Decolonising and Critical Approaches to Community Arts: Centering Relationality, Communality, And Power

Abstract

We acknowledge the Ancestors, Elders and families of the Wurundjeri of the Kulin who are the Traditional Owners and Custodians of University land. As we share our own knowledge practices within the University may we pay respect to the deep knowledge embedded within the Aboriginal community and their ownership of Country. We acknowledge that the land on which we meet is a place of age-old ceremonies of celebration, initiation, and renewal and that the Kulin people's living culture has a unique role in the life of this region. VU is committed to building better relationships and fostering greater understanding between the wider Australian community and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.We would like to thank Mehak Sheikh for coordinating aspects of the project from the VicHealth side. Thanks also to Dr. Sam Keast for his critical feedback and assistance with recording interviews. Thanks to Roshani and Sam for editing the audio and video This project seeks to accompany and inform the Future Reset project, which is part of the Future Healthy program that is based on three core principles: Equity, Co-design, and Partnership. Specifically, the literature review examines what VicHealth can learn from collaborative public health projects utilising community arts, arts-based and creative practices that draw on the knowledge, strategies, and accounts of those in marginalised communities who used art to address local needs around responding to systemic harms and facilitating justice and healing. At issue are questions of how community arts, arts-based and creative practices can re-knit fractured social worlds, redress the harms of systemic and structural violence experienced by marginal communities, and also increase understanding and respectful relationships with people in marginalised communities.