Anna Francis will be exchanging with curator and arts project manager Monika Vykoukal. Monika works currently as Curatorial Research Associate within the Centre for Art, Design, Research and Experimentation [CADRE] at the University of Wolverhampton. She has previously worked freelance in Vienna, Austria, where she is from, and more recently as curator at Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen, Scotland. Apart from socially engaged art practices in the public realm, she has a long-term interest in graffiti writing. In regard to the problematic of art and culture-led regeneration, Monika is currently particularly concerned with how decisions are made, whose interests are represented, and how the art project is positioned and functions in relation to wider political frameworks. The conversation will develop over the month – so be sure to check back periodically to see how it goes.

AF: You moved to the West Midlands some time last year Monika, to take up your current position as Curatorial Research Associate at CADRE. What exactly were you brought in to do?

MV: I moved to the West Midlands on 4 April and started the job on the 6 April 2009, to be pedantic. I am employed by the Centre for Art, Design, Research and Experimentation (CADRE) in the School of Art & Design at the University of Wolverhampton. In the second year, starting any day now, I will be working in West Bromwich, on a secondment to Longhouse. The project is a partnership of the University with Multistory through the Longhouse scheme and is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. The scope of my work, to quote the initial call-out, is “to plan, develop and then realise an innovative, public realm development scheme benefiting artists, institutions and communities in the West Midlands”. The specific focus of the project has developed slowly during my first year on the job, with I would say some significant changes to this framework (of course agreed by the institutions and funders). Practically, all this means “planning and co-ordination of a curatorial programme, as well as a small practical seminar and a public conference”. The seminar took place in mid-November last year, and I am now focused on the programme. The public conference will follow after that.

AF: So is BCCA the result of what you were brought to the West Midlands to do then (just for clarity) or is it the thing that you have developed within the context? I think it’s quite interesting, because I know quite a few arts development people, and public realm workers who move (fairly frequently) from place to place for time limited projects – though your project is relatively long in the scheme of things. How did you find landing in this place, and having to develop something creative here relatively quickly? How difficult has it been, not knowing the area very well, and what sorts of activities have you got involved in, in order to gain an insight into the place? and also – how long is the project likely to be – how far does the funding reach?

MV: As I said in my last email, I have been hired to deliver this project. The project was initiated by staff at the University of Wolverhampton, who then got Longhouse involved. The person who developed the initial idea at the School of Art & Design, approached Arts Council England, who put him in touch with Longhouse. Then he applied for funding, developing the concept parts of which I quoted in my last email to you. This application was successful. A core component of the application was to hire a curatorial research associate, to carry out the project with involvement of staff and students at the University, as well as in collaboration with colleagues at Longhouse. The person who initiated the project, however, left for a new post elsewhere at the end of June last year.

But yes, I am trying to make this a small, and two-year thing, with enough integrity in itself. The project has been shaped by a wide range of developments during the first year on the job, but it has developed from the initial idea in relation to the changing realities in the local context, the people involved, and the resources available.

The one thing I would have had different, if I had been able to shape this from the start, is that I did feel another title would have been better, because as it stands, in my view, the title does not really give an idea of what this is, and it also evokes something potentially slightly corporate, and ‘boring’, rather than attracting people to want to find out more. When I searched for the term on the internet, one of the first things that comes up is actually this “Creative Advantage Fund is a Birmingham-based venture capital fund for the creative industries.” (see http://www.creativeadvantagefund.co.uk/sign_in.asp), so this is the kind of reference there is for this type of title/name and I don’t think it is a particularly fitting association.

To be honest, I don’t really see myself as moving from place to place for short term projects, and I would not call myself an arts development or public realm worker. I actually felt that two years was quite short, based on my previous experience in comparable work in my last job, where I was for over five years, and based on what I considered good work in this area.

I did apply for it, despite the short time-line, because of the institutional partnership and the long history of Longhouse in the region. The intent was that the local knowledge and longer strategic direction would be provided by the partner organisations, and that they had considered how my contribution would fit within that larger scheme. Again, I did have many guest curators and artists developing their own projects in my last job. We invited those people, because their interests and backgrounds contributed to the longer term direction we wanted to work in as an organisation.

