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This chapter focuses on the South Side Community Art Center and the South Side Writers' Group that predate the fame of Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks. As pillars of the Bronzeville's community, these institutions of art and literature generated a unique aesthetic consciousness/political ideology for which Chicago Black Renaissance would garner much fame. The chapter emphasizes how the artists and authors of both institutions evidenced a strong commitment to and conditioning by the streets and people of Bronzeville. The aesthetic formula characterized by these visual arts and literary groups collided in ways that always articulated a vital political and modern consciousness that sustained the Renaissance movement into the 1940s.

The chapter opens with a distinction between political activism and artmaking by suggesting that activism tends to push the political as subject matter, while art has moved away this century from representing ‘the political’, returning to a concern for materials and their affects. However, such a crude distinction fails to account for nuances within practices, and thus the example of the Cuban artist, Tania Brugera, who uses political tools as material for her work, complicates the claim. Is it possible to define something as nebulous as an art community today? As with the contested space of aesthetics, Rancière argues that communities offer similar breaches that open and close, in this case between identities. There will be agreement in certain places and times on what constitutes an art community, but this is contingent upon an ongoing process of dissensus and transformation, subjectivation and disidentification. The chapter closes with an introduction to what became a global economic imperative from the 1970s, neo-liberalism, and it suggests that what is at stake for artists is a battle to define one’s practice against the contemporary figure of a complicit artist-entrepreneur. [185]

Step 1 guides readers through the discovery and description of a community and its arts. It helps readers think about what a community is; choose a community and start a Community Arts Profile; begin learning about a community and its arts through practical activities; and start exploring a community’s social and conceptual life. It introduces research methods such as participant observation, interviewing, note-taking, audio- or videorecording, and photography. It also addresses legal and ethical considerations for arts advocates. Finally, Step 1 includes examples from author experiences and highlights further resources for readers.

This chapter considers the role of participation in community arts as a means of promoting greater social engagement by older people. It considers the contribution of community-based activities in general and emphasises that they should be considered part of a broader programme to enhance the quality of lives of residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods. It then considers in detail the impact of one specific community arts project, detailing the enthusiastic reaction of the participants but also highlighting the need to ensure ongoing support and the need to recognise the central role of the facilitator. It concludes by re-emphasising the importance of promoting control of such community initiatives by the local residents.

This chapter discusses the status of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (PAPA) during the 1970s. It explains how the organization emerged reinvigorated in the mid-1970s with new recruits who had a higher degree of musical training and experience than the previous group as well as a strong commitment to the Arkestra ethos and aesthetic. These new members formed the so-called Great Houses which became community art centers. The Arkestra also became associated with the Immanuel United Church of Christ (IUCC) and its socially conscious minister, the Reverend Edgar Edwards, who offered the church as a regular performance space for more than eight years.

In its detailed assessment of the presence of white Irish-born playwrights in the development of community arts in Ireland, this chapter suggests the problematics involved in negotiating the authors’ whiteness in relation to the minority communities in Ireland. Irish-born playwrights such as Donal O'Kelly, Declan Gorman, and Charlie O'Neill must confront the ethical question of how to speak convincingly on issues concerning migration and racism, as individuals belonging to the privileged ‘white’ and ‘native’ majority of Ireland. As the author implies, they manage to avoid the pitfalls involved in such a task by infusing their work with a political activism which is built on previous paradigms of social and community engagement. Furthermore, community arts work fosters genuine interculturality through the cooperation and interaction on stage of ethnically diverse individuals.

Having summarised the underlying structural factors to be addressed, in the context of neo-liberal globalisation, this concluding chapter focuses upon the issues to be addressed within and between communities themselves. Communities can, and too often do, exacerbate the effects of displacement, becoming fragmented and divided in the process, blaming each other/ ‘the other’ for their frustrations and anxieties. But these are so far from being the only options, as previous chapters have amply demonstrated. The concluding chapter identifies the importance of common understandings as the basis for social solidarity, developing alliances across differences, taking account of the importance of community arts as a way of developing shared understandings and empathy in the pursuit of social justice agendas. The chapter ends with a collaborative poem, written by migrant, asylum-seeking and refugee women, expressing their solidarity in the face of displacement and dispossession.