Workpackage 2 description

Objectives

This WP focuses on bottom-up creative strategies, which will be analysed from an angle of “reinvention of culture and arts as platforms for social and creative strategies to overcome conditions of exclusion”. To this purpose specialised literature on the role of culture and arts in motivating and empowering people and groups as well as case-study experiences (for example from SINGOCOM, CRISES) will be confronted and conclusions will be drawn on how a broader view and practice of arts and culture can foster dynamics to overcome situations of deprivation and social alienation. The potential of this integration exercise for improving cooperation between researchers, policy-makers and other practitioners (user groups) will be examined. This does not only involve a contribution to scientific methodology, but also to developing better modes of communication and coordination between various types of actors (researchers, policy-makers, practitioners)

Description of work

Specific cases of bottom-up creative strategies will be presented and discussed at WS3. Discussants will use results from WP1 and inputs from WP4 (Social Innovation) in an attempt to contextualise these experiences in a culture and arts oriented re-interpretation of human trajectories (individual, collective) to escape a variety of conditions of exclusion – as documented in D1.1 through D1.5. WS 3 will result in a report jointly written by the LP (Athens), project managers selected from the user networks as well as artists involved in Kunst en Democratie, Olinda and Firefly . This multi-authorship will also be reflected in a multi-media expression of the report and presented in the website. In this way, the report will be an application of one of the lead principles in this WP, i.e. test the artistic and cultural ways of life and expression as modes of communication and decision-making and in this way contributing to better communication between the three types of agents who are involved.

The integration exercise will be connected to broader methodological debates in social science. This will be done by inviting discussants from outside the consortium to WS3.

Deliverables

D2: report on: WS3 on “Bottom-up Creativity to Escape Social Exclusion”

D2DISSEM: results of WP2 useful for dissemination (publication, user groups, training).

Milestones and expected result

An arts and creativity inspired mode of interpretation of socially creative initiatives to overcome social exclusion, translated into a mode of communication with other exercises meant to integrate various analyses of social integration strategies – as in both other integration exercises.