Informal groups – the pros and the cons

The Blok collective, based in Warsaw, Poland, aims to build a local platform for engagement between artists and citizens. It runs exhibitions, breakfast meetings and art workshops for local people. Blok member Anna Pelc reveals the early experiences of this informal group.

by Ania Pelc

Informally dynamic

We are freelance, flexible, constantly evolving, grassroots, responsive. We have a will to act, participate and share. And we are totally informal. In recent months, during our first activities, we have experienced many of the pros and cons of working as an informal group.

As an artistic collective, our aim is to establish a space for dialogue between artists and citizens, as well as to deliver arts to those who are excluded (not always legally; e.g. lately we have shown guerrilla video from the Museum of Modern Art in New York).

Need for space

Our neighbourhood lacks studios for artists, and our space cannot be donated because we are informal, so we rented a 65 sqm basement. This is the Blok studio, our space for activities and meetings. However, we pay much more than city-centre organisations that are supported by the city government. We pay a similar amount of money as our neighbour – a commercial company selling gas guns and weapon.

Our activities often take place in the open air: in parks and public spaces. For example, we look after an old orchard nearby and use it for the performance arts (we also collect apples along with our neighbours in the autumn!). Parks and open spaces can be considered as a kind of living-room, while the studio serves primarily as our kitchen – for cooking up and preparing our meals (our activities and meetings).

Time, money and trust

If you want to take action, what do you need, apart from the will and the idea? The time required. This is why young people, students and older people are generally more able to engage in informal activities.

Raising funds also takes time. Sometimes informal bodies can cooperate with formal ones. Blok is occasionally supported by a local government and the Association of Creative Initiatives ‘ę’ (which introduced me to the I AM EUROPE project). There is also the option of crowd funding, a way of supporting cultural projects that is increasingly popular. The idea is based on trust and shared enthusiasm; small amounts of money can be donated and combined to produce quite large amounts. Ironically, the problem with crowd funding is its very popularity; it gets more and more difficult to collect money. Last but not least, projects need to be low-cost.

Motivation based on shared emotions

Strong motivation based on strong emotions is needed. Our group is organised in a very natural way, based on friendships and common interests. If we need to rest, we rest together watching movies we like or speaking about topics we share an interest in. We promote our meetings on the Internet and invite people to join us. The social networks are crucial. To inform people in general about our activities, we use traditional forms of promotion like A4 posters printed low-cost in our studio.

No doubt we will encounter problems, but we are confident that they will be small compared to the benefits of our activities both to ourselves and to local society.