Beyond Community Engagement: Transforming dialogues in art, education and the cultural sphere

Abstract

This book reconsiders fundamental questions about relationships between community engagement, art and education within cultural spheres. Transdisciplinary chapters bring together researchers as "insider-practitioners" to challenge assumptions and offer new insights about practice, engagement and possibilities for transformation. The chapters reflect both localised projects and international perspectives on ecologies of practice as a key marker of the mobility of ideas as well as social mobility. Addressing socially engaged, informal pedagogy re-examines the aesthetic possibilities of social capital in the public domain. Re-considering contributions of education and research through transfer of knowledge and expertise across small social collectives, partnerships and larger institutional agencies is a growing practice. Examining equity and types of participation alongside issues of local and global significance is emergent in new, pop-up and continuing communities. Gauging social impact through case studies is an important project within the tertiary sector to ensure that critically reflexive visual research methodologies gain currency within contemporary neo-liberal funding and educational agendas. In the current milieux we ask, is all engagement transformative, educative, sustainable and linked to democratizing principles that address civic agendas? Re-imagining sites/situations of learning, culture and place as "practice encounters" utilises practices relevant for educators and practitioners. Applications of ecology, practice architectures and site ontologies inform broader social challenges. Conceiving arts-based research as a network, prioritises transitions and becomings to re-conceptualise the significance of relationships within local/global connectivity. Linking professional networks and agencies to adaptive communities, creates an expanded field of real world creative partnerships to enable changing pedagogies.