Community Arts

Artistic Goals: A key goal of Census was to engage individuals from varied social positions within the greater community all at once. This goal was achieved through a recruitment process, rehearsal process, and a public performance which always had this consciousness in focus. Another goal was to sustain engaged participation of 114 collaborators through a 6 week rehearsal process, which included an all-night, nine hour intensive performance. We had 65 collaborators who participated in a 6 week process which concluded in an all-night performance with hundreds of people that joined the performance. It was overwhelming and we had a very difficult time managing the audiences who decided to participate on the line without adhering to our process of integrating as performers. We had a goal to work with impromptu audience participants. We wanted to provide an opportunity for 150 audience participants to sign up. Only a few people signed up prior to the event. There were roughly 34,000 audience members who passed through the festival that night. From 9-midnight, we were able to handle the overwhelming numbers of the audience. But, around 11:30/midnight performers started to perform less which meant that there were multiple unoccupied lights, which led to a lot of drunk and non-drunk audience members taking up the ‘stage’ space. I have been making work that deals with audience engagement for the last 12 years and I had collaborators that have deep knowledge of how Northern Spark functions. There is nothing we could have known to do in terms of preparing for that overwhelming audience interaction, which was so tough to manage. We got an overwhelming response from 20 individual participants via electronic form and 10 through in person feedback. Most of the suggestions were about wanting more rehearsal time. People thought we were planned and organized, and respected in the space, as well as having tools for working on something in community. However, there were a lot of feelings about the audiences that night, although for the most part performers felt that it was out of Aniccha Arts’ control. Feedback from the group at large included: Strengths of process: efficiency of coordination with the large group and the structure for learning; good planning and keeping within promised end times; individuals feeling respected in the process; safe space, open space, welcoming space, community space; individuals feeling power to explore and perform; methods and space for holding accountability and commitment towards each other in a room of 65 people. Things that could improve: craving more space for conversation in the process; needing more time to explore the modules in the process; the overwhelming audiences on the night of the performance; more rehearsal time. I would have fewer artistic collaborators. That would be the only difference if I did a similar project. - Yes we reached our intended community. It is tricky to track the abilities of people given that abilities can be hidden. It is hard to know what gender a person identifies as and it is not an appropriate forum to ask invasive questions of that nature at the festival. Most of our audiences were white as the festival generally brings that audience. But, we really, involved our communities which in turn brought in our connections, just not in the hundreds like the festival. We had an ASL interpreter involved from 9-12am, and advertised to the disability community through various websites and connections about this. We presented our project that could involve audiences on a platform and stage that could bring in people with special needs into the performance as performers. We had Upstream Arts to do a workshop with the lead collaborators to help us create a process with access in mind for performers and audiences. 65 people collaborated in a 6 week process towards the creation of Census. 34,000 individuals attended the festival, and we had hundreds of audiences experience this project. We had hundreds of audiences participate in this project which was exciting and overwhelming at the same time.