Arts-Based Research in Global Development: Performing Knowledge

This book brings together a range of arts and development scholars and practitioners to explore the unique ways in which arts-based research methods can make a unique positive contribution to effective global development practice.

Since the 1970s, global development has witnessed an increase in the use of participatory approaches to enable the world’s most excluded peoples to be actively involved in the planning and implementation of development projects that impact them. A range of participatory practices are now in common use, many of which use visual activities which enable fuller participation irrespective of literacy levels or social position. More recently, development practitioners with arts skills, along with a small number of professionally trained artists, have started engaging in a wider range of arts-based practices within this participatory development space, aimed at co-creating new knowledge with these communities. This book explores how the performing and visual arts provide spaces for the world’s most marginalised communities to articulate their development aspirations and co-create knowledge that contributes to development outcomes. It also highlights how arts-based research puts the power over development decisions back into the hands of ’recipient’ communities.

The book will be of interest to development practitioners and artists working with marginalised communities globally, policymakers in arts and global development, graduate students, and academics. The rich case studies provide many fresh ideas for arts and/or development practitioners wanting to utilise arts-based research, particularly with performing arts, in global development programming.

Vicki-Ann Ware lectures in development studies, Deakin University. An ethnomusicologist, widely published with 30 years’ experience in arts-based community work, she researches arts-based community development/peacebuilding. Having worked in mainland Southeast Asia, she currently works in Bangladesh and Indonesia. She convenes the Arts/Sports Community Development Network, and is Artistic Director for Casey Philharmonic Orchestra.

Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta holds a Ph.D. in Applied Theatre from The University of Manchester, United Kingdom. She is Associate Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada. Currently, she is working on her SSHRC grants on Coast Salish language revitalisation through theatre. Sadeghi-Yekta has published many articles in a variety of journals.

Tim Prentki is Professor Emeritus of Theatre for Development at the University of Winchester, UK. He is co-editor of The Applied Theatre Reader and The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance.

Wasim al Kurdi is a poet, writer, and practitioner in Drama & Theatre in Education. He served as the Director of the Educational Programme at Palestine’s A.M. Qattan Foundation and as the Academic Director of DiE Summer School in Jordan. He is an author of books on education, culture, and the arts.