Research and Development Projects

• Conference papers from Education and Social Action Conference 2004
• Building a Research Agenda in Community Cultural Development
• Development of Certificate I, II & IV in Community Cultural Development
• Research and Evaluation of the Torch Project: Re-igniting Community
  The Final Research Report
• Working Towards Community Capacity Buillding Through the Arts
• Does community cultural development present alternative and fresh perspectives and practices...
• Youth Arts and Social Change
• Community Capacity Building and Community Cultural Development

Building a Research Agenda in Community Cultural Development

1. To map existing research in community cultural development in Australia.
2. To help strengthen evaluation practices and reporting in community cultural development. Examples of which include the Centre’s in-depth evaluation of The Longest Night, a community-devised theatre project commissioned by the 2002 Adelaide Arts Festival and directed by Alicia Talbot of Urban Theatre Projects; and the evaluation of Maze, an Ashfield Youth Theatre project.
3. To foster and support more published research and writing about the cultural, economic, health, educational and environmental outcomes of community cultural development activities in Australia, such as the editing a major book by leading Australian youth arts practitioners called Playing Art with Young People and Communities .

More about the National Agenda

Development of Certificate I, II & IV in Community Cultural Development

The Certificate IV was developed in 1994 and 1995 for the NSW Community Arts Association with funding from the NSW Department of Education & Training and the Australia Council for the Arts.

The Certificates I & II  was developed in 1998 for the NSW Community Arts Association with funding from the NSW Department of Education & Training and the Australia Council for the Arts. This course was developed in direct response to a market need expressed by range of organisations. A variety of stakeholders who have been involved in the development and delivery of the Certificate III/IV in CCD offered by NSW Community Arts Association have expressed need for a course in community cultural development (CCD) that is more basic and arts skill focussed than the current Certificate III/IV. These courses are now delivered by CCDNSW

More about this...

Does community cultural development present alternative and fresh perspectives and practices for those engaged in community strengthening, health promotion, environmental action, arts development and related fields of practice?

The text of a public lecture delivered by Bernice Gerrand at the Centre for Popular Education in 2002 can be found here.(PDF 840k)

Youth Arts and Social Change

Michael McLaughlin convened a one-day forum. A transcript that contains the presentations and discussion can be found at http://www.cpe.uts.edu.au/forums/past/youth_arts.html An edited book is currently being completed.

Keynote by Rick Flowers, Oct. 2001

I propose to focus on the nitty gritty detail of community capacity building practices. This is where I think there is a gap in the research, literature and policy discussions. There is a growing amount of useful literature that describes and discusses the distinct nature of community capacity building practice, aims and objectives, and achievements. It is important that we are documenting outcomes. But I think we often neglect to ask why some community capacity building practices are effective. By asking why we move beyond grand rhetoric and become more analytical. Here are just two examples of the sort of questions we might ask:

• Why do some practices fail to engage a wide range of stakeholders in the community, and why do some succeed?
• Why do some practices seem rather tired and uninspiring whereas others seem to generate huge amounts of energy, ideas and action?

A useful notion is that of evidence-based practice. Where is the evidence that certain forms of practice are more effective in facilitating community capacity building than others?

I am going to proceed in the following way. My lecture will be broken up with some exercises that can be undertaken in small groups. I will sketch some thoughts about the nature of community capacity building. I will discuss and pose the chicken and egg question... do local people's energies and capabilities come first... to create the impetus for jobs, development, more education, better health.... or is some development first necessary in order to enable the building up of people's capabilities. I will explain why I welcome the notion of community capacity building and how I see it as offering an alternative to other approaches that remain dominant and popular in community health and rural development planning.

Community capacity building potentially offers an alternative to:

• Needs-based planning approaches
• Diffusionist, top-down planning approaches
• The enduring popularity of social marketing strategies in community health practices.

I want to explain why I get impatient with what I see an unproductive and almost obsessive focus on outcomes and elaborate on my argument about evidence-based practice. I'll then conclude by offering a brief critique of what I see as staid and conservative strategies for community capacity building, and outline some ideas for dynamic and inclusive strategies.

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What particular perspectives do community capacity building bring to our efforts in community health and rural development? Is it just new jargon that means much the same as old terms like community development, participatory development, participatory action research....? There are many contesting answers to this question. I don't think it is productive to enter this debate as there are so many different interpretations of each term.

