Artful Conversation 2020 Marnie Badham Interview
Welcome to Artful Conversations - a podcast about arts and cultural management. Hosts Annetta Latham and Katrina Ingram, interview leaders who help shape the world of arts and culture. We share their stories, their insights and observations. This podcast season has been brought to you with the support of MacEwan University and The Rozsa Foundation.
ANNETTA: Welcome to Artful Conversations, I'm your host, Annetta Latham. Today I'm speaking with Marnie Badham, originally from Canada, Marnie is now based in Melbourne, where she is the senior research fellow at RMIT School of Art following the prestigious award of the Vice Chancellors postdoctoral research fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne between 2017 and 2019. Here, Marnie teaches both practice and theory in social engaged art in public spaces, art history and theory and arts management and leads arts industry research partnerships with the National Association of Visual Arts on standards of practice. With a 25 year history of art and social justice practice in Australia and Canada, Marnie’s research sits at the intersection of socially engaged arts practice, community based research methodologies and the politics of cultural measurement. Welcome Marnie.
MARNIE: Hello, thanks for having me.
ANNETTA: Oh, it's wonderful to have you and thank you for joining us for our conversation today. Now, you're originally from Canada. Tell us a little bit about your scholarly career path and how you ended up in Melbourne.
MARNIE: Absolutely. So I'm calling in today from the future. So it's tomorrow in Melbourne and I'm calling in from the beautiful lands of the Boon Wurrung people of the Eastern Kulin nations. But as you know, I grew up in Saskatchewan. So in Regina, I guess that would be Treaty 4 Territory. I came to Australia 14 years ago now. Anyway, I came here 14 years ago to study and previous to moving to Australia, I had been leading an arts and social justice organization in Saskatchewan called Common Weal Community Arts, where I first really was able to engage in socially engaged art practice. But I had many questions and tensions in the practice and thought, hey, let's try out Melbourne for a year, a year turned into, you know, a year turned into another three years of a PhD and the fellowship and all those sorts of things. And I've been very lucky to be able to go back and forth between my two homes and my families and my research as well.
ANNETTA: And so between your two homes, what would you say are the differences or the similarities between the arts and cultural ecologies in your two homes?
MARNIE: That's a big one. So, I mean, scale is a bit of a difference. Regina, as you know, is a small city. But for me, growing up there and working in the arts, it was incredible, actually, like a lot of opportunities that not only you could take, but you could create for yourself. If cultural policy wasn't going on the right track, you could call up the Premier, you know, like and make things happen in a smaller community like that and really, you know, develop relationships that can take you in a lot of different ways. A lot of the work I did was really a partnership based. And then in Australia, I guess it's sort of the opposite, I guess in Melbourne in that it's a bit of a small fish, big sea. So, the climate’s different, so there's a lot of festivals and music, art in public space, things like that. But you know what I was interested in, because my work was in Canada in a variety and with a variety of different communities, I was really interested in some of the shared colonial histories.
Of the two, they are very interested in similar but different kinds of waves of migration and multiculturalism policies in that way and how that plays out through the arts. So, you know, in both countries, we've been kind of moving around through a number of different policy frameworks, I think we're all in creative industries right now. But of course, that looks different at local government and state government or provincial government. So things the sort of policy rhetorics, I guess shift and change quite rapidly. But those trends are international, at least across the western world. So there's many similarities, but the one piece that I found quite intriguing, which I didn't have the language for in Canada, was the whole history of community arts and community cultural development in Australia. And whilst I think the practices exist in many different ways in both countries, it had sort of government intervention, could you say, in the ‘80s from the Australia Council in actually putting artists to work in local governments. They were funded for three years, so that legacy of artists and communities working together really is a strong one in a way, we might take for granted here that Canada doesn't have that same history.
ANNETTA: And you're right, I actually lived in Melbourne when that was going on during that period. And it was a really interesting period. And I think, like you said, it really created a platform where things move forward from. So for yourself, you are distinguishing yourself as an artistic researcher and you use practice led methods, which presents a really unique outlook on things. I'm wondering how the relationship between artist researcher methods works and how they are informing each other. You know, do you see things through the eye of an artist or do you see things through the eye of a researcher, which one takes the lead?
