understanding cultural action as a resource for unlocking assets and

& Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal. 2012 All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected] doi:10.1093/cdj/bss059 Advance Access publication 29 November 2012

Small Change: understanding cultural action as a resource for unlocking assets and building resilience in communities

Abstract

This article explores the role of culture and cultural action as a resource for unlocking assets and reducing vulnerability with the view of building long-term resilience in communities. Contextualized by the Small Change asset-based approach and the United Kingdom-based Small Change Forum (SCF) initiative, this article examines how culture embodies valuable resources for building resilience in community groups and ways in which cultural action can unlock and use existing assets in communities to bring about change. The opportunities and challenges for achieving development through cultural action are outlined and principles developed which aim to add to the debate about the role of culture in community development.

Introduction At a time of economic austerity in the West when equity and environmental sustainability are high on the international development agenda (UNDP, 2011), innovative ways of supporting community-led development are important. Asset-based approaches (ABAs) are built on the ‘premise that people in communities can organise to drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilising existing (but often unrecognised) assets, thereby responding to and creating local economic opportunities’ (Mathie and Cunningham, 2003). Being people-centred, ABAs focus on individual and collective strengths or assets to bring about change. *Address for correspondence: Jeni Burnell, Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment, Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP), Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane Campus, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK; email: [email protected]

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Furthermore, ABAs acknowledge that everyone has assets, including creativity, aspiration, skills and knowledge, and that finding ways of unlocking this information is vital for building long-term resilience – or a person’s capacity to survive, adapt and bounce back (IFRC, 2004). As E. F. Schumacher (1973, p. 157) said in his seminal text Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered: Development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organisation, and discipline. Without these three, all resources remain latent, untapped, potential.

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To date, ABAs have predominately been used by the international development sector on long-term community development, disaster relief and/or disaster preparedness projects. In countries, such as the United Kingdom, ABAs are gaining popularity as governing bodies retreat from the expense of service provision and explore ways of reducing alleged welfare dependency in a time of economic austerity (Friedli, 2011). ABAs are a part of a growing family of socially engaged development thinking, including ideas of social capital, time banking, co-production and the ‘core economy’ (see Goodwin et al. in Boyle and Harris, 2009) – made up of the family, neighbourhood, community and civil society – as championed by organizations such as the United Kingdom’s New Economics Foundation (NEF). Of course, in all these contexts, the complexities of community-driven social change should not be underestimated in terms of vested interests, complex accountability issues and the political and power struggles which often accompany such endeavours (Birn, 2009 see Friedli, 2011). As decentralization and localism dominate the political agenda in the United Kingdom, a fine balance needs to be struck between ‘empowering communities to do things their way’ (HM Government, 2010) and supporting the needs of the most vulnerable. While localism has the potential to positively engage community groups – be these communities of culture, interest, place/location, practice and/or resistance (Hamdi, 2004, p. 67– 69) – it also places great pressure on people to manage often complex issues themselves. Within deprived socio-economic communities, this task can be more challenging as people struggle with the practical know-how, capacity and connections that can help secure and run assets (Stott, 2011). Often, enthusiasm, creativity and aspiration are latent assets that exist within these groups, which, with a small amount of outside interventions, have the potential to be turned into positive social change. To do so requires innovative ways of capturing local voices; for example, through the arts and cultural action – or the use of the arts for development, education and social impact (Goldbard, 2006). All of which has the potential to

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‘[S]mall’ because that’s usually how big things start; ‘change’, because that’s what development is essentially about; and ‘small change’, because

Figure 1 Cultural action and education as catalysts for disaster risk reduction (DRR) were central themes of Multistory’s Small Change Creative Thinking workshop, which took place in August 2011 in the city of Leh in the Northern Indian Himalayan region of Ladakh following the cloudburst disaster which struck the region in August 2010. # Multistory.

