curious patterns #6
Artist insurance as cultural infrastructure, prototyping as evaluation, and being a good ancestor as the solution to short-termism.
While the global community seems to have decided that February is a great time to drop all kinds of new evaluation tools and frameworks, the last month was mostly about policy advocacy for me. Lots of exciting stuff happening left and right, but also coming to terms with that fragile space between what is desirable and what is achievable. Dear readers, thank you for your inspiration and your trust! 🙏
✊ If there ever was a publication in urgent need of translation into as many languages as possible, it’s the new Safety Guide for Artists by Artists at Risk Connection.
🇨🇺 More than 1,200 Cuban artists want to get rid of their Minister of Culture for violently shutting down a peaceful demonstration. Power to the people!
🇨🇭 Check out one of the more comprehensive white papers on culture and development by the SDC. François Matarasso must have had a blast researching.
🇯🇲 Hear from Jamaican cultural manager Andrea Dempster-Chung about working in, with and for the neighbourhood and taking inspiration from Marrakesh to Medellín.
🇰🇪 Getting cultural policy folks into a statistic bureau sounds like a plan, doesn’t it? Kenya wants to systematically track cultural indicators and Zimbabwe has some ideas.
🇹🇹 When the Carnival gets cancelled, everyone loses. We’re talking about spillover losses and damage to creative process and artist brands in Trinidad & Tobago.
🇳🇱 The folks over at Hivos have a new three-year strategy. Glad to see that artists are still seen as key actors in their development approach, even if a little less than before.
🌌 Have you ever considered if you’re a good ancestor? After all it was them, who have protected and taught us. And yes, they have destroyed, too. What will you do?
🏛️ Insurance as Cultural Infrastructure
This past year unveiled many structural problems of governmental social protection mechanisms. And that is if there were any in the first place. The key concern was how to keep your people healthy and in employment. Triggered by a discussion around labour rights of independent artists for a policy advocacy project, I started to contemplate the lack of cultural infrastructure in many places. I was not thinking of built infrastructure but rather of support mechanisms and whether there is a space for development partners to jump in where governments are overwhelmed.
Let’s start from the top. Many artists are freelancers and gig workers which excludes them from employer-based health insurances. A not insignificant number of artists also operate in the informal economy for lack of simple registration and taxation processes which puts them at risk of no social protection whatsoever. Any health issue becomes exponentially more threatening. What if development partners were to set up artist insurances that provide health, employment injury and pension support?
Think of an artist insurance fund initially propped up by development money. With foundational capital, the insurance can start to build trust and grow membership. Of course, fund management within the insurance would need to follow certain rules of impact investing and strict re-investment of profits into its social protection services. A lot of outreach and trust-build working (and perhaps also some advocacy for the concept of solidarity beyond one’s initial social circle) would need to be done to encourage independent artists to start contributing. The financial layperson in me hopes that such an undertaking could become self-sufficient in time.
Hey, nobody is trying to reinvent the wheel here. There are unions, syndicates, cooperatives and artist insurances of all shapes and sizes already out there. The question is where seed capital comes from and how development partners can make real impact without being in people’s faces while trusting artists to do what they do best if only they can. In fact, development partners might even be uniquely positioned to establish such infrastructure in places where unions usually are heavily partisan.
IMPACT
🔀 If change is not linear, why should your theory of change be? Ian Thomas from the British Council advocates for systems thinking and multiple feedback loops in evaluation of public diplomacy and cultural relations. In his toolbox, he has collated a range of different evaluation approaches and tools that respond well to the five outcome areas and centre around what works. Mind you, some of these are very resource-intensive in its implementation. But then again, all is a process.
🧰 Interested in another toolkit for your evaluation collection? Australia’s Cultural Development Network put together a WhiteBox for local governments to simplify policy planning and to track their outcomes. The unfortunate fact that they called it a WhiteBox aside, the tool guides you quite well through the process and offers indicator examples across five dimensions. A bit word-heavy and a little confusing in its structure here and there, but very robust underpinnings - especially for local gov.
