More than a hobby

Every Wednesday evening, when I get home from a meeting in London, a visit to one of our offices in Newcastle, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Derry or a conference in Cork, the last thing I feel like doing is getting straight back in the car to drive up the motorway to Northampton for a rehearsal of the amateur orchestra I play with. But every week I persuade myself that I can’t let my colleagues down so I make my way to the Music School and take my place amid the other French horn players at the Northampton Symphony Orchestra. And once we start playing I forget the stresses of the working day and remember why I got into working on behalf of the amateur arts sector in the first place. For those of us who voluntarily practice some form of arts activity in our own time – and some estimates suggest that this includes almost half the adult population, playing in orchestras, singing in choirs, acting, dancing, painting, lace-making etc. – it’s often difficult to articulate exactly why we do it. But it usually becomes such a significant part of our lives we genuinely feel we couldn’t do without it.

The scale of amateur arts activity across the UK is massive. The research ‘Our Creative Talent’, commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England in 2008, discovered that there are more than 49,000 amateur arts groups in England involving an estimated total of 9.4 million participants. Intuitively, the impacts these groups have on their communities must be considerable but there has been very little robust research in this area.
At the end of 2010 the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Connected Communities programme awarded funding for a research study to look at the impact of grassroots arts activities on communities. The study brought together academics from the social sciences specialising in the voluntary and community sector, academics from the arts specialising in participatory arts practices in research and evaluation and Voluntary Arts – the network of national membership organisations representing grassroots arts groups across the UK and Ireland. The study responded to gaps in knowledge identified by the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham, around community arts activity and its contribution to social policy agendas, as well as those identified by the School of Drama at the University of Exeter and School of Creative and Cultural Industries, University of Glamorgan, in terms of understanding such groups within a wider Third Sector context.

The clearest key finding to emerge from the study is that, throughout the UK, sustainable grassroots, amateur arts activities are thriving and participation is on the increase, with a considerable focus on involving young people. The study revealed that while there is a limited and fragmented amount of research literature which examines the function and role of grassroots arts activities on a local, single project basis, there is little robust, empirical research on the subject, particularly from a UK perspective. Moreover, the few studies that exist are frequently in the form of single project and case study evaluations, making it problematic to extend these claims to inform a bigger national picture of arts activities.

The initial findings from our study have been launched by the Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey, at a consultative seminar, ‘Growing the Grassroots’. The findings link to five main themes:
• amateur arts impact on individuals, enhancing health and well-being and providing common ground and sometimes a form of non-verbal communication for social contact that reduces isolation and brings pleasure
• impacts go beyond the individual across the groups who participate and into the wider communities in which they are situated
• amateur arts provide an opportunity to learn.
• amateur arts can benefit the local and wider economies.
• perhaps most importantly the amateur arts are about fun or “serious enjoyment”.

The study shows that many participants view their arts activity as more than a hobby. As they engage in the arts and find themselves fulfilled and entertained, they encourage others to join in and develop other arts-related activities. Amateur arts enable people to discover new sides to their personality, to be creative, take risks and try new mediums.
Speaking at ‘Growing the Grassroots’, Vaizey said “this is not about a few people dabbling here and there, but about a serious commitment by a considerable number of individuals. People who are involved in the voluntary arts come to it with a great deal of passion, with no financial reward.”

Participants at the seminar made some important observations:
o Amateur arts are all about creating positive human experiences. Joy is fundamental to well-being. Amateur arts are about fun and enjoyment rather than work. It’s about being ‘in the flow’, distracted or removed from everyday lives and problems.
o Art enables people to externalise their problems – they express themselves and feel better as a result. People who just sit in front of the TV are more likely to internalise their problems.
o Being stimulated to perform or create, particularly in a group, reduces isolation.
o Artists say “it’s cheaper than therapy”, but it’s better too because therapy focuses a person on their problems, it’s inherently negative, whereas art is all about positivity, creating, doing…
o Art is the closest thing you can get to a religious experience in a secular society.
o Amateur arts enables ‘quiet communication’, non-verbal sharing, entry to a different life (albeit briefly) and membership of an unspoken community. It takes people beyond self to “a different and special place”.
o People use it to cope with bereavement. It enables them to feel a sense of belonging and to enjoy friendship even after most trying experiences. Group amateur arts are about togetherness.
o Amateur arts are refreshing, renewing, endorphin releasing. The enjoyment makes you feel better physically and mentally. You release endorphins. You can feel that your blood pressure drops after a stressful day.
o Amateur arts provide a safe space for young people to mature. Art is an intermediary between adolescence and adulthood. Adults in that setting can be role models. In the safe haven of an arts group young people can grow, develop and become more confident. It’s more positive and supportive than sport. Fewer young people are disenfranchised by art.
o The opportunity for physical expression, self-expression and emotional content make you feel good.
o Doing something you love, feeling the ‘completeness of the moment’. Living in the moment away from all your worries.
o Amateur arts create collective memories that are humanising and promote societal well-being.
o Amateur arts groups recycle money within communities through the purchase of materials, room hire etc.
o Amateur arts groups contribute to the economy as producers, consumers and facilitators.
o For many participants amateur arts act as a route into employment.

The main output of our study into the impact of grassroots arts activities on communities will be a full scoping paper and an executive summary which are due to be published next month (and will be available from the Voluntary Arts and Third Sector Research Centre websites). We are then hoping to secure funding for a second stage of the research, exploring in more depth the impact of amateur arts activities. The challenge for this second stage will be in helping amateur arts groups bring together what statistical information is readily available and moving from anecdotes around impact to developing a collective narrative of the power and outcomes of amateur arts. We are hoping to develop a research tool that amateur arts groups will be able to use to generate evidence of the impact they have on their communities and we are keen to test this by working with several brand new amateur arts groups to measure various aspects of their communities before and after they start their activities. If you know of anyone who is planning to set up a new grassroots arts group we would love to hear from you.

In the meantime the next Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert is fast-approaching and I am itching to do some more practice in preparation for next Wednesday’s rehearsal.