who wants to stick a band aid on a gaping wound?

I worry about my work. I worry about having enough work. I worry about having so much work I can’t do it all properly but because I’m worried about not having enough work three months down the line, because I’m worried about some prospective projects coming off at all due to grant based funding  so I have to accept it all and so from time to time it’s wall to wall insane. Such is the condition of self employment. Still I can’t complain and at least I have a part time steady wage from the University which helps considerably when I’m worrying. Worry and fear are also great driving forces - they make you innovative, they make you plan ahead and care about the quality of what you’re doing. Sometimes though also they put you in danger of compromise or put you into grey areas – one in particular that gives me pause for thought – when I’m working sometimes with groups who are in danger of being excluded or in difficult social circumstances – and the project isn’t one instigated by us, isnt fully connected with the outside world so its products don’t get to anyone except the funders and the immediate participants - it just feels like someone got some cash and is hitting some targets but not seeing the work as a path to anywhere for the participants – you’re just there giving them something to do, so they don’t shoot up, slash someone get wasted etc. Quite frankly sometimes I sit there wondering if this was my life would   I want to write a poem or  would I want a big fuck off bottle of whisky or something stronger because it’s so hard? But then you hear the work back and you think wow have I helped release that ? Everyone should read that! Then I really worry, if creativity isnt connected in some way to real possibility of progress or change is it possible that it’s just anoher opium of the people, replacing religion in the marxist analysis, comforting the bourgeoisie, allowing the liberal bureaucrats to feel justified and cosy in their fetishisation of art as a celebratory ritual? Meanwhile the structures of society that create the exclusion, the conditions for violence and self obliteration are left untouched, indeed even protected by arts activity that should be producing challenges to them, making them visible.  I have occasionally expressed this to other artists and had it pointed out to me that – hey its okay as long as what you do helps light a fire in one soul - and I can see the truth of this but I also feel all artists working in the community should be asking these difficult questions. Sometimes you are in a project and you know its gong to have a lasting effect -last week it was amazing launching one of the Storytrails maps we’ve done with year 3 primary kids for Wynyard Woodland park – you could see as the kids read their poems, songs and stories in the green space next to the storytelling chair that they ‘d become more aware of the environment and nature through means of the imagination and would hopefully stay in the Green Man and Faery Queens’ auspices forever and want to protect more green spaces when they grew up. Other times though you feel that you are being used for other people’s purposes – even well meaning organisations and that it borders on compromising your artistic and social integrity -especially when it’s work that has been contracted to you through a middle party in the council or an arts oganisation and clear parameters of responsibility for final say on the final product have not been agreed. Every year for the last six there’s been at least one project which Bob and I have worked on when we’ve done what we said we would on our Ek Zuban tin and given the target group a voice as requested then someone in the powers that be have got nervous about what that voice is saying. Poetry and writing from such groups is often uncomfortable and makes visible some of the real effects of poverty and deprivation and exposes a class devide that less empathetic members of the administrative class can’t put a positive spin on and absolutely don’t want to be be heard. Then you’re in a tough position because they the person who gave the job to you, who you often have a history of a good working realtionship with, under pressure – to not put the play about teenage pregnancy out more widely because what the young mums say in it doesn’t chime comfortably with the latest government initiative on “delay” being a realistic solution, to not publish a certain piece because it may challenge the perceptions of effectiveness of work with that kind of group without broader social initiatives or because it is simply offensive to hear the voice of the usually silent and powerlessness when it doesn’t sound like your own. And if you’re unlucky that person in the middle caves in, being perhaps, reasonably afraid of losing future funding from that body. One of the big problems that causes this is the fetish for positivity that exists in the arts and local government and media, you can see how this occurs with all the pressure on funding - we all start to develop this relentlessly cheerful approach to sell projects in the first place and then this can spill over into interference with the truth of the final product. People lose track of the fact that exposing disturbing truths and allowing screams of rage can be positive in itself as it can then lead to better empathy and change as well as allow for personal catharsis and reflection but then maybe sometimes it doesn’t – so what – its better to see more truth than less surely?  This week all this came back into my mind on a project where the person responsible for commissioning a mag by a particularly vulnerable group has come back with some criticisms of the final product that goes well beyond what you normally get in terms of how we may describe their organisation in the editorial, size of logos etc and has asked us via the council who brought us in to change the front cover (a cover agreed with the artist working with us and the participants) on the grounds that it is “disturbing” and to remove what we regard as one of the strongest autobiographical pieces on the grounds of it making them feel “uncomfortable”. So what do we do, do we insist on the integrity of the product and defend the voices of the clients who have told their truths or do we risk it not coming out at all and losing the support of those in the council who brought us in to do the job (and many others) in the first place ?  Do we stick a band aid on it? What would you do? ( I usually ask myself what Joe Strummer or Jean Paul Sartre would do but then it’s not always helpful in an area tinged with grey) One thing I would draw from this is if you are brought in for a project that you haven’t seen a contract for you really should ask for one that makes it clear that you and the participants have the final say on creative content. After ten years of working in the arts I would point out to poets just starting out that it can be a minefield and usually the political explosions occur in the fields of those you may have presumed to be your natural allies. Try and get clear agreements about artistic independence on projects if you can – not easy though when  you’re competing with fellow artists for the work in the first place. No matter where your place is when you get into this territory on the creative arts map ”Beware, Here be Dragons!”