Issue on socially engaged practice in arts, culture, and heritage sectors now online!

Culture Caleidoscoop, an interdisciplinary open-access publication on socially engaged practice in arts, culture, and heritage worldwide, has published the beginning of its first issue – available now on the Culture Caleidoscoop website.

The the inaugural issue of Culture Caleidoscoop – ‘Working with and for people: Mapping socially engaged practice in the cultural sector’ – explores the main focus of Culture Caleidoscoop: socially engaged practice in the arts, cultural, and heritage sectors, revealing what this kind of practice looks like in different organisations and to people working in different roles and around the globe. The first contributions touch on some of the challenges that people face working with and for people across the sector as well as the valuable impact of this type of work.

Some of the themes that have emerged and the questions posed include defining community, social impact, co-creation practices, the role of the professional, and experimentation and evolving practices.

Please feel free to comment under the editorial to share your thoughts about the issue or relevant experiences. We expect this issue to grow: our call for contributions remains open so that we can continue the conversation on this topic.

The first contributions explore

•  a film collective connecting with the local community and shifting perspectives on local history (‘Communities that film, watch, and walk: On the work of Imperfect Cinema‘ by Henry Mulhall),
• working with machine learning software to create an artist’s book that humorously exposes bias in museum collections and art history more broadly (‘Let’s Talk Art: An interview with multidisciplinary artist Michelle Lisa Herman on collaborating with AI software to expose bias‘ by Michelle L. Herman and Sarah McGavran), and
• using co-creative practices to encourage a sense of belonging in migrants and how cultural organisations can stand in solidarity with migrants (‘The civic role of cultural spaces in culture and immigration: Reflections from the Becoming […] projects‘ by Lora Krasteva).

We hope you enjoy reading the contributions as much as we did, and we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch: email us, comment on the editorial, or join the conversation on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram.