Community Arts Research Articles

Exploring the Real-World Applicability of an Intercultural Music Engagement (ICME) Framework

ABSTRACT As our societies become increasingly multicultural, our collective ability to understand and tolerate differences is critical for social cohesion. Music has been used by many organisations to help foster connection across cultural divides, yet research suggests it is not always a simple exchange. This paper tests the feasibility of a framework formerly proposed by the current authors for helping people navigate the intercultural music experience, specifically when facilitating Intercultural Music Engagement (ICME). Interviews and observations with community artists working in ICME test the real-world applicability of the framework. Results support all elements of our existing framework and add both nuance and detail to our understanding. The findings also strongly indicated that efforts in this area should focus on supporting artists already embedded within communities, rather than solely supporting external organisations. Ultimately, we argue the need for further community-engaged research to identify how a framework in this area can best support existing practitioners.

"I've got yer back": A community art and anatomy project.

This article describes a community collaborative project, "I've got yer back," that utilized the craft of needle felting to raise awareness and develop understanding of the anatomy of the human spine. The project took place in 2023 and engaged with participants from across the United Kingdom and abroad and its completion was timed to coincide with National Back Health Awareness week in October 2023. We describe the process of creating a vertebra using needle felt and examine how the particularities of the process and the use of the sense of touch helped participants notice and understand the complex form of the human vertebra. We consider how the project encompassed creative processes of hands-on learning to enhance knowledge about this aspect of human anatomy. We discuss how the project evolved to include public and academic participation in a shared goal and argue for the effectiveness of seemingly simple and straightforward art or craft workshops in teaching relatively complex science. The article includes detailed feedback from participants who reflect on the process of learning through making and how it went on to affect individuals in very different, and sometimes very personal, ways.

Making With Place: Community Artists Theorizing Change

This article confronts tensions of “risk” and “change” in youth engagement and community arts, towards insights for alternate world-building. We problematize overly instrumental approaches, by examining aesthetic and inductive theories of change arising from Making With Place, a research creation initiative based in Toronto, Canada. From Spring 2020 to Fall 2022, we engaged diverse young people as artist-researchers in community arts production experiments exploring concepts of place from individual and collective perspectives. We draw here on resulting public artworks, discussions with the artists, and our own field notes to surface the theories of change arising from this work. We identify three emergent metaphors—the garden, the bridge, the margins—and the ways in which they resist dominant discourses in favor of new practices of imagination and repair. We explore how these creative explorations articulate theories of change that refuse forgetting and call forth desire.

Levantamento documental sobre a vida e obras de pintura mural da artista brasileira Gilda Neuberger (1911-2011)

Gilda Gelmini Neuberger (1911-2011), with a career spanning more than 60 years, was one of the rare artists to produce frescoes in Brazil during the 20th century. She was probably also the only Brazilian artist to experiment this technique on unconventional supports, as well as false frescoes with a still ambiguous meaning for the artistic community. In Brazil, the artist was a pupil of Cândido Portinari and Edson Motta and, in Italy, of Bruno Saetti. This article is based on research of primary and secondary sources, including oral testimonies from people who lived with Gilda Neuberger or knew her work. The aim is to reveal her artistic career and evaluate the potential influences of her peers in her work. The article also details the execution process and highlights the originality of her frescoes in various media, which will be analytically investigated in the future.

Harnessing the power of empathy, visual art and patient narratives to improve health literacy: An exploratory study.

Health-related information can often be overwhelming for consumers, frequently infused with complex medical terminology that is difficult to understand and apply. Historically empathic connection, art and narratives have played key roles in communicating with diverse populations however collectively have received little recognition as a modality to improve health literacy. This study aimed to investigate the empathetic connection between art and patient narratives with a view to improve health literacy in the wider community. Nine recently discharged patients and one carer from a regional hospital were paired with 10 tertiary visual arts students for interview. Each narrative was transformed into visual art and exhibited at a community art gallery. The Empathy Quotient (EQ), Medical Outcomes Study 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) and self-completed questionnaires assessed empathy and functional well-being. Health literacy was evaluated through community response surveys post-exhibition exposure. Student artist participants' EQ Cognitive Empathy (EQ-CE) scores were associated with 'Emotional Reactivity' (EQ-ER) (p = .038). SF-36 scores revealed that role limitations due to physical health and emotional problems had the greatest impact on patient/carer participant's life at the time. The SF-36 General Health domain was associated with the EQ-ER total score (p = .044). Exhibition surveys revealed that 96.9% of observers had learnt something new about illness or injury. SO WHAT?: Although a relatively small study, our findings suggest patient/carer narratives and visual art is a simple yet effective modality for health service organisations to facilitate affective learning and improve health literacy when engaging with consumers.

