Arts-based Research in Global Development

This book brings together a range of arts and development scholars and practitioners to explore the unique ways in which arts-based research methods can make a unique positive contribution to effective global development practice.

Since the 1970s, global development has witnessed an increase in the use of participatory approaches to enable the world’s most excluded peoples to be actively involved in the planning and implementation of development projects that impact them. A range of participatory practices are now in common use, many of which use visual activities which enable fuller participation irrespective of literacy levels or social position. More recently, development practitioners with arts skills, along with a small number of professionally trained artists, have started engaging in a wider range of arts-based practices within this participatory development space, aimed at co-creating new knowledge with these communities. This book explores how the performing and visual arts provide spaces for the world’s most marginalised communities to articulate their development aspirations and co-create knowledge that contributes to development outcomes. It also highlights how arts-based research puts the power over development decisions back into the hands of ‘recipient’ communities.

The book will be of interest to development practitioners and artists working with marginalised communities globally, policymakers in arts and global development, graduate students, and academics. The rich case studies provide many fresh ideas for arts and/or development practitioners wanting to utilise arts-based research, particularly with performing arts, in global development programming.