Journal of Arts & Communities - Volume 1, Issue 3, 2011

This article presents the results of evaluation research on a Dutch experimental project, 'ArtWork(s)' in the Third Sector', in the Netherlands. Theatre artists participated in four pilots over a period of four to twelve months with migrants, detainees, mentally handicapped and young people at risk. The main goal was to develop and strengthen the competencies needed in daily life and at work. Evaluation research on the effects of the arts programmes in a pre-test–post-test design with quantitative and qualitative methods was an integral part of this experimental community arts project. We evaluated the effects of the arts activities on the members of the four pilot groups, who needed to integrate better into Dutch society. This evaluation not only provides information on the effects of the pilots, but also discussion points on how we can evaluate these kinds of projects, as well as lessons on how to improve the research methods in the future. Important issues in this evaluation are the visions of the artists and coaches on the function and goals of the programmes for these target groups, and the way these visions are reflected in practice.

Despite the post-1994 South African state's efforts to support poverty alleviation through arts and culture programmes, government-funded craft enterprises have had a poor rate of success. Based on two case study projects within Phumani Paper, a South African papermaking poverty-alleviation programme, this article argues that craft enterprises can provide an enabling environment for sustainability and resilience in periods of social transition and transformation. However, if the funding and design of such programmes are managed badly, these can undermine the very benefits they are designed to achieve, with negative impacts on poor communities.

Poverty alleviation grants were initially designed as mechanisms for reparations. But the experience described here suggests that government funders neither took cognizance of the values of sustainable development, nor supported what Appadurai describes as 'deep development' (2004). This article demonstrates how Phumani Paper played a valuable role in supporting the imagination, voice and agency of participants, thereby building human capacity and social capital towards a more just and hopeful future without poverty.

In this article, the author revisits the pedagogy of a chef, which inspired his interest in community arts, before turning to pedagogies of three British community artists that he investigated through an exploratory case study. The article discusses ways in which these artists described establishing relationships with participants and using materials in ways that might push them in new directions and towards the unknown. This process, described by one creative practitioner as 'meeting' and 'extending' her participants, was facilitated through creating an atmosphere of comfort and care, role play, and using materials in ways that allow for experimentation and are not suggestive of particular arts disciplines. In his final discussion, he explores the implications of these pedagogies for current debates within the emerging field of community arts practice.

This article examines theatre's special function in rural communities that have weakened social coherence and cohesion. It considers theatre-making as a communal activity that crosses class and cultural boundaries, bringing people together in ways that mirror the interdependencies and local focus of past rural living. The author considers the nature of community theatre, the changing nature of communities, the loss of shared story and the concept of theatre as communal work. Four diverse case studies of community theatre are presented.

Teacher-practitioners are a unique community, working across cultural and creative sectors and within Arts higher education (Arts HE). The authors argue that higher education programmes like post-graduate teacher training certificate courses do not meet practitioners' professional development needs. Higher education institutions (HEIs) have the potential to develop wider models of creative industry workforce development through offering practice-based staff development to its teacher practitioners. The authors argue that academia has responsibilities to engage with practitioners by; (1) supporting them in pursuing practice outside of HE and in maintaining their identity as practitioners, acknowledging this as central to the value of their role; (2) exploring how practice-knowledge can be made available to students and (3) supporting practitioners in managing processes that make the teaching-practice relationship mutually beneficial to their practice (industry) and the teaching and learning community.

The writer reflects upon a year of teaching at the State Correctional Institution, Graterford, Pennsylvania, USA, where she and twenty-four prisoners collaborated on the development of an original play. In preparing the men to both perform and write their own dramatic work, based on stories from their lives, she employed both autoethnographic writing and improvisatory theatre practices, namely Augusto Boal's Forum and Rainbow of Desire exercises and Jo Salas's Playback techniques. In the article, the author again utilizes autoethnographic practices, now in combination with scholarship, in an effort to define prison theatre. She elucidates certain challenges encountered, specifically those that occurred when transferring the work to other parties for evaluation and performance. Considering how the prisoners' text changed, as it passed through various communities and struggled to fit into those communities' discursive practices, the writer looks at the unfortunate results of such traffic, specifically how the traffic itself affects the original intentions of the work. However, she admits that only in bringing the work out of the prison and into other communities can it have continued life and presence, which holds the potential to create a wider public forum on community-based work in the justice system.