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equip people with the necessary skills and know-how to actively participate in civic life. Building people’s resources and assets requires time if an approach is to be developed which is both appropriate and empowering to those involved. This article suggests that cultural resources and cultural action can assist with this process. Furthermore, following Schumacher, and later Hamdi, it proposes that by starting small and being strategic community-based initiatives have the potential to influence wider social, political and economic agendas. To elaborate, United Kingdom-based development practitioner and academic Nabeel Hamdi pioneered the Small Change approach to community development. In his book Small Change: About the Art of Practice and Limits of Planning in Cities, Hamdi (2004, p. xxiii) defines Small Change as being:

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this can be done without the millions typically spent on programmes and projects.

Generally, Small Change explores how communities are strengthened by unlocking and using their existing assets and resources. The approach is based on the common sense assumption: to achieve something big, start with something small and start where it counts. Small Change projects therefore explore how small, practical and mostly low-budget interventions, if carefully targeted, act as catalysts for bigger, long-lasting change. This article applies Hamdi’s Small Change approach, using cultural resources and cultural action as championed by the UK initiative, Small Change Forum (SCF). The SCF was created by United Kingdom-based community arts organization Multistory and the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) based at Oxford Brookes University in association with Professor Hamdi. Comprising a network of people interested in community-led change using the Small Change principles, the SCF carries out research and practice designed to inform future learning and practice in community-led development while creating a policy environment conducive to change (Figures 1 and 2). Networks, such as the SCF, apply Hamdi’s development principles to cultural interventions. Described in Hamdi’s code of conduct, these principles offer practitioners and policymakers alike the opportunity to change the way they think, work, learn and teach development and emergency practice (Hamdi, 2004). To elaborate, the code emphasizes creative thinking and spontaneity by asking practitioners to take advantage of their naivety and recognize their ignorance in development situations. Furthermore, it suggests a ‘bottom-up’ practice approach incorporating imagination and embracing serendipity while being strategic in one’s approach in order to challenge consensus and look for ways of scaling up the initiative in

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Figure 2 Multistory’s Small Change Creative Thinking workshop in the Northern Indian Himalayan region of Ladakh explored risk and community-led DRR. # Multistory.

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terms of size and development impacts (Hamdi, 2004, pp. 130 –141). Each statement in the code alludes to a sensitive, people-centred approach to bringing about change – one which recognizes that practitioners ‘join the process somewhere along the way and try to help it along with new ideas, new wisdoms, new technologies and new skills’ (Hamdi, 2004, p. 130). Central to this approach is culturally appropriate intervention. At the 1982 World Conference on Cultural Policies in Mexico City, members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 1982) defined culture as:

It has been suggested by a key researcher in the field of culture-based development, Franc¸ois Matarasso, that culture is an important resource for development because of its considerable potential to influence change (Tubadji, 2010). To these ends, cultural projects have the potential to relatively quickly enable community groups to capture important insights about their environment which can be used to evoke a change. Within the international development context, cultural resources can often be accessed via the arts and have, in the past, been applied to creative conflict resolution, disaster risk reduction (DRR), HIV and AIDS awareness and prevention programmes, and as a tool for post-disaster rehabilitation. The arts have also been used to address a range of social exclusion issues. In the United Kingdom, for example, these include homelessness, disability, cultural diversity, criminal justice and regeneration (Gould, 2003). While cultural resources are a powerful tool in building social cohesion and resilience, this article does not advocate that the arts alone can resolve complex socio-economic issues faced by many disadvantaged or disempowered communities (Matarasso, 2007). Instead, it promotes a people-centred, community-based approach that includes culture as an essential resource for change. Furthermore, it promotes cultural action as a tool for unlocking latent assets and building social capital. This is due to its ability to communicate, question and challenge existing norms and assumptions. This investigation is positioned within human development with a focus on ABAs. As such, the Small Change approach is examined along with why culture matters to development. The article concludes with a discussion aimed at adding to the debate about the role of culture in development.

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[T]he whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterise a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs.

