How to nurture ground for arts-based co-creative practice in an invited space: Reflections on a community in North Netherlands

Abstract

This chapter provides inspiration for researchers and practitioners who aim to engage with a community using (arts-based) creative practices, inclusive of dealing with the challenges this presents. We do this by reflecting on an illustrative case, a community engagement strategy that nurtured the ground for such practice under 'invited space' conditions. The questions that guide this chapter are: How should a creative practitioner deal with the constraints of an invited space when engaging with a community in the initial stage of a project? And, how best then to respond to the needs of the community on their own terms, rather than to external interests? To address these questions, we draw upon a place-based, cultural project situated in a village in the north of the Netherlands. The village is currently in the midst of two significant spatial transformations, namely municipality boundary changes and the construction of a windpark within its immediate environment, which caused distress and opposition among the residents. The case demonstrates how a creative practitioner was able to flip the constraints of co-creating within an invitational space 'on its head' by transforming this challenge into an invitation from the community themselves to continue the project on their own terms. This reversal was enacted by the creative practitioner implementing a community engagement strategy that reflects many of the participatory action research principles outlined in Neal's (Playing for Time: Making Art as if the World Mattered, 2015) 'art of invitation'. The findings provide inspiration for researchers and practitioners that aim to apply arts-based co-creative practices, including how to navigate existing power balances and re-centre a cultural project towards the needs of the community.