In many post-conflict societies, arts funding policies and practices are invariably interwoven with the politics of reconciliation, especially when that funding is derived – directly or indirectly – from statutory bodies and arts councils. Within this context, peace-building and economic regeneration will also become part of the same instrumentalist discourse, as new political institutions and contexts emerge. However, while there may be ways of measuring economic performance and the robustness of democratic processes, capturing how the arts contribute to social cohesion and conflict transformation is a more challenging proposition: it is one thing to lobby passionately on behalf of Art for Reconciliation (AfR) projects – alongside artists, civic and community activists, teachers and researchers – but quite another to demonstrate exactly how such projects contribute to attitudinal, behavioural, and structural change.
This special issue of Cultural Trends examines these issues in relation to contemporary Northern Ireland. Drawing on a wide range of methodologies, case studies, and community-based contexts, the selected articles examine a series of questions associated with the relations between funding policies and modes of cultural production, statutory accountability and artistic creativity, happening and archiving: how do we assess the extent to which AfR projects contribute to reconciliatory processes of healing, witness testimony and intercommunity engagement, rather than merely reinforcing disagreement and prejudice? Does AfR possess the conceptual and definitional robustness required to adequately understand how its positive reconciliatory outcomes are realized? How are funding practices, arts activities, community responses and management processes archived within this context, and is this archive intentionally skewed to tell the right story about AfR? Are reliable evaluative tools available to measure how AfR achieves a shift out of, and away from, conflict? If evaluations are typically based on audience response (as opposed to more detailed and grounded evaluative techniques that measure positive relational change between communities in conflict), how much emphasis should be placed on the forms, genres, and situations of given AfR activities (for example, theatre, film, exhibition, creative writing, mural art, musical performance, etc.), and the particularity of their audiences
In the opening article, Peter Shirlow reflects on key findings from research conducted as part of the AHRC-funded major project, The Art of Reconciliation: Do Reconciliation-Funded Arts Projects Transform Conflict? (2017–2021), which was led by the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies. This project, which – remarkably – has been the first of its kind related to AfR and Northern Ireland – investigated twenty years of AfR funding and practice, and concluded that, as Shirlow notes, working concepts of reconciliation have been ill-defined due to both an ideological aversion to conceptual clarity, and the presence of a deeper societal scepticism or under-appreciation of the transformative role the arts can play in peacebuilding. The article offers both a viable conceptualisation of AfR and explains how multi-methodological approaches are required to study long-term aspects and outcomes. Shirlow also highlights the potential of these outcomes in bringing together funders, those funded, artists and participants to map out more coherent AfR approaches in the future. Also drawing on the findings from the AHRC Art of Reconciliation project, in their article Coupe, Hadaway, and Jankowitz examine the reasons why a proliferation of funder-led auditing and evaluation processes (and rhetoric) has in fact led to a paucity of “accessible data recording the development, production and experience of such cultural and artistic practices”. In their view, the complex political relations between AfR funders and funded practitioners have mitigated against good practice when it comes to “what traces of [AfR] work are officially archived and in what form.” According to authors, the “selectivity of this archive” further exemplifies the broader ideological priorities of the peacebuilding elites in Northern Ireland rather than facilitating the development of effective AfR policy and practice.
The next two articles in this issue focus on questions of AfR, peacebuilding, and regeneration through specific case-studies. Taking as its example the Theatre and Peacebuilding Academy programme (2018–2020), which was funded through the EU Peace IV Programme, David Grant’s article reflects on the tension between meeting the funder’s expectation that this project would conform to “pre-determined expected outcomes” and the reality of what happens on the ground as a production, involving a wide range of participants, responds to circumstances both within and beyond the performance space. Grant questions the efficacy of too narrowly defined or formulaic AfR funding criteria that fail to take into the account not only the vicissitudes of any collaborative creative process but also the new, unexpected peacebuilding possibilities they can discover. Continuing the issue’s focus on the performing arts, Eleanor Lybeck’s article then examines the role played by social circus in conflict transformation, particularly the Belfast Community Circus School (BCCS), Belfast’s annual Festival of Fools, and the more recent incarnation of BCCS as Circusful. Drawing on a range of policy documents, interviews, and evaluation data, as well as critical perspectives (especially, the work of the performance theorist and cultural activist, Alan Read), Lybeck traces how the social aims and peacebuilding impact of BCCS has been affected by wider changes in Northern Ireland over the last forty years, changes that have culminated in the advent of Circusful in 2021.
In the closing article from this special issue, Des O’Rawe and Mark Phelan take a comparative look at questions of testimony, representation, and reconciliation within the context of Northern Ireland’s contemporary screen and theatre cultures. Focusing on recent BBC/Northern Ireland Screen-funded documentaries concerning the legacies of the conflict (for example, Lost Lives, or Troubles: The Life After) as well as AfR theatre projects (Theatre of Witness, for example) and specific productions (Owen McCafferty’s Quietly), the article argues that despite their very different funding, exhibition, and reception contexts, such examples highlight the dangers of assuming that the arts can make up for shortfalls in political communication elsewhere, or that they should ever be funded because in and of themselves they can adequately address the rights of victims and survivors. This assessment reiterates a theme running through the special issue; namely, the need to continue interrogating the relationship between the arts and peacebuilding, clarifying what we understand by AfR, and ensuring that in funding the arts for socio-political ends, we do not forget why they exist in the first place.