Creative Case for Diversity and Equality in the Arts Nike Jonah and Hassan Mahamdallie

What is diversity ? We’re going to discuss about What is diversity ? shout out Let’s see how diverse we are here.in our group? from an identity point. Who identifies as First Nation? Who identifies as producers Who is here visiting from Asia? (South American) Who identifies with multi- disciplinary art making ? Who identifies with having a disability? Who speaks more than 1 language, more 2 ? Who identifies as a Micky Minors Award winner ? Who is under 30?

What we mean by Diversity? For the purposes for this discussion – all of the aforementioned diversity includes The following Characteristics that make up diversity agenda, Age, Gender, Race, Sexual Orientation, region/location/geographicy, disability, religion and faith, Socio economic/Class

What is Creative Case? The Creative Case is based upon the simple observation that diversity, in the widest sense, is an integral part of the artistic process. It is an important element in the dynamic that drives art forward, innovates new expression and genres and brings it closer to a profound dialogue with contemporary society.

Context Fed up with minority/majority conversation. Moral case? Financial, business case? Legal case? but how we make, promote, critique art and creativity Creative case for diversity and equality in the arts. Not a complaint, not a plea, not even a manifesto, it’s an approach to how we fundamentally understand art.

Legal Case Compliance to legislative equality duties around compliance to legislative general and specific equality duties; Business Case Diverse people spend money on the Arts hat centred on an increasing trend of diverse people who wanted to spend money enjoying the arts... Moral Case Right and fair that the Arts are inclusive and then more philosophical cases – the moral, the ethical – that it is right and fair that the arts are inclusive.

Existing cases In other words, diversity was Implemented either because it was the right thing to do, because people were told to do it, because it made sense for business market share. None of these in and of themselves addressed the imperative for engaging with diversity for the sake of producing and facilitating access to the arts. This focus is the foundation of ACE’s creative case for diversity in the arts.

The Search We started the search for the creative case for diversity by looking at the Harlem Renaissance –to try and grasp how was it that an oppressed and ignored community found themselves in the vanguard of American art – the authentic expression for all people about what it meant to be an American at the start of the 20th century – not a black American or a white American – an American.

The Search In the Harlem renaissance you had the particular and the general coming together – you had an art that attempted to speak with two voices – “one from the stage of national culture and the other from the soul of ethnic experience”.

The search Between World War One and the onset the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression it was the voice of the black American that became the authentic voice of the mass of society struggling to comprehend what it meant to be human in the modern age. A Du Bois put it – the black American is “born with a veil and gifted with second sight in this American world”.

The Theory As I stated earlier The Creative Case is based upon the simple observation that diversity, in the widest sense, is an integral and central part of the artistic process. It is an important element in the dynamic that drives art forward, that innovates it and brings it closer to a profound dialogue with contemporary society. (x+y=z)

Our Journey We have a journey to go on, one that leaves behind increasingly outmoded approaches to our artistic and cultural life in favour of new ways of seeing and telling and making. We need to recognise that art placed in the margins through structural barriers and antiquated and exclusive approaches has to be brought to the centre of our culture and valued accordingly.

Three interlocking progressions We believe that the Creative Case approach demands three interlocking progressions:

Three interlocking progressions 1 Equality 2 Recognition 3 A new vision

1 st progression Equality There has to be a continued drive for equality to remove barriers in the arts world, releasing and realising potential and helping to transform the arts so that they truly reflect the reality of the diverse society that we have become but still do not fully recognise.

Equality Diversity is not the problem. Diversity exists. Natural state of things. It does not have to be created – it is all around us. But it only has meaning and value, and becomes an active force, when it is linked to the drive for greater equality. The issue we face is that within a diverse society and diverse arts community, within its history, its practice and critical debate, some are seen as far more equal than others. This presents the paradox of the creative process - diversity rich in inspiration, but the distribution and consumption of the creative product being delivered in the main through a network of exclusive clubs.