👓 Prototyping is continuous evaluation. So is the regular check of your success metrics against cultural bias and assumptions by all project participants. In fact, this article by DESIAP (Designing Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific) argues that success needs to constantly be re-framed and co-defined by community members, practitioners, funders and intermediaries. Things get tough when the relationships simply aren’t strong enough and there is no shared understanding.
Multiple Dimensions & Great Ideals
Evaluation — Actors, Values, and Metrics
(2021: Eduardo Bonito, Katarina Pavić, Claire Malika Zerhouni)
Today I want to look at a co-created and rather complex model for bottom-up evaluation practice in the arts. The article Evaluation — Actors, Values, and Metrics is part of the Reshape: An Experiment in Collaborative Change-making in the Arts platform, where you can find some of the most thought-provoking articles I have read in a long time. Take some time to dig your way through this collection of essays and experiments around reshaping arts ecosystems. Contributors from Europe and the Southern Mediterranean write about fair governance, questions of value, solidarity and citizenship as well as transnational/postnational artistic practices. What an absolute gem of a resource platform!
Now, let’s dive into evaluation. Eduardo, Katarina and Claire used the Reshape network to do a bit of a mapping and identify what cultural actors generally perceive to be the biggest issues around evaluations. Their guiding principles were influenced by Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index 🇧🇹 and Lala Deheinzelin’s 🇧🇷 concept of 4D Fluxonomy. Unsurprisingly, they found (and experienced themselves) that evaluations are often too stiff, too donor-driven and too often corroborating competition. In another interview, Katarina also explains how evaluations need to shift from being instruments of power to instruments of self-reflection and even therapy.
One thing all actors included in this brief research had in common was searching for places and platforms that would enable more freedom from excessive coercion, places for experimentation, failure, and reflection.
What I appreciate a lot is that the authors didn’t stop there but decided to dig deeper and work on a potential solution. Inspired by the work of FARO, a research consortium of several cultural organisations from Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, and Chile wanting to infuse new values into their work, the authors collaborated with this community to develop an evaluation matrix useful for Reshape and beyond.
The tool - in continuous evolution - is built on the core principles of Deheinzelin’s 4D Fluxonomy. It reads complex, it looks complex, and well, it is complex. But hey, we are operating in complex systems on a daily basis and if we have learnt anything from populist politics it’s that easy answers to complex questions may well lead to disaster. If this could be a tool to help us to navigate such complexity, I’m stoked.
Fluxonomy values have been adapted to the socio-cultural sector, maintaining the theory’s fractal vision of reality based on its ‘zooming’ in on four dimensions: cultural, environmental, social, and financial, which are in turn divided into four, generating a chain of meaning that facilitates a more holistic approach to reality. For instance, the cultural dimension of a project that in turn includes a cultural dimension of the cultural, an environmental dimension of the cultural, a social dimension of the cultural and a credit dimension of the cultural.
Since every dimension is looked at both in macro and in micro for each individual dimension, some very nuanced questions arise. Is the knowledge generated within the project capable of transforming? Does the project activate a multiplier circulation of resources? In fact, the framework is heavily build on an understanding that your project is set within an ecosystem where it plays a distributed role; one where the how is just as important as the what. And exactly these idea(l)s of fairness, reciprocity and service to everyone around you make this approach really rather normative but all the more powerful.
To make this concept usable for the general public, a website is supposed to be established featuring the tool. You can already take a look at a low-fi prototype of the website that shows, yet again, the complexity of the model. It is designed in a way that projects or organisations register and all the people involved (the team talks about project's organisation's members, but I think it'll work just as well with stakeholders) can enter their perceptions for each dimension. An evaluator will then synthesise both qualitative and quantitative information before sharing or publicising it. The quantitative aspect is merely an average of the sliding scale of perceived achievement of each dimension, though.
Even though I haven’t tried this framework yet myself, I see massive potential and I am keen to get my hands dirty. However, there are also significant issues I foresee. The complexity of the tool will be very resource-intensive. Engaging with the tool will require participants’ openness to truly and deeply reflect, willingness to ask questions if understanding of some concepts within the framework is limited, and, most of all, time. If an organisation or a project is embarking on this evaluation journey, though, I applaud their commitment and readiness to be vulnerable and learn. Go get ‘em!