Wspólnotowość a sztuka i kształcenie estetyczne

In the article, the topic of community is presented in relation to art, education, and aesthetic education. Attention was paid to the value of art and related educational activities in shaping community. The art refers to the work of Joseph Beuys and his interpretation of social art and social sculpture. Artistic activities that are proposed in the creative activities of pupils were indicated, such as: happening, art action, collage, assemblage, and even street art. These types of creative activities develop students’ skills of cooperation in a group, their tolerance for the diversity of artistic solutions, their ability to express themselves through physical matter and creating artistic matter, creative courage and being in a group, and, in sum, helping to develop creatively and socially. Me and others, others and me and creativity, and art with us, we all create a community.

Model Strategi Pengembangan dan Keberlanjutan Kampung ‎Angklung Ciamis Menjadi Desa Wisata Berbasis ‎Pemberdayaan Masyarakat

The diversity of each tribe in Indonesia is the main attraction as a tourist destination for both local and foreign tourists. The development of tourism based on local culture and community can be a long-term opportunity for an area because each region has natural resources, people and local knowledge that are of positive value for the development of tourist destinations in the area. Kampung Angklung Ciamis is located in Panyingkiran Village and is an area where local community activities are angklung craftsmen who are quite productive in making angklung so that it has the potential to become a tourist village. But there are several obstacles to making Angklung Village into a tourism village so that a development strategy is needed and what is used is the analysis of the 6A component of Tourism, SWOT analysis, and the application of the concept of community-based tourism (CBT). This research is descriptive qualitative research, with the subjects being the manager, the head of the community of craftsmen and musical arts, angklung distributors and the people of Ciamis Angklung Village. Data collection techniques are carried out by interviews, observation, and documentation. The technique of determining the resource person uses Purposive Sampling. The data analysis method uses three, namely data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing / verification. The results of this study show that Angklung Ciamis Village needs regional development in order to become a community-based cultural tourism village.The results of IFAS and EFAS show that the development strategy of Angklung Ciamis Village is in Quadrant I (Growth Oriented Strategy), namely the strength and also the opportunity to obtain maximum development.The implementation of the tourism village concept requires several efforts such as structuring tourist areas, determining tourist products and attractions, developing tourist facilities, marketing and partnership, and empowering the community.

Understanding the Guanxi Culture in Chinese Art Market: Okada Kosho and Shanghai Art World in the Late-nineteenth Century

Shanghai art market had developed a strong international trade system since China was forced to have her gate ajar in the late-nineteenth century. In 1873, a Nagasaki doctor Okada Kosho (1821-1903) travelled to Shanghai and Suzhou. Thanks to the development of stochastic models for the analysis of social networks in contemporary statistics, the structure of Okada’s guanxi (social connections) in Shanghai and Suzhou in the late nineteenth century can be represented by the model, which illustrated that Okada was connected with a few “bridges”, including the Japanese artist Yasuda Rozan, Japanese Consulate Shinagawa Tadamichi, an official dispatched at the end of 1860s to Shanghai, Kumashiro Encho, and the prominent art collector of the Guoyun Chamber, and Gu Cheng, all of whom helped Okada Kosho to explore the Shanghai and Suzhou art world. Through the bridging ties spanned by these individuals, Okada interacted closely with a particular cluster of Chinese artists, art collectors and art dealers. This proved that the Chinese art community heavily relied on social connections of the “bridges” in advertising itself and spreading its reputation. This paper first outlines the Shanghai art market in the late nineteenth century based on Okada Kosho’ s Diaries of Shanghai and Suzhou (1890). It then argues for the opportunity and limitation of building guanxi in the context of the Chinese art market. Finally, it suggests research approaches based on viewing the late-nineteenth-century Shanghai art market in this new way.