I also applied for the project, because I was keen to experience a new environment and to move away from working based on an art space. I was interested in and worked on projects outside art galleries, in spaces from retail locations to bars to outside, in the streets, for a long time, and I’ve also been interested in and working on/with various magazines for a while. So, it seemed that this opportunity would allow me to focus on and develop this.

Also, you must know about this from Airspace, and from the many commissions large and small you do, I was attracted to being able to concentrate on one substantial project, rather than having to deliver such a wide range of small ones over the year. In my last job, we did about 12 exhibitions per year, as well as one-off events of all kinds, so the amount of research and thought to be given to any one, was really limited. Not to mention resources…

Lastly, I really wanted to work with the person who hired me, and would almost certainly not have applied if it weren’t for him. I thought his perspective would really challenge me, because my impression was that he was much more optimistic about the potential for art to have a positive impact on urban development, whereas I had begun to suspect that the regeneration context did not usually allow for that. So, I thought that as a youngish sceptic (not cynic) I could learn from an old(er) optimist to put it simply. Now, having taken on the direction of the project, I feel more that it is better to be quite cautious and open and to learn more about developments in the specific. Hence, the commission part of the project, that is about to start, has become an ‘investigation’.

When I started, I got some documents from Multistory. At the time they were talking about potential work in three locations: Wolverhampton, Walsall and West Bromwich. There were a lot of changes in the first year, I have all of them documented, but it would be a massive report, so just briefly: It’s not easy to start quickly in a new place, but it’s also quite exciting. In terms of the research, the other people involved did give me some ideas and contacts and research material, and I just tried to meet as many people, and attend as many relevant events, and do as much background research – in libraries, on the internet – as possible. I also walked around the towns quite a lot. The tricky part is to kind of find a balance of action and research, and to admit that this is not going to approach some imaginary comprehensiveness. You need to act at some point! I think seeing the people who get involved and their interests as key, and to consider the whole project as a process-based mutual learning experience gives a good ground for that balance of action and reflection to happen.

Usually I like to work in collaboration with others and make decisions together. I also like to get an overview of the situation I am working in, the context, by mapping things out, i.e. in this case the various bodies that together shape regeneration in the area. I tend to pick up idiosyncratic things and coincidences. However, trying to map out the regeneration-related bodies and their relationships and who decides what and timelines of various schemes just turned out to be too complicated (or maybe it was unclear beyond me not getting it). So this is actually going to be partly the starting point for the commissions now. I am kind of interested in the areas that “frame” and impact on the art commissions, as you can see. I went to at least as many planning and regeneration related events for the project, I think, as to art events.

I think I will stop there for now, if that’s ok.

The funding for the project is limited to two-years, as is my contract. Given the voluntary redundancies and changing focus of the University, as well as the potential impact of the ongoing national plans for cuts in education as well as public services, which will and indeed are impacting on our funder and on the partner organisation as far as I know, I think it is unlikely that the project will continue. At the same time, I also believe, that if enough people want this to continue in some form, it will. With money or outwith the current funding and institutional framework. And if it continued, we (they?) would hopefully get us a sweeter title!

AF: I know from attending the BCCA seminar that a lot of practitoners were brought in to discuss practice, and methodologies of approach for public realm working. What benefit do you see there being in holding a seminar like that? and how is it going to feed in to the wider programme. Also, now that the ‘action’ side of things is starting – what is that going to be? I know you have taken up residence in the market in West Brom (do you have a picture?) what do you think that will achieve, and what would you like to see happening in that space?

MV: Having a seminar at the start of the project was part of the plan I was given. However, I do think it was a good idea to start this way, and I did organise it in a way I thought would work well.

Before I get into that I want to actually mention how the work on the project is done, because when I write ‘I did organise’ there was obviously an internal decision-making process with various people (Chloe at Multistory and her colleagues, Andy Hewitt and Dew Harrison at the University, and the project advisory board who met twice with us).

To get back to the seminar, this was to develop the potential focus of the project, share and learn from experiences, and to gather a group of people who might be interested in getting involved in the project for the duration, and thus should also be able to shape that. We did an open call, as suggested by the advisory board in their first meeting. I was a bit worried about that, because it is hard to manage an open call and to have a clear and open and reasoned selection process. I think open calls can create the illusion of something like an equal opportunity, but not quite deliver that. People spend time and effort to apply, and then they don’t even get an individual, open reply, just something about there being too many applicants. One of the advantages of course is that people you might never have heard about introduce themselves in applying. A bit of all of that happened with that call out.

