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Linking communities, universities and museums through artistic inquiry: The Kamloops experience
On 2 July, 2003, Dr. Lon Dubinsky spoke at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden.
At the talk of Lon Dubinsky, co-organised by the ACSN and supported by the Canadian embassy in the Hague, about 20 people were present of many different backgrounds. There were academics as well as artists. Besides Lon Dubinsky, Ross Nelson and Jann Bailey spoke as well. The afternoon ended with a lively discussion and a visit to the museum of ethnology.
Dubinsky explained all about the research project The Cultural Future of Small Cities and about the small city of Kamloops. The main players in this project are the Art Gallery of Kamloops and the University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops. This is one of the rare cases where the art gallery actually has the lead in a research project. In most cases the lead role is reserved for universities. The accent on small cities as opposed to big cities is decided because there is already so much attention for mega projects of almost epic proportions in metropolitan areas. The fear of the decline or loss of community projects was another reason. Besides, isn't a big city nothing more than a collection of communities? Communities seem to be a highly relevant scale for research projects concerning cultural aspects. Unique in this research project is the collaboration of universities, museums and the community. The small cities project contains 12 individual projects with related community activities. The projects vary from installing a children's area in the museum about the notion of home and place to an intercultural play by the playwright Thomson Highway that will be travelling through Canada.
The Small Cities project employs five artists. There are three models to pair them up with a scientist or a scientist's work. An artist can have affinity with the topic and has past or current work that matches the research themes, an artist can respond to an individual research project or an artist can work side by side with a scientist.
Dubinsky expressed three concerns about the unconventional academic practice of this big research project, which has already been running for four years. The first is that there is a methodological challenge; the second is an ethical consideration. The artistic license that many artists believe in does not always agree with the ethic review. Every artist working on this project has to submit his or her work to an ethical committee. The third concern is that contemporary art is becoming too institutionalized.
Ross Nelson told about his project and collaborating with the very popular painter, Steve Mennie, who handed disposable cameras out to people he met on the street, giving them the assignment of taking three pictures, one of themselves, one of what they liked in Kamloops, and one of what they didn't like in Kamloops. This is also a good illustration of some ethical concerns; there is no control of what shows up in these pictures, re-evaluation is necessary. Still, this highly original project is going to be academically sound with the necessary commissions and reports. Revisions and changes will be taken care of after talking to the community. With that, it is a concern "whose language" you are speaking in the dialogue between artists and scientists as well as with the community. All directions are indeed of concern.
The general finding is that there is a culture of participation, rather than a cultural participation. Furthermore, the small cities project is succeeding in putting academic research into a larger public domain.