Art and wellbeing

Assembles ideas and case study material that demonstrates connections between community cultural development and government 'wellbeing' initiatives.

Australian and overseas research shows that direct involvement by communities in arts activity can contribute significantly to individual and community wellbeing and can enhance the efforts of government agencies in realising their policies for community wellbeing and ecologically sustainable communities.

The case studies presented here demonstrate that community-based creative processes, when embedded into an agency's policies and strategies, can be very powerful in strengthening the knowledge, engagement, social capital and leadership required to achieve policy objectives.

The case study material is grouped under seven themes, which represent key priorities for governments in Australia in achieving community wellbeing:

• Health
• Ecologically sustainable development
• Public housing and place
• Rural revitalisation
• Community strengthening
• Active citizenship
• Social inclusion and cultural diversity.

If governments wish to more effectively enhance community wellbeing, they need to recognise or incorporate the community's culture (and thus values) within government policies and strategies. They can do this through participatory creative processes.

Community cultural development uses involvement in artistic and other creative processes as a way of exploring and expressing our cultures and the values underpinning these cultures and our society. Community cultural development processes can therefore play a vital role in helping people to think critically about their experiences.

The full potential of community cultural development is achieved when it is effectively integrated into the way in which an agency goes about its business. The case studies in Art and Wellbeing demonstrate how this is already happening.

The book also provides a five stage scheme for integrating community cultural development and presents sample proposals suggesting how integration might be achieved in future programs.