Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/12546
Title: Engaging Creative Communities in an Industrial City Setting: A question of enclosure
Contributor(s): Gibson, Chris (author); Gallan, Ben (author); Warren, Andrew  (author)
Publication Date: 2012
Open Access: Yes
DOI: 10.5130/ijcre.v5i0.2178Open Access Link
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/12546
Abstract: This article discusses the politics and practicalities of research process in a major government-funded, academic/community collaborative research project on cultural assets in Wollongong, a regional industrial city 85 km south of Sydney, Australia. It does so through the theoretical concept of 'enclosure', which helps illuminate how policy discourses are framed, and reveals capacities to challenge and reframe policy imaginations through research. The setting is pivotal: Wollongong has a legacy of steel and coal industries that dominates contemporary discourses about the city's future prosperity. Cultural industries such as music, film, art, circus and theatre have at various times been either marginalised as insignificant to economic futures or, when they have been noticed, have been worked into city planning in very particular ways - as cultural pastimes, as prospects for economic diversification or as means to renew socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Such visions have rested on notions of what constitutes 'culture' and 'creativity', with a focus on the performing arts, while other forms of vernacular creativity have remained largely unnoticed. Our research project has sought to respond to this, identifying and engaging with people involved in forms of vernacular creativity outside the arts orthodoxy among Wollongong's blue-collar and youth populations (including surfboard shapers, Aboriginal rappers, custom car designers and alternative music subcultures). Our hope is that such engagement can better inform future planning for cultural industries in Wollongong. However, engaging with such creative communities is complicated, and in different times and places research strategies confronted apathy, suspicion, absence of representative organisation and 'consultation fatigue'. We discuss our efforts at engagement with creative communities beyond the arts orthodoxy, and appraise some of the prospects and difficulties of the research methodologies adopted.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Source of Publication: Gateways: International Journal of Community Research & Engagement, 5(1), p. 1-15
Publisher: University of Technology Sydney ePress (UTS ePress)
Place of Publication: Australia
ISSN: 1836-3393
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 160403 Social and Cultural Geography
200206 Globalisation and Culture
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 440404 Political economy and social change
470210 Globalisation and culture
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 950299 Communication not elsewhere classified
950199 Arts and Leisure not elsewhere classified
959999 Cultural Understanding not elsewhere classified
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 130299 Communication not elsewhere classified
130101 Design
139999 Other culture and society not elsewhere classified
Peer Reviewed: Yes
HERDC Category Description: C1 Refereed Article in a Scholarly Journal
Publisher/associated links: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre/article/view/2178
Appears in Collections:Journal Article

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