Resilient Communities: Fostering Citizens Through Arts and Culture

By:
Claudia Carvalho
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This project is focused in case studies within the Boston area (MA, USA) where cultural and artistic practices have been integrating the daily life of communities and where cultural events (like community festivals, street parades, exhibitions or neighborhood artistic presentations) have been refunctionalizing and developing (economically and socially) urban public spaces, like parks, squares, train stations, urban walls, ancient factories or churches.
With data collected from these urban examples, the intention is to gather empirical evidence that elucidates three main variables: the variable community and the variables cultural and artistic citizenship. Having in mind the various social meanings of community, I intend to gather data that helps to characterize and understand the variables cultural and artistic citizenship, taking into account the different cultural events, the community programms and the multi-ethnicity of these different neighborhoods.
Data from these communities is being collected using textual, visual and documental materials: tape recorded interviews, video-interviews, community grounded field notes, community video sessions, neighborhood and community photographs and documental analysis. This data should help to elucidade, in a broader sense, how communities can be empowered through the arts and how urban public spaces can be culturally and socially rehabilitated.


Keywords: citizenship, community arts, empowerment, public spaces
Stream: Art in Communities
Presentation Type: Virtual Presentation in English
Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Claudia Carvalho

PhD student, Research Affiliate, Center for Reflective Community Practice
USA

As a master’s degree scholar in sociology, has worked in the thesis: Cultural Dynamics and Citizenship - The local cultures in pos-modernity - A case study. This study intended to analyse the cultural and social benefits of the cultural and recreational association of Tondela - ACERT (Portugal) in the cultural development of the region, through the implementation of a network of localized international cultural and artistic flows. On the other hand, the research focused on new approaches to the concept of citizenship. This research was supervised by Professor Carlos Fortuna. As a PHD scholar is now working on her PHD project in sociology: Resilient Communities - Fostering citizens through arts and culture, at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. This project is supervised by Professor Carlos Fortuna. Part of her PHD empirical research is being done at the Center for Reflective Community Practice (Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT, USA), with the co-supervision of Professor Ceaser McDowell. Has attended classical ballet classes for 10 years, has participated in various artistic courses and has worked as an actress and theatre producer for six years. Has done community artistic work in penitenciary institutions and in a center for the prevention of drugs' addiction.

Ref: A06P0153