Participate!

Once upon a time, I read a book that argued that it is participation in the arts that holds a social good: against the assumption that going to the opera made an individual a better person, it was clear that being part of a local drama group had a more positive impact on quality of life. Admittedly, the studies it used were primarily concerned with levels of recidivism in prison populations, but it was affirming to know that those prisoners who took classes in sculpture are less likely to break into my house as soon as they are released.

Like 'art', or 'criticism', or objectivity, "participation" is a loaded word that has different meanings, depending on what point the writer is trying to make. For John Carey, it isn't an abstract idea that included every time an audience member turned up, or made a donation to the NTS: it's the hard graft of making art, training or studying. Plenty of reports, however, identify participation as any engagement - these reports are usually intended to emphasise how art enriches life and is more popular than most people think.

My love of being abstract and vague encourages me to consider a more internal version of participation: one that can't be quantified, and happens in the mind of the participant. I have watched plenty of performance over the years, even been to the odd art gallery. But I don't think I am always participating. Sometimes, I am nodding off in the back row. A show later, I'm lobbing shoes at an actor. There's a difference.

Carey's analysis does suggest that participation is a matter of investment: he uses some nice cold statistics, but his message is that when art is worth something, that's participation. To understand whether it is worth something, he judges the impact on someone's life - or society's well-being. Less people jacking cars: a positive. Link it back to that master-class in Bar-L by Larry Olivier, and there's a justification for blowing all funding on a prison programme. And since schools are a bit like prisons, buy a few instruments for kids with the change.

What this doesn't account for, and makes this article just another blast of throat clearing, is that it is impossible to assess the impact in a purely scientific way. I ought to add that I might not be using "scientific" properly, but Carey's research compares the recidivism rates of prisoners who had art therapy against those who didn't. That's actually quite a good experiment, as it has a control group. The statistics for opera goers, and their criminal rates, are more difficult to compare: we'd need a study of people of similar identity who didn't go to opera. And then to see whether the overall picture of society is changed by the presence of performance, we'd need another planet with no art on it. 

So, I might as well stick to my thought experiment. I'm arguing that "participation" in art counts when the observer experiences an assessable change in their understanding. It could lead to action - like throwing a shoe at a Belgian - or just a quiet acknowledgement. 

However, that change isn't going to happen to everyone every time at the same moment. I haven't really changed my opinions on violent pornography due to Wonderland (still not keen), which means that it didn't make me participate (this could stand in for an assessment of quality). Audience, on the other hand, which was still being discussed a year after it shocked the Fringe by mocking the crowd, got me to clamber on the stage. 

If participation is something that could be used to determine star ratings...

I think, possibility, participation, under my definition, is the point

of art. The clever tricks - good acting, clear ideas, nice costumes, the number of naked bodies - are all subsumed towards the end of making the audience feel, to get involved. Traditional notions of quality don't come into it: the ballet is sumptuous and skilful, but does it make anyone change their minds? I'm not so keen on Roman Imperialism since I saw Spartacus, and I'm wary of swans, but I don't think this represents the intense participation I am seeking.

Participation is an act of co-creation - a phrase that comes up in quite a few of those reports I skimmed. I do get involved when Scottish Ballet do Cheating, or Hitler turns up in Nigel Tranter's puppetry: I even get excited by the thought of Rasooly's Paper Cuts, so I am participating before I turn up. To be honest, even when I wrote those smart words about Spartacus, I did think that maybe my sympathy towards communism - which is small - is only due to having seen the Bolshoi. It certainly isn't the Soviet attitude to dissidents that made me consider it as a viable alternative for about thirty seconds in 1987.

Wait a minute - am I always participating? Does something always happen? Those stars only tell of the extent of participation? Do I participate when I decide to miss a show? Is it conscious decision making that counts? What about an involuntary reflex? Do I privilege thinking over feeling? 

I'm hiding this article in the back of the blog.