MEDIA
🏝️ An artistic research lens helps governments to be relevant. Artists from Vanuatu and Fiji share how they can reach communities with messaging and mobilisation that government departments or development partners wouldn’t be able to. They also touch on the enabling importance of core funding and how development actors need to listen more. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then tune into this snackable 33-minutes podcast on artivism in development by Vosa.
📻 Travel the world without leaving your own four walls? No problem! With Radio Garden you quite literally tune into your favourite places around the world. Want to see how it works? Join me on a quick tour of my own migration history: Berlin → Darwin → Hat Yai → Görlitz → Sulaimani → Erbil → Coventry → Phnom Penh → Auckland
🔬 Are you ready for a little discomfort? The Cultural Research Network is a neat little community of cultural researchers (surprise!) who run a mailing list and organise virtual study groups. The latest was titled Creative Equity and Decolonising Creative Practice in Asia. Listen to nuanced insights around colonial legacies of ethnicity as navigated through theatre in Malaysia and Singapore, organisation and weaponisation of hegemonic culture and resistance to such equalising efforts of the Indian state, and the evolution of Indonesia’s arts education throughout its political history.
🇮🇶 First Stop: Baghdad
The first thought about Baghdad that comes to mind is certainly not one of innovation and creativity. Not in 2021 anyways. A massive intellectual centre back in the days, yet little of that glory remains. Destroyed cultural heritage, semi-secret invite-only performances to avoid ruffling too many feathers and political parties that see cultural policy as a means for sectarian mobilisation are sadly all-too-common illustrations of Baghdad’s state of culture. But there is resilience. Take, for example, the ever-flourishing Mutanabbi Street known for its book shops (which probably played no small role in Baghdad becoming UNESCO City of Literature) and the latest addition to the city’s creative scene, The Station - المحطة.
At first sight, this co-working space is nothing groundbreaking when it comes to concept. Start-up incubator, makerspace, business courses and an elaborate cultural programme. And yet, The Station is incredibly innovative in the current environment. And risky. Since it opened its doors in 2018, the high risk has lead to high rewards for the local arts, cultural and business communities. As much as it is about reframing a persistent, crushing narrative of violence and hopelessness that the people of Baghdad have to endure on a daily basis, The Station offers a safe space for creative entrepreneurs in a city that otherwise has few such refuges apart from a handful of cafés and hotel lobbies.
Current co-working tenants include film production companies, interior designers, carpet weavers, graphic and web developers, marketing and communication professionals and a whole range of local start-ups such as the by-women for-women taxi service LadyGo and the photographer market place app Photonect. And while we might lament the commodification of creativity, The Station decided to go the route of non-profit NGO precisely to inspire a culture of collaboration, allow for failing and to create opportunities for young Iraqis to live off their arts and crafts.
Next stop: Mosul.
OPPORTUNITIES
8 March: The Art of Peace (call for chapter proposals)
If you’ve got some research on the role of arts in the formation of peace sitting in your drawer, now is the chance to get it published. The book The art of peace: Opportunities and blockages will feature case studies on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Lebanon/Syria and the DRC. So, get your 500-word abstracts out now.
16 - 17 March: Futures & Beyond – Where creativity & 4IR meet (online conference)
4IR is the fourth industrial revolution, apparently. And this online forum seeks to position the creative industries as an important contributor for that development. Fair enough. If you register online, you can join the University Johannesburg, Andani.Africa and speakers from Ghana, Namibia, Uganda and South Africa in these futures talks.
23 - 25 March: Istanbul Innovation Days: Development and its Futures (online conference)
Futures take two. UNDP is holding a two-day online conference (as well as several sessions pre and post) on futures of development. The framing is around the three themes of identity/roots, opportunities and prototyping alternative narratives. Registration is free, so get in there! Here are two sessions to get you started: 1 | 2
curious patterns is a monthly email newsletter on all things culture, impact and development, written by Kai T. Brennert (Twitter | edge & story).
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