerns were reflected in his making. If fluidity is an essential aspect of cultural participation then static criteria are irrelevant. The evaluative discourses of this research have been fluid, as they have reflected the shifting priorities of the young people involved. Such discourses acknowledge the creative process as a conceptual space for the development of ideas that impact not only upon the product but also the producer:

Roz: So for you, is it really important to show the work, to exhibit the work...?

Roonie: Well, I see it like this; at the beginning, I would have thought that exhibiting the work to the public would be the ideal, and I was doing it for that reason, but now, even if the work isn't shown to another living soul, I'm happy with it, because working on this piece helped me develop; its made me think about things more deeply. It's like, I came up with the idea for doing that but I never really used to think about being British and Asian, but while working on the piece I had chance to think about a lot of those things, and I'm really happy because working on the piece made me develop as a person.

The positive impact of the process is clearly acknowledged by Roonie as of greater significance than that of the final product. What is significant, however, is that this was not necessarily an aim at the outset. Many forms of community arts focus on this type of outcome, whereby the 'process' becomes the imposed focus of evaluation. Within Roonie's process there has been no imposed emphasis. In seeking to represent himself to an audience he has been concerned about all aspects of the production, and through these considerations has developed a sense of the potential value of the process for himself. Evaluation developed through ongoing discourse with young people about their cultural participation identifies and utilises the most relevant notion of quality, and considers the most significant aspects of participation, for that young person.

By engaging young people in discussions around their image production, and utilising their own perceptions of their work as a framework by which to locate and understand it, the form of evaluation which evolves is distinct in terms of cultural participation and the unique engagement that has developed. Process generated evaluation is thereby responsive to the increasingly diverse and distinct experiences of young people, and acknowledges those experiences as valid.

Summary

The development of the research project demanded a new method of evaluation, which has grown out of the process itself. This process of informed, process generated, evaluation was developed with issues of access and inclusion being at the core of the research. The process of informed evaluation is one in which the specific actors, priorities and dynamics, of any one process and production, shape the evaluative criteria, in relation to a notion of quality that is specific, and therefore pertinent, to the production.

I would argue that the notions of quality that inform most evaluative conventions and criteria are contextually specific. The process of informed evaluation that has developed through this action research project is not reliant on any context specific notions of quality as fixed. It thereby addresses the problematic way in which the place of the artefact / product in the arts education arena is traditionally defined according to the evaluative conventions of the context for production.

I would argue that informed process generated evaluation supports the development of work that transcends contextually predetermined notions of quality. Forms of evaluation based on context specific criteria can be understood as simply acting to identify the extent to which a product adheres to context specific conventions. What is measured is simply the proximity of the work, in terms of the experiences informing its production, to those experiences that inform the evaluative criteria, predefined within the context for production. Opportunities for valuing different experiences and understandings across contexts are thereby denied.

Context specific evaluative criteria might be understood as simply valuing certain experiences and understandings over others. For me this is problematic, as I would argue that cultural capital(8) is not something we have more or less of, but something that we have different types of. It is interpreted, as more or less, according to its proximity to the cultural location of the context for evaluation.

Any hierarchical sense of cultural experiences, and understandings, is, I would argue, clearly located in opposition to notions of cultural democracy. Through developing forms of democratic evaluation the value of different ways of understanding and creating meaning, can be identified.

Bourdieu, P. (1979)
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.
London: Routledge.
Stanley, N. (1996)
Photography and the Politics of Engagement.
The Journal of Art and Design Education: Vol.15. No.1. pp.95 - 100