Creativity to Community: Arts Nonprofit Success One Coffee at a Time is both an inspiring and practical guide for anyone who values the role of art in their community. Written by Dr. Matthew Hinsley, a successful arts administrator who managed the growth of an arts nonprofit from its infancy to become the largest of its kind in America, Creativity to Community is an approachable yet detailed guide that addresses the most important issues facing community arts organization leaders.

A new wave of community arts projects has opened up exciting areas of cross-cultural creativity in recent years. These collaborations of local people, arts facilitators, anthropologists and supporting organisations represent a flourishing new form of arts-based collaborative anthropology that aims to document the stories and cultures of local people using creative art forms. Often focusing on social and cultural agendas, from education and health promotion to advocacy and cultural heritage preservation, participants bring together methods historically linked to anthropology with those from the arts and community development. Side by Side? – The Challenge of Co-creativity investigates these creative projects as sites of significant cultural creation and potential social change. Through the exploration of a range of diverse collaborations, the common threads and historical contexts in this domain of cultural creativity are examined. The role that creative arts collaborations can have in disrupting existing hierarchies of social power and knowledge creation is analysed, as are the potential futures, historical and cultural implications of these co-creative practices. Drawing on the experiences and reflections of over 30 facilitators from more than 7 countries, and written by an experienced collaborative arts practitioner and researcher, this exciting forthcoming book will play a defining role in the emerging critical discourse on collaborative art and collaborative anthropology. It is essential reading for collaborative anthropologists, arts facilitators and others who aim to collaborate cross-culturally, as well as students of Art, Anthropology, and related subjects.

This book examines research using anti-oppressive, arts-based methods to promote social change in oppressed and marginalized communities. The contributors discuss literary techniques, performance, visual art, and new media in relation to the co-construction of knowledge and positionality, reflexivity, data representation, community building and engagement, and pedagogy. The contributors to this volume hail from a wide array of disciplines, including sociology, social work, community psychology, anthropology, performing arts, education, medicine, and public health.

'Communities of practice', like 'social capital' and 'networks', is an idea that has been widely adopted in the social sciences, particularly in discussion of innovation and creativity. This book evaluates the concept and its uses, and will be an essential guide for students and researchers.

Collective Creativity offers an analysis of the explosion of artistic creativity currently taking place on the South Pacific island of Rarotonga. By exploring the construction of this art-world through the ways in which creativity and innovation are linked to social structures and social networks, this book investigates the social aspects of making fine art in order to present a ’collective’ theory of creativity. With a close examination of tourism, galleries and, of course, the artists themselves, Katherine Giuffre presents a detailed picture of a complex and multi-faceted community through the words of the art-world participants themselves. Theoretically sophisticated, yet grounded with rich empirical data, this book will appeal not only to anthropologists with an interest in the South Pacific, but also to scholars concerned with questions of ethnicity, creativity, globalization and network analysis.

Anna Halprin, vanguard postmodern dancer turned community artist and healer, has created ground-breaking dances with communities all over the world. Here, she presents her philosophy and experience, as well as step-by-step processes for bringing people together to create dances that foster individual and group well-being. At the heart of this book are accounts of two dances: the Planetary Dance, which continues to be performed throughout the world, and Circle the Earth. The Circle the Earth workshop for people living with AIDS has generated dozens of "scores" for others to adapt. In addition, the book provides a concrete guide to Halprin's celebrated Planetary Dance. Now more than 35 years old, Planetary Dance promotes peace among people and peace with the Earth. Open to everyone, it has been performed in more than 50 countries. In 1995 more than 400 participants joined her in a Planetary Dance in Berlin commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Potsdam Agreements, at the end of World War II. More recently, she took the Planetary Dance to Israel, bringing together Israelis and Palestinians as well as other nationalities. Throughout this book Halprin shows how dance can be a powerful tool for healing, learning and mobilizing change, and she offers insight and advice on facilitating groups. If we are to survive, Halprin argues, we must learn, experientially, how our individual stories weave together and strengthen the fabric of our collective body. Generously illustrated with photographs, charts and scores, this book will be a boon to dance therapists, educators and community artists of all types.

By building on existing elements at your library and filling in the gaps with community-driven additions, your library can be a space that cultivates creativity in both its users and staff.