Community Arts

At the hand of three artistic projects —Suzanne Lacy’s Between the Door and the Street (2013) , Lee Mingwei’s The Moving Garden (2009/2015) and Rirkrit Tiravanija’s The Land Foundation — this paper reflects on the methodological precepts underlying theoretical and conceptual foundations of participatory art at the public space.  Taken as case studies about participatory art, each propositions allow to explore relational art / relational aesthetics concepts proposed by the French curator artificer of the Altermodernism, Nicolas Bourriaud, as well as develop and expand this study considering other contemporary debates related to art practice-based research (practice-led research / practice-based research in the arts), widely addressed by Hazel Simth and Roger T. Dean in their book Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts (2009).  Collaborative art at the public space proposals implies a dialogue with the audience —relational art before mentioned—, they are bas...

How does play impact the way we work in, and with communities? What can we learn about play as an approach in the artistic practices of artists Koh Hui Ling, Lin Shiyun and Tan Beng Tian? Read our freshly published “playbook”, which will distil how play works, as well as how to lead and play in the work with communities.

This book explores the potential for lifelong learning in dementia. A growing social issue, dementia has previously been understood as a wasteland for learning: at best, those with dementia are helped to hold on to some pre-existing skills. This book draws on extensive qualitative data with people with dementia and their families to demonstrate that new forms of learning can happen in dementia, with positive outcomes for both the learner and those around them. In doing so, this book demonstrates that those with dementia help us to understand learning differently, thus providing a breakthrough in our understanding and theorising of lifelong learning. Using posthuman theory to scaffold and discuss the findings, this pioneering book will appeal to scholars of dementia, lifelong learning and the posthuman.

Move, Act, Play, Sing (MAPS) explored early childhood teaching and learning in the performing arts through community artist interventions and relational practices and pedagogies. The research developed three early childhood centre case studies where teachers, children, and parents worked together with community artists, the research team, and other colleagues to explore emergent pathways of performing arts teaching and learning. In MAPS, community artists in music, dance, and drama worked alongside teachers and children in semi-planned, open, and improvisatory pedagogical settings set up to explore the potentialities of performing arts learning and teacher responses in the centre environments and communities. The ethnographic inquiry focused on how the early childhood teachers engaged in meaningful performing arts experiences through the research process and looked at ways in which centres could engage in sustainable, ongoing performing arts teaching and learning.

Community arts have been in evidence in Ireland for over three decades; however, this form of artistic practice has been largely overlooked from social studies perspectives. There is a dearth of social studies scholarship on community arts within the Irish context, which may be explained in part by participatory arts becoming the more dominant practice in recent years. Therefore, this article works to introduce youth work, community development and social studies students and practitioners to community arts and to try and spark interest in this type of arts-based practice. The paper seeks to provide an understanding of community arts and to differentiate community arts (focused on and emerging from communities) from participatory arts (focused on individuals and groups and emerging from organisations and/or institutions). The history of community arts in Ireland is outlined and the contribution of community arts to youth work and community development is focused on. Drawing from international empirical research the paper highlights the beneficial role that community arts can have, in the contexts of youth work and community development. To conclude, the article argues that community arts can play an important role in youth work and community development because this type of arts-based practice facilitates collective community expression and can help stimulate social change from the ground up. The paper encourages youth work, community development and social studies students and practitioners to examine any preconceived ideas they have, that might inhibit them from helping facilitating community arts projects and set these aside; in order to, explore opportunities to foster cohesive magic and creative collective expression to bring about social change.

This article explores the painting of two murals as part of a community arts education project aimed at understanding Marshallese children's experiences of displacement and belonging. It describes the process and outcome of mural making workshops conducted in two schools: one in Honolulu attended by migrant Marshallese children; the other with a community of Marshall Islanders, internally displaced as a result of the effects of nuclear testing on their home atoll. Engaging with anthropological approaches to art (Gell 1998; Schacter 2014), the article seeks to address important questions around the agency of these murals in the context of community arts education. What do these murals do, both in the process of coming into being, and as finished products? How did the images depicted on them take shape? In what ways were the artist's intentions, and the children's input, enabled and limited in this process? Paying detailed attention to these questions, the article argues for a nuanced understanding of what a successful community mural-making process might look like.

