Web Resource/Links

ccd.net is an internet resource for communities, artists and organisations working in the field of community cultural development. Its assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, and by the South Australian Government through Arts SA.

In Profile 2003 is a directory of 70 UK performing arts practitioners who have expressed an interest in facilitating international Arts and Culture for Development (ACD) projects. It includes case studies of a wide range of past projects, many of which were British Council partnered. It gives guidelines on how to plan and manage an ACD project - including advice on strategy, finding partners, tailoring projects to fit your targets, and budgeting. There are also information resources for those who want to find out more about ACD.

The Culture and Development Development Topic group on the World Bank-supported Development Gateway Internet information and discussion service has been joined by a new one on E-Commerce in relation to the cultural industries: E-Commerce for Arts & Crafts. This already has almost 100 resources.

This new initiative envisions a website full of creative responses for healing and reconciliation. It is a project of Herm Weaver and John Paul Lederach. Herm is a roofer, a psychology professor, and always a singer/songwriter. John Paul is a mediator, a professor, and always a storyteller. Both work on the question of reconciliation and healing, and believe there is great potential for nurturing these processes through songs and stories. The site features the Dream the Light CD, a song and story in response to September 11, books, videos and other resources.

CBIR Online - Creativity Based Information Resources is a database maintained by The Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College. Currently, the database contains over 11,630 annotated references of works focusing on creativity.

This site concentrates on making art to heal, on the power of the creative process of art as a healing force. In art and healing, no interpretation or therapy is necessary. The creative process is the healer. Here, art is transformational in itself. The field of art therapy and the field of expressive arts also uses art in healing, but tend to concentrate more on therapy or method and involve training and /or licensing although there is much overlap in ways of working. They are wonderful fields and are usually different from art and healing as discussed on this site. On this site there is information about how art heals, the history of the art and healing, and how each person can heal themselves with art, music, and dance It shares the experiences of healers working in medical programmes using art, and of artists making healing art to heal themselves, others, and the earth. It give you links to other art and healing sites, earth sites, and ritual healing sites on the web. It also have links to art therapy and expressive art sites for readers who are interested art therapy. It acts as a centre of art and healing energy on the web, to help heal you, others, and the earth.

A detailed listing of professional organisations working in art therapy. It includes details of various arts programmes and links to other web sites and projects.

Seeing with the Mbya Guarani is an ambitious collaboration between two small Mbya Guarani Indian communities in the rainforests of Argentina, filmmakers from UK based Native Voice Films and the University of La Plata in Buenos Aires. The project not only empowers the Mbya Guarani to both make a series of films about themselves and their changing environment but also represent themselves on the Internet. The intention is to give a voice to an enigmatic and passionate people in their struggle to preserve their culture and land. It has been in development for over two years and focuses on the rights of indigenous peoples and the preservation of their culture, and how innovation and new technologies, such as the Internet, can allow those in the poverty cycle to make themselves heard on a global scale. At the heart of the project is the intention to give a threatened culture a voice and access to a media that has for too long left them marginalized. All those involved have been working for free. The first websites written by the Mbya, in collaboration with OneWorld International, are already on the net. The short films made by the Mbya are to be on the net in January 2003. t is the primary intention that the film be screened in cultural centres and to other Indian communities across South America in the hope that it will inspire other indigenous groups and filmmakers to use visual media, cinema and the Internet as a platform for expressing their culture and bringing attention to their concerns.

The Development Gateway is an interactive portal for information and knowledge sharing on sustainable development and poverty reduction. The Development Gateway’s Culture and Development Topic Area aims to provide an authoritative entry point to, and focus for, information and discussion about all the key issues, including Arts, Crafts & Media, Cultural Management, Cultural Policy, Cultural Tourism, Heritage, Preservation, Heritage in Danger and The Economics of Culture.

The Panos Oral Testimony Programme has launched a new website which presents a collection of interviews gathered by and from communities in selected mountain and highland regions. To date more than 250 interviews have been recorded in local languages, and transcribed, translated and summarised. The testimonies come from communities in the western Himalaya of India, the Cerro de Pasco region in the Peruvian Andes, Mount Elgon in Kenya, the highlands of Ethiopia and Lesotho, Nepal, and from southwest and northeast China. Each collection is only a snapshot, and does not claim to be representative of entire mountain groups. But the range of individual voices does provide a vivid picture of highland societies, their changing physical and social environments, and their concerns for the future. The main content of the site consist of text summaries of each interview. Each summary presents a profile of the interviewee, an overview of the interview, and a detailed page by page description of the topics covered. The site also provides information about the locations where the testimonies were collected, and the partner organisations involved in the project; and the themes and concerns (with quotes) which emerge in each collection. The testimony summaries are accessible by region and by theme. It is easy, for example, to look through all the summaries in the Peru collection; or all the summaries in all collections relating to the theme of 'migration'; or all the summaries that relate both to Peru and the theme of migration. Sample themes include: changes in the environment; relations with lowland people; gender; the impact of resource extraction; traditional customs.