The democratization of heritage is the formula encapsulating how tangible and intangible heritage can respond to current needs in an open and inclusive way. One of the possibilities for carrying out this democratization is through community art. According to François Matarasso in A Restless Art. How Participation Won, and Why it Matters, community art is: ‘the creation of art as a human right, by professional and non-professional artists, co-operating as equals, for purposes and to standards they set together, and whose processes, products and outcomes cannot be known in advance’.^[1]

In this sense, Matarasso points out, all the people involved in the process have different roles and contribute different resources, but all those who participate have the same rights in the process: ‘They must negotiate, agree and share what will happen, because, in a rights-based process, there is no legitimate basis on which anyone, including the professional artists, can impose their vision or authority on the group’.^[2] This is in tune with the democratization of heritage, insofar as there is no single or regulated authority that establishes what is and what is not heritage and, more importantly, how we should interpret and use it.

Heritage is a great resource for community art when it is understood from this perspective, that is, as a multifaceted, open and current legacy capable of responding to current issues or, in any case, raising questions or offering other views on the issues that concern us. As Matarasso explains, in the practice of community art, the premise is not only to create something good, but to collectively decide and agree on what ‘good’ means:

the purpose and standards of community art are integral to the meaning of the work and must be established and agreed by the people who make it. Finally, and as a direct consequence of the previous two statements, the processes, products and outcomes cannot be known in advance. […] Community art is not a score to be conducted. It is improvisation, like jazz. Its players agree themes and boundaries at the outset: after that, art emerges as they pay attention and respond to one another.^[3]

When the main resource to build this collective and open score is heritage, we need to understand (as explained in the chapter on exclusive versus inclusive heritage) the importance of rereading, adjusting and listening to the tangible and intangible heritage that we have inherited in order to nurture artistic work. While an exclusive or rigid view of heritage gives us little room for creativity and performance, the perspective of inclusive heritage, in contrast, facilitates imaginative processes, creativity and art and is an ideal tool for community art.

One of the first acts required for this to happen is to determine what type of heritage we want to work on or what is the most appropriate for starting a community artwork. If, for example, those involved live in the same neighbourhood, we can collectively investigate and share the different heritage in the area. As explained in the chapter on inclusive heritage, we can explore the assumed origins of this heritage to find the intersections, mixtures and complexities which forged this heritage element. Ultimately, we will come to an understanding of the way it speaks to us today and how we can use it in our discourse.

One example of this is found in some forms of community theatre, such as is found in the Bambara heritage in Mali. The Bamana have many variants of traditional community theatre called Koteba, whose semantic origin has been linked to the phrase ‘Ko te maaw minniw bali’ (those who can’t be stopped by anybody) or ‘Kote anw bali’ (nothing is impossible to us).^[4] When a modern group interested in community theatre wanted to work on social problems, they turned to the heritage of ‘koteba’ to combine entertainment and social harmonization, turning social problems into comedy, but also into tragedy:

Koteba constantly conveys the idea of individual-society interaction. The repertoire therefore includes scenes from everyday life as well as historical sketches, the aim being to highlight the value of the system of social relations. Koteba has to evoke both the virtues of man and his faults, the latter constituting a latent danger to society. Laughter and derision are used to express criticism and ideas that would be inconceivable in other circumstances.^[5]

Here, heritage (in this case, traditional theatrical technique) is used to elaborate current community work in an always fruitful dialogue between tradition and modernity, heritage and current affairs. It is important to note the central dimension of community work and participation in the entire creative process. In this way, the democratization of heritage, like the democratization of art, implies real and consensual participation that dilutes the barriers between professional and non-professional artist. As the late Ngugi wa Mirii, of the Zimbabwe Association of Community Theatre (ZACT), explained, this is one of the premises of community theatre in Africa that gathers the theatrical heritage of each region to generate current works: ‘The foreign approach to community theatre (where you show the work, talk to the people and leave) – I think it is an insult to the intelligence of the peasants and workers. Those who come from abroad assume that the community has no potential, no communication capacity and that it cannot think for itself’.^[6]

The Parapanda Theatre Lab (PTL), which is one of the leading groups in Tanzania that promotes of this type of theatre, explains what they do:

The process seeks out and analyses problems and offers community members the opportunity to find solutions through debate and consensus. The plays, performed by the same community, are based on the experiences and problems that affect them, such as gender, economics, politics, children’s rights, sexual health and HIV/AIDS, governance, environment or projects for teenagers who have dropped out.^[7]

This community involvement, as with many of the African performing traditions, encourages improvisation as a key element for those who wish to participate but do not have training in theatre. As Oga S. Abah explains: ‘The technique of improvisation democratises dramatic creation, and allows each person to contribute with her skills in the role she plays. Furthermore, the space where it occurs becomes a forum for debate’.^[8]

Thereby, the cultural heritage of the region – where oral and theatrical heritage is central to the entire community in being used to explain myths and legends while serving as a space to create cohesion and resolve conflict – remains a living source of inspiration to generate new community works.

Although the examples are located in a specific geographical context (Africa) and in a specific discipline (theatre), we can find examples of this same community urge to democratize art and heritage on other continents. One example is the Theatre of the Oppressed that began in Latin America and which is now gaining territory as a basic methodology for community involvement in many European contexts.

Community art – and heritage democratization through community art – is a formula that can be replicated anywhere and in all creative disciplines. To get started, all you need is the intention.