Finding Voices Making Choices

Since the first edition of this work appeared, the world of Community Arts has changed almost beyond recognition. This new edition is inteded as a primer for Community Arts, and is clear enough to act as an introductory volume for novices and also contains enough detailed insights and case histories that will make even the most experinced Community Arts activist reflect upon their approach to their work.

Are you tired of seeking and searching for answers and acceptance and always coming up empty? Are you losing hope? Have you stopped dreaming? Are you living a discouraged, defeated life, focused on your failures and seemingly endless sources of discontent? Regardless of the reason, your disappointment plays right into the plans and purposes of your enemy: to keep you down and depressed, pathetic and unproductive, to poison your potential and corrupt your calling. Let Sierra Kinsley share lessons learned from her own riveting, heartrending journey away from rejection and abuse, destructive choices, and the relentless pursuit of more to the powerful, life-changing truths that offered her true freedom and forgivenessthe same truths that will set you free and guide you to your own personal victory. Your Choices Matter is filled with principles, proofs, and promises as well as extraordinary stories to guide, encourage, and inspire you to pull out of your pit and into your potentialto transform you into the person you were created to be so you can begin living the life you were meant to live. You dont have to remain a victim of your trying and troubled past or a prisoner of your present circumstances. This time really can be different. You can break free from your condemning voices and crummy choices, even the unfair circumstances that have beaten you down and bruised or broken your spirit. You can overcome the pain of the past and live a richer, fuller, more productive lifeYour Choices Matter shows you howone right choice at a time.

Cultural Protest in Journalism, Documentary Films and the Arts: Between Protest and Professionalisation entails a comprehensive account of the history and trajectory of contemporary journalistic, (documentary) film, and arts and cultural actors rooted (partially or wholly) in radical, alternative, community, voluntary, participatory and independent movements primarily in Britain and Germany. It focuses particularly on the examination of production and organisational contexts of selected case studies, some of which date from the countercultural era. The book takes a transnational and interdisciplinary approach encompassing a range of theoretical perspectives – drawn from the political economy of communication tradition; alternative media scholarship; journalism studies; critical sociological and cultural studies of media industries; cultural industries research; and critical and social theory – in conjunction with extensive ethnographic fieldwork. It does so to reveal the obscure nature of media and cultural production and organisation at seventeen media and cultural actors based in Britain and Germany, including South Africa and Nigeria. A particular focus is placed on how such actors balance competing imperatives of a civic/socio-political, professional, artistic and commercial nature as well as various systemic pressures, and on how they navigate the resultant ambivalences, paradoxes and tensions in their day-to-day work. In essence, the book highlights key insights into a changing nature and quality of engagement with social and political realities in protest cultures.

A model for cultural activism and pedagogy through art and community engagement

"Phrase 1: A captivating story of Jewish women in North America and their use of the arts, the digital, and technology to reshape Orthodoxy. First translocal ethnography of the ultra-Orthodox female art scene in music, film, and dance across North America and on social media. Phrase 2: An in-depth look into a secluded religious and artistic world in North America"--

With the proposed development of the 'youth professional' and the consolidation of graduate professional qualifications, this is an important time for youth work. This book sets out the current state of debate about youth work for those considering, or about to embark on, a degree course. Contemporary debates in youth work are explored, and help to give students a sense of its history and its future contribution. By combining the experience of its editors and the contemporaneous experience of the voices of contributors, this book provides an excellent introduction to work as a youth worker in the twenty-first century.

Investigating how people and places are connected into the creative economy, this volume takes a holistic view of the intersections between community, policy and practice and how they are co-constituted. The role of the creative economy and broader cultural policy within community development is problematised and, in a significant addition to work in this area, the concept of ’place’ forms a key cross cutting theme. It brings together case studies from the European Union across urban, rural and coastal areas, along with examples from the developing world, to explore tensions in universal and regionally-specific issues. Empirically-based and theoretically-informed, this collection is of particular interest to academics, postgraduates, policy makers and practitioners within geography, urban and regional studies, cultural policy and the cultural/creative industries.