The ambition was then to have the seminar very discussion-based and in a thematic progression from the wider issues around regeneration, to the more specific about the art work, but still focused on the relationship of the art practices to and in the wider social and political developments large and small that make up the regeneration, rather than as an isolated specialism, or with the urban development just becoming raw material for the ‘content’ of artistic work. The day before the seminar we had a launch event, that was a public discussion. Basically, it was really important to me to be open and visible from the start, but also to consider what people outwith the arts might find relevant about this and what working people could or could not attend. Having a free, open evening talk about regeneration by an engaging writer and speaker [Anna Minton, who wrote 'Ground Control'] who had done some solid research and could communicate that well… that just seemed like a good way to do that. Of course, a lot of people who attended that, judging from their contributions, also had professional interests in regeneration or at least planning or architecture, but I think that’s good.

On the day of the seminar itself, things worked more or less well. For what follows, I would like to state in advance, that I tend to be a bit critical and focus on the things that did not work that well. I’d never organized such an extensive event of this kind before in that fashion, and there was a real problem with time-keeping. A lot of the practical, organisational issues around the event had started to take over my time in preparing the seminar, and I had actually never gotten the space to properly focus on ‘just the content’. I still don’t know how I could have done this better, because practically everyone spoke much longer than they’d been asked to. Added to that, I’m not into policing people or exerting pressure, I think, and am more of the ‘whatever happens happens’ type, and that the group will collectively create a certain dynamic. I don’t think any of the talks were boring either, there was just a lot to take in.

I also think that the ambition behind it might have been a little in conflict with the make-up of the group and structure of the day. I feel because people came to the seminar from different places and backgrounds, a one-day seminar was not really enough time to make them a ‘group’ in terms of developing a shared outlook or interest. I think the topic would have to have focused more and people have been invited in a more specific way for their contributions and interests. But then there would have had to be more of a specific agenda already. And I wanted to see how far the concerns that I identified for myself and the questions I have and approaches I find interesting are actually shared by other people who may want to get involved. It was great to get all those people together, and I felt they all had a good time and could get something out of talking to each other, both during the seminar, and informally outside it. For me it was a good way to get a sense for how much my impressions and ideas fit with the experience of people who had been working in this area much longer than I have. It was also good to get so many people’s impressions of the locality, obviously. Before the seminar, I had mainly been doing the research I wrote to you about earlier, and done reading, and walking and going to talks, but I had not had the opportunity to discuss in this way.

Some obvious points to make, are that there is always a bit of a pressure to come up with a plan and an outcome very quickly, rather than to take time to just have a considered thoughtful discussion and development. It is very easy to just do things in the forms and structures that are familiar, and also in this case one speech after another, rather than discussion, maybe. I have a lot of questions and concerns right now, about the project and the wider situation, and also my personal circumstances in this, and this can make it hard to be a good chair and “professional” at times, but I think it is important to be aware of those things and acknowledge them.

The discussions at the seminar have actually directly informed the plan forward at this point. The main conclusion from the seminar was really, that actually, what happens under the label regeneration, and what interests are enacted, and e.g. the relationship of all the documents generated and plans and so on, and what actually happens, is not at all self-evident and needs careful examination. Another issue that came across strongly are how arts projects are often ‘used’ (by authorities, commissioners, funding bodies…) to substitute for public involvement in actual decision-making (there are also actual studies that come to that conclusion), to be almost an advert for the regeneration scheme, making it look good, or to supplement consultation exercises or stand in for them. And, the last point I found central, was how professionalism can detach people from the complexity of the actual situation and from developing their own position and judgement in relation to events they are implicated in. As a result planners do the planning part, artists do their practice, one part of the council works with the global corporation, another works to support local grassroots initiatives and so on. And how they feel about it all as people is not relevant.

So, out of this comes the market stall. But like I said before, this was something I had been thinking of earlier: I’d started to think about it a few months after I started the job. I had moved to Wolverhampton, rather than e.g. Birmingham, which is in commuting distance, because I had thought the project was taking place there, and felt it was important to get first-hand experience of daily life in the locality. As it turned out, the location, as was soon clear would be West Bromwich, which is a different town. So, here I was, in my office in the School for Art & Design, mostly working away at the computer on my own. I became very keen to get a better feel for the place, and to have more people and activity around me, and therefore started to think about a shop. This did not come about though, because I kept rethinking and looking at different angles, and just being busy with the research.