In 2010, The Arts and Culture Strategic Review (ACSR) was initiated to chart the next phase of cultural development in Singapore. The final report, which was released in 2012, appears to propose a paradigm shift in focus for arts and cultural policy making in Singapore: from the desire to manage the arts and cultural sectors into profitable creative industries to the utilisation of the arts and culture as expedient tools for social cohesion and community building in Singapore. The shift has resulted in government programmes placing (renewed) importance and emphasis in 'community arts' as a cultural activity.

This chapter critically examines the early years of this shift  towards a socio-cultural focus and it ensuing promotion of 'community arts'. Through an analysis of the rationales, formulation and implementation of the ACSR, this chapter will demonstrate how the ACSR is not an illogical discontinuity from previous cultural policies. Rather, the ACSR is a reaffirmation of the government's deep-rooted desire to harness the arts and culture as ideological tools to socialise the migrant society into a cohesive community. This chapter will also show that the ACSR's invocation of 'community' is a strategic response to the current socio-economic and political realities in Singapore. Finally, this chapter will also highlight some key challenges that the government faces in pursuing a community arts agenda in Singapore.

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What Can Space Do for the Arts?; What Can Arts Do for Space?; and What Can Arts and Space Do for the Community?

Through the lenses of creative placemaking and neighbourhood arts ecology, Trivic re-examines the position of community arts in the spatial, social and cultural landscape. Emphasising urban design considerations of complex interdependent relationships between arts, space and people, he re-explores the role of community-based arts activities in shaping urban neighbourhoods, enriching public life and empowering communities. This is divided into an analysis of spatial opportunities for the arts in the neighbourhood; and a study of the impacts of bringing arts and culture activities into local neighbourhoods and communities, using Singapore’s nodal approach as a developed case study. Using spatial opportunity analysis, the book demonstrates a step-by-step procedure for identification and evaluation of the neighbourhood spaces that work best for community arts and culture activities. In the study of impacts, Trivic proposes a holistic framework for capturing and evaluating the non-economic impacts of arts and culture, on space, society, well-being, education and participation.

An invaluable template for arts event organisers and artists to assess and maximise the outcomes of their creative efforts in local neighbourhoods, as well as an important reading for students and practitioners of neighbourhood planning, urban design, and creative placemaking.

With reference to 'Arts and Culture Nodes' strategy initiated in 2012 by the National Arts Council (NAC) in Singapore, this paper outlines the study that investigated the impacts of community arts and culture events on five local housing neighbourhoods and their communities. 'Neighbourhood Arts and Culture Impact Assessment (NACIA)' framework was developed and applied through spatial opportunity analysis (on-site observations and mapping), surveys, focus group discussions and interviews with residents, artists and event organisers. Key findings reveal the capacities of the initiative to generate positive spatial, social and participation impacts and build stronger neighbourhood arts ecology in local Singaporean neighbourhoods.

What is the value of arts and cultural approaches to community development? To better understand arts-based community development practices in geographically-based communities, this case study looks at the practices of 3 case examples to reveal insights about the work. Featured in this case study are the following cases: The Community Theatre by Beyond Social Services and helmed by Izzaty Ishak; Curating Whampoa (2016-2018) led by Tsao Foundation and Professor Thomas K. Kong; Let’s Go PLay OutSide! (LGPO!) by 3Pumpkins, led by Lin Shiyun at Lengkok Bahru (2018), in collaboration with South Central Community Family Service Centre.

