The Culture and Community Researchers’ Network was a partnership between CDN and Victorian College of Art and Music’s Centre for Cultural Partnerships. It brought together researchers from universities in Australia and other countries who were interested in cultural development, social change, creative methodologoes, artistic intervention, and/or community research themes. In 2012, a new program led by VCA-MCM’s Centre for Cultural Partnerships: Social Practice in the Arts Seminar Series continued the work of the Network.
2012 Presenters
November
Dr Aneta Podkalicka: “Youthworx: generating social value through cultural production and enterprise”
Kerrie Scheafer: “Post-capitalism, community and performance in the work of MED Theatre and Theatre Modo.”
October
Xris Reardon: “The legacy of Augusto Boal’s work on Theatre of the Oppressed: where have we gone, where we have come to.”
Chris Parkinson: “The ethics and aesthetics of community-based arts practice.”
Cymbeline Buhler: “Peace-building theatre in Sri Lanka. First steps and considerations.”
September
Pamela Bruder: “Visual methods: articulating when words fail.”
Dr Anne Harris: “Ethnocinema and 21st century applied video.”
August
Candice Boyd, PhD Candidate, University of Melbourne: “The notion of therapeutic space in art, clinical psychology, continental philosophy, and contemporary cultural geography.”
June
Bo Svoronos, PhD Candidate, RMIT University: “How Indigenous festivals create spaces for reciprocity and community identity – observing impacts of festival sustainability.”
Miriam Fathalla, Masters Student, La Trobe Univsersity: “Principles of the Burning Man festival and characteristics of successful community development engagement.”
April – Urban Space and the Creative City
Kelum Palipane: “Towards a sensory production of urban space: Developing a conceptual framework if inquiry based on sensory embodied practice.”
Dr Kate Shaw: “Re-thinking the ‘creative city’: reconciling global strategies with local subcultures.”
March – Participatory and Creative Research
Devora Neumark: “Collaborative performance art in search of beauty and home: making a case for participatory research and co-creativity.”
Jen Rae: “Riparian project.”
February – Creativity/Creative Risks
Jim Chambliss: “Can Epilepsy enhance creativity in Visual Art?”
Nilgun Guven: “Critical reflections on practice led research as a performance, community and arts worker.”
2011 Presenters
November
Poppy de Souza: “Video-as-process experiments in thinking with a video camera.”
September
Michelle Evans, PhD Candidate, Melbourne Business school: “Be:Longing – Enacting Indigenous leadership in the arts.”
August
Emma Blomkamp, PhD candidate VCAM and University of Auckland: “The political context of cultural indicators: evidence and values in democratic governance.”
Kim Dunphy, PhD Candidate, Deakin University: “Understanding outcomes of participatory arts: a framework for evaluation.”
Marnie Badham, PhD student, University of Melbourne: “Naming the world’ as representation: a relational approach in socially-engaged arts and cultural indicators.”
July
Sue Doyle, Arts Victoria: “Evaluating Victoria’s community arts advisory network, Castanet.”
Anne Kershaw PhD Candidate Deakin University: “The influence of museums’ relational capabilities on their work with culturally diverse communities.”
June
Dr Andrea Lemon, Creative Director of Cha Cha Sam and Kids Thrive: “This Place has no Place: Traditional circus, community and belonging.”
Adam Broinowski, University of Melbourne: “In search of commonalities in multiple sovereignties: a discussion of intercultural and multilingual performance collaborations in Cardiff, Dili, Jordan and Tokyo.”
May
Emma Blomkamp, PhD candidate VCAM and University of Auckland: “Evaluating community wellbeing and cultural policy: from theory to practice.”
March
Isabel Jackson, PhD candidate, University of Melbourne: “I am, you are … but who are they and why are they looking at us like that?”
Georgia Birch, PhD candidate, Deakin University: “How does previous physical activity and motherhood influence activity levels in later life for older Somali women living in Melbourne, Australia?”
February
Dr Mark Selkrig, La Trobe University: “Community-based dialogues of identity and learning.”
2010 Presenters
October
Jill Parris, PhD Candidate, University of Melbourne: “Arts-based study into the settlement of young, humanitarian entrants from the Horn of Africa.
September
Tony Hicks: “Exploring the various historical and cultural influences that inform decision making in Tony’s creative practice, music improvisation, within a range of collaborative projects.”
Evangelos Sakaris, PhD Candidate, University of Melbourne: “Transubstantiation: Alterity of particularly determined objects. What changes in ordinary matter to change the way we consider it?”
August
Zara Stanhope, PhD Candidate, ANU: “How can contemporary public art create cross-cultural dialogue?”
Poppy de Souza, PhD Student, University of Melbourne: “Having a voice that matters.”
July
Vicki-Ann Ware, PhD: “Moving with the time: maintaining cultural identity through fusion genres.”
Robert Hoskin, PhD Candidate, ACU: “The Mowanjum festival: a model for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Collaboration
June
Louise Docherty: “Evaluation in music therapy.”
Kim Dunphy: “The role of arts in social change in East Timor.”
May
Marnie Badham, PhD Student, VCAM & McCaughey Centre: “Creative engagement and deliberative democracy: participatory advocacy methods.”
March
Danielle Wyatt, PhD Candidate, RMIT University: “Community art and cultural theory: beyond a practitioner discourse.”
Bo Svoronos, PhD Candidtate, RMIT University: ” Exploring Indigenous festivals and reciprocity.”
2009 Discussion
Creative Ways of knowing: how can we consider and value ways of knowing through the arts?
Theories of change as they relate to the arts: what are the theories of change that drive the work of the socially engaged artist?
September 2009 Creative and collaborative methods in community research: Interdisciplinary tales of understanding and adventure
National roundtable of culture + Community PhD researchers
Presented by the Centre for Cultural Partnerships at the University of Melbourne, RMIT Globalism Research Centre, and Cultural Development Network at the VCA, Southbank, Melbourne.
Keynote presentations:
Dr Lachlan MacDowall, University of Melbourne
Dr Lisa Slater, RMIT Univeristy
Dr Kathleen Irwin, University of Regina, Canada