FeaST: Feature-guided Style Transfer for high-fidelity art synthesis

Text-conditioned image synthesis methods such as DALLE-2, IMAGEN, and Stable Diffusion are gaining strong attention from deep learning and art communities recently. Meanwhile, Image-to-Image (Img2Img) synthesis applications that emerged from the pioneering Neural Style Transfer (NST) approach have swiftly transitioned towards the feed-forward Automatic Style Transfer (AST) methods, due to numerous constraints inherent in the former method, including inconsistent synthesis outcomes and sluggish optimization-based synthesis process. However, NST holds significant potential yet remains relatively underexplored within this research domain. In this paper, we revisited the original NST method and uncovered its potential to attain image quality comparable to the AST synthesis methods across a diverse range of artistic styles. We propose a two-stage Feature-guided Style Transfer (FeaST) which consists (a) pre-stylization step called Sketching to address the poor initialization issue, and (b) Finetuning to guide the synthesis process based on high-frequency (HF) and low-frequency (LF) guidance channels. By addressing the issues of inconsistent synthesis and slow convergence inherent in the original method, FeaST unlocks the full capabilities of NST and significantly enhances its efficiency.

Does type of antiretroviral therapy pick-up point influence 12-month virologic suppression in South Africa?

ABSTRACT We assessed the impact of community- versus clinic-based medication pick-up on rates of virologic suppression in an observational cohort of adults on ART enrolled in a decentralized antiretroviral therapy program (CCMDD) in South Africa. Participants either attended clinics where they were given the choice to pick up ART in community venues or traditional clinics, or clinics where this pathway was assigned. Among 1856 participants, 977 (53%) opted for community ART pick-up at enrollment, and 1201 (86%) were virologically suppressed at one year. Because of missing data on virologic suppression, primary results are based on a model incorporating multiple imputation. In addition to age and gender, distance from clinic and year of HIV diagnosis were included in the multivariable model. There was no difference in opting for clinic- vs. community-based pick-up with regard to achieving 12-month virologic suppression (aRR 1.02, 95% CI 0.98–1.05) in clinics offering choice. There was no impact of assigning all participants to an external pick-up point (aRR 1.00, 95% CI 0.95–1.06), but virologic suppression was reduced in the clinic that assigned participants to clinic pick-up (aRR 0.87, 95% CI 0.81–0.92). These results suggest that provision of community-based ART has not reduced continued virologic suppression in the population enrolled in the CCMDD program.

From Hope to Reality: A Global South Perspective on The Issues of Performing Artists During The Covid-19 Pandemic in India

This article explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted artists and practitioners in the performing arts, particularly in Kerala, which declared a medical emergency upon becoming the first state in India to confirm an active case of COVID-19. The results show that online platforms and going digital were essential to keeping Kerala’s theatre activities alive during the year and a half of the pandemic starting from March 2020. Government protocols primarily affected seasonal performing artists and crews, whose economic and creative engagements were most heavily impacted, along with their freedom as artists caught in limbo under circumstances determined by politicians and bureaucracy. The protocols, though sharply restricting live performances, contained no emergency relief for artists with sorely limited sources of income as a result. Recognizing the state’s neglect, Kerala’s performing arts community continues to remain uncertain about its future.

Sistem informasi manajemen berbasis website menggunakan metode RAD pada komunitas seni Standupindo

This research aims to analyze and design a website-based management information system using the Rapid Application Development (RAD) method for the Standupindo Malang Arts Community. Standupindo is a stand-up comedy performing arts community that requires an efficient information system to manage members, events and other related information. The RAD method is used because of its ability to speed up the system development process by involving users in every stage of development. This research includes analyzing user needs in the Standupindo community, as well as designing a system based on the results of this analysis. The resulting information system will allow community members to register, access information about upcoming events, submit stand-up comedy performance material, and interact with other members via the website platform. Thus, this system will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Standupindo community management. It is hoped that the results of this research will make a positive contribution to the development of the stand-up comedy performing arts community in Malang, as well as become an example for similar communities in implementing a website-based management information system using the RAD method.