MARNIE: Neither, really, I mean, I'm trained as an artist, so I bring sort of an aesthetic sensibility to anything I do. And an extension of that, I’m a socially engaged artist-researcher, which kind of informs the practice with a really strong values base, ethical frameworks, really important questions around collaborations, self-determination and what have you. But in terms of having that term artist researcher, that's something I adopted when I was doing my PhD because it made a lot of sense to me because the work I was developing with communities or by invitation of communities, they were really open ended sort of propositions. And the practice and the projects didn't have defined outcomes before I began them. So I like to sort of fold and create space and think through ideas with my collaborators. And it turns into something completely different than how I sort of come into it. So this idea of practice led research is, we - in sort of the scholarly sort of methodological literature in practice and research arises out of tensions of practice or out of even enthusiasm of practice. So for me, I had a lot of questions about self-determination, intellectual property, if I'm working for social change, how do I know that that change... is that a change I intend... is it a change communities intend, those sort of bigger questions, which I haven't completely sorted out. But at least I'm asking the questions. And that's the beauty of art, is that it asks more questions.
ANNETTA: And it kind of allows you to step outside, color outside the lines, really. And so in your work, you've curated and completed a wonderful array of projects with numerous communities and numerous mediums. You reference and discuss the term ‘social turn’ frequently throughout all the projects you do. Can you explain to our listeners what is social turn and what are the impacts of that?
MARNIE: Sure, so the social turn came about from an art historian/theorist Claire Bishop, in 2006. It was 2006/7, and it was an essay and then later a book, Participatory Art with the first essay was called The social turn: Collaboration and its discontents. So it was thinking about a move away from object based material, commercial, gallery based artwork. So it was a turn away and thinking about a much broader role for the arts, not just in communities, but thinking about engagement of audiences as well and socially engaged art, the social turn, there's a whole lot of different frameworks that people will use, including Nicholas Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’, Grant Kester's ‘dialogic art’ in the UK, participatory art or live art... And they're not all the same. Of course, they do all share that element of expanding what we understand art to be and sometimes being critical of histories of more narrowly defined mainstream economic systems of art or traditional art audience relationships, they shift and change where you are in the world, what policy framework we're in. But you know, we can look at that trajectory of community arts or the grassroots or even identity politics, but we can also look at other trajectories of like, the avant garde with situationist data, even kind of performance practices. And then more recently, a lot of institutions are working in the social turn about thinking through can we do something to activate or activate our audiences in different ways. So these practices are really looking at the social relations within art making.
ANNETTA: Which is a great segway into that concept of socially engaged arts practices. And you talk a lot about this in your research. And, you know, it also can be defined in other ways as community based arts practice, social practice, arts and social justice. Can you talk about why developing socially driven art practices is important and their relevance that they have now?
MARNIE: That's a big question. I mean, the relevance now is like I mean, there's lots of ways to talk about things that are important in the world, but socially engaged artists we’re driven for justice outcomes, driven by collaboration and relationships. And want something more, something more than selling material works. And I'm not criticizing that, not criticizing modernism. I'm trained as a painter and have an art history degree. Yeah, but I think there's a relevance in a quite a dare I say, multi kind of balanced way. So these practices actually speak to a range of stakeholders. In my work in particular, I'm often interested in collaboration, engagement with communities, which creates a different type of aesthetic, maybe collaborative aesthetic, as Maria Lind would say. But I'm also thinking about real world changes, playing out politics in the art making, even imagining better futures, not so much sort of social realism of community arts, but really thinking about how do we explore local place, from different voices and knowledges. Is this in my practice in particular, and how can I as an artist, maybe stay visible in public in a way that decision makers, policymakers, the general public can understand? So I'm very much interested in sort of being that interstitial, in between, in betweener, a socially engaged artist has been described as like they could look like a project manager, like an artist, they could look like an ethnographer. So we do shape shift quite a bit and have quite a lot of tools in our toolkit, if you know what I mean. Depending on the topic, depending on the community, depending on the public presentation of the work.
ANNETTA: So would you say that a lot of your work as an artist researcher is done in a public realm?
