The importance of Sino-Australian sister city type relationships in regional development

Using the Jiangsu-Victoria and Greater Green Triangle-Yangzhou relationships as case studies this paper provides an initial analysis of the origins, objectives, achievements, and limitations of SinoAustralian Sister City Type Relationships. Based on research to date, we suggest that certain factors, including the development of inappropriate SCTRs have seriously limited the capacity of these relationships to achieve their stated and unstated regional development objectives. After reviewing the recent history and perceived effectiveness of Sino Australian SCTRs. the paper concludes by commenting on the potential of such relationships to contribute to economic and cultural development in regional Australia.

Music education and minority groups cultural and musical identities in the 'newer' South Africa : white Afrikaners and Indians

Music Education, as well as cultural and musical identities are all being renegotiated, post-Apartheid, within the so-called 'newer' rather than the commonly known 'new' South Africa. The developing situation with certain minority groups is particularly interesting. Education in general has undergone much change since the first democratic elections in 1994: music education specifically has been affected by such change in terms of content, delivery and assessment. Within the South African context, cultural and musical identities are often intertwined with language, racial and even tribal identities, and discussing one implies the others. We are particularly interested here in the role of formal Music Education in relation to white Afrikaners and Indians as they renegotiate their cultural development, including musical aspects

Full house theory: A new theory for assessing demand for arts centers

In this article I will establish an underpinning theory to apply in measuring demand for a new arts center (theater, museum, gallery, multipurpose space, tourism destination, or cultural precinct). The new theory is called "Full House Theory"-so called because it aims to provide an equation among the factors that result in maximum occupancy and use of an arts center or cultural facility. Existing theories used in the retail sector offer a distance-and-time analysis of expected customer demand but do not include differentiated product-demand analysis. Cultural planning literature examines community need in relation to cultural development but fails to provide a formula to predict sustainable demand. In addition, I will analyze the theories and methodologies in current use as well as their weaknesses in assessing cultural facility demand.

Multi-level rural community engagement in health

Community participation in health is consistent with notions of democracy. A systems perspective of engagement can see consumers engaged to legitimise government agendas. Often community participation is via consultation instead of partnership or delegation. A community development approach to engagement can empower communities to take responsibility for their own health care. Understanding rural place facilitates alignment between health programs and community, assists in incorporating community resources into health care and provides information about health needs. Rural communities, health services and other community organisations need skills in working together to develop effective partnerships that transfer some power from health systems. Rural engagement with national/state agendas is a challenge. Community engagement takes time and resources, but can be expected to lead to better health outcomes for rural residents.

Inclusive schooling : contexts, texts and politics

The title ‘Inclusive schooling: contexts, texts and politics’, names a thesis which critically analyses the development of inclusive schooling in the small Australian Island state of Tasmania between 1996 and 1998. The ‘Inclusion of Students with Disabilities’ policy, introduced in 1995 by the Tasmanian Department of Education, Community and Cultural Development, provides an opportunity to understand the cultural context and politics of change in schooling over this period. The qualitative methodology deployed here is informed by poststructuralism and captures the everyday experiences of university teaching as a research site. The teacher/researcher as the visible maker of the research use metaphors of fibre and textile practice, techniques of textual juxtaposition and her positioned subjectivity as a female academic to tell a 'big story'. The researcher develops a 'double method' as a possible model for Inclusive research practice and educational policy analysis. Using a critical ethnographic method, derived from the work of Carspecken (1996), 'data stories' (Lather & Smithies 1997, p.34) are produced from the narratives of five key informants – a parent, two teachers, a policy-maker and the researcher. Assembled as the data of the thesis the multi-voiced texts provide an account of the sociocultural, professional and systemic context of Inclusive schooling over a three-year period. In the analysis these data are interpreted from a feminist poststructural standpoint. A deconstructuive reading of the data stories interprets the discourse of inclusive schooling emphasising the dominant foundation of the special education knowledge tradition. The idea of author function (after Foucault 1975, 1984b and Grundy and Hatton 1995) is used to interpret the 'texts' of the key Informants as discursive constructions. The researcher theorises inclusive schooling as an entangled, multiple and contradictory discourse, embedded in the social, cultural and material contexts, rather than a singular unitary Idea of the progress within the special education knowledge tradition. The study contributes a fine-grained analysis of the constructed knowledge of inclusive schooling in one locality. The thesis advocates continuing engagement with questions of epistemology and social transformation in inclusive schooling, rather than persisting with technical rationality and the status quo. The researcher takes the position that the opportunities to theorise inclusive schooling lie within the multiple and disparate constructed texts of the micro world of everyday practice and the macro understanding of understandings of contemporary social justice. The poststructuralist writing/reading questions traditionalist theorising in the special education field. Central to the negotiations of power and truth inclusive schooling research and practice is a communicative theory that transforms populist conceptions of inclusion.

Flows and catchments : stone soup

Installation of the makings of three types of soup: stone soup, axe soup and heirloom soup in accordance with the folk stories. Formed part of group exhibition of photographs, films, installations and drawings, and sound in response to the artist-researchers involvement with the Lake Bolac landscape and community and research being conducted on Charles Dawson an 18th century businessman who engaged and advocated for the cultural rights of the Indigenous peoples of SW Victoria. The aim of the research is to suggest that creative research constitutes a important way to understand and engage local communities for the purpose of exchange and cultural development. My work in particular suggest a way that artist induce community collaboration by creatively producing collaborative platforms that require cooperation and benefits everyone.

