Cultural transitions: Italy.Scotland Project
Oct 13, 10:47 AM
After some 18 months of work with 2 Dumfries schools and communities, Lincluden and Maxwellton, the Italy.Scotland project is drawing to an end.
Notions of community permeated the Italy.Scotland project. From Wenger’s idea of communities of practice comes the concept of community as composed of separate individuals, who share a common philosophy (1). Key to this is the sense that a community of practice “is not merely a community of interest”, but “a community of practice are practitioners”, who, over time and through “sustained interaction [...] develop a set of stories and cases that become a shared [...] resource of and for practice” (2). The Italy.Scotland project aimed to create a context that would embrace such an idea and diversity of communities, their identities, practices, ways of seeing and being in the world, which, through the mediation of artists, would “place the viewer” and participants “at the centre of a discussion about experience and meaning” in art, as it becomes juxtaposed and intermingles with “the world beyond” (Ibid) .
At a time of increasing policy interest in community, particularly in terms of entitlement and access and the opportunities presented by the building of a new curriculum in Scotland, what was special about Italy.Scotland and the communities that it involved? As young participants responded to this very question, it was emphatically, “Lisa”, the Dumfries born artist who, in revisiting the communities in which she grew up, encouraged a renewed confidence and sense of self amongst those she worked with; and “Pietro”, the “Italian artist” who “jist looked like he wis a real artist, like somebody that would do like real art, he just looked like Leonardo da Vinci, and he looked like that” and who, along with film-maker Alessandra Populin brought much valued outsider perspectives and insights to the richness of Dumfries communities. From pupils, teachers, choir singers, Salvation army officers, Burns’ aficionados and Red cross workers to name but a few of those involved, these artists challenged how we look and what we think and say art is, in order to make a different sense of the world.
Alessandra Populin 
Pietro Fortuna
Researchers are often asked to sit outside of the communities that are under their scrutiny, however, in a project like this, objectivity and distance are less possible, particularly when working with artists such as Lisa, Ale and Pietro, the community of CREATE and its commitment to the arts and its role in learning, and most importantly the communities of pupils from Lincluden Primary and Maxwellton High, who, supported by their extended communities of families, friends and teachers offer the most valuable insight to the strength of communities of practice, and what happens when individuals feel free from constraints; when the individual is placed at the centre of learning. Confronting such ideas of self is no easy task; as one of the artist’s noted: “Art is all about vulnerability – it is revealing things and that’s hard”. Hard as this challenge may be, all of the communities in the Italy.Scotland project offer ways of thinking about art’s purpose that sit beyond our relation with the object or thing itself and place the activity of making and what it can mean to do that at the core.
Note: The 3 artists involved in the project were: Lisa Gallacher, Pietro Fortuna and Alessandra Populin. A documentary film of the project, directed by Populin is available via Tailsfilms.
References
1. Wenger, E. (undated). Communities of practice: a brief introduction. http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm
2. Zero to infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972. Tate Modern exhibition, 2001.
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/artepovera/