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Assets, Small Change theory and human development

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Assets are the stock of resources that people use to build livelihoods. Acquiring assets is not a passive act but requires agency or similarly a capacity to ‘“play the game of life” – access resources, navigate discrimination and negotiate forms of governance’ (Sanderson, 2009). ABAs focus on different types of assets or capitals along with the strategies used to accumulate them. Generally, assets can be person, household or community-based and are categorized as being either tangible or intangible. According to urban social anthropologist, academic and development practitioner, Caroline Moser (2009, p. 18), assets are made up of physical (stock of plant, equipment, infrastructure and other productive resources), financial (savings and supplies of credit), human (including education and health investment), social (reciprocity and trust embedded in social relations, social structures, rules, norms and so on) and natural (soil, atmosphere, forests, water, minerals) capitals. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) also identifies political assets such as a person’s membership to a trade union, leading to stronger negotiation power based on collective decision-making (Sanderson, 2009). In contrast, intangible assets are less grounded in empirical measurement such as ‘aspirational’ and ‘psychological’ (Moser, 2009). Dreams, hopes and ambitions can also be defined as intangible assets. Often difficult to measure, these assets embody important human, cultural and social capital essential to building resilience. Owing to its highly personal and innovative nature, cultural action expressed through the arts can assist in unlocking these assets. Hamdi’s Small Change approach further offers a theoretical framework and practice methodology by which assets can be identified and strengthened. Small Change thinking predominately focuses on placemaking and the transformative way that place-based interventions can generate opportunities for social and economic development. Small Change starts with practice, drawing on local innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship to catalyse change. Through participatory planning, a process is facilitated by which community collectives make important project decisions, including identifying key problems and opportunities, establishing goals and priorities and defining project resources and constraints (Hamdi, 2004, p. 102). Decisions made during this facilitated process direct or are incorporated into traditional placemaking, including architectural design and urban planning. This way of working challenges many professional working practices by raising questions about the amount of formal structure required to successfully deliver community improvement programmes before the structure itself restricts progress, becomes self-serving and inhibits personal freedom (Hamdi, 2004). Small Change thinking also extends beyond

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Figure 3 The Small Change Forum: ingenious people make better places conference (October 2011) included a keynote presentation by the writer and researcher in culture and community arts, Franc¸ois Matarasso. # StoryWorks.

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place-based interventions to address issues including community-led DRR along with community health and wellbeing initiatives. Applying the Small Change approach to cultural action entails a series of often quick, light touch and relatively inexpensive participatory arts interventions being carried out in a participatory manner with community groups. The intervention itself, or finding from it, inform the creation of a Small Change catalyst – be this a community event or small-scale physical change. In each case, the arts are employed because of their ability to spark creative thinking in individuals and the collective, thereby unlocking existing latent resources and assets while creating a framework for skills and capitals to be accumulated. The theme of culture as a catalyst for change was investigated at the Small Change Forum: ingenious people make better places conference, which was held in October 2011 at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford (Figures 3 and 4). Co-hosted by CENDEP and Multistory, the event was attended by over eighty academics and practitioners from non-governmental organizations, universities and the private and public sectors. With keynote presentations by Nabeel Hamdi and Franc¸ois Matarasso, the event explored the Small Change approach highlighting the need for policymakers and practitioners to challenge the perception that the arts are unconnected to development. According to Matarasso, art and culture, like development, aim to express people’s dreams, hopes and desires; ‘And those values and dreams are – must be – at the root of development’ (Matarasso, 2011). Both community art practice and Small Change thinking focus on people as the linchpin for change – a concept paramount to human development.

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In 1990, the UNDP published the first Human Development Report (HDR). Chapter 1, Defining and measuring human development opened with the provocative, anti capitalist-centric statement: ‘People are the real wealth of a nation’ (UNDP, 1990, p. 9). Drawing on a long lineage of influential thinkers, including the economist, academic and writer Amartya Sen, human development recognized that there was no direct or automatic link between income growth in countries and human progress (UNDP, 1990). This report, and Sen’s thinking, helped substantially reposition thinking on poverty, highlighting its multidimensional nature and focusing future development policies and practice on people. By the 1990s, a paradigm shift in development thinking was taking place that included ‘differentia[ing] between defining poverty as a static concept and vulnerability as a dynamic one, and focused on defining concepts such as assets, vulnerabilities, capabilities, and endowments’ (Moser, 2009, p. 19). This statement highlights that while people are susceptible to vulnerability in adverse events (i.e. sudden onset disaster such as earthquake or unemployment brought about by recession), not everyone will become impoverished if faced with these vulnerable situations. According to Sen (1999), people have an increased likelihood of experiencing poverty if they do not have the capabilities and/or freedoms to access and accumulate assets. Participation of people in the development process is essential if these capabilities or freedoms are to be realized. ABAs, as part of human development, soon challenged the prominent needs-based approach, which in general relies on aid or resources being supplied to poor communities to address an issue or deficiency, as the primary method for implementing development strategies. Alison Mathie

