Periodic Reporting for period 2 - AMASS (Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture)
Período documentado: 2021-04-01 hasta 2023-01-31
AMASS proposed an innovative approach to address addressed societal challenges in Europe through arts practice, arts education, arts-based research, and design thinking that can impact on and mitigate such challenges. AMASS brought together societies in Europe that are often considered peripheral but may contribute valuable experiences of education through arts and culture. The project learned from, invested in, and celebrated the diversity of cultures in Europe by creating new bonds through arts and cultural actions and activities between regional communities, cultures, and localities in Europe, with a focus on reaching the unreached: socially disadvantaged and culturally marginalised communities. Through face-to-face and digital cross-border collaborations within Europe and globally, the arts and cultural practices of Europe’s peripheral societies were exchanged, represented, and valued, whilst policy issues investigated, discussed, reconsidered, innovated, and disseminated to reinforce the social, cultural, and economic benefits the digital age has to offer. The overall objective of AMASS was to address the marginal positioning of some European societies, groups, and communities and the under-representation and power imbalances that exist for arts and arts activities in the peripheries. AMASS addressed societal challenges, such as various forms of exclusion and poverty (cultural poverty through lack of cultural capital, material, educational, and skills poverty, as well as poor networks), whilst promoting resilience and inclusion in European regions through the strengthening of insights into ways that were inclusive of peripheral communities, their specificities, and the societal impact of arts and culture practiced by vulnerable groups. This led to a more equitable distribution of the benefits of innovation, but also to access to the arts and the fight against exclusion.
The literature reviews and policy analysis performed by WP1 provided a framework and set of evaluation tools and parameters that provided the AMASS partners with insights to guide and develop the experiments carried out within the AMASS framework. WP2 authored a report based on assessment methods in art education that reviews contemporary methods of assessment in art education and identified authentic methods for socially engaged arts-based interventions. WP2 initiated an international overview of arts-based social interventions in the seven AMASS partner countries and compiled a rich, structured dataset. WP2 authored a report based on contemporary methods of assessment for socially engaged arts-based interventions and compiled numerous publications in open access high-quality scientific books and journals and co-authored the AMASS policy white paper, a collection of research-based suggestions about strengthening the role of the arts in education and community work. Following the kick-off of the AMASS European Testbed of experiments in WP3, pilot studies were conducted by different partners and evaluated. Experiments planned for the testbed were completed. The studies carried out in WP3 had an impact on participants’ well-being, self-esteem, interest in cultural institutions, and attitudes towards the arts, while participating institutions and NGOs broadened the reach of the consortium considerably by helping to recruit participants or by disseminating information about the studies and their results. The set of participatory service design methods developed in WP4 enabled stakeholder engagement. Data collected from stakeholder workshops were presented as 7 regional policy roadmaps, from which the AMASS policy paper was developed. A communication and dissemination plan and safeguard data were developed in WP5, alongside a visual profile for the project. In the project's final phase, a MOOC was co-created by all partners in 8 lessons. WP4 and WP5 technically implemented of the MOOC by managing the development of the course outline and learning content. At the project management level (WP6), information sharing, feedback, planning was implemented to meet the project’s planned objectives and milestones. The independent ethics advisor (IEA) ensured timely ethics reviews and ongoing monitoring of ethical implications for each AMASS partner.
In addition to developing a sense of social responsibility among artists and a participatory role for communities in artistic work, AMASS evaluated the social and pedagogical impact of its projects from the perspectives of all stakeholders in the testbed of experiments. WP1 impacted the project’s overall knowledge base and, through joint analysis of data, contributed to the connection between that knowledge and practice, as well as knowledge and policy, and knowledge dissemination through the online MOOC. The project strives for assessment and accountability; therefore, we accomplished a systematic literature review authored by WP1, which showed that the impact of the arts is complex and may simultaneously be negative and positive for different communities. The literature review also revealed that social marginalisation is not the primary focus of the research collected in our corpus (over 10,000 articles). As educational policies in EU countries are research-based and data-driven, the national projects of AMASS are evaluated, and the affective and cognitive development and enhancement of creativity and social skills are revealed. A descriptive collection of authentic and sensitive assessment methods compiled by WP2 provides a basis for the selection of suitable tools. The pilot projects of the testbed of experiments (WP3), which were conducted by five of the seven AMASS partners (except HB and Leeds), have all undergone such scrutiny, and their effects on participants and their community have been revealed. These results add to the value of these innovative educational interventions. The societal impact of the arts, assessed and disseminated through over 30 projects in WP3, have, together with the PSD and stakeholder workshop approach of WP4, fed into local, regional and European-wide policy recommendations that were disseminated in the project. WP4 contributed beyond the state of the art through experimentation with different policy development approaches in digital environments. The AMASS project completed and evaluated 35 international arts-based interventions. AMASS offers researched examples of participatory art practices that can be adapted to improve the social processes of inclusion. Assessment results seem to be more convincing for local, regional, and national policy makers than proud statements by project leaders, and thus ensure the sustainability and dissemination of AMASS methodology. AMASS contributed to addressing the structural problems associated with policy development, which is based on top-down narratives often reinforcing existing power structures and elitist organisations, thus posing a problem for grassroots-level participation and the involvement of marginalised communities in policy decisions. The persistent challenge with policy decisions is that they are often too abstract and removed from the concerns of marginalised communities while there are growing divides and gaps to be bridged between stakeholders.