I do accept that the term community capacity building has helped place more emphasis on qualities such as trust and problem solving versus an over-reliance on infrastructure planning and skills development. Community capacity building does owe much to the large amount of recent research and theorising about social capital. Whatever view one might have about social capital, a virtue of the considerable theorising and research about it, is the attention that is paid .... not only to immediate material outcomes - eg. new roads, jobs etc..... and to inter-mediate training outcomes - eg. more TAFE graduates ...... but the increasing attention that it now paid to those foundational things that lie in the realm of social capital - eg. community spirit, co-operation, .... willingness to place collective benefits over individual interests.

Let's consider typical key phrases that characterise literature about community capacity building. Consider the way value is placed not just on hard skills and knowledge but also on 'soft' attributes that fall more in the realm of qualities, attitudes, values....

• helping small rural communities take charge of their future.
• Promote grassroots initiatives and planning
• Help develop skills and leadership
• Identify resources and community assets to mobilise them
• Inclusive participation
• Collaborative decision making
• Community transformation
• Active citizenship
• Visioning and goal setting
• Social cohesion
• problem solving
• Build relationships or bridges between associations, agencies, individuals and businesses
• trust, reciprocity and respect

I think it's time there was an explicit interest by community health and rural development planners in these sorts of qualities and values. They shouldn't be taken for granted. They can be nurtured and can be learnt. And they are a foundation for any efforts in community health and development.

*****************

But where do these qualities and values come from? Are they already there in each community? Or do they have to be learnt and developed from scratch? These are chicken or egg questions; which came first? Is the challenge of community capacity building a task that is about tapping into latent resources that lie beneath the surface? How much and what kind of resources are to be identified, shaken up and supported? Why have these resources being lying dormant? Whose resources are most valued?

I suggest you discuss these questions in your small group. We might have time for two small groups to report back?

Or is all this just a play on words? Is it more a matter of developing new resources with local people? I think there is a bit of both. There are many valuable resources that are already in local communities. But there are also many valuable new resources that can be developed.

I think what is more important to ask is: whose capacities and resources are most valued? All communities, large or small, are diverse. Will, should, and can, the chairperson of a community capacity building initiative equally value the capacities of:

• Women and men alike
• Young and old alike
• Employed and unemployed alike
• Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people alike
• Rich and poor
• People with disabilities and those without
• Working class and middle class alike
• Sporting and arts enthusiasts alike
• Committee meeting junkies and those who have never been part of a committee?

This points to the contestation around the notion of community. It is possible that capacities are built up in one part of the community that end up excluding other parts. This is not a profound argument. But what I do wish to highlight is that to facilitate community capacity building efforts that are genuinely inclusive is a mightily complex and difficult challenge. Such efforts are sometimes taken for granted or glossed over. It sometimes takes a fair bit of courage to name and be explicit about the diversity and differences within a small, rural community, let alone a large urban community.

As much as possible, let's be explicit about the sort of community capacity building we value..... or whose community capacity building we value. At a more theoretical level, we should not assume that there is universal agreement about the nature of social capital or community capacity building. There are those who see qualities such as trust being with individuals who freely choose to exercise it or not exercise it. Others see these qualities connected to structural arrangements that either encourage or discourage it? For example, do private businesses, government programs, or co-operative enterprises shape trust in different ways? These sorts of questions relate to the hoary old debate between individual agency vs collective structure. Of course, individuals no matter how heroic and talented, cannot advance everyone's interests through their solitary actions. Likewise, structural interventions will not impact on all individuals in the same way. I'd argue that community capacity building efforts should pay attention to both individual and structural change.

But when it comes to the crunch I'd argue that a lot of social capital theorising and consequently community capacity building practices favour individual vs structural change. The trouble with this is that it may reinforce inequalities. There is an assumption held by many that if you change individuals that will trickle down into community change. Think of the value placed on developing leadership skills in community capacity building initiatives. It is possible that the leadership capabilities of a few individuals are significantly increased while the rest of the community remains passive and dependent. Now ..... I do recognise that community leadership strategies can be more inclusive and participatory ..... but that is another story.

*****************

I now want to talk about why I welcome the notion of community capacity building and how I see it as offering an alternative to other approaches that remain dominant and popular in community health and rural development planning.

Community capacity building potentially offers an alternative to:

• Needs-based planning approaches
• Diffusionist, top-down planning approaches
• The enduring popularity of social marketing strategies in community health practices.

In a conventional needs-based planning approach to development people are seen as 'in need.' For example, they have a problem of obesity and they 'need' better diets and more physical activities. Or they are seen as lacking required skills and they 'need' training. This is a deficit approach that is often accompanied by issue specific or sector specific strategies. So, the education department delivers training programs and health authorities deliver nutrition programs... more often than not in isolation from each other.