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Figure 4 The Small Change Forum: ingenious people make better places conference (October 2011) provided opportunities for people from diverse working backgrounds to meet and discuss the potential of the Small Change approach. # StoryWorks.

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and Gord Cunningham (2001, p. 474) explain why ABAs became so popular: [T]he appeal of ABCD [Asset Based Community Development] lies in its premise that people in communities can organise to drive the development process themselves by identifying and mobilising existing (but often unrecognised) assets, thereby responding to and creating local economic opportunities.

What is culture and why does it matter to building resilience? Traditional notions of culture today have gained in importance and equally been disregarded as societies compete for economic and industrial progress in an age of mass globalization and rapid change. Creative industries, including public art programmes, museums and galleries and historic buildings and architecture (DCMS, 2001), generate vast sums of money annually around the world. Equally, traditional cultural artefacts such as vernacular architecture in some emerging economies are being destroyed to make way for new and modern expressions of culture. This highlights the fact that culture is not stagnant – as UNDP’s HDR (2004, p. 4) further explains: ‘Culture is not a frozen set of values and practices. It is constantly recreated

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The advent of ABAs produced a proliferation of analytical concepts, operational approaches and developmental frameworks with the aim of improving efficiency and transparency of humanitarian organizations along with increasing community involvement in the process. Examples include the ‘asset-vulnerability framework’, the ‘asset-accumulation framework’ and perhaps the most well-known, ‘sustainable livelihoods model’. Since their introduction, ABAs have been applied to humanitarian organization and programme planning at national, project and community levels and have provided a structure for programme development including participatory poverty assessments, policy process analysis, programme reviews and monitoring and evaluation processes (Carney, 2002, p. 18). Owing to their people-centred focus, ABAs have been used in community development and disaster response situations. In both contexts, accumulating assets are viewed as essential for building capacity and reducing vulnerability. Building resilience of people through livelihoods and asset accumulation and safeguarding remains key to reducing the existing gap which currently exists between development and emergency practice. Community-based livelihoods programmes, such as ABAs, offer an opportunity to bridge this gap – especially if the approach includes cultural resources as a catalyst for change.

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[T]raditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.

Intangible cultural assets or resources are often artistically expressed. Through this creative process, tangible assets can also be accumulated such as through creative industries that provide people with livelihood opportunities. Additionally, other social and human assets or capitals can be accumulated, including increased self-confidence and sense of selfworth, strengthened community co-operation and social networks (social capital) and a greater sense of self-reliance (Kay, 2000; Kay and Watt, 2000; Matarasso, 2001b, 2007; Belfiore and Bennett, 2007; Phillips, 2004). Accumulation of these individual skills has the potential to create greater collective assets, such as economic prosperity and increased political influence, which are essential to building long-term resilience in individuals and communities. The value of cultural action in building resilience also relates to its ability to communicate complex and culturally specific ideas and issues in a unique and accessible way. According to Matarasso (2011), this is because exchanging ideas creatively enables people to express ‘their values, as well as their dreams, fears, hopes and desires.’ Cultural action, be this via performing and/or visual art practices, not only creates a platform for creative skills training and personal development but also offers associated business opportunities, including project, administration and financial management. According to Rhonda Phillips (2010), the arts within this context are applied using creative tourism initiatives or as arts business

