Right now I’m occupied with thinking about the overlap in my practice between art, learning and interpretation, as in interpretation for heritage or environmental sites.
Most of my work at the moment falls into three main areas -
1. Developing interpretation materials for English Heritage/The National Trust by consulting creatively with children and young people, for Stonehenge and its surrounding landscape
2. Responding to the environment of College Lake Reserve in Bucks for Outdoor Culture to develop an installation for a bird hide and creative learning programme for a local school
3. Mentoring or providing professional development for artists, teachers and museum educators on the role of the arts/creativity in learning
I personally see all of this as my practice as an artist, because my practice centres around the role that art can play in supporting individuals to engage with the world around them, and in ways appropriate to them. However, I describe my role to different people in different ways depending on the context in which I’m working, because the popular image of what an artist is/does often doesn’t quite fit. This seems to stem from the image of the artist as being somehow separate from society, not someone with an integral role, apart from to entertain or provoke, or to make things pretty.
But can’t art be interpretation, can’t interpretation be art, and what is the relationship of both of them to learning?
I’m not going to try and answer these questions, in fact I’ll probably ask a lot more. What I’m interested in doing is looking at the role that artists can and do play within the field of interpretation and learning, and explore the relationship between these areas within my own practice.
When I was at college, studying Fine Art and making sculptures that explored the relationship of my body to the landscape around me, I was told by one tutor that my work was too beautiful. She told me that she wanted to be shocked, to be challenged. My response at the time was that that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to engage people, to connect with people and to seek to connect people with the material-reality of the world around them, through engaging them with my artwork. I wanted to encourage a kind of empathy with my experience as the maker, through our shared cultural and bodily relationships with the artwork. I wanted to start to set up a dialogue between them and me, via the materials and processes that led to the creation of the object, and so to the place where the materials might have come from.
In the 15 years since then, my work has developed to engage much more directly with other people, through participatory projects and creative learning initiatives, but the direct sensory experience of exploring a place, and making in response to that, has stayed with me.
I understand that there are lots of kinds of art and artists, and that not everyone is trying to achieve what I am. There are also various approaches to learning, and interpretation materials in heritage and environmental settings take various forms. But what links my work across these areas is the belief in the need for each individual to be given the opportunity to engage with a place, a material, an object, in ways that leave room for them, for their own personal context.
My installation at College Lake could well be seen as a form of interpretation. The other interpretation already on site could also be seen as art - illustrations of the species and habitats are placed around the site and work well. But what I want to offer at College Lake is an opportunity for engagement and learning through interaction with an artwork, within the context of a specific place, that could be said to be poetic, in that it offers more than the sum of its constituent parts. I hope that it will offer a chance to be moved or changed by the experience of that specific environment, rather than being purely illustrative.
So can, and should Museum and Gallery interpretation look to encourage a similarly individual, emotional and imaginative response to a place or an artefact? Can one work of art offer a ‘way in’ to another?
There are plenty of examples of artists carrying out residencies in Museums (see Art & Artefact: Museum as Medium by James Puttnam), of creating interventions that respond to or highlight the background of specific artefacts, but these tend to be temporary, and afterwards things tend to return to normal, like the ‘parachute’ art projects that pop up and fade away in schools. Some interpretation aims to evoke a place or time using film, sound or smell, but is this art? Is there room for an audience or participant to interpret and adapt the experience to fit their own needs and experiences?
My interest is in exploring how artists can facilitate more meaningful interaction with sites or exhibits, questioning assumptions, and giving permission for alternative interpretations to be discussed and shared, in ways that can be transformational for all involved. Can (should) Museums, Galleries and Nature Reserves look to work with artists on a longer term basis, to support a re-evaluation of what a site can look and feel like to visitors, and what they might gain from interaction with it?
As with successful artist-teacher partnerships, this could be beneficial for both partners, with artists offering alternative ways of presenting and interpreting artefacts or information, whilst gaining from the in-depth knowledge and experience of site (Museum, Reserve etc) staff/professionals.
My work in education, especially on behalf of 5×5x5=creativity, seeks to support a move towards permanent change - a move towards educational practice that is responsive to the needs of the participant, that places them at the centre of the learning experience. I see my work in this context as being socially embedded art. I am acting from a position within the system, working in partnership and effecting change through dialogue.
Can involving artists in developing interpretation do the same? Can interpretation evolve in ways that value and respond to the individual, and provide information, rather than simply placing emphasis on the ‘official’ story of an object for example? Can we release our grip on telling people what to think and instead start to focus on engaging and asking people what they think, supporting them to learn for themselves? (See ‘Curiosity’ at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery)
I was watching ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’ last night on BBC 4, filmed at The Freud Museum ( http://www.freud.org.uk ). The staff at the Museum seemed to be exploring similar issues to those mentioned here, with a new director looking to make the Museum appear less elitest, and a discussion amongst staff debating whether letting the objects on display speak for themselves or increasing the amount of interpretation would be best.
The programme seemed to infer that the office staff as theorists/academics took a different view to those staff who were more hands-on. Essentially the Museum was struggling to understand what their visitors wanted and who their visitors were; whether to focus on Freud’s theories or to draw on the life of the Freud family and their personal effects.
I guess that some of them were worried about ‘dumbing down’ and felt anxious about change. From my own work with Museums, there often seems to be a divide between those that conserve and study artfacts, and those that seek to encourage greater access to them. With interpretation lying at the boundary between curation/research and learning/access, it isn’t surprising that there is some conflict.
But as a more creative approach to learning begins to creep into our schools and museums, encouraging more inclusive and person-centred practice, I think that Museum interpretation has a lot to learn and gain from it.
Its not about ‘dumbing down’, its about providing access to a wider range of people and encouraging greater dialogue, resulting in interpretation that is multi-faceted and responsive to the needs and interests of everyone. As people who explore the world around them in creative ways on a daily basis, artists could be the ideal partners in helping this to happen.
After all, what is the point of preserving artwork or wildlife at a specific site if we don’t seek to forge links between them and their local communities, to allow learning to take place in ways that are moving and meaningful to the individuals of that community, using the site as a valuable learning resource and raising awareness of its importance.
Art to me is not something separate that might occasionally seek to engage with society, it is a way of exploring and engaging with the world, which when embedded within our institutions can lead to powerful social and environmental change.
(For more discussion on co-creation of exhibitions with artists and the public, see Museums Association website)