Editorial - Elaine Forde

Welcome to the arts edition of Fingerpost. 

As guest editor I want to explore socially engaged art which gives voice to social issues relevant to our lived experience. 

From a young age art has played a prominent role in my life. As a four-year-old I made ceramic houses with my uncle Dermot. 

Studying A-level Art History encouraged me to compare the aesthetic value of art with art that explores the complexity of the world we live in. For example, Matisse’s brightly coloured hand-painted paper cut-outs representing nature, juxtaposed against Picasso’s Guernica depicting the horror and violence of the Spanish Civil War. I understood and appreciated both, but it was Guernica which spoke to me as I grew up experiencing the impact of the Northern Ireland Troubles.

I studied Fine Art at University, and during my Master’s degree in 2000 visiting lecturer and artist Jeremy Deller presented his work to us. He was not a formal artist in the sense that he painted or sculpted, instead he worked with people. His work felt fresh, immediate and inspiring. In collaboration with people he was using art to explore their lived experiences. Jeremy spoke to us about his current work The Battle of Orgreave, 2001 a re-enactment of a violent confrontation between striking miners and the police during the 1984/5 British miners’ strike.

“Basically, I was asking the re-enactors to participate in the staging of a battle that occurred within living memory, alongside veterans of the campaign. I've always described it as digging up a corpse and giving it a proper post-mortem, or as a thousand-person crime re-enactment."

The piece was originally shown on Ch4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ncrWxnxLjg

As I have grown in my career I have sought to discover authentic approaches to socially engaged art practice which explores social issues with communities. Approaches, where there is no hierarchy, where artist and community are equals, sharing and trading knowledge, lived experience, vision and skills to create art which addresses and questions the world around us. This practice can be ethically challenging and difficult ….  and I am sure the re-enactment of a The Battle of Orgreave, 2001 had many challenges. 

As guest editor of Fingerpost I want to bring to you a set of people to share their views on socially engaged practice.

Ailin Conant and Damian Gorman share their experience of using theatre to address conflict. Damian shares three things to bear in mind “when working with people on their stories of hurt”.  Ailin gives us an insight into a production she co-created called “Nobody’s Home” about American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars returning to the United States with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Felicity McCall revisits her experience of participating in Ailin Conant’s production First Response which explored the lived experience of heroic people who responded to the devastation of the Northern Ireland Troubles. “The response was overwhelming. They (audience) got it. Our words, poems, images, recollections resonated with them. They cried. We cried….”

John Johnston from ArtEZ University of the Arts Netherlands identifies the need for a “new generation of artist educators and a new generation of schools who will dedicate their intentions and work to the urgencies of our times…”.

Lotte Wandel, a recent graduate of John’s course at the ArtEZ University of the Arts shares her experiences of working as an artist educator - “I felt an urgency to take the next step in my practice by actually going to Camp Moria on Lesbos to join a small Dutch NGO doing socially engaged arts projects in the camps, called Changing Stories.”

Curator and artist Sara Greavu explores the context of propaganda ….”at its core, is just art that promotes a political cause or point of view.  Propaganda comes from the same root as ‘propagate’; to spread an idea and help it to grow. Until the 20th century, propaganda was a neutral term, then it became associated with lies, manipulation and authoritarian control.”

Our final contributor is Georgia O’Kane who was selected by Holywell Trust to contribute a young person’s perspective to Fingerpost. Her piece entitled Poets and Peacemakers: The Art of Language in Conflict explores with great maturity the impact of words.

This edition brings together insightful and thoughtful pieces which have encouraged me to reflect, and I hope they stir something within you.