The art of connectivity – using the brain as a community art project

We have been using the brain, and all the marvellous systems, cells and structures within it, as the basis of a community outreach project using art to engage children and young people in science. Through this, we aim to show that communication within our brains and bodies, between our own close networks of friends and families, and across disparate groups the world over, depends upon the same principles of connectivity, diversity and feedback. Ultimately, we will use the project as a springboard to engage more community organizations, hospitals and schools around the UK and beyond to add to our network of budding scientist-artists.

Deep learning based anime character sketch quality recognition

The explosion of the global anime market is poised to redefine the entertainment industry, boasting a valuation of USD 31.23 billion as of 2023 and projected to climb at a CAGR of 9.8% until 2030. At the heart of this growth is a vibrant community of artists and enthusiasts who navigate challenges such as artist scarcity and the lack of advanced tools for qualitative feedback and effective content promotion. Our study targets the core of anime creation sketching by evaluating the essential drawing elements and assessing their implementation in professional-quality anime portraits. We introduce an automated approach to predicting the anime quality using advances in deep learning. Utilizing transfer learning, we enhance three pre-trained models—MobileNetV2, ResNet50, and VGG16—with a customized dense layer, refining their capabilities for the binary classification of anime character sketches. The dataset employed comprises 155 images, categorized as 'Good' and 'Bad' to reflect the quality of sketches. A balanced split into training, validation, and testing subsets ensures a quantitative evaluation of data not seen previously by the model. The models, pre-trained on ImageNet and fine-tuned with our dataset, demonstrate varied sensitivity to hyperparameters, with the MobileNetV2 and ResNet50 model attaining a peak validation accuracy of 94% and the highest test accuracy of 79% indicating its potential as a robust tool for quality assessment in the anime industry. An interesting outcome of the research is that a lightweight MobileNetV2 model with much fewer parameters compared to other models resulted in the highest test accuracy.

The Evolutionary Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Contemporary Artistic Practices

This article explores the transformative influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on contemporary art, focusing on the integration of AI in creative processes, the reception of AI-generated art, and the ethical considerations it raises. As AI technologies become more sophisticated, they redefine artistic creation, collaboration, and interaction, expanding the traditional boundaries of art. By employing AI, artists access new tools for enhancing creativity, automating production, and engaging audiences through interactive installations. However, this integration also brings challenges, particularly concerning the authenticity and ethical implications of AI-generated art. The article discusses AI's role in augmenting creativity, its impact on art production, the dynamic ways it engages audiences, and the ethical dilemmas it presents, such as data privacy and intellectual property rights. The discussion aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how AI is reshaping the art world, influencing artistic communities, and prompting a reevaluation of art in the digital age.

Export-Oriented Eco-Friendly Products of Hereditary Artisans and The Need to Promote Their Craftsmanship

Artisans both hereditary and traditional are an indispensable part of Indian society and culture. Though they have a lot of talents useful for their development and have huge potential to support the nation's economic development, their talents and the scope of their capabilities are yet to be explored and utilized in their proper way. Though there are a lot of government schemes and initiatives, the benefits of all of them do not reach the poor ignorant artisans, many of them still live in superstitious practices. There have not been many sincere serious efforts to bring them to the forefront till recently. Even if there are programs by various governmental agencies, most of the artisans could not make use of them due to their deficiencies. Therefore, there is a special need to reach out to them and improve their entrepreneurial abilities to tap them for greater growth of the economy and inclusive development of these marginalized groups. To achieve this, this paper suggests a nationwide empirical study to find out the socio-economic and educational realities of these hereditary and traditional artisan communities and based on the findings, necessary correctional measures are to be made urgently. To carry out the above, a separate ministry for artisan affairs is needed.

