Creative arts as a catalyst for community participation in environmental stewardship

Abstract

This portfolio raises issues of vital importance to environmental decision makers and policymakers, and professionals in the cultural sector. It investigates the important role that creative based arts can play as a catalyst for community participation in environmental stewardship. In particular, emphasising the integrative relationship between understanding human based values and people's connection to environmental issues (Bushell, 2001). Environmental stewardship encourages people to be custodians of the land and to care about the way they use and interact with the environment for current and future generations. In this respect, it involves elements and principles of community development and is based on practices and a set of values that addresses to improve community wellbeing and build communities based on social justice, equality and mutual respect. This research can assist in understanding what are the drivers of community participation. Community cultural development (ccd) is an extension of community development incorporating culture in its broadest sense promotes participation in artistic and cultural expression as a means to explore common community concerns and issues. The portfolio raises discussion about the challenges with current traditional practices of community engagement and environmental communication and provides inspiration to alternative approaches of creative community engagement to stimulate community dialogue. This portfolio also illustrates the important the role of individual and collective visions and aspirations and how they can be materialised through cultural production (Carter, 2004) using community cultural development processes working with artists and local communities in developing their sense of place and identity. By examining issues of the value of community knowledge through creative arts based approaches in combined knowledge making using informal and formal sources for cultural research, new methods and opportunities are revealed for its application in an environmental context and the role of technology and various modes of communication technologies and social media. As a result through engagement with creative based arts processes and various new approaches it can stimulate community participation that can lead to active citizenship by local communities to inform environmental decisionmaking. Through stimulating local communities' active participation and understanding in creative arts projects it can further lead to stronger commitment to environmental issues. This can be very empowering for local communities on a transformative level on many levels and the impacts when shared in the public domain. This is timely as current environmental research is moving towards a more systems based approach to conservation (Merson et al 2012) and the recognition that nature is dynamic and so is the relationship with human activities and the environment. This systems based approach combined with methods of a landscape based conservation approach (Merson et al 2012) which accommodates the diverse perspectives and multiple levels of interpretations and connections with the land will inevitably bring new understandings for communities and organisations. The main key point is the ability for environmental organisations through a new attitude and approach to contemporary governance of natural resources and their use can be responsive to the changing factors and listening to the voices and needs of society and the community. This can be achieved by an adaptive governance approach in reviewing systems, processes and organizational change to improve the effectiveness of environmental communication and future environmental problem solving.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	English