Scholar activism as a nexus between research, community activism and civil rights via the use of participatory arts

ABSTRACT

Can academy-led research ever be used as a liberatory intervention in communities especially when they have already decided upon their own interventions? This paper attempts to explore this question with a case study about a piece of grassroots community activism that combined knowledge and expertise from both the academy and the grassroots to save a local heritage centre. The paper explores the tension between the epistemological starting points of these often-disparate constituencies when they attempt to come together to constitute ‘scholar-activism’. The paper also examines how this epistemological tension between the academy and the grassroots can affect the efficacy of upholding and fighting for civil rights at the grassroots level when scholar-activism is used as the main vehicle for achieving social justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Grassroots communities
• scholar-activism
• impact
• epistemology
• academic research
• community engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Ornette D. Clennon is a Visiting Research Fellow and a critical race scholar in The Research Centre for Social Change: Community Wellbeing, Manchester Metropolitan University, where he leads the Critical Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster. Ornette is also Visiting Professor at the Federal University of the Amazonas.

Notes

1. C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (London: Penguin, 2001 [1938]).

2. O.D. Clennon, Project Mali, Manchester: A Snapshot of Manchester's African and Caribbean Assets (Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University, 2017). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317893633_Project_Mali_Manchester_A_snapshot_of_Manchester's_African_and_Caribbean_Community_Assets

3. N. Frude et al., Crime-Pics II Manual (Cardiff: Michael and Associates, 1994).

4. O.D. Clennon, ‘How Effective Are Music Interventions in the Criminal Youth Justice Sector? Community Music Making and its Potential for Community and Social Transformation: A Pilot Study’, Journal of Music Technology Education 6, no. 1 (2013): 103–30.

5. Ibid., 113.

6. BBC, ‘Keeping it Real? Encore Performance at the BBC, 2015’, (full). June 15, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgrB4b0Azjo

7. P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1973).

8. J. DeFilippis et al., Contesting Community: The Limits and Potential of Local Organizing (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010).

9. E. Wenger, Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction, October  2011. University of Oregon Libraries: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/11736

10. M. Newman, ‘Learning, Education and Social Action’, In Understanding Adult Education and Training, ed. G. Foley, (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2000), 59–80.

11. Y. Field et al., A Place to Call Home: Community Asset Ownership in the African Diaspora Community (London: Locality, 2015).

12. Newman, ‘Learning, Education and Social Action’, 275–6.

13. O.D. Clennon, The Polemics of C.L.R. James and Contemporary Black Activism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

14. O.D. Clennon, Mali Enterprising Leaders COMMUNITY BUSINESS EVENT, September 30, 2017. Critical Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster: https://critracemmu.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/mali-enterprising-leaders-community-business-event-west-indian-centre-westwood-st-30-9.pdf

15. O.D. Clennon, Project Mali, Manchester, April 7 2016. Critical Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster: https://critracemmu.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/project-mali-manchester-7-4.pdf

16. D. Austin, ‘Education and Liberation’, McGill Journal of Education 44, no. 1, (2009): 107–17.

17. O.D. Clennon, Mali Enterprising Leaders LEADERSHIP DAY, July 2017, 29. Critical Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster: https://critracemmu.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/mali-enterprising-leaders-leadership-day-coin-street-community-centre-29-7.pdf

18. L. Flanders, In the Age of Disaster Capitalism, is ‘Survival Socialism’ the Solution? July 2018, 19. The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/age-disaster-capitalism-survival-socialism-solution/

19. Ibid., para 23.

20. O.D. Clennon, SPECIAL REPORT: Building the Democratic Economy, from Preston to Cleveland. The Laura Flanders Show, June 2018, 20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnXsteyfiUg&feature=youtu.be (L. Flanders, Interviewer)

21. Flanders, In the Age of Disaster Capitalism, para 28.

22. A. Choudry, Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015).

23. G. Foley, Learning in Social Action: A Contribution to Understanding Informal Education (London: Zed Books, 1999).

24. See note 7 above.

25. O.D. Clennon, Urban Dialectics, The Market and Youth Engagement: The 'Black' Face of Eurocentrism (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2015).

26. J. Butler, ‘Merely Cultural’, Social Text 52/53 (1997), 265–77.

27. D. Hancox, Skengdo and AM: The Drill Rappers Sentenced for Playing Their Song, January 31, 2019. The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/31/skengdo-and-am-the-drill-rappers-sentenced-for-playing-their-song

28. Choudry, Learning Activism, 87.

29. M. Bowl, and R. Tobias, ‘Learning from the Past, Organizing for the Future’, Adult Education Quarterly 62, no. 3 (2010): 272–86.

30. S. Howard, Shane Howard: Lyrics (Melbourne: One Day Hill, 2010).

31. See note 4 above.

32. See note 22 above.

33. i.e. The general atomising nature of neoliberalism as expressed through the commercial market of cultural commodities (Clennon, 2015) and O.D. Clennon, Black Scholarly Activism between the Academy and Grassroots: A Bridge for Identities and Social Justice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

34. C.E. Glassick et al., Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997). Their framework comprises: clear goals, adequate preparation, appropriate methods, significant results, effective communication and reflective critique.

35. R. Swindells et al., ‘Eudaimonic Wellbeing and Community Arts Participation’, Perspectives in Public Health 133, no. 1 (2013): 60–5.

36. R. Purcell, ‘Images for Change: Community Development, Community Arts and Photography’, Community Development Journal 44, no. 1 (2009): 111–22; A. Scher, ‘Can the Arts Change the World? The Transformative Power of Community Arts’, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 116 (2007): 3–11.

37. O.D. Clennon, NCCPE Engage 2013 Conference – Day 2, Bristol, 28.11.13, November 28, 2013. Academic Creative Enterprise: Some of my Press Clippings and Other Stuff … .: https://mynewsclippings.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/engage-2013-day-2.pdf

38. Ibid., 17.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid., 3.

41. Ibid., 4.

42. Ibid., 5.

43. For example, it was quite difficult to mobilise the operational structures within the institution around applying for potential funding for the project that could have made its organisation much easier.

44. Clennon, NCCPE Engage 2013 Conference.

45. Ibid., 4.

46. M. Madriaga, ‘Antiblackness in English Higher Education’, International Journal of Inclusive Education (2018). doi:10.1080/13603116.2018.1512660.

47. S. Martikke et al., Greater Than the Sum of its Parts: What Works in Sustaining Community-University Partnerships, September 2015. GMCVO: https://www.gmcvo.org.uk/greater-sum-its-parts-what-works-sustaining-community-university-partnerships

48. S. Hill, Engaged University – Engaged Research, October 25, 2013. National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement: https://nccpe.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/engaged-university-engaged-research/

49. i.e. The importance of close social bonds to support emerging youth leadership, the role of the community Elder in knowledge transmission and youth mentorship, the application of intergenerational leadership in creating alternative community economic models and the strategic planning for the maintenance and acquisition of community assets.

50. D. Coburn, ‘Beyond the Income Inequality Hypothesis: Class, Neo-Liberalism, and Health Inequalities’, Social Science & Medicine 58, no. 1 (2004): 41–56.

51. Precisely to build a market case for structural investment in the local community via the community centre – implicitly a market transactional use of research.