In a community capacity building approach people are seen as having talents, resources, aspirations that are positive. The community capacity building practitioner ..... so the theory goes.... does not see themself as an expert whose job is to identify and articulate needs.... but more that of a facilitator whose job is to help people identify and articulate their ideas, their aspirations and the resources they already have and any additional resources they may need.

How often have we heard stories of communities being besieged by researchers, consultants and planners armed with clipboards and butchers paper who identify needs, go away, and make recommendations that seem far removed from the local reality? These are stories of disempowerment. Compare this to a community capacity building strategy where the many government agencies work together rather than separately. Compare the exercise of writing up on butchers paper a long list of the community's needs or deficiences to a community capacity mapping exercise..... an exercise where people are asked to think out of the square ..... to affirm things they may have taken for granted.... An exercise where they are supported to map the community's capacities. I want you in your small groups to take a small flight of imagination. Imagine you all belong to the same, small rural community. It is a hypothetical community. Brainstorm features for a mapping exercise. You are considering possible features that are strengths, resources, assets. (eg.s home grown vegies, two general stores, the biggest astrology club in the state etc.).

I am sure there is no need for me to spend time at this conference describing the difference between a top-down planning vs community capacity building approach.

I would like to say something about the enduring dominance of social marketing approaches to community health and how the growing interest in community capacity building provides a welcome counter-weight. Social marketing strategies mostly look for ways to change behaviour around specific problems such as smoking, Hep C, teenage pregnancy. They look for ways to sell, persuade, convert, convince people via conveying attractively packaged messages. Of course, such strategies have their place alongside other types of community health work. But research does suggest that the returns on the huge amounts of monies spent on social marketing are not terrific. The returns have been more promising where there have been supplementary measures to increase levels of personal and collective efficacy in the target groups. People may understand a message to change behaviour but if they feel powerless to make that change they are unlikely to change in the long term. This is where community capacity building strategies are important. They potentially can directly address people's levels of efficacy; ie. help people feel more able and powerful to make changes.

*****************

This is all very well ..... but how do you do it? I think that practitioners and planners under-estimate the complexity of community capacity building practice. I get impatient when I read many accounts of community capacity building practice. I find many accounts are descriptive and not analytical. The accounts describe the goals but rarely do I find critical discussions about how difficult it was to include and mobilise a wide range of stakeholders in goal setting. Getting people involved, let alone to take control and responsibility is, never easy. Many accounts of community capacity building practice go on to describe how meetings were convened, committees formed, and plans agreed to. But rarely do I learn about the nitty gritty details of how effective these meetings and committees were. Who came to the meetings? Who actively participated in the meetings? Who, if anybody, shifted from an apathetic and despondent attitude to a buoyant and confident attitude? What were the contesting models or ideas about development? Whose interests prevailed? How were differences negotiated and respected?

I think part of the reason for the lack of analysis is that there is a widespread taken-for-granted assumption that community capacity building practice is essentially about being a good meeting organiser. I know, I'm probably being simplistic.... But I reckon if one did a survey of community capacity building projects that over 75% would follow what I am going to call a staid, conservative and formulaic procedure. It goes something like this...... (a) establish some sort of action group or local committee; (b) convene some sort of workshop planning process - Search planning workshops, Community Opportunity workshops etc. ; (c) organise follow-up meetings to continue the planning and make decisions about implementation; (d) establish and seek agreement on management arrangements with some sort of secretariat.

I wonder how many practitioners consider alternative ways of devising and implementing community capacity building strategies. Where is the research to provide us with evidence about how effective the various strategies are? Where is the research to give us evidence about who participates in particular community capacity building efforts? To my knowledge, there has not been a lot of research about the practice of community capacity building. There has been much more about what it is, and how to measure it. Therefore, I make the following comments and suggestions cautiously.

I suspect that meeting-based / workshop-based practices are not effective because they are:

• not inclusive. Fran Baum and Robert Bush have been researching aspects of civic participation and governance in community capacity building. They argue that working class people are not being represented in the usual types of consultation forums - namely meetings, workshops and committees. There are people who like meetings and committees but there are probably more that don't. A challenge is to engage those who don't.
• not pluralist. They employ a one-size fits all approach rather than responding to different ways people like to learn, plan, make decisions and work together.
• Not experiential and rarely provide opportunities for learning by doing. Meetings and workshops are overwhelmingly cognitive. They are often quite didactic. If people are going to learn to take charge of their future, the way they learn should mirror that. I don't think workshops and meetings, even those that are interactive, do mirror a participatory way of working. They are inevitably dominated by a small number of individuals.

