Category: Arts – Social, Political and Community Agendas in the Arts
Collision and Symbiosis of Multiple Cultures in Post-Industrial Heritage Renewal: An Autoethnographic Account
This paper explores the potential of post-industrial heritage renewal as a catalyst for cultural exchange and inclusive development, based on the author’s observations and reflections on visits to four different sites in different countries. Drawing on an autoethnographic approach, the paper examines the collision and symbiosis of multiple cultures in the Ruhr Museum of Industry …
Exploring Cross-Cultural Understanding Through Chinese Paper-Cutting: An Observational Study in Welsh Communities
In the contemporary globalised world, cross-cultural communication has become a subject of widespread concern, with cross-cultural understanding being a key component. Traditional folk art and cultural heritage can be potent vehicles for promoting cross-cultural understanding. This research seeks to explore how the art of Chinese papercutting can be utilised as a medium for cross-cultural communication. …
Community-Centred Design for Social Innovation: Bottom-Up and Government Initiatives in Shanghai
Insecurity has gripped our society. When we write these words, some countries may be experiencing war, hunger, and poverty. The causes of this extreme insecurity vary, but the major contributors include a lack of community cohesion, relevance, and cultural identity. In the absence of timely solutions to these problems, more social problems will arise. Therefore, …
Up Start: Community-Based Creative Industries
The article focuses on the Up Start – Creative Industries project, an initiative by the Aga Khan Foundation Portugal in partnership with the University of Évora, under the scope of the Partnerships for Impact Programme and Portugal Social Innovation. The interaction between the two institutions focused on design for social innovation, heritage and management with …
The Quercetum Chorus Workshop
The Quercetum Chorus Workshop introduced students in the Cal Poly Pomona Interdisciplinary Paris Study Abroad Program (CPP IPSAP) to methods of deepening human-tree relations through sound, drawing and movement. Students applied a multi-sensory approach to knowing trees by attuning to their frequencies, textures, shapes, and movements. They were invited to reimagine trees as more-than-human bodies …
How Power Inequality Operates in the Gig Economy: Taking Chinese Food Delivery Platform Meituan as an Example
Sharing economy has become a buzzword in the world in recent years. Though it brings lots of convenience to individual daily life and boosts economic growth, it seems to perpetuate and even develop the unfairness between employers and workers, leading to the further deterioration of labour rights. Given this background, this paper will take Meituan …
East Versus East: The Failure of Ilya Repin’s Parisian Café at the 1875 Paris Salon
The 19th century in Europe was characterized by the canonization and de-canonization of various painters. My paper deals with the failure at 1875 the Parisian Salon of a painting by the great Russian realist Ilya Repin (1844–1930), who exhibited a social genre work – a cafe scene – to a French audience for the first …
The Mediatization of Folk Art: -A Narrative Study of Paper-Cutting in Fujian, China
Paper-cutting in China is considered a culturally-based interpretation.With a paradigm of folk culture built within it, paper-cutting creates civilization and documents history. “Mediatization” refers to a process of media and social change, and research on it focuses on the role that various media rings play in the process of social and cultural development. Developments in …
Liminality in Inclusivity: Faculty Perceptions Towards an Inclusive Educational Community
As Singapore lives with COVID-19, the notion of an inclusive educational community is imperative to enhance the engagement of persons with diverse learning abilities. Over the course of eight months from February to September 2021, concepts of human-centred design, disability through the lens of inclusion, and principles of Universal Design for Learning were examined in …
Differences as a Source of Creativity: Friendship Between Wang Hui and Yun Shouping
The biography of Wang Hui (1632-1717), a famous seventeenth-century landscapist in China, has been written many times over. While the question of whether to define him as a professional artist or as a scholar-amateur is still being debated, it has not been fully articulated what the sophistication of his identity brought to his work as …
A SDT-SFBT Based Group Intervention on College Students’ Smartphone Addiction and Positive Smartphone Usage
Smartphone addiction/problematic smartphone usage has become a pressing issue, however, interventions aiming to arouse positive energy and inspire self-determination to change are scant. Integrating the tenets of self-determinaiton theory (SDT) and solution-focus brief therapy (SFBT), this study aimed to implement a group intervention to evaluate its effectiveness on college students’ smartphone addiction, positive usage of …
Social Forums for a Different Democracy: Key Artistic Strategies of Chinese Socially Engaged Art in the 21st Century
It is the goal of this presentation to analyze how do some recent Chinese socially engaged art experiment a different democracy than the western paradigm. An in-deep study of art project Everyone’s East Lake (2010-2014) will be introduced. East Lake is the biggest tourist attraction in Wuhan city of China, whereas, in recent ten years, …
Resisting Precariousness, Reclaiming Community: Contemporary Art, ‘Unitary Urbanism’ and Urban Futures
This paper will examine instances of contemporary art that have responded to the social urgencies of capitalist-urbanism, which force urban communities into precarious positions such as, exclusionary development, gentrification, housing struggles and the displacement of vulnerable groups. Such works have demonstrated art’s potential to be a tool for assisting communities in acquiring agency over urban …
Anti-amnesia: the Viability of Millenary Weaving in a World of Acceleration
This paper presents a design research mediation process towards the sustenance of ancient weaving techniques in the Portuguese region of Almalaguês. It focuses on identity, traditions, knowledge and economic viability; actions comprise ethnography, archiving, design practices, and media and business strategies. The project subscribes to the need to “consider the ways in which we contextualise …
The Individual and the Arts in a Globalised Society
The topic for this presentation would be to make use of the social and political agendas in the Arts in a manner that would highlight the transformational nature of identity, difference and belonging in an increasingly globalised and multicultural society. This in turn has changed the way we approach and relate to people based on …