A partir de um cenário de aumento constante dos índices de violência e alastramento da quantidade de vítimas crianças e jovens, há um início de trabalho a respeito da formulação e efetivação de políticas públicas na perspectiva da prevenção da violência. Contudo, este trabalho é ainda incipiente e durante anos o acesso aos direitos, tais como
cultura, esporte e lazer têm sido restritos a uma pequena parcela da população. Por tal motivo, iniciativas autônomas e horizontais têm surgido no sentido de universalizar o acesso à arte e à cultura no combate e prevenção da violência. Em Londrina/PR, dois exemplos desse tipo de iniciativas, o Ciranda e o MH2 – música e hip-hop, partem
originalmente de propostas de moradores de bairros periféricos da cidade para atender outros moradores dessas regiões. O presente artigo apresenta uma pesquisa que busca entender a capacidade de desenvolvimento do potencial criativo-político dos indivíduos que delas participam com vistas a transformação da realidade vigente e da possível prevenção da violência.
Palavras-chave: Potencial criativo-político, Arte, Cultura, Prevenção da violência

TEN: Territory, Encounter & Negotiation (2014) is a self-published critical memoir, produced as a learning tool for the sectors of collaborative arts, education and youth/community work. The publication explores a decade of collaborative art practice from the vantage point of the primary artist involved. It offers a personal and subjective insight into complex working relationships, methods of engagement, creative processes and analyses from ten years of direct engagement with young people. The memoir
tracks the collaborative decision making process coupled with the artist's own thought process at each juncture of the work, to retrospectively identify the methodology inherent in the practice.

Art and arts-based projects are gaining increasing attention as an alternative to traditional peace-building mechanisms and the last decade has seen a more deliberate application of the arts into peace-building work. Focusing on the restorative and transformative potential of community rooted arts to support conflict-affected communities to engage in dialogue, to heal the past and to re-build a future, this essay explores the role of participatory arts in peace and reconciliation processes. Within the emerging field of ‘strategic arts-based peacebuilding’ (Shank and Schirch 2008), how do community artists and arts organisers conceptualise and define their work and its relation to wider reconciliation and peace efforts?

This essay draws on work undertaken as part of Art and Reconciliation: Conflict, Culture and Community, a multidisciplinary AHRC funded research initiative exploring the relationship between the arts and rec- onciliation1. It discusses two long-term participatory arts initiatives in Bosnia and Herzegovina with com- munities affected and divided by atrocity and conflict. Listening to the perspectives of the practitioners be- hind Most Mira and Srebrenica Children’s Music Theatre with Opera Circus UK this research explores how they frame their contribution to peace and reconciliation processes. In communities who are distrustful of politicised discourses around reconciliation how do participatory arts projects challenge what it is that is imagined as ‘reconciliation’?

Nowadays, the gap between arts and everyday lives is narrowing. When it comes to the arts, everything goes. But what makes good community arts? What are the aesthetic standards? How can we assess it? How can it be developed? Community arts is believed to possess the positive power to unite people and inspire them to reflect on social issues as well as to seek out more democratic ways to attain happiness. All these acts of joyous resistance do not only change the society, but they can also be considered as an aesthetics of community arts:  an aesthetics of the pursuit of democracy, justice, equality, fraternity and freedom.

In the fall of 2004, API approached the Center for the Study of Art & Community (CSA&C) to undertake a a study of exemplary practice in the growing but largely disconnected community arts field. Its focus is exemplary arts-based programs that have had a significant and sustained positive impact on their communities. For the purposes of this inquiry “significant and sustained positive impact” is defined as change leading to the long-term advancement of human dignity, health and/or productivity. “Long-term” in this context is defined as a minimum of ten years.

There is growing interest in the arts in community and economic development, yet little research examines the dynamics of community-based arts institutions to inform urban planning and policy. Drawing on interviews with participants and organizers of small and mid-sized art spaces, the study explores the factors that influence their involvement in neighborhood revitalization and outreach, support for artistic communities, and efforts to build bridges to commercial cultural sectors. Art spaces function as a conduit for building social networks that contribute to both community revitalization and artistic development. But, issues pertaining to the location, organization, and management of art spaces may limit their community and economic development potential. The article concludes with proposals to craft stronger artsbased community and economic development programs.

