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Creative Responses to Social Suffering: Using Community Arts and Cultural Development to Foster Hope

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Emancipatory and Participatory Methodologies in Peace, Critical, and Community Psychology

Part of the book series: Peace Psychology Book Series ((PPBS))

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Abstract

In this chapter, we examine community arts and cultural development (CACD) as a method for working with Aboriginal communities to begin to respond to issues that stem from social suffering produced by conditions of oppression. We outline the theoretical underpinnings of CACD, locating its roots in the liberation paradigm. We emphasise the importance of disrupting singular stories and seek to expand ways to foster community-engaged action to promote liberation. An example of CACD practice with Aboriginal people in Western Australia, the Narrogin Stories project, is used to illustrate the practice. The example describes the various processes of consultation and negotiation, and the collection and re-articulation of individual and group stories through creative output. The case study also includes a description of the production and staging of a soundscape that was important to the longer term process of transforming a community narrative of loss, pain, and feuding, to foster hope. The chapter concludes with a listing of key principles taken from this project for community engagement and knowledge production.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Community cultural development, community arts and community-based arts are often used interchangeably in the literature. In this article, we use Community Arts and Cultural Development (CACD). The Australia Council for the Arts uses this more encompassing term.

  2. 2.

    This research is focused on CAN’s Bush Baby project in Narrogin.

  3. 3.

    Following protocol, we deliberately capitalise the word “Indigenous” to refer specifically to Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; ‘indigenous’ refers to any ‘indigenous’ person from any part of the world.

  4. 4.

    Noongar people are the original inhabitants of the southwest corner of Western Australia.

  5. 5.

    When referring to CAN staff in the Narrogin Stories case study (which spans approximately 18 months), it refers mainly to the lead community artist Catherine Simmonds, Aboriginal personnel Frank Walsh and later Geri Hayden, and Pilar Kasat.

  6. 6.

    The word ‘Elders’ is written with a capital letter as a mark of respect.

  7. 7.

    The third being boodjar (country).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Health and Biomedicine, Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Christopher C. Sonn & Amy F. Quayle

  2. Sustainability Policy Institute, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia

    Pilar Kasat

Authors
  1. Christopher C. Sonn
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  2. Pilar Kasat
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  3. Amy F. Quayle
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher C. Sonn .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Mohamed Seedat

  2. South African Medical Research Council-University of South Africa Violence, Injury and Peace Research Unit, Cape Town, South Africa

    Shahnaaz Suffla

  3. Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Daniel J. Christie

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Sonn, C.C., Kasat, P., Quayle, A.F. (2017). Creative Responses to Social Suffering: Using Community Arts and Cultural Development to Foster Hope. In: Seedat, M., Suffla, S., Christie, D. (eds) Emancipatory and Participatory Methodologies in Peace, Critical, and Community Psychology. Peace Psychology Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63489-0_8

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