But, when I developed the plan for the second year, I considered what I wanted to do and thought I could do well, and would find good as an experiment of sorts, to see how it works. I basically looked at the issues and key points at the seminar, in so far as they resonated with my perceptions, at the project resources, and my capacities, in carrying out and supporting the work. The main resource, actually, is my own full-time labour. I therefore asked myself how I can use this best towards addressing the issues raised above (i.e. agendas and interests behind developments, and so on)? And the next piece of the idea was actually that the image of Lucy from the Peanut’s cartoon at her stall came to my mind.

I was also quite exhausted, this was right after the seminar, and I was visiting some good friends for a few days, to think about the project from a bit of a distance. So, I also thought, how can I sustain this for another year? And what I felt I needed was more contact, so I thought, the stall can be a base to invite people to come and do things. And from that I considered that those activities would be more focused on the ideas behind the project, and, repeating myself yet again (sorry) the seminar “findings”. So I made a general outline. But basically, my ideas are a mixture of rigorous and fluffy, and ‘I really want to work with this person, because that’s so brilliant,’ and then checking back and thinking, of how this will affect the overall project direction, and public presence of it, and potential consequences as far as I can see, of course. Is this really going to work as part of an attempt at co-production, and is this important, is this going to be a considered reflection, both in how it is done, and what it is about, and all that, or might it just become an advert for the shiny new future of the town, as promised by succeeding waves of regeneration plans? Or is it about making the dirty edges of the place looking all cool, in a grimy, keeping-it-real sort of way? Those are just examples of the kinds of questions that go round my head. And I think it is important to be clear about your own motivations, and have that in the project, rather than to just focus on other people’s interests and see yourself only as ‘doing your job’ in a neutral fashion, or, what’s worse in my view, as ‘doing good for/to those people out there’.

I then wrote an invite to take part, trying to given an idea of the parameters of the plan forward, and sent it to the seminar participants, to get an idea of who wanted to get involved further and how. The basic plan now is to have this stall in the indoor market in West Bromwich. How I got the space is a whole different story. I am sending you some photos, we are currently working on the set-up, i.e. me and Jens Strandberg, who is an artist based in Glasgow, is doing the graphic design ( ), and Rich, who used to work at Multistory, and Keith, who works there, are working on the actual stall’s look together and coordinated with Jens. Rich brought those amazing 70s copies of the Blackcountryman to the office yesterday. It was a bit scary, because they used a very similar look and colours to what Jens had come up with who has never seen them. Anyway, this sounds like I am getting carried away on some decorating project, which I am sure I am not. But it is important to honor the trust of the market in giving us the space, and also to show that we care about doing this well, by making it look right. It’s going to be quite flexible and practical, and low-key and basically simple and functional, but mindful. At least that’s the aim. I will be at the stall, and have people contribute to the “investigation” into urban development in the centre of West Bromwich, from April to end of September. That’s the basic plan.

I have not gotten to answering what I think that will achieve and what I want to see happen yet. So, I will answer that quickly for now, so I can actually get back to the doing: basically, I would like to get a project that is a collaborative investigation, and looks at arts and culture as interconnected with all those other facets of urban development, or basically our lives, as social, here and now. I’d just like to think through and articulate, and make visible certain questions around that, to learn new things, and to challenge assumptions, especially around questions of value, and equality, and power. I am not really in agreement with the idea that this is ‘all common sense” or “obvious.” In a way, the more you try to really look at what seems to be happening, the more complicated things actually are.

Those questions are not particularly shiny and new, but this does not mean they’re not relevant anymore. Just because claims are often so much repeated and unchallenged, and language is used without any meaning, or rather without the ostensible meaning (for instance a few years ago local councils across Scotland, as part of cultural policy, started something cultural entitlements, and then there was a footnote that said ‘entitlement’ did not imply any legal right to anything; that’s that sort of new twist to words, I mean). There’s a lot of talk about how the recession in the last two years (with frequent proclamations in the media of it having ended or never been), has changed things irrevocably, but I think there need to be people doing the questioning, for this to be true to any extent, including even in small art projects like this one. More specifically, with the regeneration right now, and with all kinds of public services and existing structures, there’s a lot of schemes that have been halted, or cut, and questions of how things will go on, both in the immediate and in the longer term, I guess. And there is a need to just keep asking and looking and restating things, as well as needs for doing, maybe. And I mean asking based on specifics as much as possible. I don’t think this should be a policy document analysis (not even locally). I think paper trails can be a distraction from looking at the ground beneath your feet, and the street around.