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as people question, adapt and redefine their values and practices to changing realities and exchanges of ideas.’ Because definitions of culture are extensive, this article offers a small range selected for their relevance to the subject. According to Verhelst and Tyndale (2002, p. 2), culture consists of ‘particular aspirations, attitudes, mentality, values, belief, spirituality . . . [along with a person’s] own skills, expertise and creativity.’ Matarasso (2001a, p. 3) suggests that: ‘Culture is the expression of human values . . . [it is] everything we don’t have to do to survive – but are compelled to do to feel human.’ UNESCO (2009, p. 3) further defines culture as being made up of tangible and intangible assets with tangible cultural heritage, including the monuments and collections of objects that are of cultural significance to a people and place while intangible assets, also known as living heritage, are the:

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Figure 6 Foxhill in the city of Bath (England) rates high on the national indices for multiple deprivation. Multistory’s ‘Made in Foxhill’ project captured local aspirations and know-how using cultural action # StoryWorks.

incubators, arts cooperatives and/or as a comprehensive approach to tackling social needs (Figures 5 and 6). The use of cultural resources and cultural action for community development purposes requires sensitivity on the part of the practitioner as cultural assets can be commandeered and used ‘as a mechanism of control [where people] become subjects whose projects, dreams, values and meanings are supplied by others’ Parmar (2011, p. 156). Rhonda Phillips (2010) also warns that excessive culture-based development can lead to culture/the

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Figure 5 A part of Multistory’s Small Change Creative Projects (SCCP) programme, ‘Made in Foxhill’ (March 2012) explored aspects of community planning using digital storytelling. Situated in the neighbourhood of Foxhill in the City of Bath (England), this project shared stories, like Patricia Griffin and Jonathan Strange, about this neighbourhood with the local authority. Using cultural action, the project aimed to influence local decision-making and highlight local voices in relation to the proposed redevelopment of land adjacent to Foxhill. # StoryWorks.

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Table 1 Opportunities and challenges for development using the arts and cultural action

Opportunities

Challenges

Human and social impacts

Culture-based development remains marginalized in mainstream development practice. Power dynamics if used inappropriately can misuse cultural action Professionalization – terms such as ‘art’ and ‘development’ do little to improve everyday life situations for people living in poverty Policy and institutional structures have the potential to inhibit ‘bottom-up’ creative development initiatives

Economic impacts (cultural tourism, creative industries) Contributes to cultural identity and cultural diversity issues

Artists can make a creative response; challenge existing ways of doing things; reflect, deconstruct and create alternative meanings; and support the expression of people’s stories of place in new and innovative ways Participatory arts are safe, creative, empowering, inspiring, a resource and fun. The arts in development can raise awareness, advocate, universalize issues and reduce conflict situations Cultural action can be used to foster networks and relationships that have the potential to spark change Art and cultural action is a unique type of communication that can spark a powerful exchange of ideas Participatory arts can encourage personal development and social cohesion

The arts build on inherent community assets defined as the gifts, skills and capacities of individuals, associations and institutions within a community

Resources (time and money) Outcomes of cultural action cannot be guaranteed, as there is nothing inevitable about the action of art on people Using cultural action purely to solve social problems constricts its potential to be radical, innovative and questioning Artists working in participatory arts can reduce genuine community engagement by a preoccupation with professional artistic motives

Culture-based development and the arts cannot be done in isolation if social change is the end goal Measuring the developmental impacts of the arts in development can often be difficult due to the human and social impacts being far-reaching and long-term Community development can be inhibited without strong community leadership Neither art nor community activism can nurture a final response to the challenges that face disadvantaged or disempowered communities Group participatory practice is a third-sector approach to community engagement and one that is often alien to the participatory culture of deprived neighbourhoods Participatory community development (including arts practice) requires communities to be flexible and have time and resources to commit to the process

Sources include Arts Council England (2010), Carey and Sutton (2004), Matarasso (1997, 2007, 2011), Moseley (2002), Kay (2000), Phillips (2004), Taylor (2007), Williams (2003) and information gathered from primary research sources.

