CALLING ALL ACTIVE CITIZENS …
Back in 1965 when Los Angelino artist Sister Corita Kent spoke about nervousness in the face of ‘giant rearrangements happening all around us’ and urged us to ‘live with change and newness [and] even to help make it’, she couldn’t possibly have imagined how relevant her words would still be fifty-three years later. Those of us working in the cultural sector are used to assessing how we adapt our approaches and messages in a changing world, now more so than ever as we face a giant shift in financial and political climates. So how are we tackling these developments, and what do we need to do to ensure that our audiences find value and relevance beyond purely commercial and perfunctory transactions? How do we make people care? The answer might just lie in our ability to loosen the reins of ownership.
Relevant Social Purpose and Corita Kent
Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft is currently taking part in Culture 24’s Let’s Get Real 6 project, which this year asks “How can arts and heritage organisations use digital culture, content and technologies to foster active citizenship and cultural democracy for, and with their communities, to achieve relevant social purpose?” This very specific question comes at a good time for Ditchling and coincides with an exhibition programme that makes these issues relevant. Corita Kent is the subject of our current season: an artist, charismatic educator and nun based in Los Angeles during the 1960s, whose own social purpose extended to creating vibrant screenprinted banners and posters containing powerful social messages and critiques and drawing on pop and modern consumer cultures.
Alongside the exhibition is a specially commissioned project, Belonging, created in association with contemporary designer Morag Myerscough. The project has been a while in the making, but has positively surfed the current cultural tides from inception to actualisation: issues around individuality and collectivism are currently polarising groups, with questions raised about collaboration, community, national identity and economic expediency. Correspondingly, we are responding by looking for better ways to actually listen to our audience, to create a dialogue that flows both ways rather than a monologue directed at specific groups of people.
Back at Ditchling, the Belonging project and the topic of the Let’s Get Real 6 initiative have got us re-examining both how we communicate and who we communicate with — how much ownership do we claim over our programmes? Are we talking at or with our audience and partners? Do we formulate ideas and roll them out regardless of input from other communities who may have a stake in the subject, or do we listen to what they have to say and incorporate their ideas, at the risk of a project evolving into a slightly different beast?
A Game of Risk
One of the tools we have been introduced to during the Let’s Get Real 6 process is VisitorBox, a set of playing cards designed to help cultural heritage institutions roll out focused digital projects. The cards are grouped into categories and are not only useful devices to inspire creative projects, but also set about challenging those ideas with ‘disruption cards’, posing pragmatic questions about how the project will work in practice — a creative, fun way of carrying out your risk assessment.
The cards came in very useful when pinning down the final stages of our accompanying Belonging digital campaign. We had a sense of what shape it could take but, in common with so many other cultural and arts organisations, we have very limited resources to work with. By responding to the challenges posed on the VisitorBox ‘disruption’ cards, we were able to focus our ideas and simplify our initial thoughts (digital app anyone?) to working with the resources we, and much of our audience, already have. This process of simplification makes it much easier to work with, for both our audiences and us, breaking down perceived technological barriers and adopting a more democratic approach.
Loosening the Reins
Over the months, our project has developed into #MakeBelonging, something aimed at encouraging our broad audience of Instagram followers to create their own content through messages of hope and belonging, in the spirit of both Corita Kent and Morag Myerscough. The artwork and messages could be put to community use by their creators, displayed on our website, plus … wait for it … cover the walls in the museum toilets! We quickly ruled out an app in favour of using tools to which everyone would already have access (Instagram provides very easy to use add-ons). The backs of the museum toilet doors have also been covered in blackboard paint, and chalk has been provided to encourage people to chalk their own messages.
After some risk assessment, this really required us to accept that we would relinquish some control over the output — we will monitor the project and censor any truly offensive messages, but as a museum used to curating our content and how it is viewed, it has been a big psychological step. Looking further ahead, we plan to integrate these key Let’s Get Real 6 considerations into the development of all future digital campaigns, with the phrases ‘active citizenship’, ‘cultural democracy’ and ‘relevant social purpose’ ringing in our ears.
We are inviting our audience to have their say and assuring them that they will be heard — Corita Kent might just approve.
