I have recently completed a research project on behalf of Arts Council England which explored a range of social inclusion work occurring in the arts and involved many of the arts organisations that have contributed to this issue of Mailout. This article looks at some of the issues that were explored in the research, including the importance of clear and shared objectives, partnership working, the pursuit of quality and approaches to securing sustainability.

Background
In 1999 Policy Action Team 10: A Report to the Social Exclusion Unit concluded that "Arts and sport, cultural and recreational activity, can contribute to neighbourhood renewal and make a real difference to health, crime, employment and education in deprived communities." The report outlined some 'best practice' principles that could be applied to community development work, but one of the issues raised by PAT10 was the lack of hard evidence about the "costs and benefits of arts and sport". Subsequently, the Arts Council published Social Exclusion: A Framework for Action, which identified five key ways it would take forward its work in social inclusion: profile raising; the work of regularly funded organisations; evaluation; multi-agency working; and targeting resources. It was against this backdrop that it commissioned the Arts and Social Inclusion research project which aimed to explore a number of different 'models' of social inclusion work; to identify the characteristics of successful initiatives and approaches which do not work; and to develop measures of success.

Participating organisations and projects
Twenty-eight arts organisations participated in the research and the work involved an in-depth look at 15, mostly participatory, arts projects. Many organisations, such as Bournemouth Theatre in Education (BTiE) and Soft Touch, were nominated for inclusion in the project because they were identified by their (then) regional arts boards as exemplars of good practice in social inclusion work, while others were delivering projects funded through the Enabling Inclusion strand of the New Audiences Programme. The New Audiences funded projects included four 'Model 3' partnerships set up by the Arts Council between regularly-funded organisations and 'expert' organisations for whom working with excluded groups was core to their work.

A variety of artforms were represented and participating groups included young people living on housing estates, older people living in sheltered accommodation, people who were homeless or ex-homeless, people with disabilities, people with mental health problems, young offenders and prisoners. The resulting data raised a number of interesting questions, as well as material that can be used to inform policy and advocacy in the future.

Definitions and language
The research could not escape the thorny issue of language and definitions! While some arts practitioners talked about 'social inclusion', others talked about 'social exclusion' and a number owned up to being unsure as to what the correct terminology was. While social inclusion was generally felt to be less offensive and more palatable than social exclusion, practitioners did not feel entirely comfortable with 'social inclusion' either. As one interviewee explained, "People don't want to be labelled. They don't consider themselves to be in need of social inclusion. That's not how they view themselves at all. It's not appropriate to use that kind of language."

The research documented a broad range of arts projects - but do they all count as social inclusion work? There were example of projects in the research that worked in geographic areas experiencing 'social exclusion' and projects that involved working with groups which some might define as 'socially excluded', or at risk of exclusion, such as young offenders, homeless people or recovering drug addicts. However, the arts projects tended not to have aims that involved explicitly tackling the four policy indicators of social inclusion that are commonly referred to (e.g. health, education, employment and crime). The Arts Council's Framework for Action document noted that "expanding access has always been an important part of the work of the funding system… Advocating the role the arts can play in addressing social exclusion is however a new departure...", which suggests that access is something different to work which 'addresses social exclusion', but this remains an area that needs further clarification.

Good practice principles
The good practice principles identified through a literature review conducted at the start of the research were tested against the projects to see how they operated in practice. For example, 'working flexibly' was identified as a good practice principle, but what does this mean in practice? Some of the other areas explored included: clearly-stated aims and objectives; partnership working; pursuing quality; connecting with local needs; and securing sustainability.

Clearly stated aims and objectives
A scan through the 15 research case studies reveals how much variation there was in the nature of objectives set by organisations. Some could be reached relatively easily and some were challenging. Some focused on reaching certain numbers of people, on an end product such as a play or on outcomes (such as raised self esteem). Some had short-term goals while others had long-term aspirations (to inspire an arts group to continue, for example).

Setting aims and objectives was felt to be a good thing. As one arts practitioner said, "Generally, yes, we set aims and objectives for projects, it's down in black and white here, you have to do that or it's a chicken without a head." However, aims and objectives, although set, were not necessarily clear - the practicalities of 'how do we achieve this?' were not always thought through, sometimes there were no mechanisms in place to assess whether an objective had been met, and sometimes partners interpreted aims and objectives in different ways. A further issue was that, once set, aims and objectives were sometimes revisited only at the end of projects, and artists delivering projects were sometimes only vaguely aware of them.

If an objective was not reached this did not in itself indicate a project had 'failed'. Artists would sometimes state how they genuinely wanted to do more than achieve objectives on paper or at all costs. For example, Fashion ID, a project run by Artworks-mk and Milton Keynes Gallery, hoped to bring together younger and older residents but in practice it would have been insensitive to have pushed for this in order to 'tick the box' - the groups were not ready.

Partnership working
Partnership was used to describe a wide range of different types of relationship. Some of the partnerships with non-arts agencies amounted to little more than the agency hosting a visiting arts activity, while at the other end of the spectrum long-lasting, mutually-beneficial partnerships had evolved, such as that between the Mercury Theatre and North Essex Youth Offending Team. Sometimes partnerships just weren't established early enough - arts organisations secured funding and set about delivering projects and later tried to bring others on board.

