What is it about?
The Community Arts Movement originated in the UK in the early 1970s and was active as a movement until the mid-1980s. This edited book is in two parts and the first part offers the artists involved a platform to discuss the work that they did and why they did it. The second part uses the work of the Community Arts Movement to reflect on the state of community arts now. The book is co-edited with artist Gerri Moriarty.
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Why is it important?
In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s there was a huge amount of time and effort spent thinking about how best to connect 'ordinary people' with arts and cultural expression. Many art forms emerged as a result of this that were particular to the Community Arts Movement. This work has been largely ignored in the history of fields like applied theatre and relational, social or dialogic arts and we thought that it was important to make a claim for the undervalued influence of community arts work.
Perspectives
As someone who worked in community arts throughout the 1980s this was a great way to reconnect to that work and to many colleagues who worked in the same field whether I knew them at the time or not. It was important to me to write a book that would have academic rigour while still being accessible to a more general audience. It was a difficult tightrope to balance at times but the hard work has paid off. Not only is the book readable, it is also now available free online through a Gold Open Access agreement.
Dr. Alison Jeffers
University of Manchester
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art, June 2017, Bloomsbury Academic,
DOI: 10.5040/9781474258395.
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