MARNIE: Oh, yeah, I think so. I mean, the way I work, I work in a couple of different ways, but typically I'm invited to do projects now and there’s a couple of important elements of that invitation. If it's community, that means that there's a community not my own, there’s a big responsibility for me as a guest to that community. And I really see it as a social contract set up, which is reciprocal, sort of giving and taking and working together, which is underpinned by quite a strong ethical framework. But then I'm also invited to do these types of works by institutions and thinking, OK, well, do I work in the community and show it, do I invite community in to work on a project with me, so there's a lot of different models. But like I said, I'm very much interested in between kind of the relationship between artists, communities and institutions because, of course, back to cultural policy, we're always talking about the benefits of socially engaged arts. And my PhD was actually like, well, how do we actually know? And I'm also really interested in the negative value and the potential for harm in this work. So there's a lot of artists in Australia who would not align themselves to the term community arts, community cultural development, because there was an understanding of artists going into a community, sometimes with misguided colonial intent. And that's not true of every artist, there's incredible community artists who have been practicing for 40, 50 years, who are important members of those communities as well. But I'm also interested in this idea of negative value and there are power relationships in these works. And one of the goals of the work is not just aesthetic, but it's actually about shifting power relations.
ANNETTA: Yeah, you've touched on that power that art has to ignite thought and ignite a review of us, how we engage in the world in different ways and all of those kinds of things. And I think, you know, as certainly, you know, as someone who's worked in Australia, I’m very aware of cultural policy development and a lot of it being recently wrapped around that dialogue of health and wellness in community. And it's very, very interesting, you know, from that perspective, you know, you've touched a little bit on the role of public art in creating social and cultural engagement. In the big picture stuff, if you feel you can do the big picture answer, where do you see the positives in that kind of engagement in relation to cultural policy and community engagement with art and, you know, participating in the works that you do, you know, what’s your hope of the outcome with those kind of engagements as an artistic researcher?
MARNIE: I've thought alot about these questions - so I will try to keep it kind of high level. There's a difference between consultation and collaboration. What was it, like 1968, Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation. And I was actually just looking at it with my students the other day, it's like different ways of connecting. And one thing I learned when I was doing my PhD, I did a case study in North Central Regina and one in St Kilda in Melbourne. And I remember talking to my colleague at the time doing some research assistance with me, now very dear friend Joely BigEagle. And she said: why would people want to be involved in research if they didn't have, if they only got content and had no control over the form or the outcome? And, you know, I have to thank her for that, because it was like that moment where, you know, things were very clear. So the idea of like engagement, consultation, even cultural policy, and it's not just government, it's actually all kinds of ways of structuring and knowing, it's the arts it's education, it's everything. We think inclusion is actually something that we want to achieve, but actually no, it's actually about equity. And even further than that, self-determination, particularly for First Nations, People of Colour and a range of voices that aren't always at the table. So I think we need to change the table settings.
ANNETTA: Great description.
MARNIE: Do it in a park at a picnic instead. You know, we actually don't just need to revise the way we're doing things, there's a lot of violence in institutions, policies, governments that needs to be teared down and started again. Seriously.
ANNETTA: And I think one of the things you mentioned earlier is also some of your work comes from a project management perspective and, you know, taking on board what you've just said, you know, from that project management perspective, because our emerging arts managers do have a very kind of project management perspective in what they do in their first job or first couple of jobs, what do you feel, socially engaged artists and arts professionals can be creating and planning when they're developing work or programs to deal with some of these social and political concepts. How do they tear down the wall?
MARNIE: In a way that's safe and respectful for everyone. Yeah, I mean, it's complex, right. And a lot of the way that artists have been working in this space for a long time, we learn it and iterate it and we learn it from colleagues. Um, you know, our mentors as well. But I think, thinking through probably two or three basic ideas, one is what is not the output or the outcome, but what is the change you wish to achieve and being really clear about that as an individual, but that being a starting point when you're talking to collaborators or partners or funders, because if it is ultimately about kind of shifting power dynamics, we need to be really aware of what different people's needs and interests are in a project and they don't all have to be the same, and they probably shouldn't be the same. So that kind of exchange of value and values is a conversation rather than like a measurement tool at the end, is the way to go.