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Culture-based development is people-centred and contributes to human development. Cultural action post-conflict, post-disaster and long-term development interventions Resources (time and money) Outcomes of cultural action cannot be guaranteed, as there is nothing inevitable about the action of art on people Participatory arts can be radical and innovative and challenge the status quo

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Discussion: towards understanding cultural action as a resource for building resilience in communities The aim of this article was to explore the role of culture and cultural action as a resource for unlocking assets and building long-term resilience in communities. With the discussion positioned within human development, ABAs were explored as they meet the developmental needs of community by nurturing their strengths and resources (McLean, 2011). By emphasizing culture as a resource and the context for development, this article stressed the importance of practice that is culturally appropriate, people-centred and place-specific. The Small Change approach provided a practice and theoretical framework for asset building and cultural action. This study proposes the following ‘next step’-principles designed to further incorporate culture and cultural action into future humanitarian teaching and practice. The first principle is about providing more opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning and practice. Networks, such as the SCF, offer development practitioners and those interested in community development practice the opportunity to exchange ideas and knowledge, leading to more innovative and collaborative community-based work. Furthermore, these networks become repositories of knowledge and evidence regarding the long-term impacts of cultural action in development. Therein

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arts becoming a commodity, thereby reducing its development potential; this is especially the case if local people are excluded from the decision-making process. To avoid these pitfalls, active participation of community groups in programme planning, management and implementation is essential. As part of this process, Matarasso (2007, p. 456) highlights the importance of giving community arts funds directly to groups noting that: ‘Being trusted with money was a genuinely empowering experience [for participants in a cultural arts project] that built confidence and encouraged people to prove what they could achieve.’ Table 1 further provides a list of some of the other challenges and opportunities for community-led development when using cultural action. In summary, culture matters to development because it is a valuable resource for bringing about change and because it is intrinsic and instrumental to how human beings and their societies function. Lasting change, however, requires a progressive approach that is owned by the whole of society and not just a few (Schumacher, 1973). While the arts alone cannot resolve complex social issues, cultural action as a catalyst for this change can aid the process by uncovering latent individual or collective intangible assets and using them to build tangible assets which improve people’s livelihood opportunities and living conditions.

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Funding Research into Small Change theory and cultural action was joint funded by Oxford Brookes University and community arts organization, Multistory.

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lies the second principle, that being development of simple and effective tools for disseminating information about new community-led development practice. It is imperative that these tools do not exclude people from the process; therefore, the use of accessible language is important. Creative methods such as digital storytelling, community journalism and participatory photography can aid this process due to the open and engaging nature of the mediums. Furthermore, it is through publically accessible media, such as YouTube, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, that this information and the networks of people who create it can federate on a global scale, leading to the establishment of a critical mass that starts to challenge mainstream consensus and actively influence future learning, practice and policy-making. Finally, increasing the number of community-led development initiatives will scale up ABAs in terms of development impact and size. Programmes such as Multistory’s Small Change Creative Projects (SCCP) programme (2009–present) demonstrates how to creatively capture information about a community group, using cultural action, and direct it to challenge and change the way neighbourhoods are managed more equitably and sustainably. Working with a range of community groups and associated partners such as governing bodies, housing associations, local authorities and other charitable and community groups, creative development programmes increase the social value of how often scarce resources are used in communities. With the number of people being affected by disasters worldwide predicted to rise to 375 million by 2015 (BBC, 2012) and tough economic times continuing in the West, ABAs offer opportunities to build culturally appropriate resilience in communities. Cultural action is one way of capturing and communicating individual and collective stories about place in order to inspire change. While the arts and cultural resources alone cannot transform the lives of people living in the most vulnerable of situations, they do, however, provide a wide range of diverse opportunities aimed at unlocking intangible assets and social capital – opportunities that can lead to an increase in tangible assets being accumulated with the aim of reducing vulnerability and building more resilient and sustainable communities. Community-led ABAs, such as Small Change approach, are one way in which to catalyse change in neighbourhoods – change designed to improve where people live and the opportunities available to them.

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Jeni Burnell is a researcher and development practitioner with over ten years’ experience in community architecture, art and development. Her research is practice-based and focused on applying the Small Change approach using the arts and cultural action. Jeni is chair of the Small Change Forum (www.smallchangeforum.org) in the United Kingdom, a position divided between working for community arts organization, Multistory and CENDEP based at Oxford Brookes University.

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