This book brings together a range of arts and development scholars and practitioners to explore the unique ways in which arts-based research methods can make a unique positive contribution to effective global development practice.
Since the 1970s, global development has witnessed an increase in the use of participatory approaches to enable the world’s most excluded peoples to be actively involved in the planning and implementation of development projects that impact them. A range of participatory practices are now in common use, many of which use visual activities which enable fuller participation irrespective of literacy levels or social position. More recently, development practitioners with arts skills, along with a small number of professionally trained artists, have started engaging in a wider range of arts-based practices within this participatory development space, aimed at co-creating new knowledge with these communities. This book explores how the performing and visual arts provide spaces for the world’s most marginalised communities to articulate their development aspirations and co-create knowledge that contributes to development outcomes. It also highlights how arts-based research puts the power over development decisions back into the hands of ‘recipient’ communities.
The book will be of interest to development practitioners and artists working with marginalised communities globally, policymakers in arts and global development, graduate students, and academics. The rich case studies provide many fresh ideas for arts and/or development practitioners wanting to utilise arts-based research, particularly with performing arts, in global development programming.
Table of Contents:
Section 1: Introduction and Theoretical Framework 1: Artful Development: Arts as Research Method? Section 2: Case Studies in Arts-Based Knowledge Creation in Global Development Theme 1. Supporting Positive Social Change through Arts-based Processes 2. Harmony Reimagined: Music as a Source of Development Knowledge 3. Island Connect: Video and Art Collectives to Support Inter-cultural Dialogue, Learning and Connection in Sri Lanka 4. Exploring Together: Communal Arts-based Knowledge Creation and its Contribution to Peacebuilding and Poverty Reduction 5. ‘I realised I needed to change’: When Development Workers Explore Communal Conflict Through Arts-based Research 6. Shared Discourses: Post-Communist Participatory Art in East-Central Europe Theme 2: Local Arts-based Knowledge as Development Vehicle 7. Our Ocean is Sacred, You can’t Mine Heaven 8. Healing-ish Healing: Languages Heroes on an Indigenous Theatre Festival 9. Third Space Arts-based Youth Development Work: Navigating the Space Between 10. Toi Taiao Whakatairanga: Shifting Awareness of Forest Health Through Artistic Research 11. Rain Later, Good, Occasionally Poor: Rhetorical Listening in the Time of Climate Change 12. Jathilan Reborn, social transformation through Javanese Traditional Arts 13. From Tragedy to Tradition: Partition Narratives in Haryanvi Folk Songs Section 3: Conclusions 14. The Art of Knowing
About the Author :
Vicki-Ann Ware lectures in development studies at Deakin University, Australia. An ethnomusicologist who is widely published with 30 years’ experience in arts-based community work, she researches arts-based community development/peacebuilding. Having worked in mainland Southeast Asia, she currently works in Bangladesh and Indonesia. She convenes the Arts/Sports Community Development Network, and is Artistic Director for Casey Philharmonic Orchestra.
Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta holds a PhD in Applied Theatre from The University of Manchester, UK. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada. Currently, she is working on her SSHRC grants on Coast Salish language revitalisation through theatre. Sadeghi-Yekta has published many articles in a variety of journals.
Tim Prentki is Professor Emeritus of Theatre for Development at the University of Winchester, UK. He is co-editor of The Applied Theatre Reader and The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance.
Wasim al Kurdi is a poet, writer, and practitioner in the fields of drama and theatre in education. He served as the Director of the Educational Programme at Palestine's A.M. Qattan Foundation and as the Academic Director of DiE Summer School in Jordan. He is an author of books on education, culture, and the arts.
Review :
"This much needed contribution to current development debates provides a powerful analysis of the way the arts can build connection in a disconnected world. In a world where individualism frames human thought, this monograph articulates the power of arts to build the empathy necessary to challenge us all to re-examine, re-think, and re-imagine what it is to be truly human."
Dr Victoria Jupp Kina, Social Research Consultant, Social Research, ReImagined.
“This book embodies that rare type of scholarship which combines academic astuteness with a caring narrative. Detailed analytical insights and rich individual case studies provide both theoretical breadth and innovative practical guidance. This book is essential reading for all those who strive to promote global development that is participatory, empowering, inclusive, and enriching”.
Dr Ana Ljubinkovic, Assistant Professor in Sociology, College of the Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, California State University, Stanislav.
"This original volume centres art's ability to energise and tap into the aesthetic, emotional, affective and somatic realms where so much research fears to go. Critically attuned to ongoing questions about ethics, scale, impacts and, community ownership, this book bridges different literatures, art forms, and contexts to position the arts as a vital (but still underappreciated) form of research/knowledge creation in global development."
Dr Rosie Meade, Lecturer and Vice-Head for Curriculum and Academic Development, School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Ireland.
“This ground-breaking volume is a compelling call for greater integration of artistic ways of knowing, doing, and being in development research. The twelve case studies, conceptually and theoretically framed by the opening and closing chapters, offer practical, critical, and inspiring examples of what is possible, and of the profound insights that arts-based research can generate about the complex work of change. This is a must-read book for development researchers everywhere, whether in the academy or embedded within NGOs.”
Gillian Howell PhD, Musician | Researcher | Educator, Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Melbourne (2023-2026), Research Fellow, Laurier Centre for Music in the Community, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.
"This book represents a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary fields of arts-based research and international development, addressing a critical gap in the existing literature. The book presents a detailed theoretical framework that examines the relationship between the arts and development, along with the cultural significance of artistic expression in various global contexts. Arts-based Research and Global Development [...] constitutes a substantial resource for both scholars and practitioners engaged in arts-based methodologies. The volume aims to fill a gap in contemporary literature by exploring the growing field of arts-based research, specifically how performing arts methodologies, can contribute to effective practices in global development."
Faval Copedo, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, writing in Development in Practice.
