Taking pleasure in one's own thoughts and experiencing joy at common activities are the major themes of this volume. The biologist Gerald Huether makes it clear that every living system can only develop to its greatest possible potential by participating in a coevolutionary process together with other forms of life. Put more succinctly: Together we can do more than we can alone, and together we can regain what makes us living creatures: creativity, the courage to be ourselves, and the ability to find a personal answer to the question of the meaning of life.Gerald Huether infuses the concept of the personal development of potential in individualized societies with new and exciting highlights. This capability does not arise from the demands made on us by our economic system, nor is it based on ethical considerations and moral imperatives. It is much simpler: It lies in our very nature as humans.

This book brings together discussions about Australian arts policy and funding, outcomes of arts engagement in terms of social inclusion, well-being and education. It presents exemplars of creative programs or case studies that build capacity and lasting impact for communities in urban and regional Australia. This book describes the impact of the arts using narrative case studies. Through this, it develops conceptual understanding and frameworks that can be used to dynamically assess the value and impact of arts engagement across the three types of cultural value: intrinsic value, instrumental value and institutional value. It focuses on how arts engagement creates, supports and extends factors such as well-being, social inclusion and educational achievement. This book provides an innovative examination of the evidence from Australian projects depicting the impact of the arts on a range of indicators and sectors.

'This is a landmark study that tackles an important black box in innovation studies — i.e. communities of innovation. While conventional work focuses on formal organizations, a select group of academic leaders highlights the various communities that cut across firms and form the vital 'underground' for processes of creativity and ideation. While targeted toward business and management, this volume is a must-read for all social scientists interested in the dynamics underlying the current knowledge economy.'Journal of Economic GeographyThis book describes the important role played by communities in innovation processes and how organizations can benefit from it. A community brings together individuals who share a common passion for a given area of knowledge and can contribute to innovation at different levels: capitalization of good practices, problem solving, sharing of expertise, or development of new and creative ideas. The literature has progressively identified many variants of communities such as communities of practice, epistemic communities, communities of interest, virtual communities, etc. These forms of communities differ regarding the type of the specialized activities of knowledge on which they focus. As practitioners and academics increasingly emphasized the needs of collaborative approaches in innovation, they progressively challenged the traditional idea that innovation is mainly generated by hierarchical corporate departments and highlighted the active role that communities play in innovation processes. The aim of this book is to shed light, using multiple examples, on the proactive and fundamental role of communities in the new innovation practices of organizations.

The Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) is a national award for urban places that promotes innovative thinking about the built environment. Established in 1987, the award celebrates urban places distinguished by quality design-design that considers form in conjunction with social, economic, and environmental issues.

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.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference, UCMedia 2009, which was held on 9-11 December 2009 at Hotel Novotel Venezia Mestre Castellana in Venice, Italy. The conference`s focus was on forms and production, delivery, access, discovery and consumption of user centric media. After a thorough review process of the papers received, 23 were accepted from open call for the main conference and 20 papers for the workshops.

This Research Topic includes high-quality Perspective articles and Opinion articles published in Frontiers in Health Services in 2022. The mission of the journal is to ultimately contribute to helping health systems improve both experiences and outcomes of patients, and make health systems more efficient. Perspective articles aim to present a viewpoint on a specific area within Health Services. The articles in this collection may discuss current advances and future directions and clearly present the author's perspective. Perspective articles should also provide an accurate presentation and citations of other authors’ work and may include original data as well as personal insights and opinions.