Community Arts

An arts and mental health initiative, Berkshire and Oxfordshire 2001-2003maps aims to change lives and overcome isolation by placing people with mental health needs at the heart of the community.The video documents key features of the programme, including:• A mentoring scheme supporting the personal and professional development of emerging artists with mental health histories.• Interviews with artists, health professionals, project participants, mentors and mentees.• Participatory arts projects in day centres.• Festivals celebrating the performing arts• Visual arts exhibitions

hands up! and be counted looks at some of the projects funded by the Community Cultural Development Board that have been produced by communities with migrant or refugee backgrounds. The 'how to apply' section is a simple outline of the steps involved in developing a proposal and applying for project funding.

Over 6 workshops, young people from a refugee background and living in Brisbane came together to talk, draw, paint and sing about their experiences of the past and their hopes for the future. The video is a snapshot of these reflections.

A practical guide to setting up and running arts projects in the community including advice for planning and organizing and templates for project proposals and managing publicity.

A report which aims to provide a practical resource for community organisations, communication professionals and social-change activists working in development projects that they can use to assess the progress and the effects of their programs.

Research regarding the role of arts in young children, from birth until the age of 6.Identifing and describing examples of current practice in the arts in eary years, the study also aims to help provide a firm foundation for development work in this area.There are 3 main starnds to the research:1. a national survey of arts education and early years representatives to identify, and collects the views of, key providers of arts and early years activity; and to identify examples of current practice.2. six focus groups of representatives to discuss current practice and fututre priorities.3. ten case studies of current practice.

This title is designed for people who want to make and use pictures for development. It provides guidelines to enable non-artists to make their own visual aids such as discussion starters, picture cards, flannel boards and community maps. It includes sections on: common pictorial conventions; how to draw and use colour; how to copy and adapt pictures; how to make and use a range of people-centred visual aids; and how to plan and conduct workshops on visual communication. The book looks at ways in which visual aids have been designed and used in the past, and shows how the authoritarian approach to communication has failed to promote a more equal distribution of power among people. The author proposes a different approach to work with educational visual aids - a "people-centred" approach - which goes beyond mere participation towards fuller involvement of local people in their own development. The traditional perspective of research studies of visual literacy among non-literate people is shown to be essentially neo-colonial. In this text, by contrast, visual literacy is viewed as a skill that is easy to acquire, rather than as a handicap to overcome by outsider professionals trying to develop a top-down "pictorial language".