Exploring The Small Community

Understanding the small community; Community planning: the concept; Community planning: the practice; Coordinating community activities; Diminishing social cleavages; Leadership development.

The development of the festival and event industry has seen large scale growth and extensive government support as a result of objectives to enhance and project the image of place and leverage positive sponsorship and regeneration opportunities. As we move deeper into austerity measures prompted by economic recession, community festivals and events as a sacred or profane time of celebration can be considered even more important than ever before. This book for the first time explores the role and importance of ‘community’, ‘culture’ and its impact through festivals and events. Split into two distinct sections, the first introduces key themes and concepts, contextualises local traditions and culture, and investigates how festivals and events can act as a catalyst for tourism and create a sense of community. It then questions the social and political nature of festivals and community events through examining their ownership. The second section focuses on communities themselves, seeking to examine and discuss key emerging themes in community event studies such as; the role of diaspora, imagined communities, pride and identity, history, producing and consuming space and place, authenticity, and multi-ethnic communities. Examples are drawn from Portugal, the Dominican Republic, the USA, Malaysia, Malta, Finland and Australia making this book truly international. This significant volume will be valuable reading for students and academics across the fields of Event, Tourism and Hospitality studies as well as other social science disciplines.

How can community art build connection in diverse communities? Where is the art in contemporary libraries? How do you bring subway art into the classroom? Drawing on an abundance of examples from Finland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and the USA, including the NYC 2nd Ave Subway, the Detroit's Heidelberg Project, the Favel Painting Foundation and bicycle rack sculpture, Szekely inspires readers to look beyond the classroom walls to develop meaningful art experiences for students. She shows the myriad art forms, media expressions, and design professions that have the influence and potential to shape the local environment, reaching far beyond the traditional museum and gallery venue. Underpinned by a clear philosophical foundation, the field-tested approaches show readers how to go beyond the study of reproductions or dwelling on of the masters who are framed in art museums, instead having meaningful art experiences using everyday objects and diverse collective experiences. She also shows that innovative and exciting art lessons don't need large amounts of funding, transportation or even a museum within the local community. Each chapter includes photographs, talking points and key lesson ideas along with links to further resources.

Tourists are travelling the world in greater numbers than ever before, seeking immersive cultural experiences. This massive rise of tourism has caused issues of environmental and cultural sustainability in the world's global cities. At the same time, smaller cities and rural communities struggling with increasing urbanization and the loss of traditional industries could benefit from increased tourism. Smaller cities and communities are uniquely well-suited to hosting tourists seeking authentic connection with local cultures. Locally led, collaborative efforts to build creative tourism industries have the possibility to reinvigorate communities facing economic depression or devastation. Creative tourism offers the opportunity to build socially and environmentally sustainable channels for cultural and economic growth that benefit locals and visitors alike. Creative Tourism in Smaller Communities examines the processes, policies, and methodologies of creative tourism, paying special attention to the ways creative and place-based tourism can aid sustainable economic and cultural development. With topics ranging from placemaking through food to the cultural impacts of cruise travel, and from catalyzing creative tourism to creating resiliency, this collection offers a wide range of theoretical and practical perspectives from a variety of experts. Creative Tourism in Smaller Communities offers a bold vision for the future of tourism worldwide.

The new millennium finds humanity situated at critical crossroads. While there are many hopeful signs of cross-cultural engagement and democratic dialogue, it is equally the case that the challenges of warfare and injustice continue to plague nations and communities around the globe. Against this backdrop, there exists a powerful mechanism for transforming crises into opportunities: the philosophy and practice of nonviolence. The expert authors brought together in this volume collectively deploy the essential teachings of nonviolence across a spectrum of contemporary issues. From considering the principles of the French Revolution and encouraging peace through natural resource management to exploring multiculturism and teaching peace in the elementary classroom, this work is broad in scope yet detailed in its approach to the fundamental principles of nonviolence.

This volume explores the impact of research?practice partnerships in education (broadly conceived) on communities in which such partnerships operate. By invitation, some of the partnerships celebrated in this volume are firmly established, while others are more embryonic; some directly engage community members, while others are nurtured in and by supportive communities. Collectively, however, the eleven chapters constitute a range of compelling instances of knowledge utilization (knowledge mobilization), and offer a counter?narrative to the stereotypical divide between researchers and practitioners. Educational researchers and educational practitioners reside in and are both politically supported and socially sustained by their local communities. The nesting of researchers’ and practitioners’ collaborative decision?making and action in the financial, social, organizational, and political contexts of the community—together with the intended and unintended outcomes of those decisions and actions—speaks to the essence of community impact in the context of this volume.