17 OCT 11 Â ANOTHER CONVERSATION Â Â European Parliament Offices, Dublin 2
A4er Lisa Crowne of A4 Sounds took part in Another Conversation, an event organised by Blue Drum. As part of the event to mark the UN Day for the Eradication of Poverty the group  walked from the European Union Parliament office in Dublin, Ireland to the gates of Dail Eireann (House of Parliament). As part of our walk we also handed in a Community Arts Petition to the Ministry of Culture and the Arts Council.
Workshops, Conversations and Silent Work
“Blue Drum works in the context of families and Family Resource Centres
but for Another Conversation we are participating with others interested in collective actions in the area of cultural rights. Of course, the group is actively seeking others, too, who care about community arts, poverty and human rights and the contribution of creativity and arts.
Ten years ago, the Combat Poverty Agency identified the need for an arts agency
to support young people, families and communities in poverty because community
arts was a means to having a voice; having a voice meant making that voice heard and
having that cultural voice listened to”.
“Can you agree to the basic idea?
Imagine a celebration of an Ireland re-set. A (re)connection between ordinary people and the wider social, political and economic process. A new sense of ownership, voice, action. A true creative response to the tsunami that hit every Irish family and community especially those on the edge/margin. This is what is envisioned in our arts programme and will manifest in three ways: (i) newly commissioned work from, by and with communities on the edge in their own home (ii) a parallel pedagogical process about community (re)building and a set of critical reflections emerging from a new strain of community (iii) a set of actions that distribute contemporary cultural expression across the island of Ireland.
We want to do something that has never happened before: to commission the representation of exemplar traditions and living artistic expressions such as oral traditions, performing and visual arts practices, social practices, rituals and events as well as the knowledge concerning making sense of our place in Ireland and beyond. We want to showcase a set of practices, representations, expressions, as well as the knowledge and skills (including instruments, objects, artifacts, cultural spaces), that communities mark as their own. We want to create a platform for cultural expression of the ways our communities on the edge use artistic creation, production, dissemination, distribution and enjoyment and other ways of making sense of their life.”Â
Responses