2 nd interlocking progress Recognition There has to be a new conversation that attempts through various means to resituate diverse artists, both historically and theoretically, at the centre of art – whether that is the performing arts, the visual arts, combined arts, music, literature or film.

2 nd interlocking progress Recognition Recognition: Approach of EM Gombrich arts critic Museum of Modern Art MOMA – historical chain from European Renaissance onwards of a linear canon of the European masters – cannot hold. There needs to be an acknowledgement that, for example, artists whose work has been marginalised through inequalities and structures of discrimination in wider society have nevertheless had a significant and sometimes pivotal influence on artistic genres, forms and styles that have developed over the years.

2 nd interlocking progress Recognition On the bigger canvas European modernism in the visual arts was in reality an African- European expression. Picasso, Brancusi, Modigliani, Matisse, Klee, Epstein, Hepworth – all drew their inspiration from sub saharan African art – revolutionising a canon of work away from realist representation to the abstract and the symbolic.

2 nd interlocking progress Recognition We draw an example from the arena of race and class, but clearly there are parallel narratives in the arena of disability and art, women and art, sexual orientation and art, and so on.

Intrinsic to Art Development Diversity in its widest sense is intrinsic to the development of art and culture, yet this viewpoint is often obscured by orthodox and dogmatic narratives and histories. there is little institutional recognition that the absence of non-white artists from mainstream art history has falsified the history of modernism.

Intrinsic to Art Development We have to question why so many influential artists remain largely invisible in the history of the arts, and absent from contemporary conversations of the true value of diversity in the arts today. As Theatremaker, Kwame Kwei-Armah (AD centre stage Baltimore) observes: ‘That which is not articulated does not exist – we have been really bad at articulating the links between what could be seen as a peripheral activity and its impact on the mainstream.’

Intrinsic to Art Development That which is not articulated does not exist – we have been really bad at articulating the links between what could be seen as a peripheral activity and its impact on the mainstream.’

Case Study: Theatre To make the point, Kwei-Armah picks out the place of playwright Barry Reckord in regard to the course of post-war British theatre. Reckord came from Jamaica in the 1950s to study at Cambridge. His first play was staged at the Royal Court Theatre in 1958 and his contemporaries include Caryl Churchill, Edward Bond, John Arden and Arnold Wesker. Skyvers, Reckord’s 1963 portrayal of alienated and brutalised working-class schoolboys up against the authorities.

Case Study: Theatre Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington has described Skyvers as: …a devastating account by a young Jamaican writer of life in what would now be called a ‘bog-standard’ London comprehensive school

Case Study: Theatre Skyvers had a huge impact at the time, but is now largely forgotten and has not entered the British theatre repertoire. Barry Reckord played a key role in driving forward British theatre of the 1960s but today we are a long way from acknowledging and expressing such an integrated vision of key moments that ‘switched the tracks’.

Case Study: Visual Arts When the artist Louise Bourgeois died at the age of 98, obituary writers and critics praised her for her ‘persistence’ and noted that she had not gained prominence until she was in her 70s. However, most did not touch on how she was excluded from the charmed circle of male artists whose work was purchased and exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in the late 1930s:

Case Study: Visual Arts It took MoMA 50 years to mount a major exhibition of Bourgeois’s work (and thereby its first retrospective of a female artist). According to Bourgeois, this finally came about in 1982 because a female curator, Deborah Wye, ‘convinced them [the trustees] that I was important’.

Case Study: Visual Arts The cultural theorist Janet Wolff has argued that in the field of the visual arts there is still a job to do in uncovering women artists in history and analysing their work. But there is also much work to do in challenging the ‘natural’ view of the artistic legacy that exists in museums and galleries:

A new vision We need a new framework for viewing diversity, one that takes it out of a negative or ‘deficit’ model and places it in an artistic context. Diversity becomes not an optional extra but part of the fabric of our discussions and decisions about how we encourage an energetic, relevant, fearless and challenging artistic culture in England and the wider world.