本文以研究者與楊逵文學紀念館的合作為例,探析一個應用劇場方案如何跨 越劇場、博物館與社區的邊界,在博物館使命、劇場實踐與社區脈絡所涵構的空 間中建立多樣的互動關係。工作坊課程、觀摩、排練與呈現提供了多層次的戲劇 經驗,社區的地方知識和凝聚力不僅有利計畫的推動,也啟發了課程設計。整體 而言,這個跨界的劇場方案,促成不同的機構、規訓和人們在關係中互相學習, 進行文化交換。

This paper shares the example of a cooperative research project of the researcher with The Memorial Museum of Yang Kui Literature, reflecting on how an applied theatre project crossed the borders mediating theatre, museum and community, and developed the pluralistic relationships in the spaces distributed among the museum mission, theatre practice and community context. The project provided the community members a wide range of drama experiences through workshops, demonstration, rehearsal and presentation, while their local knowledge and cohesion facilitated the project planning and execution. As a whole, this border-crossing project stimulated learning in relationships and led to cultural exchanges among different institutions, disciplines and people.

De finals de 2001 fins a 2003, la Fundació Jaume Bofill va animar un procés de reflexió al voltant de projectes i experiències de Catalunya que ja aleshores utilitzaven l'expressió artística com a mitjà educatiu amb joves en risc d'exclusió. Aquesta publicació va ser el resultat de la posada en comú entre diversos/es professionals del sector i també l'embrió de la xarxa Artibarri: http://artibarriblog.wordpress.com/

A special issue of Art and the Public Sphere Journal, that invites contributions that examine the interrelationships between public murals and left-wing politics across the past hundred years, and their legacies and resonance within the public sphere today. In 1922 the 'Declaration of Social, Political and Aesthetic Principles' by the Mexican Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors declared its repudiation of 'so called easel painting and every kind of art favoured by ultra-intellectual circles,' calling instead for an art which 'belongs collectively to the people' and set its fundamental task to 'socialise artistic expression and wipe out bourgeois individualism'. In the years that followed, the declaration's signatories (including David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco), established a mural tradition which - if not successful in wiping out bourgeois individualism - offered a defining example of the capacities of the medium. Time and again in the intervening century, the mural emerged in centres across the world at moments of heightened class struggle and revolutionary, pre-revolutionary or reformist mobilisation. This special issue invites
contributions which examine the extraordinary diversity and international
dimensions of one hundred years of muralism, and its myriad interrelationships with left politics and the public sphere.

This essay engages collaborative art projects in a field of settler/indigenous relations: drumming and performances of self at a Michigan language revitalization symposium, Native Women Language Keepers; Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore’s iconic video performance work at the Canadian pavilion of the Venice Biennial; and the Australian community cultural development project Ghost Nets, which emphasizes relationships while cleaning up fishing debris off beaches. The essay argues for reading strategies that acknowledge relational living, in the flow of history, speaking from webs of more than one voice, and attending to gaps.

This report, commissioned by Grantmakers in the Arts, is about the ways that arts and culture grantmakers can engage in systems-change work that addresses root causes rather than symptoms of cultural inequity. The cultural sector is actively seeking alternatives to business-as-usual to create economic and racial justice in the sector and beyond. Grantmakers can play a role in the transformation of the sector by following the lead of BIPOC creatives who are innovating models for self-determination and community wealth. This work is part of an emergent movement in the United States that is known globally as the Solidarity Economy.

This article comprises an oral history from Dr Enda Murray about his involvement in the live music and club scene in Drogheda, a small Irish town in the early '80's. Murray was one of a small group of young people who set up a music cooperative to stage music gigs and clubs in the town. The article also features a detailed and accurate diary of the music and club gigs that took place in Drogheda from 1981 to 1988. The diary features almost all of the major Irish rock bands of that period and is a valuable social record of the local and national music scene in Ireland at the time.

ii Keywords community arts community media community cultural development participatory media appropriate technology sustainability materiality internet studies software studies critical design critical making cultural policy informal education ICT4D Australia iii Abstract This thesis establishes appropriate internet 1 technology as a matter of sustainability for the community arts field. It begins with a contextual review that historicises community art in relation to technological, cultural, and political change. It goes on to identify key challenges for the field resulting from the emerging socio-cultural significance of the internet and digital media technologies. A conceptual review of the literature positions these issues in relation to Internet Studies, integrating key concepts from Software Studies and the computational turn with approaches from the fields of ICT for Development (ICT4D), Critical Design, and Critical Making. Grounded in these intersecting literatures the thesis offers a new pragmatic ethics of appropriate internet technology: one involving an alternative philosophical platform from which suitable internet-based technologies can be designed and assembled by practitioners. I interrogate these ideas through an in-depth investigation of CuriousWorks, an Australian community arts organisation, focusing on their current internet practices. The thesis then reflects on some experimental interventions I designed as part of the study for the purpose of provoking shifts in the field of community arts. The research findings form the foundation of a series of recommendations offered to practitioners and policy makers that may guide their critical and creative uses of internet technologies in the future.

