Only Connect: Arts Touring and Rural Comunities
by Francois Matarasso with additional research by Phyllida Shaw, Helen Denniston, Anselma Gallinat and Emma Martin (A Comedia report for the National Rural Touring Forum (NRTF), 2004, ISBN 1 873667 825 £10 [£13.59 inc p&p*])
The evocative experience of high-quality ?professional and homemade? performance taking place in rural community venues in England and Wales is highlighted in Francois Matarasso?s ?Only connect: arts touring and rural communities? ? a perceptive exploration of an arts infrastructure rarely described or valued. Based on case studies and contextual research, this report aims to record the important contribution of rural touring schemes to artistic and community vibrancy. It is written in a context of rural change and explores notions of community development and local democracy. It discusses the economics of rural touring, the make-up of audiences and the work of volunteer promoters.
One might expect Matarasso and the NRTF to produce a report advocating the wider social contribution of rural touring ? and, indeed, they do. But Matarasso also stresses the importance of the artistic integrity of the work and describes a form where the inseparability of the two defines the particular qualitative experience. He finishes with a welcome plea to policy makers to avoid engineering outcomes from above as this, in itself, is ?inconsistent with an understanding of those outcomes, and the processes by which they come about?.
Whilst the NRTF?s previous publications focus on ?how to do it?, this report probably represents, along with ?The same? but different: rural arts touring in Scotland? by Hamilton and Scullion, the first significant exploration of community-based arts practices in rural areas in Britain since Bailey and Scott?s ?Rural arts? in 1989 ? and certainly the only one to explore the phenomenon of rural touring in detail.
Review by Jennie Hayes, AHRC Research Fellow, Dartington College of Arts
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