Building Community through Arts

At the 4th Living Buddhism Conference in April 2006 there was a presentation by Hilda Flint and other members of BCA: Building Community through Arts.
[Next Conference 2008]

Here is what they wrote about their work at that time...

This is what has absorbed our energies over the last 10 12 years. Working in the community and in residential homes we have devised a workshop plan in which teachers have worked alongside students, professional care workers alongside clients, family members and neighbours have been included, and people isolated by disability or dementia have been drawn in, with education and business volunteers.

We have used the arts to create a workshop format in which there is no need for discrimination between those with high intelligence or those whose cognitive faculties have failed, or between status, ethnicity, or age. We offer two basic quotes which underpin our whole approach: All that is human we have in common (Franck) and Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain one when we grow up (Picasso). We each, we believe, have a fund of creativity, latent or expressed, which may reflect our common humanity, and if brought to the surface, well-presented, talked about, may bring individuals together in community, more able to make their particular contribution to the societies in which they live and work.

In our experiential workshop at the Conference we were mainly concerned to demonstrate our usual way of developing individual creativity, and learning how to facilitate the process. With more time available we would have given each participant a saucer of black ink, a stack of paper, and unusual tools to play with twigs, pieces of card, sponges, a toothbrush, string with the instruction to PLAY, EXPERIMENT, make unusual marks on your paper. This can be an absorbing exercise!

In the event we gave each of our participants a piece of paper already covered with random marks and invited them to select a small portion which interested them, using a ready made frame. Again, with more time we would offer a variety of frames, both in black paper and white, and a pair of L shaped pieces of card to isolate their chosen piece.

The next stage of the workshop works in threes, each participant taking a turn at being the artist presenting their work to the others; the facilitator helping the artist to express themselves; or the observer noting ways in which the interaction between the facilitator and the artist developed, how creativity was encouraged or perhaps frustrated, and keeping attention on the task.

In this stage each artist is encouraged to describe why their chosen piece attracted them: what the image evokes for them, perhaps what memories might have surfaced, certainly what their feelings were in making their choice.

This was followed by a time of individual reflection in which each participant was asked to find a title, write a sentence or two, to give some meaning to their selected piece, within the overall theme of relating individuals to the community. These reflections were then gathered together, and in their groups of three participants were challenged to find the connections, which could draw their pieces together as expressions of individuality within the community.

Comments

[Beba]

"Birth of art —
song of rice planters,
chorus from nowhere."
Basho

If we are utterly silent, then everything that happens in that silence, takes on a new color. It becomes the very birth of art.

‘Song of rice planters’ — it is not much of a music. Poor rice planters, just to keep them engaged, they are singing in chorus. But a man of silence, immediately makes or gives a glamor to the ordinary stones.
‘Song of rice planters, chorus from nowhere.’ As far as he is concerned he is utterly silent, so he wonders from where this chorus is coming. The whole existence has become a chorus, a beautiful symphony. Our lives can be lived as music, as poetry, as art...as mystics. Those are the right ways to live our lives. Right, because to live those styles, you will have to find your origin first.