A new vision A new vision: We need to develop a total approach to the arts that allows us to reassess artists whom we consider to display excellence, and uncover aspects of their lives that the establishment template cannot hold – for example the role of disability in art. New Instrumentation Clarence Adoo: Headspace technology _ City of London orchestra Digital: Merce Cunningham arthritis Biped LifeForms software (now DanceForms). Pina Bauch (the ageing body) Kontakthof – Mit Damen und Herren ab 65

Innovation New Instrumentation Clarence Adoo: Headspace technology _ City of London orchestra Digital: Merce Cunningham arthritis Biped LifeForms software (now DanceForms). Pina Bauch (the ageing body) Kontakthof – Mit Damen und Herren ab 65

Video Clarence Adoo musicians.. Who challenges what is to ‘play’ an instrument ritchie

What are the conditions for artistic innovation? Who are the innovators? Standpoint Theory – the inbetweener This notion of the “the other” is intriguing as it presupposes “the us”. Blinded by false notions of cultural superiority – in a neo-liberal society. What does this mean in Artistic terms? the cultural potential of being an “inbetweener”, and we wanted to try and find what that might mean in terms of artistic value. This is at the core of the creative case – one conversation about art with the true value of diversity at the heart of it.

Standpoint Theory There is a framework from feminist theory that kind of made sense to us in this context. It’s called “Standpoint Theory”. This posits a direct relationship between people’s structural location in the world and their understanding of the nature of the world... The further one is from the centre of power, the more comprehensive one’s analysis will be. This is because those who are marginalized have to understand the viewpoint of the dominant groups, while those in the dominant position have no need to understand the perspective of the oppressed”.

Standpoint Theory In other words, certain groups may be marginalised, but their insight represents anything but a marginal discourse. They may be marginalised, but there contribution is not marginal. If this is true, then we need to look at their work via different aesthetic and cultural frameworks than the one’s that presently dominate.

Standpoint Theory These artists, whether they be BME, disabled, women, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender or working class, in a sense have the potential to innovate for society (and the arts) as a whole. They may not choose to – which is fine. That’s a fundamental issue of equality – being empowered to make the choices you wish and not having an identity you don’t relate to thrust upon you.

Case Study: Music If we can apply a total vision of the arts, then we can begin the enriching process of expanding the creative possibilities to the benefit of everyone. Harlem Renaissance: Igor Stravinsky (1930s) moved to New York and struck up a unique musical conversation with the jazz musicians he found there. (Ebony Concerto ) He learnt most “precious lesson” – that “jazz was the only musical idiom in existence that could aptly express America”.

Case Study: Dance The hugely influential choreographer, the father of modern ballet, George Balanchine when he first arrived in America from Russia declared that he wanted a dance company consisting of eight white dancers and eight black dancers (he was told that segregation wouldn’t allow it). Creatively fascinated by the black body in motion:

Expanded Possibilities Think how many different ways we could expand our possibilities for the art and culture of today and tomorrow if we could truly value and harness and release that kind of transformative potential that exist unrealised in our society today? We could then talk about seriously about the “authentic” and the “profound” and “truthfulness” in human creative expression.

POWER Power: There must be the construction and dissemination of a new framework for viewing diversity, one that takes it out of a negative or ‘deficit’ model and places it in an artistic context. Diversity becomes not an optional extra but part of the fabric of our discussions and decisions about how we encourage an energetic, relevant, fearless and challenging artistic culture.

POWER The belief that there is only one way of defining taste, only one canon by which to judge what is great art and what is not, has increasingly been challenged over the past forty years. In many respects, old fashioned elitist notions of a universalist Western canon have been hollowed out by streams of critical thought that have succeeded, in part, in infiltrating even our biggest arts institutions. I believe we have one have the arguments, and the proof on our side, but there has not been an attendant shift of institutional power.

Video Hassan Mahamdallie hassan-Mahamdallie

Imaginative and innovative We have to find imaginative and innovative ways to gather together a consensus that agrees that the relationship between the arts and diversity and equality needs to find another, more fundamental axis to turn on. Let us banish forever the wrong notion that diversity in the arts is a problem. In fact it is a map to all our futures.