Challenges While Working in Communities
As part of the What We Do Now (WWDN) Introduction and Training sessions in August 2021, we invited key people to think about what working collaboratively with communities looks like, the ethics and principles, examples of practice, and problematising some of the challenges to this way of working for artists.
In this session, community artist and arts consultant Gerri Moriarty explores some of the themes proposed for What We Do Now by describing three projects they were involved in in the 1990s in Belfast and England.
Gerri talks about the problems encountered and suggests that – although things are very different in the 2020s – the underlying questions raised may not have changed a great deal.
All of Gerri’s work has been informed by a commitment to social justice and to cultural democracy. Recently, Gerri co-edited ‘Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art’ about the British community arts movement. They also co-founded Live Well Make Art, a Greater Manchester-based network of activists, artists, health professionals, and academics which promotes arts and health as a social movement, and ArtsChain, an informal, voluntary network for socially engaged, participatory, and community artists.