Conclusions: Learning from for-Wards

Curatorial approaches to community engagement are multiple and varied. Some arts organisations deliver projects where communities participate through a top-down approach, and others are more collaborative. Building upon insights from the for-Wards pilot, the hyperlocal compositional methodology I developed focuses on community-specific adjustments and opens up the planning stages of my methodology to the wider community. The enthusiastic involvement of Lee Fisher, initially a for-Wards pilot audience member, and subsequently a steering group member and artistic partner, embodies this curatorial model, whereby community members contribute throughout the process.

There are several aspects of the project that I would approach differently were I to re-run for-Wards in the future. On reflection, community group leaders who were pivotal in the compositional process should have been more closely involved in the curatorial process from the start, instead of which, the steering group I established following the pilot was made up primarily of local arts and music education professionals. I would also ensure that the project is a three-year programme. The curatorial workload for for-Wards was considerable and I would advise a three-month break from outreach activity in-between each year, to allow the core team and partners to have creative downtime. During this period, partners and composers can meet together and allow more time for the iterative cyclic web process to permeate all factors of the process. I would adapt the project budget, so each composer received more funds granting more contact time with their community groups. I would also recruit a field recording practitioner to run the community field recording sessions to ensure the quality of the recordings, and a Birmingham composer to work solely in the role of the 'shadow composer'. The shadow composer would be enlisted to support and challenge the collaborative teams’ hyperlocal compositional approaches. 

However, for-Wards had many successes. The transposition of site-specific art methods into collaborative composition worked effectively. Drawing from site-specific sound art approaches, it included methods such as exploring each locality for non-musical and musical materials, utilising instruments found directly within the site, and field recording - all these methods were able to support the formation of the hyperlocal collaborative works. My principal aim for curating the for-Wards methodology was to ensure a productive, creative environment for collaborative compositional work and resulting hyperlocal musical works. Despite many challenges and an intense workload as artistic director, all 10 commissions were completed, and I was impressed by the commitment of the compositional teams who strove tirelessly to co-create new music informed by specific places and local communities. 

Compositional and curatorial outputs from for-Wards have received regional and national recognition. Young Birmingham saxophonist Xhosa Cole performed Moving Ladywood, one of the ten collaborative works created by the for-Wards team, in the final of the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year, 2018, a competition he would go on to win. During the first year of for-Wards, I was invited by Gavin Wade, director of Eastside Projects, an artist-led organisation working in Birmingham, to share my methodological approach to supporting community engagement to realise a public art project by Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz. Philipsz won the Birmingham Big Art Project commission to realise Station Clock, an aural clock to be made up of 1092 Birmingham voices. I have consulted on this project, sharing the organisational framework I developed for for-Wards, and supported planning for the associated community engagement project, Twelve Tones. Twelve Tones, which I named, is a ‘year-long citywide participatory art project engaging communities across Birmingham and Solihull to support Philipsz's Station Clock. The project explores sound concerning place and time in a series of artist-led workshops and sharing events’ (Eastside Projects, n.d: online), and demonstrates the value and legacy of the for-Wards project beyond the immediate community benefit of my work.