The convergence of art and culture within Australian cultural policy disguises conflicting and preferred meanings ascribed to key terms such as  ‘culture’ and ‘community’. Arguments for funding the arts tend to support programs that express a universalising script of a commonly shared Australian national identity. This study has recorded and analysed interviews with six arts/cultural policy managers and eleven creative practitioners to assess the impact of Australian cultural policy. The study concludes that Australian cultural policy discourse is prone to ambiguous and preferred meanings that legitimate public funding for art and cultural programs.

The thesis argues that current cultural policy aims to grow the economy with a creative industries strategy while the community cultural development model is designed to build social capital. The two approaches are not always consistent in their aims and outcomes.

The Australia Council’s community arts programs are founded on cultural democratic ideals, advocating ordinary people’s right to engage in creative expressions of Australian identity. A founding principle for funding the community arts is intended to promote cultural pluralism. However this approach has contributed to the prevailing view that the sector privileges the cultural fringes at the expense of the wider Australian community.

The thesis tracks how funding for the community arts has devolved to local government to voluntarily plan and manage community cultural development even as state and federal governments continue to assert influence in local and regional arts and cultural programming. There is also the expectation that local government must demonstrate expanded understanding of culture as an integration of social ideals and economic objectives.

The research method deployed by the thesis encourages participants to tell their stories. Consequently, storytelling emerges as a critical creative method and practice that can disrupt and renew idealised images of Australian cultural identity.

The thesis concludes that there is a general consensus based on the interview data that culture does not need to be mandated by government.  As local government continues to rely on key individuals to identify and realise local arts and cultural aspirations, these tend to support idealised expressions of a shared cultural heritage. The consequences are a general resistance to difference in art and cultural practices.

The Pomegranate Center, based in Issaquah, Washington, works “with communities to imagine, plan and create shared public places.” One prominent expression of their work is the “creation of community gathering places (parks, neighborhood focal points, community trails, and public artwork) that contribute to community distinction, vitality and social interaction.” 

In the summer of 2012,  the Pomegranate Center, the San Diego Foundation and the San Diego youth arts organization, A Reason to Survive began exploration of a gathering place project in San Diego to create two citizen-designed and -built gathering places. The partners also expressed a strong desire to extend the benefits of the project beyond the initial placemaking effort. As such, the San Diego Gathering Place Initiative also provided mentorship and employment for a cohort of ARTS-sponsored youth and trained local leaders and organizations to implement future projects.

This study documents the impact of this  9-month community development and training initiative on the  communities, artists, and organizational partners involved.

Recent literature credits community art spaces with both enhancing social interaction and engagement and generating economic revitalization. This article argues that the ability of art spaces to realize these outcomes is linked to their role as public spaces and that their community development potential can be expanded with greater attention to this role. An analysis of the public space characteristics is useful because it encourages consideration of sometimes overlooked issues, particularly the effect of the physical environment on outcomes related to community development. I examine the relationship between public space and community development at various types of art spaces including artist cooperatives, ethnic-specific art spaces, and city-sponsored art centers in central city and suburban locations. This study shows that through their programming and other activities, art spaces serve various public space roles related to community development. However, the ability of many to perform as public spaces is hindered by facility design issues and poor physical connections in their surrounding area. This article concludes with proposals for enhancing the community development role of the art spaces through their function as public spaces.

Between 2010 and 2013, social circus instructor Jon Burtt worked on a number of social circus projects in the Arctic and the sub-Arctic in the far north of Quebec in Nunavik, a semi-autonomous region with Inuit communities dotted around the Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay coasts. In this interview, writer and circus director Katie Lavers talks to him about his experiences there, about the programme he was involved in, the Inuit youth involved and their communities, and the effect of the work on him personally.