Shigeko Kubota’s Multi-hyphenated Curatorial Activism

Abstract This article examines artist Shigeko Kubota’s vital role as a curator, critic, and organizer of video art during the 1970s and 1980s, arguing her historically neglected labour was instrumental to the formation of a video art community at a time when it lacked widespread institutional support. By tracing Kubota’s organizational efforts from her role as Fluxus’s “vice-president” and her curatorial work on Tokyo-New York Video Express, to her participation in important video conferences and festivals, such as the Women’s Video Festivals and the Museum of Modern Art’s Open Circuits: An International Conference on the Future of Television, the article reveals the ways in which she frequently utilized her own platform as a critic and curator to amplify the voices of underrepresented artists, particularly women and women of colour. These experiences culminated in Kubota’s role as the first and only video art curator at the Anthology Film Archives (afa) between 1974 and 1983, which deeply influenced her approach to curatorial work as a collaborative and non-hierarchical practice, and finally, reinforced her belief in video as a social medium.

Walking with: understandings and negotiations of the mundane in research

Abstract Disruptions, and indeed spectacular disruptions, are understood and experienced by people in many different ways. They serve to both highlight and embed deep-rooted inequalities, changing experiences of the everyday and even challenging the very right to have an everyday. In this joint article we critically engage with conceptualisations of the mundane, exploring how people negotiate everyday life in contexts of unprecedented change. We take up Georges Perec’s call to take account of the everyday, focusing on examples from two ethnographically informed projects, both of which engage with creative practice. The first is long-term research in forced migration settings in North-Western Finland, which explores how people negotiate and re-negotiate linguistic citizenship and everyday life, in a policy context which restricts and limits. The second is a community arts and wellbeing project in the North of England, which investigated creative approaches to re-emergence from the Covid19 pandemic among people who had been particularly affected by isolation, including new mothers. In both projects, our data are drawn from fieldnotes from observations, reflections from our own participation, interviews and creative artefacts made by participants. In our analysis and discussion, we foreground ephemeral everyday moments and how individuals aim to hold up the mundane in the middle of major, internal and international crises. We consider how the ‘right to an everyday’ is central to understandings of being human, and draw on these experiences to show how ethnographic research, with particular emphasis on language(s) and creative practice, can shed light on lived experiences of the mundane and unequal experiences of and rights to the everyday.

Rural Tourism and Homestays in India: Impact on Local Economy, Culture and Ecology

Purpose of the study: This study explores rural tourism as a sustainable form that encompasses environmental preservation, entrepreneurial opportunities, and the preservation of traditional village customs, values, and practices. Methodology: The research methodology employed a literature review approach, focusing on secondary data sources. The search utilized the Google Scholar database as a search engine, with the initial 500 results sorted by relevance to ensure comprehensive coverage of relevant scholarly sources. Finally, 31 articles were selected for this study. Principal Findings: Operating homestays can provide alternative accommodation options and catalyze the promotion of rural tourism, benefiting the local community, economy, and regional art and culture. A well-executed marketing plan in rural tourism can bring significant societal advantages by channeling resources from urban to rural areas and curbing rural-urban migration. Applications of the study: This study can be helpful in the tourism and hospitality industry. It is instrumental in promoting rural tourism and supplementary accommodation like homestays in India, thus boosting the local economy and promoting local culture and tradition. Novelty/Originality of the study: Tourism and related industries substantially impact employment due to the sector's labor-intensive nature. Village tourism can generate income and employment and contribute to rural development, preventing rural-urban migration and promoting sustainable revenue generation.

Twins Seven-Seven: The Glocal Framing of an International Artist in Memorial Pages

On 16 June 2011, the foremost Nigerian visual artist, Taiwo Osuntoki, popularly referred to as Twins Seven-Seven, passed away. His passing, as is common with personalities of that nature, elicited some interesting memorials across the world. Family members, close friends, admirers, art collectors and colleagues in the art community in Nigeria and across the globe flooded the art space with glowing tributes, lauding an iconic figure whose works were known to reflect the embodiment of Yoruba folklore, mythology, spiritual, ghostly and invisible worlds. This article draws on a descriptive analysis of memorials in selected local and international print media and academic outlets (journals). The intention is primarily to identify and examine some of the memorials and then engage them in ways that help to understand how Twins Seven-Seven’s image was conceived in global as well as local contexts. Given his complex and multipersonality, we ask how memorials shape the meanings that could be associated with Twins Seven-Seven’s life generally. Lastly, the paper is a fitting tribute to one of Africa’s greatest postcolonial artists, whose passing now marks more than a decade.