Creative Communities conference

Creative Communities 2

21-23 September 2010, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Surfers Paradise, Queensland Australia

Confirmed keynote speakers:

  • Professor Les Back (Goldsmiths College, UK)
  • Associate Professor Mine-Ping Sun (National Chengchi University, Taiwan)
  • Mary Fogarty (University of East London, UK)

Conference convenors:

  • Professor Andy Bennett (CPCI)
  • Dr Ian Woodward (CPCI)
  • Dr Jodie Taylor (CPCI)

Conference organisers:

  • Ms Jill Jones (CPCI)
  • Ms Sarah Gornall (CPCI)

This is a three-day international conference hosted by the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, Griffith University.This conference is affiliated with Griffith University's Strategic Research Program Social Change and Well-Being.

Conference themes and focus

‘Creative communities’ is a phrase that appears in a wide range of government policy and strategy documents, commissioned reports and academic texts. In a post-Richard Florida landscape, urban planners, social scientists, economists, cultural development workers and bureaucrats litter their work with affirmations of community creativity, underscoring its vital role in a twenty-first century creative economy. As we move from a knowledge-based economy to a creative economy, attention has been directed to creative communities in the hope that they will generate economic value through innovation. Therefore, this impresses a higher value upon those creative communities that become, or at least demonstrate the potential to become, creative industries. Moreover, much of the discourse around how creative communities are engendered and sustained indulges the rhetoric of globalisation and the ‘act local, think global’ spin.

The loose application of the term, ‘creative communities’, and its variable discursive contexts, have distracted us from asking the most elementary of questions regarding the people and the practices that generate and sustain ‘creative communities’ that lead to social inclusion. That is, who are the individuals, collectives and facilitators of community creativity? What are their stories and where are they located? And, how might we rethink ‘creativity as a pathway to social inclusion’ outside the current debates around ‘creative class’, ‘creative cities’, and ‘creative industries’?

Following the highly successful Creative Communities conference in April 2009, Creative Communities 2 will address the above questions, bringing together academics, practitioners and policy makers from a variety of different settings, national and international.

Topics for discussion at the conference include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Festivals and carnivals as spaces for multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism
  • Youth culture, cosmopolitanism, citizenship and political engagement
  • Ageing, leisure and social inclusion
  • Embodiment, performativity and pathways to inclusion
  • Community arts-based projects, creativity and cultural expression
  • Rural communities, creativity and social inclusion
  • Street art and civic participation
  • Creative projects and the prevention of juvenile crime and delinquency
  • Creativity, social inclusion and the role of education
  • The internet and communities of creative interest
  • Creative projects as a tool for social inclusion among indigenous cultures
  • Creativity, social inclusion and DIY initiatives
  • Urban regeneration, city spaces and cultural participation

Call for papers

The deadline for abstracts is 23 April 2010. The Call for Papers can be downloaded here (PDF 86K).
Please send abstracts of between 150 and 200 words to creativecommunities@griffith.edu.au

Registration

Conference registration has now opened. Please download and complete this registration form and then return it with your signature either via fax, email or post to the return contact listed on the bottom of the form.

Program

The program will be available closer to the time of the conference.

Venue, accommodation and location details

These will be available shortly.


If you require any other information please email the creative communities team: creativecommunities@griffith.edu.au

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