Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction, by Alison Jeffers (University of Manchester, UK) -- Part 1: The British Community Arts Movement 1968-1986 -- 1. Introduction by Alison Jeffers -- 2. Community Arts - a Forty Year Apprenticeship: A view from England, by Gerri Moriarty (artist) -- 3. Craigmillar Festival, the Scottish Community Arts Movement of the 1970s and 1980s and its impact: A view from Scotland, by Andrew Crummy (artist) -- 4. The Pioneers and the Welsh Community Arts Movement: A view from Wales, by Nick Clements (artist) -- 5. The Ground of Convinced action: A view from Northern Ireland, by Gerri Moriarty Part 2: Praxis and Pragmatism: The legacies of the Community Arts Movement -- 6. Introduction by Alison Jeffers -- 7. Memories, Dreams, Reflections: Community Arts as Cultural Policy: the 1970s, by Oliver Bennett (University of Warwick, UK) -- 8. Training and Education for Artists: The impact of ideas in the 1970s and 1980s on the training of artists today, by Mark Webster and Janet Hetherington (Staffordshire University, UK) -- 9. From Community Arts to the Socially Engaged Arts Commission, by Sophie Hope (Birkbeck, University of London, UK) -- 10. Cultural Democracy, Developing Technologies and Dividuality, by Owen Kelly (Arcada University, Finland) -- 11. Conclusion, by Alison Jeffers and Gerri Moriarty -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Notes on Contributors -- Index

Based on the words and experiences of the people involved, this book tells the story of the community arts movement in the UK, and, through a series of essays, assesses its influence on present day participatory arts practices. Part I offers the first comprehensive account of the movement, its history, rationale and modes of working in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; Part II brings the work up to the present, through a scholarly assessment of its influence on contemporary practice that considers the role of technologies and networks, training, funding, commissioning and curating socially engaged art today. The community arts movement was a well-known but little understood and largely undocumented creative revolution that began as part of the counter-cultural scene in the late 1960s. A wide range of art forms were developed, including large processions with floats and giant puppets, shadow puppet shows, murals and public art, events on adventure playgrounds and play schemes, outdoor events and fireshows. By the middle of the 1980s community arts had changed and diversified to the point where its fragmentation meant that it could no longer be seen as a coherent movement. Interviews with the early pioneers provide a unique insight into the arts practices of the time. Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art is not simply a history because the legacy and influence of the community arts movement can be seen in a huge range of diverse locations today. Anyone who has ever encountered a community festival or educational project in a gallery or museum or visited a local arts centre could be said to be part of the on-going story of the community arts.

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).

"Marvelous . . . A vital book about how to make political art that offers lasting solace in times of great trouble, and wisdom to audiences in the years that follow."- Washington Post NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR A STONEWALL BOOK AWARDS HONOR BOOK The oral history of Angels in America, as told by the artists who created it and the audiences forever changed by it--a moving account of the AIDS era, essential queer history, and an exuberant backstage tale. When Tony Kushner's Angels in America hit Broadway in 1993, it won the Pulitzer Prize, swept the Tonys, launched a score of major careers, and changed the way gay lives were represented in popular culture. Mike Nichols's 2003 HBO adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, and Mary-Louise Parker was itself a tour de force, winning Golden Globes and eleven Emmys, and introducing the play to an even wider public. This generation-defining classic continues to shock, move, and inspire viewers worldwide. Now, on the 25th anniversary of that Broadway premiere, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois offer the definitive account of Angels in America in the most fitting way possible: through oral history, the vibrant conversation and debate of actors (including Streep, Parker, Nathan Lane, and Jeffrey Wright), directors, producers, crew, and Kushner himself. Their intimate storytelling reveals the on- and offstage turmoil of the play's birth--a hard-won miracle beset by artistic roadblocks, technical disasters, and disputes both legal and creative. And historians and critics help to situate the play in the arc of American culture, from the staunch activism of the AIDS crisis through civil rights triumphs to our current era, whose politics are a dark echo of the Reagan '80s. Expanded from a popular Slate cover story and built from nearly 250 interviews, The World Only Spins Forward is both a rollicking theater saga and an uplifting testament to one of the great works of American art of the past century, from its gritty San Francisco premiere to its starry, much-anticipated Broadway revival in 2018.

In 2018 India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, inaugurated the world's tallest statue: a 597-foot figure of nationalist leader Sardar Patel. Twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, it is but one of many massive statues built following India's economic reforms of the 1990s. In Gods in the Time of Democracy Kajri Jain examines how monumental icons emerged as a religious and political form in contemporary India, mobilizing the concept of emergence toward a radical treatment of art historical objects as dynamic assemblages. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork at giant statue sites in India and its diaspora and interviews with sculptors, patrons, and visitors, Jain masterfully describes how public icons materialize the intersections between new image technologies, neospiritual religious movements, Hindu nationalist politics, globalization, and Dalit-Bahujan verifications of equality and presence. Centering the ex-colony in rethinking key concepts of the image, Jain demonstrates how these new aesthetic forms entail a simultaneously religious and political retooling of the “infrastructures of the sensible.”

Drawing on international examples, this book interrogates the relationship between the arts, culture and community development. Contributors from six continents, reimagine community development as they consider how aesthetic arts contribute to processes of peacebuilding, youth empowerment, participatory planning and environmental regeneration.