Here are some ideas for alternative strategies.

Imagine the ways a local newspaper might:

• engage different groups in the community
• get them expressing views about a community's history and future, generate lots of discussion and debate
• make individuals and groups feel important because their ideas are published
• create opportunities to commission and support local people to research community capacity building issues.

To do this, I imagine a local newspaper giving column spaces to not just local dignitaries but also to those whose voices are often not heard - eg. early school leavers. It wouldn't be much good if all they did was make the column space available. The newspaper would have to think of ways to actively support people to write columns. The newspaper could work collaboratively with people or groups in the community to research and prepare stories.

Imagine if a local community capacity building group chose to invest funds in a community film project. Imagine finding and commissioning some film-makers who over a period of six to twelve months didn't make a film about the history and future of the community, but instead collaborated with various stakeholder groups and supported them to make the film. I am not talking about a local steering committee overseeing the film-makers. I am envisaging a process where members of the Aboriginal community get an opportunity to work hands-on.... researching, scripting, editing, acting, and dubbing in the making of part of the film. Likewise, shopkeepers, nurses, juvenile offenders might engage in a similar hands-on collaborative film-making process. Imagine the thinking and discussion that would have to go on among these people to research and make the film. Imagine if the film-makers were not just good facilitators but also good at their craft.... and the film turned out to be 'good'.... not a dull documentary. It could be launched and shown in town and at other places. Imagine the pride and sense of achievement that might be generated by this.

Let me highlight features of these proposed strategies. They are seeking to create opportunities for people to be actively engaged rather than passively engaged... by giving them the responsibility to research and devise capacity building strategies for themselves. They are shaped by an explicit commitment to work with people whose voices are not usually heard. The strategies are shaped by an assumption that the deepest challenge in, and a pre-requisite for inclusive, community capacity building is to bring about a change in mindset. In one sense it's easy to do community capacity building work with successful business people, experienced local government officials.... people who do already feel they are in charge of their community's future. It's much harder working with people who feel relatively powerless to influence change... the sort of people who put themselves down saying they are not important, they're not clever, successful etc. To help such people shift by seeing themselves not as objects of change but as agents of change is the greatest challenge in community capacity building.

In this respect I think artists and community educators can make valuable contributions to community capacity building. Artists can help people map their communities, research and tell their histories, and convey their possible futures, in ways that are creative, engaging, dynamic and inclusive. Community educators can help devise strategies for learning and planning beyond meetings and workshops.

papers and abstracts from: (download PDF 8.4MB)
Flowers, R. (Ed.) 2004 Education and Social Action Conference, Centre for Popular Education UTS

Bennet-McClean, D. and Dutton, J.
Delivering the dream: an Indigenous approach to strategic planning 89

Burden, J.
Community Circus: Cultural development, creativity and the building of community 94

Clifford, S. and Kaspari, J.
Creative Democracy – Homelessness 103

Coker R. and Coker, J.
Soul Food: collaborative development of an ongoing non-denominational, devotional event 111

Correa, L. and Bevis M.
Women of the West: A Photovoice Project in Tregear. Learning Community Leadership 116

Coulter, K.
Challenges of researching community cultural development projects in
custodial environments 127

Dennis, R.
Improvised performance as a model for popular education and capacity building 128

Friedman, G.
Puppetry-in-health, education and community development 134

Gaines, A.
Briefing for a world that works. Developing a guiding orientation to the transition
to sustainability and community well being 135

Merlyn, T.
Celebrating life in Sydney’s West: The hard and soft learning of community action
in a festival organising workshop course for grassroots leaders 140

Mollison, M., Hammond, C. and Fallon, G.
Producing videos by and for Aboriginal community groups in Australia 146

Murray, M., and Tilley, N.
Developing community health action and research through the arts 147

Philip-Harbutt, L.
Mapping arts and cultural practice 154

Philip-Harbutt, L., Dwyer, P. Coulter, K., Putland, C. and McEwen, C.
Beyond anecdotal evidence and project acquittal: Searching for an appropriate
evaluation framework and methodology for community cultural development
projects and practice 160

Ramilo, B.
ccd.net, Community Cultural Development and Open Source 161

Reardon, C.
Pooling our collective learnings: Forum theatre experiences 167

Slattery, P.
‘A Story Unfolds’: Interactive theatre-based storytelling 169

Zigmond, H.
Not Only But Also – moving beyond the case study: Creatively linking a
community through its arts, CLACIA 172