Dialectic of Community Arts Practice and Globalization

"When you work to create and provide tools for cultural self-determination to your fellow community members, do you know if you're truly contributing to human liberation and empowerment? Or might you be unwittingly advancing a grander colonization scheme or an economic exploitation strategy?"

With these questions in mind, Borrup provides three "stories of contradictions": case studies of community-based cultural work worldwide that have been used - wittingly or unwittingly - as tools for a larger, corporate-driven aim. To cite one example, Borrup reflects on his experience as the organiser of the Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA-based Intermedia Arts' "Wheels As Art" July 4th parade. In an effort to provide an alternative to the showings of military grandeur that often characterise this American holiday (showings that tend not to resonate with south Minneapolis' fast growing immigrant communities), the parade focusses on the values of freedom of speech and expression by driving cars that have been transformed into works of art into these neighborhoods. For reasons of convenience, Borrup explains, parade participants - most of whom tend to be white - assemble in a predominately white, upscale area. With the sinking feeling that the parade, which is supported by corporate event sponsors with possible interests in making certain neighborhoods amenable to white people only, was marching in the wrong direction, Borrup notes, "What may serve as empowerment for one group in one place at one time, may at another time and in another place serve to exploit another group...Was Intermedia Arts' July 4th event contributing to cultural development or cultural and economic colonialism?"

Borrup's other contradiction stories were gleaned from a 2003 Harvard University symposium entitled "Building on the Past: Supporting Culture in Sustainable Urban Development." One of these stories focusses on Bogotá, Colombia, where the mayor has worked to establish a number of environmental programmes. Borrup notes that he has really not sought the input of neighborhood or community councils - inspiring Borrup to ask, "When this progressive, yet despotic mayor borrows techniques that were used by the Catholic Church to pave the way for colonization of the Americas is he disempowering the citizenry?" Or, he continues, if he makes changes that improve the health and lives of Colombians significantly - say, by making the sidewalks, which have been taken over by cars, safe for pedestrians - do the means really matter? The final case study critically examines the efforts of the World Bank to preserve cultural heritage in China and Macedonia through projects based on a transparent, localised, bottom-up process. Questioning the sincerity of these efforts (while nonetheless acknowledging that the language sounds just like that used by small community-arts organisations), Borrup wonders whether efforts that are successful in "making it possible for the living culture of a region to continue to be practiced, and for the indigenous character of a place to survive" are justified by efforts that may involve economic practices that, in turn, feed the global corporate economy. He asks, "Does The World Bank's seemingly progressive approach to cultural preservation result in empowered, independent, culturally rich nations and regions? Or does it provide a smokescreen for the exploitation of a workforce and natural resources while maintaining political stability and enriching global corporations?"

The article concludes by raising more questions: "Is it irrelevant who is employing cultural development tools in any given context and to whatever end? Community-based cultural practices have been used to empower their respective communities and institutions. And they're being used to serve vested interests looking to exploit communities. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Will the long-term result still be the same?" Borrup concludes that community arts-based development work is a"long-term dialectical process". He urges that people working in this field continue, but that they strive to question their work and think carefully about the implications of what they're doing for all groups concerned.

Click here for the full article on the Reading Room page of the Community Arts site.