arts

In this book chapter, I reflect on several different "Community Economy Return on Investment" projects I have been involved in over the last decade. I ask how we might measuring and communicate the holistic value of community wellbeing initiatives, and narrate the experiments of trying to do so with the organisation Life in Vacant Spaces, a community organisation that facilitates temporary use of vacant spaces in Ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand.

In the paper I argue that in a world where our lives are intricately interconnected and our environments are rapidly changing, commoning produces ecological imaginaries and understandings of places that could build a sense of global commons based on mutuality, reciprocity, and relationality. In exploring commoning in the international class room, my paper contributes to on-going dialogues community economies and feminist political ecology in the Community Economies Research Network (CERN), and the newly formed EU project Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity (WEGO).

This article uses kindness as a lens through which to analyse examples of giving to and through the arts in Aotearoa during the first year of COVID-19. We consider whether the exceptional conditions created by COVID-19 caused reconsideration of the way the arts look after society and why and how societies need to look after the arts. We do so by critically examining state and private giving to the arts in Aotearoa New Zealand, from March 2020-March 2021, alongside large- and small-scale artistic gestures of giving. It appears that a ‘kinder’ economy for the arts emerged during this time.

This open access book presents new methods for evaluating the contribution of participatory arts to health and wellbeing. Responding to shifts in arts and health discourse, it argues for challenging long-standing ideas about how value is theorised, measured, and communicated. This book critiques the dominance of social impact as the primary way of understanding change in arts, health, and wellbeing, proposing instead evaluation approaches grounded in contemporary Indigenous, post-humanist, and postcapitalist theories.

In the early 2000s the minority world turned towards the creative sector to revitalize regional economies. The resulting development policies ultimately led to gentrification and social exclusion based on race, ethnicity, class and gender. These exclusions also apply to artists and artisans, occupational groups whose economic activity and needs have been paradoxically erased from dominant creativity-based development prescriptions.

Artist Ailie Rutherford has been working with Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) to visualise the complex nature of work and care for many women. The Pouring Out, Pouring In exhibition shares prints and other outcomes from the Mapping Women’s Work workshop series at GWL. Building on a University of Glasgow study, the women involved have mapped out their multiple paid and unpaid roles, thinking together about how a more equitable economic system might look. 

This report outlines two approaches to assessing the intentions and outcomes of the non-governmental organisation, Life in Vacant Spaces (LiVS), in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Ōtautahi Christchurch presents a useful case study for wellbeing as it continues to recover from the physical and psychological trauma of earthquakes. 

An investigation through texts, interviews, and documentation of the complex relationship between the urban, the rural, and contemporary cultural production.