This article was commissioned by Malcolm Dickson for the book ART WITH PEOPLE of which he was editor. It is an AN Publication, 1995. ISBN 0 907730 23 X.

In the book this chapter is entitled, 'Another History.' I have reverted here to my original title.

A Review and Reflection on Some of the Community Art Works and Projects that took place in Scotland from the Late Sixties to the Nineties with Reference to Related Practices and Events in England.

As with so many of today's practices in culture and the arts the ubiquitous Sixties are invoked as the time when 'it all began to happen'. Community Art was no exception. Certain shifts in art practice relating to, 'whom the art was for?' and 'where it should be made and displayed?' took place during that decade which changed received perceptions about visual art as dramatic as any such change in the twentieth century. The democratic urges and idealism of the Sixties moved a number of artists to question their role in society. Individualism, self- expression and 'art about art' began to be replaced in their practice by collaboration, social relevance, process and context and the whole panoply of galleries, dealers and the art market was deemed antithetical. Maxims such as, "the artist is not a special kind of person but every person is a special kind of artist"; "the context is half the work"; and later, "everyone an artist," offered some philosophical base to the changes. There was also a growing concern and respect for the arts of non-western and ethnic minority cultures which questioned the notion of universally accepted standards in art. Some artists moved out of the gallery and into the street using performance, graffiti, mural painting and video. These actions were fuelled by the gut feelings and radical politics of the time that art should actively engage broader constituencies. However, as Su Braden emphasised in her 1976 book, Artists and People, it is simply not enough to move the work out of the gallery and into the street but that the form and content has to change to take account of that move.

A decade earlier the Artist Placement Group, known as APG and founded by John Latham and Barbara Steveni, had already articulated this in the clearest possible terms by claiming that the "the context is half the work." APG was set up in 1965 to place artists in non-art situations and institutions to make art out of the experience. Graham Stevens, one of the first artists to be placed by APG wrote in 1989, "This might have been called 'contextualism' since it is founded on the recognition that an artwork changes fundamentally in where, who with and how it is made." Artists were placed in situations as diverse as the Department of Health and Social Security, the National Bus Company, Ocean Fleets, the Scottish Office, among many others. The APG procedural model for a placement was, and continues to be, exemplary. Artist and institution were put together for a short initial period with no predictable outcome on either side. This was known as "The Open Brief" out of which came "The Feasibility Study." It contained the artist's proposal for the remaining period of the placement but crucially it was the point at which both the artist or the institution could decide not to proceed. This sequence thus opened the way for the possibility of radical and challenging work. It was a new role for artists and the process and the context became key elements in the subsequent practice. Stevens goes on to claim that APG, "...........grew to make major contributions to the thinking and orientation of art movements of the Sixties and Seventies: Environmental, Light Works, Air Art, Conceptual, Participation, Performance, Process Art, Community Art, Art in Architecture, Artists Film and Video, Energy, Phenomenalism and Time-Based Arts." These are significant claims for APG's influence, an examination of which remains outwith the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that I do regard APG's work as a clear starting point in creating some of the precedents for alternative art practice for this period.

Although APG continued to place artists well into the Seventies, the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Gulbenkian Foundation took up APG's idea of artist placement, diluted the key elements and turned it into the artist-in-residence. The Arts Council appointed, a Placement Officer while APG's funding was reduced and finally withdrawn. The much-diminished form of artist-in-residence became dominant. This was a major error of judgment by ACGB but, more insidiously, it contained serious elements of suppression, sufficiently documented for John Latham to take the case to the European Court. The case was lost when the Court decided it had no power over the decisions of ACGB. With the sidelining of APG went the opportunity to develop, over a long period of time, the kind of contextual art practice that it had begun to refine.

Some artist-in-residence projects have undoubtedly been excellent; the book about which is waiting to be written. (Although Su Braden's book was commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation to examine residencies it had funded up to 1976, she felt compelled to include other, non-Gulbenkian residencies) In the main however residencies were more to do with providing the artist with a studio to continue her/his own work with one or two conditions, such as for example, that the studio should be open to the public for a short period each week to see the artist at work. Nothing could be further removed from APG's aims for the artist and the work. Institutions with their hierarchical and compartmentalised structures were fertile settings for artists to work in. They were able to cut across boundaries bypass red tape and often had the ear of the managing director. This was De Bono's lateral thinking in action and APG succinctly described the artist in these kinds of settings as "The Incidental Person". This episode reflects, what begins to look like a consistent pattern of that period; the arts councils of the UK taking over successful artists-run projects and movements and doing them less well at much greater expense. Richard Demarco suffered the same experience in Scotland. It is clear that APG's work was thwarted and a great opportunity was lost.