The other thing I would say is and we've been thinking about this a lot in terms of our teaching practices at the university as well, in the School of Art around not just risk assessment in a physical sense, but actually ethics as well. So thinking in a way that is not about risk averse, we want to encourage risk. Risk is important for the arts and the creativity, creative risk is the way that things happen, right? We do need to think through. Yeah, risk is like, it's a friction that creates something else. But we can think about an ethical framework in terms of benefit versus harm. And that could be as simple as thinking through will somebody get hurt by participating in this physically, but it's also a much more complex thing. Should I really be visiting, you know, perhaps a vulnerable community who actually has a lot of more important things to do than engage with a community artist like, you know, so that's why I like the invitation is important to me and those sorts of things. Like, well, like check yourself. Like, seriously, why do you want to work with other people and what is it that you really want to achieve? And I think that's hard to talk people out of doing projects in public art projects. But just really think about the site that the work’s in, the social cultural histories of a site that perhaps, you know, if you're of a settler community, you may not actually understand the significance of the site as well. There is a lot of consultation that needs to happen even before you kind of set up the project management. It's a lot bigger than one might think rather than just a logic framework.
ANNETTA: I hear what you are saying. And that really feeds into how you evaluate a project as well. You know, from your perspective, what kind of measures are you putting around some of your projects to go, that succeeded or didn't succeed, from an artistic and academic perspective, because you kind of have your feet in both camps.
MARNIE: Yep, so my other secret superpower is evaluation and measurement and policy. I usually would prefer to be known as an artist and researcher, but like I yeah, I did my PhD around this idea of how do we know that we're actually achieving social change? So if it's about our community for social change, how do we know? And I got really into this whole system of like indicators, cultural indicators and I was like this is good because there's lots of different ways of knowing and lots of different ways to collect data. And I got to know some systems both in Australia and Canada, and I realized that these sort of external benchmarks on community practice are just like extensions of cultural policy. That's not even measuring the success of the project, that's helping the government report on what they need to report on. So how do we again have that conversation? What is the change we hope to achieve? And then how do we know it?
So the research in Regina and St Kilda was around how do we know our neighborhoods are getting better? Because what we realized is that in these two communities that have quite complex social situations, conditions stemming from colonization and from racism, but it plays out in being overpoliced, high levels of crime, addictions, poverty and what have you. And I said, well, you know, I think I can propose that if people set their own goals, they're more, you know, it's more likely they're going to achieve them, rather than trying to respond to other people’s goals. In Victoria, the state I'm in in Australia, there is a group at the University of Melbourne that I was working for, led by Professor John Wiseman, called cultural no, Community Indicators Victoria (CIV) is about collecting data evidence around levels of employment, arts and cultural participation, access to green spaces... data at a glance that can grab to make policy arguments for local government, but what I realized was that they started comparing communities, which is very stigmatizing. So well out in the west like Footscray and Brimbank and Sunshine, maybe we scaled the lowest out of seventy nine local government areas around arts and cultural participation. Yeah, and I was like bullshit because there was like two hundred and seventy three languages spoken. There's like music, live music everywhere, there's traditional cultural festivals every weekend, all of this. And I started thinking about, well what kinds of arts and cultural activities are they actually measuring. And it was these sort of more formalized mainstream activities like - have you gone to the gallery, have you gone to a concert or gone to the opera? And these things aren't in those communities. So how do we think much more broadly around a whole range of arts and cultural expressions, not just what we might call professional arts?
And so I kind of sidetracked there in terms of the evaluation question, but I guess I like to start talking about that in framing it as the politics of measurement. And so I've done a lot of work and thinking about what we call my former colleague, Lachlan MacDowall and I, call the specters of evaluation. And the specter is like what's haunting the arts? And it can be a health framework. It can be a well-being framework. It can be an economic development framework, all of these sorts of ways of a) funding these practices and b), instrumentalise them right. So how do we actually get to the core of what the value and values of these practices are? And the only way to do it is I'm invited into a whole range of communities that are not my own with very culturally complex contexts. And, you know, I used to resist like, oh, I don't want to place my values on your practices, but I realize actually. Well, what I can do as an artist researcher is offer some participatory methods to support people, to make sense of what the meaning and significance of their practices are, rather than just translating it through the policy outcomes that are expected.
