Agency, Power and Confrontation: the Role for Socially Engaged Art in CSCW with Rurban Communities in Support of Inclusion

Rapidly expanding rural communities (often termed ‘rurban’) face complex social challenges around inclusion of newcomers and resulting changes to long-established community identity. Although participatory CSCW provides resources to support rurban social inclusion, complementary approaches may be needed to facilitate potentially uncomfortable creative and political responses to questions of agency, power, inclusion and confrontation. We suggest that socially engaged art (SEA) has the appropriate qualities and track record to complement better known CSCW approaches in these settings. SEA offers a specifically experiential and dialogical approach to community participation in design, where the kinds of interactions made available by SEA can provide a space for a more dissensual participation. As well as introducing SEA and explaining its potential contribution to participatory CSCW, the paper presents a focus group study undertaken in an Irish rurban community, and considers the implications of insights from that study in future SEA-informed CSCW with this community. The focus group analysis highlighted supportive organised community action, queried social encounters in public space, examined misperceptions and poor communication, and problematised the role of powerful organisations in fostering inclusion. SEA-informed design considerations in support of social inclusion in this community include: supporting volunteerism; examining the evolution of community institutions; reimagining interactions in public place; and dispelling misconceptions through building mutual understanding. We propose that the dialogical aesthetic of SEA complements other CSCW approaches by drawing attention to tacit, visceral and emotional experiences; dialogue and conflict in collaborative processes; and increasing participant (including emerging community) agency in enacting alternative possibilities.