That's not to say that partnerships between arts agencies were trouble-free - organisations were often coming from different places, had different ways of working and had different cultures. Those that ran into problems often traced back the difficulties to the planning process - there needed to be more time spent on discussing and establishing a way of working together. The partnerships that worked best tended to develop very naturally: the project aims were clear and understood by all parties; the project fitted the organisations' own goals; the organisations had been very honest about what resources and time they could (or could not) contribute; and roles and responsibilities were understood.

The Model 3 partnerships were purposely set up to test whether mainstream organisations could learn from working with expert organisations, but the research found that these partnerships experienced many of the same problems as other projects. One such partnership was Cardboard Citizens and the Royal Shakespeare Company, who had never worked together before. The RSC hasn't become a socially inclusive powerhouse as a result of working with Cardboard Citizens, but both partners have learned a number of lessons, and it has provided a foundation on which future projects might occur.

Working flexibly
The importance of flexibility in projects working with excluded groups was evident in all sorts of ways: artists spoke of responding to the mood of the group or of individuals on the day, and of responding to individuals' needs and accommodating their particular interests or strengths. Projects were collaborative, but this did not mean participants were let loose to do what they wanted: as one visual artist put it, "It's not good enough as an artist to just give them the materials and say 'there you go, you're so wonderfully creative, how lovely'. That isn't actually working with people."

Similarly in the drama projects, although the process was led by a director or facilitator, the material for a play was devised from participants' ideas, improvisations and exercises, and participants felt a strong sense of ownership of the final product.

Pursuing quality
Quality had relevance to projects, not only in terms of process but also the final output. In visual arts projects, quality was evident in the way work was finished and exhibited, and in drama the focus was on achieving as professional a performance as possible. As one artist put it, "Why bother doing anything else?" Projects often culminated in a performance, exhibition or sharing of work. The 'sharings' were a way of celebrating achievements, and the interviews with participants showed the role of these events in enhancing their feelings of pride.

Connecting with local needs
The PAT 10 report identified "connecting with local needs" as a good practice principle in this area of work, and it had been hoped that the research would include some projects that were 'community-led'. Most projects felt they were responding to a need, although one not necessarily articulated in formal terms by the group itself. However, in practice, the projects in the research could not be genuinely described as 'community-led' - none were initiated by communities themselves and none were controlled by participants - it is an area that future research might explore. That said, Vita Nova is a theatre group of recovering addicts which formed as a result of doing a drugs education play with BTiE. The group is developing into an independent theatre company and the role of the person who first initiated the project, Sharon Muiruri, Co-Director of BtiE, has changed from one of facilitator to mentor of the new company.

Securing sustainability
It would clearly be unrealistic to expect all arts projects to carry on indefinitely. Indeed there was one example, Connections, a ten-week course during which prisoners read excerpts from literature to explore their behaviour, where the tutor noted that the brief and intense nature of the project was one of its strengths. However, artists were reluctant to parachute into an area, deliver a project and then run because "You know that everything will close up behind you and then that will be that."

Organisations tried to secure some level of continuity in various ways. Some had built a training or mentoring element into projects in the hope that people within groups would be inspired to lead activities themselves. Some organisations continued to invite participants to 'open access' events. One organisation was hoping to keep its participants informed of events run by other organisations that might be of interest. More generally, organisations would signpost people on to other groups or classes, but, as interviewees pointed out, this was often an unsatisfactory approach - there was little to signpost people on to, existing arts groups had long waiting lists, and many participants did not easily 'fit' into existing forms of activities such as those delivered in schools or youthclubs.

Soft Touch, one of the well-established organisations participating in the research, was trying to tackle the sustainability problem by focusing on creating programmes of work that would enable it to return to groups it had worked with in the past but also to instigate work with new groups. It is ironic that at the time of writing Soft Touch is in the throes of a funding crisis - its local authority is proposing to cut the whole of their grant aid funding from April 2005, a move which in turn may jeopardise the funding it receives from the Arts Council.

This brings me neatly on to my next point about sustainability. It is difficult for organisations to work with groups or communities in a strategic way, to offer participants routes for progression and continuity, in part because of the short-term, project-focused nature of much funding. One artist noted that that one of the difficulties with a lot of funding was that funders liked supporting things that were new but "sustainability is not quite as sexy". This raises important issues for the arts - how can funders best support sustainable organisations?

One item that should be added to best practice working is implementing polices and procedures that protect the safety of both artists and participants. While some organisations had a code of practice that informed artists' way of working, had risk assessment procedures and offered artists support in dealing with issues that might arise from the work they were involved in, this wasn't true in all cases. For example, there were a few rare instances in the research where an artist had worked alone with vulnerable or volatile groups and difficult situations had arisen. Artists will always need to make judgements based on their experience and the situations they find themselves in, but it would be beneficial to disseminate best practice in this area.

The research also reports on what participants themselves thought about taking part in projects, although there isn't enough space here to do justice to that. Participants talked about what they'd learned, the pride they felt, how they'd come to think differently about themselves. Some talked about the arts in life-changing terms but for others it was simply an opportunity to try something a little different, to have fun, as one participant said: "We've had fun, laughs along the way. I've not done anything like this before and it's been fun."

Helen Jermyn's report has fed into the evaluation report on the overall Arts Council England New Audiences programme, published in May this year.