So two quick examples. One was a couple of years ago with All The Queens Men, beautiful friend Tristan Meecham said to me, I need you to help me sort this one out. And OK, LGTBI+ Elders, so were over sixty five who were still grieving the AIDS epidemic are aging and moving many into social isolation in terms of aged care facilities, not culturally or socially relevant. They built this beautiful dance club project, it's just social dance and had this celebration called the Coming Back Out Ball. So this idea that these Elders have to come back out again when they come, really traumatic stuff. And I thought, well, I don't even understand the aesthetics. Like the event. It's so beautiful that the whole idea of balls, which was like an underground Melbourne scene for decades, is about spectacle. And that's not within my aesthetic language. So it's like, all right, can I find some students who are part of this community? They can talk to Elders about the significance and quite in an open ended way, and then later do some of that analysis to understand kind of the success or values.
The other one I've been reflecting on lately was some incredible Indigenous traditional dance projects up in the Northern Territory. So as a Canadian living in Melbourne, I'd never even been outside of the state. So when invited, yeah, so when invited to go to the desert, to go to Borroloola in the Northern Territory, I just thought, wow, I'd love to, but how do I go about doing this, it's really about finding where the knowledge sits in the community and supporting those folks to develop and, you know, with the Indigenous traditional dance project, like a three year cultural development program, festivals and traditional dance inviting mob from different language groups from across the country to drive for days and days to come to this dance festival and to say, well, how do we know it's successful? Well, some people are like, well, it's really important to bring more people into the region. That cultural exchange is really important. But one old man told me how he knew it was successful and I didn't quite get it until I actually was at the festival. And he said, well, when the red dirt flies up, and so when you're actually at the festival and you know the songs, singing these incredible voices, singing Country, beautiful traditional instruments and these dance troupes with like this red dirt, the dust is flying up from the dance. And it's not just the physical force. It's actually quite, how would I say, spiritual kind of connection, transcendental anyways.
So these ways of measuring success, I think it's really important to ask community what success looks like to them, you know, for me it might be like, oh, the amount of people who show up. No, actually that's not the point. The other thing with the traditional dance festival, too, is that I learned quite quickly that the festival is not just about a celebration there, but it's about practicing connection to Country. So, unlike Canada, you know, the Queen didn't sign any treaties when they colonized Australia. So, you know, language groups and Elders are having to prove their connection to Country. And the only way they can do that now is through songlines and story. And without that language and the live practicing of their culture, that connection is lost. So their Traditional Ownership is more, I guess you'd say, of custodianship. So it's quite difficult to provide evidence for the land claims without that culture being practised. So it's been such an honour to be invited to work in these different communities and a big responsibility on my part.
One other thing I guess I'd say about evaluation and research in communities not my own, is obviously I go through the whole ethics process of collecting consent for people to be involved, but I'll never actually take people's data, that's their knowledge and information. So you'll see in my writing and presentations, I don't talk about outcomes so much. I talk more about methodology and my own stake in the work, because one of the big challenges, I think, in this field is people speaking on behalf of others.
ANNETTA: Wow, Marnie we've talked about so many things and touched on so many topics, you know, and we've touched a little bit on social transformation, and I'm really aware that you and I could chat for hours and hours and hours on stuff, you know, and, you know, I'm absolutely fascinated by the fact that you don't collect data, which is when I mean, every kind of Research 101 class is about collect the data, collect the data, name, age, all the demographics. And, you know, I think it's fabulous because it really honors the people that you are working alongside and it makes it a journey rather than a we're researching on you, or about you. It's actually a journey and as you've said, some of the engagement is when you connect with people, it's about social transformation, it's about change. It's about those things. So, you know, and you know, there's growing concern globally around people's social welfare and their identity, especially when you have Indigenous and First Nation communities around. What's important to those people. From, you know, as a kind of a last question for you and I in our time, when we talk about artistic engagement with communities in relation to social transformation, you know, what do you feel are some of the best practices that we as, you know, as arts based, you know most of us, predominantly, very white from a point of privilege, can really put into structuring cultural development to work alongside and to do social transformation in a journey rather than directively. What for you are the real kind of take home points that you think are really important that our emerging arts managers need to be mindful of?
MARNIE: There's lots. The first one is, I think listening. Yeah, we forget how to listen sometimes all the time, listen to me talk, talk, talk. Exchange, reciprocity, what are you bringing to the table? I actually as an emerging arts manager twenty years ago as an emerging arts manager, I would try to write myself out of the story all the time. And because I'm like, I was told my leadership style was the servant leader. So behind the scenes, at the Banff Centre, leadership training it was they told me it was like Gandhi and I just thought that was the best I'd have to maybe do that, do that quiz, that personality quiz again now. But I realized quite early on that I have a role in this work. We all have a stake in making change, but we also need to get out of the way sometimes and don't take up space. Just because you have agency and privilege doesn't mean it should be your voice in front. And so I do, and it's taken me a long time to be able to articulate it. But dear friends have taught me ‘First Nations First’. Let's start there. And it doesn't necessarily fix everything, but it does set up a situation just like a very simple Acknowledgement of Country that I recognize people's sovereignty and I also recognize my positionality. So understanding yourself before you can work in community, I think is really important too. And I guess on that note. I guess on that note is just, yeah, positioning yourself and understanding your own, your own wants, needs limits, which is very kind of human thing to do. Sure, you can get training and a lot of different areas and experience, but that's the whole point of collaboration, right. There’s a lot of different people and you can work on everybody’s strengths in complementary ways. And I guess the final note is in positions of privilege, like you and I have working in universities, we have a lot of cultural capital. And we can, I don't know whose listening, but we can steal that from the university and we can share that in community in ways that benefit everyone. And yeah, so I guess, maybe, maybe, maybe that's the end of the story for now.
ANNETTA: That's a great end of the story for now, because I think it reminds our listeners that, you know, get in the conversation, get in the conversation, you know, get involved and like you say, take some of the things that your agency and privilege give you. But, you know, use them and transfer them into the community and be part of your conversation rather than, you know, assume they are a right for you in conversation. I think it's a really great take home. Marnie, it's been absolutely fascinating and wonderful talking to you. We must do this again and revisit many, many of the topics that we've covered. It was a wonderful privilege to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much and all the best with your upcoming projects that you're working on.
MARNIE: Thank you and thank you, too, for the invitation. I look forward to part two, three, four and five. And good luck with the next couple of months. I know, winter and public health, are a challenging place, but hopefully a place where people can retreat and have some reflection as well.
ANNETTA: Wonderful. Thank you.
Analysis
ANNETTA: Katrina, Marnie’s always interesting to talk to, and I really loved chatting with her and just kind of tracking her career and what she's been doing and what she's engaged with and it’s just extraordinary. I think one of the interesting things that happened I didn't get to talk about was the mapping, cultural mapping stuff that she does and that she uses. And she has done this absolutely fascinating piece of cultural mapping where she looked at how women felt about walking around a neighborhood in Melbourne that has a significant train station. And we'll put a link on the website to this piece of work so you can see it. And it was fascinating because it really informed the safety stuff that needed to come into that community to help women feel safe in it and how powerful cultural mapping can be. I mean that’s only one side of what she does, but she really, really shows the strength and cultural mapping and how important cultural mapping is when you're exploring your community.
KATRINA: That sounds fascinating and something I would love to see. I really enjoyed listening to this interview and there were so many different pieces of it that resonated with me, one being this question that she asked about the downside of socially engaged art. What is the downside of socially engaged art? And I feel it’s a really interesting question because it brings up this idea of power relationships. And I think that's something we should really acknowledge as we're living through all of the social upheaval. We're having conversations about race and power and who gets centered. And she really kind of had a new way of looking at that, that really resonated with me. And it ended with this idea of metrics, too, about what gets evaluated or what doesn't get evaluated. So I really got a lot from this interview with Marnie.
This show was created by Executive Producer and Host Annetta Latham; Co-host Katrina Ingram. Technical Producer Paul Johnston. Research Assistants involved were Caitlin McKinnon and MacEwan bachelor of music students.
Theme Music by Emily Darfur and cover art by Constanza Pacher. Special thanks to the Rose Foundation for their support and to our guests. Artful Conversations is a production of MacEwan University and Assistant Professor Annetta Latham, all rights reserved.
Latham, A. (Executive Producer and Host). Regan-Ingram, K (Host). (2020, November 19) [Season 2: Episode 12]. Marnie Badham. Podcast retrieved from: www.artfulconversations.com/season-2-1/2021/2/6/ep-12-marnie-badham