What obstacles did Creative Civic Change communities face?

Environmental factors impacted on the work of Creative Civic Change communities. 

All of the Creative Civic Change communities are neighbourhoods of long term deprivation and inequality.

Even though the projects took an asset–based approach to their work, focusing on the resources and positive possibilities in their areas, the challenges that many residents face around poor health, financial precarity, housing conditions, and family circumstances mean that it can be hard to find the head space and mental strength to participate. 

These pre-existing inequalities were deepened further by the advent of COVID-19. Many residents in Creative Civic Change communities were vulnerable due to pre-existing health inequalities, and digital inequalities in their communities meant a simple pivot to online wasn’t going to work.  

Not being able to spend time face to face as a group, strained relationships, and meant it was difficult to sustain resident led working groups; project workers had to work much harder to keep in touch with people individually; and many teams experienced burnout from working so hard in the early stages of the pandemic.

Growing through the Storm provides more detail of how Creative Civic Change communities responded during the COVID-19 crisis. 

For some Creative Civic Change communities, inequality was deeply shaped by structural racism, although this connection was not strongly emphasised within the programme on the whole. 

In 2020, the twin impacts of COVID-19 (which laid bare the racial dimension of health inequalities) and the worldwide trauma and grief following the murder of George Floyd, along with the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, affected Creative Civic Change communities and their residents unevenly.

For one project, which was already responding to the structural racism of the Windrush scandal and the racialised effects of gentrification, this heightened the challenges of working with inter-generational trauma, grief, and vulnerability.  

For another, it felt important to respond creatively by highlighting the everyday forms of racism experienced by Black members of the community. The impacts of these crises will be long felt in Creative Civic Change communities.  

As early as summer 2022, Creative Civic Change project workers were bracing themselves for the approaching cost of living crisis, knowing that their communities would be particularly vulnerable. They were planning how to create warm hubs, fundraising for wraparound after–school activities, and re-starting food support. 

• Read about what it was like to act as a ‘Critical Friend’ to a Creative Civic Change project.
• Find out about the Playing the Race Card project and the role it played in amplifying the voices of Black artists.

In common with all community work, Creative Civic Change project workers had to contend with tensions and conflicts within their community. They needed to negotiate long–held grievances, distrust, and personality clashes amongst residents:

“Too many suspicions, and people from two communities such that even I, at that point, still a volunteer, was regretting the idea of the two communities in a project, because I thought ‘there’s already problems in one community. But then when you have two communities coming together, oh, my goodness, where do we start?” (Project worker)

In a small number of places there were tensions between who was perceived as a ’proper’ artist and who wasn’t, and local talent was overlooked in favour of external ‘experts’: 

As soon as the external artist, creative, critical person came in there, what they said, sort of had the value, and we weren’t necessarily listened to.”
Artist

Some places struggled to build equitable relationships with local cultural organisations, whilst others had to contend with disparaging and derogatory attitudes about their area from the wider cultural sector: 

“When I’m at networking events, especially in the creative field … there was one particular occasion where somebody remarked on where I was working, and said, ‘Well, you know, everyone down [place] is just thick and uneducated anyway, so what difference will it make?’” (Project worker)

In some areas, personal histories led to tensions and competition between cultural organisations for resources, rather than collaboration. 

A number of projects reflected that their activities hadn’t reached as deeply into their communities as they hoped. They acknowledged that some of their most marginalised residents weren’t benefitting from this investment: 

We always want to get more people involved and hear more voices and do more. You always have to factor in that people’s lives go through phases and change. And they’ve got different capacity or different incentive to be involved. And, you know, you can’t rely on residents to want to always do something.” 

Project worker

Creative Civic Change teams wanted to spend as much of their budget as possible on activities that benefited their community, and to keep overheads to a minimum.  

As a result, many under budgeted for project management and admin time, and, because of their commitment and passion, found themselves working way beyond their contracted and paid–for hours. Unpaid labour kept their projects going: 

“We really intended to spend the minimum on the admin. And that makes it hard … we were shocked when we went to see how much arts organisations spend on the admin. And I can understand why now, especially if you’re going to be proactive, encouraging people … you can gayly say, ‘Oh, yeah. We don’t need to spend all that money on admin’, but actually, it’s got to come out of a pot somewhere for things to actually happen.” (Project worker)

There was also a lack of clarity in some places around who was getting paid, for what, and who was volunteering their time: 

This line between who’s a volunteer and who’s not. And then people are working, and work on the group. And then we pay someone to do a few things … and then there’s some people have got no money whatsoever. It’s not quite right.”

Project worker

In some areas, the decision makers and local fund holders didn’t have the same values as the programme funders. Creative Civic Change project workers didn’t feel trusted, and felt their Locally Trusted Organisation (LTO) didn’t really understand their community and the value of arts and culture. (Locally Trusted Organisations are the ‘host’ organisation that holds the funds for each individual project and has ultimate accountability; some LTOs also deliver their Creative Civic Change activities, some are more hands off.)

One project described ‘dreading’ meetings, as they felt their work would be scrutinised and criticised, whilst another needed their critical friend to explain about fair payment for artists: 

“It’s run by like, older ladies and gentlemen who come from a different, say, economic background to the people that we’re trying to reach. And so I don’t think they fully understand the weight of money. And I don’t feel like they fully understand what the community needs … what the poorest parts of the community needs, because they’ve never experienced it.” (Project worker)

Many (but not all) Creative Civic Change projects based their work on artists co-creating alongside communities, with a core principle that creative ideas were to come from the communities, not from the artist.  

This was a challenge for some artists who were used to leading community arts work, rather than listening, questioning and responding. Projects (and their critical friends) invested considerable time and effort in supporting artists to work in this way, and it wasn’t always easy:

The idea that ideas come from people, and then we have to work with those ideas, I think, was a challenge. But I also think it was an opportunity to do things differently for those who had not done that before … for this one artist in particular, she became defensive, angry.”

Project worker

When I got asked to do the project, I thought of a few ideas. And then [name] was like, ‘No, it has to be co–creating’ … And so in the end, the kids came up with the idea … so I took their idea and made it into a thing.  So that’s quite different to how I’ve normally worked.”

Artist

Project workers were also local residents, and because of their enthusiasm and commitment to their work it was often difficult to draw a line between their personal and their professional lives:

For me, it’s been about setting boundaries, and living my life. And that as much as this project is a massive part of my life as a community member and citizen. I have a life outside of that and I need to make space for that.”

Project worker

Burnout was an issue in many communities. Project teams worked above and beyond to deliver activities and support their communities during the pandemic, and many residents and workers were personally impacted: they lost loved ones, became ill themselves, or were shielding.  

 This, combined with working long and unpaid hours to see projects through, and the emotional labour that this type of work needs, took its toll on workers who felt utterly exhausted, with one describing ‘being on their knees’:  

All the really relational stuff that’s made things work, that takes tons of time, and you have to just stop what you’re doing and deal with that. And it’s very inconvenient, but it’s … completely essential, and the people that we’re asking to step up deserve that.”

Project worker

The financial support that projects provided to artists during COVID-19 highlighted the precarious nature of their work. Self employed, dependent on an unpredictable succession of projects for their income, and often poorly paid, many had no safety net and no support structure to fall back on.  

Whilst we heard how rewarding this work is, and the emotional and creative benefits it brings, artists are acutely conscious of their economic situation.  

One was frustrated that she was expected to join a series of ‘catch up’ sessions without any payment, while one who had switched careers noted that she was earning a third of her previous salary. Another commented:  

“From when I got the theme, to when I did the carnival, I just did that constantly. I was probably on less than minimum wage if you work it out.” (Artist)