Beautiful Civic Engagement

I think Darren's list of Criteria to Determine Beautiful Civic Engagement deserves some thought and analysis. These are galvanizing social strategies, and I think there are a few that are really crucial to distinguish community-based art from the social acupuncture that Mammalian Diving reflex enegeages in. For four seasons, I have worked with Public Dreams on community-based outdoor celebrations, with the goal of stimulating the growth of healthy communties through participation in the arts. The events are highly successful in terms of number of participants in both the set decor and performative aspects, and in attendance, but there are limited pockets of criticality in the events - they are beautiful, engaging, surprising, galvanizing, but also tend towards earnestness. They are missing items 6 and 8 (Questioning Social Assumptions and Fruitful Antagonisms) from the list of criteria. Public Dreams strives for inclusiveness, and is grappling with how to make productive antagonisms and social change a part of the events not only in their creation, but also in their content.

For the creator who is comfortable with the antagonism and questioning that genuine civic engagement can engender, the challenge perhaps comes up when practising items 4 and 5 (Inversion of Hierarchies and Offering Agency). Who determines when a hierarchy has been successfully inverted? How much agency is offered, and how does an audience know? If they don't does that matter?

Darren told an anecdote in his workshop dealing with an instance with a participant in Q & A who rather than talking about his homelessness insisted on talking about his criminal past - raising the discomfort quotient for some of the audience, who didn't necessarily read the participant's level of agency, instead seeing an exploitative relationship between the theatre makers (in the power position) and the homeless guy who used his agency in an unexpected way. That example does seem to play on antagonsisms - but were they fruitful?