Ripple Effects: community building, participation and cultural citizenship through creative practices in Western Sydney
| Organisation | University of Technology, Sydney |
|---|---|
| Contact | Ilaria Vanni/ Jemima Mowbray |
| Position | Chief Investigator/ Project Officer |
| jemima.mowbray@uts.edu.au | |
| Website | http://datasearch2.uts.edu.au/tfc/projects/detail.cfm?ProjectId=2007002139 |
| Other organisations or people involved | Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE), Australia Council for the Arts, Arts NSW |
| Objectives | This study explores emerging media and creative practices developed through and around Information and Cultural Exchange in Western Sydney by engaging with participants, peers and the wider community. The project seeks to provide a new framework for understanding the nexus between cultural production and citizenship practices. It considers ICE as situated in and producing an ecology of relations, projects, impacts and in turn it examines the way the organisation operates, the path of individual cultural producers, specific programs and enterprises. Led by researchers from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), the project is a partnership with new media arts and community organisation ICE, the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts NSW.
The project will offer new ways to think about questions on the relation between new media and creative practices and cultural diversity, belonging and participation beyond multiculturalism. |
| Research questions | Lines of enquiry for research will include:
- a study exploring the way ICE successfully operates as a ‘creation space’. - a study following specific cultural producers - a survey mapping recognition of ICE among ‘mainstream’ Western Sydney organisations - evaluations of specific ICE projects, analysing community responses to project outcomes - profiles of key arts and community organisations, focusing on the influence ICE has had on their professional practices and approach - an analysis of media coverage gained by key ICE projects - funding policies analysis identifying the ways in which policies inform the development and sustainability of projects |
| Methodology | The project investigates the role of community media, arts and creative practices in Western Sydney, using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods and critical approaches. Using ICE, its developments, projects and participants as a case study, the research examines the engagement of participants, the community and the organisation.
The ‘ripple effect’ of ICE projects on participants is investigated through surveys, participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus groups and artistic biographies. Contextual archival research explores key projects as snapshots of ICE’s long term engagement in Western Sydney. Rather than producing a linear narrative of ICE’s history, this methodology aims to capture particularly significant microstories in order to understand the ways participants engage with ICE cultural productions and performances. The approach is to produce several microhistories that will display better the variety of roles and influences that ICE may have had on Western Sydney by its enabling of cultural production. The use of micronarratives will open up room between the local ‘here and now’ and the globalised environment of all cultural production. It will enable a field of ‘comparative possibility’ as movements, flows, and circulation of cultural resources and capital are approached not simply as themes but as analytic methods which define the research endeavour itself. These methods will generate the following outputs: - a study on evaluation methodologies - participant biographies that document short and long term involvement with ICE and beyond - network maps documenting how ICE brings artists together to form new collaborations and creative projects - critical history of ICE specific projects (micro stories) |
| Status | In progress |
| Web Links | 3) Panel on Community Arts and Cultural Citizenship at CrossRoads, Hong Kong 2010
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| Project start date | Jun 2008 |
| Project completion date | Dec 2011 |
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