This book draws on the author’s experience as a storyteller, drama practitioner and researcher, to articulate an emerging dialogic approach to storytelling in participatory arts, educational, mental health, youth theatre, and youth work contexts. It argues that oral storytelling offers a rich and much-needed channel for intergenerational dialogue with young people. The book keeps theory firmly tethered to practice. Section 1, ‘Storyknowing’, traces the history of oral storytelling practice with adolescents across diverse contexts, and brings into clear focus the particular nature of the storytelling exchange and narrative knowledge. Section 2, ‘Telling Stories’, introduces readers to some of the key challenges and possibilities of dialogic storytelling by reflecting on stories from the author’s own arts-based practice research with adolescents, illustrating these with young people’s artistic responses to stories. Finally, section 3, ‘Story Gaps’, conceptualises dialogic storytelling by exploring three different ‘gaps’: the gap between storyteller and listener, the gaps in the story, and the gaps which storytellers can open up within institutions. The book includes chapters taking a special focus on storytelling in schools and in mental health settings, as well as guided reflections for readers to relate the issues raised to their own practice.

This book demonstrates how participatory arts-based approaches can help children and youth contribute to peacebuilding within post-conflict contexts and to their communities. Cultural forms of storytelling through visual arts, drama, music, and dance can help to enhance post-conflict community well-being, social cohesion, and conflict prevention. However, in the planning and implementation of these arts-based projects, children and youth are often marginalised in decision-making processes. Drawing on cases from Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, Indonesia, and Nepal, this book demonstrates the benefits of participatory action research with children and youth to inform education curricula and policies for sustaining peace. Showing how artforms can be adapted to meet the needs of children and youth, the book emphasises the need to scale up arts-based peacebuilding initiatives and leverage for greater policy enactment from the bottom up. It is also an excellent example of South–South learning, advocating for a local approach to engage with arts-based methodologies and peacebuilding. This book will be of interest to researchers across the applied arts, sociology, anthropology, political science, peacebuilding, and international development. Practitioners and policymakers would also benefit from the book’s recommendations for the implementation of successful arts-based research projects and interventions.

From the contents:00I. Participatory art now01. The normalisation of participatory art 0II. What is participatory art?02. Concepts03. Defnitions04. The intentions of participatory art 05. The art of participatory art 06. The ethics of participatory art 0III. Where does participatory art come from?07. Making history 08. Deep roots 09. Community art and the cultural revolution (1968 to 1988) 010. Participatory art and appropriation (1988 to 2008).

This book focuses on a rising generation of female storytellers, analysing their innovation in interdisciplinary collaboration, and their creation of new multimedia platforms for story-led performance. It draws on an unprecedented series of in-depth interviews with artists including Jo Blake, Xanthe Gresham-Knight, Mara Menzies, Clare Murphy, Debs Newbold, Rachel Rose Reid, Sarah Liisa Wilkinson, and Vanessa Woolf, while Sally Pomme Clayton’s reflections on her extraordinary four-decade career provide long-term context for these cutting-edge conversations. Blending ethnographic research and performance analysis, this book documents the working lives of professional storytelling artists. It also sheds light on the practices, values, aspirations, and achievements of a generation actively redefining storytelling as a contemporary performance practice, taking on topics from ecology and maternity to griefwork and neuroscience, while working collaboratively with diverse creative partners to generate new, inclusive presences for a traditionally-inspired artform. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners in drama, theatre, performance, creative writing, education, and media.

"This book provides a unique insiders account of the work of Big hART, one of Australia's leading participatory arts organisations. Founded on the values of social justice, creativity and transformation Big hART seeks to mobilise a range of community resources including young people, elders, artists, and community activists to produce high quality public performances of merit and social worth. Located in diverse geographic, social and cultural settings across Australia's vast landscape, these creative works generate intergenerational understandings of the cultural processes of individual and collective transformation strengthening capabilities, identity, and connected belonging. This book documents a series of powerful stories that illuminate the ideological, artistic and cultural pathways and learnings gifted by the generosity of participants themselves"--

This book describes innovative ways to do research about, and design interventions for, cyberbullying by children and adolescents. It does this by taking a narrative approach. How can narrative research methods complement the mostly quantitative methods (e.g. surveys, experiments, ....) in cyberbullying research ? And how can stories be used to inform young people about the issue and empower them? Throughout the book, special attention is paid to new information and communication technologies, and the opportunities ICTs provide for narrative research (e.g. as a source of naturally occurring stories on cyberbullying), and for narrative health interventions (e.g. via Influencers). The book thus integrates research and insights from the fields of cyberbullying, narrative methods, narrative health communication, and new information and communication technologies.

This book investigates the power of art to enhance human development and to initiate positive social change for individuals and societies recovering from conflict. Interventions aimed at reinforcing social justice and bringing communities together after conflict are often accused of being top-down, or failing to consider all groups and contexts within a society. The use of participatory arts can help to address these challenges by fostering community engagement, social cohesion, influencing public policy, and ultimately, advancing social justice. Arts-based methods can be particularly effective at reaching youth communities, providing voice and political agency to young people who are often not given a platform. Situated at the intersection of participatory arts, social and epistemic justice, this book brings together case studies from across the world to reflect on best practice for the use of bottom-up, participatory, co-produced, and co-designed arts processes in conflict settings. This book provides an important guide to the role that arts can play in addressing epistemic injustice and contributing to social justice and human development. As such, it will be of interest to international development and arts practitioners, policy makers, and to students and researchers across participatory arts, youth studies, international development, social justice, and peace and conflict studies.