In terms of what I want, I am quite nervous right now. I usually like to do pesky detail in the background, and have someone loud, and charming do the social interactions. But I’ve got no-one to be a sidekick to here… so that’s quite scary. I’m not always particularly witty or charming or easy with my answers. I’m not a natural sales-person, all told. And that’s a bit bad for a market stall (and sometimes I also think for the kind of ‘creative,’ positive project that is demanded in art a lot right now, it seems). So, at least this is an adventure.

I want this to be lively, and to learn more, in a specific situation, about what makes up those developments, what interests shape them, what consultation does and does not allow for in terms of decision-making by non-experts from the area affected by the development, and of course about what kind of art practice can come about in relation. I want this to be a small, but open project, and to have some integrity. It would be great, if the stall attracted passersby, and people with a keen interest in those interested came forward to share and make visible things, and discuss with each other. But at the same time, I am quite conscious of the outsider role, and that there is a case not to take over what people are doing anyway for themselves and frame it as art, and basically profit from them even if in a “merely symbolic” way. Also, with activities that are somewhat of a campaigning or activist nature, and basically political, making demands in that way, framing them as art, might not be the best move to have them recognized in any way, and indeed doing an art work is not the same as organising a campaign. I’m good at stating the obvious, I guess…

Ideally, I would get into a position to connect people with similar interests, or to get information from one person to another, to basically become that info-hub. But that’s one kind of ambition. I am curious to see what happens, working in this space, but not with a pre-existing group of “local” people, and what may or may not be possible when open to responses and suggestions, based on interest. I also wonder if the monthly pamphlet, which we are going to make, is something that can be a good read for people in the area. I am a big fan of community media, and think it’s a shame there is not actually a local newsletter made by amateurs right now (council and third sector run publications excluded here), as far as I now. This is obviously also not going to be that, but it is inspired by that sort of effort. Maybe all this kind of work can do, is make the inherent contradictions and tensions more visible?

I think the other kind of ambition, and the other side of all this, although it might not be good to separate this so much in my mind, is very much the art-related part. That’s something I am asking myself, and have been for a long time, what it means to do this kind of work as art, and also what kind of framework I would want, or wider culture, really. I often wonder if what I think is right and how it seems my professional field operates, based on my concrete working experience, is at all compatible. I also have lots of literature on that, if anyone is interested… In a wider sense, it is important to consider the institutions supporting the project and their agendas, including the funders, and as often said before, the role the ambitions behind this project, if not the entire project in and of itself, plays in actualizing the role of culture in regeneration in a specific way. And to look into what this might be, and mean for conceptions of culture. I’ve also got some reading material on that. Actually many of the seminar participants were interested and had done some significant work on those kinds of questions (you can find links to their articles here on the blog: http://www.blackcountrycreativeadvantage.org/?p=109). Those are also questions to ask around the ambitions behind and now realities of  The Public (the new art centre in West Bromwich, that was built as the key project of regeneration and has been somewhat controversial, to say the least). I could go on, and I’ll probably find this all a bit simplistic when (if) I check it again, but I wanted to get back to you relatively quickly, and I need to get back to the work.

AF: A very thorough answer Monika, thank you. I like the idea of the market stall – our markets are dying out, but have always been really vibrant spaces. In the context of the Tesco development it seems like a really good grass roots location for the project. You mention that you are usually not that comfortable with the ’social interaction’ side of things, but that with this context you will have to be – the interesting thing here is in the role of ‘arts project manager’ – those in that role are probably more usually in the background, overseeing things in some ways. I think it is quite a different and unique approach to situate the project desk within the public space, and I like the fact that in this way the entire process becomes a work of art. Personally speaking, do you find this to be an exciting development, and have you worked in this way before?

*****

TALKING CITY is Anna Francis’ Longhouse Guest Editor project, for March 2010.

Click here to go to the project page.