Research in action for community informatics : a matter for conversation

In this introduction to the special issue on research in action, we briefly outline an argument concerning the importance of conversation,suggesting that, first, conversational uses of ICTs make them most suitable for community informatic development, and second, that their effective adoption and research requires conversation for that process to be effective.

What a wreck!

Re-enactment of the JC Scammell shipwreck at Point Danger in 1883 : Community Performance written and directed by Wendy Grose with choreography by Jacqui Dreessens and music led by Michele Barnes

Intimacy at work: Playback theatre and corporate cultural change in Mercedes Benz, Brazil

On the back of a faltering economic year in 2007 and a major merger of motor car and truck dealerships, international motor car giant Mercedes Benz adopted a radical approach to re-aligning the company vision for their Brazilian business. Adopting a people-centred approach to change, they integrated participatory theatre and personal stories into a nationwide cultural development programme producing twelve performances in twelve cities. The central content of the performances came from employees who told personal stories that were then performed onstage. Each event acted as a unique expression of workplace values that would be led by employee attitudes and behaviour. Through the dialogic process, the company established a new code of conduct for customer care for the next phase of company activity. This article critiques various aspects of the programme and considers the value and limitations in the person-centred approach facilitated through theatre.

Community social capital and entrepreneurship : analyzing the links

This study examines the effects of community social capital on entrepreneurial intentions (EIs) in rural communities in a developing country. Entrepreneurship, in the form of business start-ups, is widely recognized as an integral component of local economic development programs designed to address poverty and limited livelihood opportunities, especially among poor and marginalized communities in rural areas in developing countries. Using a survey of 496 individuals residing in five rural communities in the Philippines, and drawing from the theory of planned behavior and social capital theory, we examine the direct and indirect effects of community social capital (CSC) on an individual’s EIs. The findings show that CSC largely influences EI by shaping an individual’s perceived self-efficacy (PSE) to engage in entrepreneurship, perceived desirability of entrepreneurship (PDE), and perceived social norms toward entrepreneurship (PSNE). High levels of PSE, PDE, and PSNE have a positive influence on an individual’s EI. These findings offer more nuanced explanations of how social capital within a community can facilitate entrepreneurship as a means of community economic development. Implications of the findings and areas for future research are discussed.

Teeth Tales: a community-based child oral health promotion trial with migrant families in Australia

OBJECTIVES: The Teeth Tales trial aimed to establish a model for child oral health promotion for culturally diverse communities in Australia. DESIGN: An exploratory trial implementing a community-based child oral health promotion intervention for Australian families from migrant backgrounds. Mixed method, longitudinal evaluation. SETTING: The intervention was based in Moreland, a culturally diverse locality in Melbourne, Australia. PARTICIPANTS: Families with 1-4-year-old children, self-identified as being from Iraqi, Lebanese or Pakistani backgrounds residing in Melbourne. Participants residing close to the intervention site were allocated to intervention. INTERVENTION: The intervention was conducted over 5 months and comprised community oral health education sessions led by peer educators and follow-up health messages. OUTCOME MEASURES: This paper reports on the intervention impacts, process evaluation and descriptive analysis of health, knowledge and behavioural changes 18 months after baseline data collection. RESULTS: Significant differences in the Debris Index (OR=0.44 (0.22 to 0.88)) and the Modified Gingival Index (OR=0.34 (0.19 to 0.61)) indicated increased tooth brushing and/or improved toothbrushing technique in the intervention group. An increased proportion of intervention parents, compared to those in the comparison group reported that they had been shown how to brush their child's teeth (OR=2.65 (1.49 to 4.69)). Process evaluation results highlighted the problems with recruitment and retention of the study sample (275 complete case families). The child dental screening encouraged involvement in the study, as did linking attendance with other community/cultural activities. CONCLUSIONS: The Teeth Tales intervention was promising in terms of improving oral hygiene and parent knowledge of tooth brushing technique. Adaptations to delivery of the intervention are required to increase uptake and likely impact. A future cluster randomised controlled trial would provide strongest evidence of effectiveness if appropriate to the community, cultural and economic context. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12611000532909).

Securitising participation in the Philippines: KALAHI and community-driven participation

Participatory approaches to development have been implemented increasingly. One form is the World Bank’s community-driven development (CDD) programme. Participation has, also, become increasingly securitised since 2001. One instance of these trends was the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan (KALAHI) project in the Philippines. This paper examines the implementation of CDD and the problems of its securitisation, using the Philippines as a case study. A composite conceptual framework is advanced that draws upon the international analyses of development. Adapting the concepts of securitisation and de-politicisation, it argues that a new hegemonic-development framework has appeared: the Securitised-Washington consensus. The analysis assesses these trends through the examples of KALAHI and Philippine politics and economics. It suggests that securitised CDD projects result in token efforts at political reform and poverty alleviation that often are contradicted by counter-trends towards development decline and militarisation. Unless these deep-rooted problems are confronted, localised participation is likely to remain ineffectual.

A apreciação musical infantil: aspectos da constituição da infância contemporânea no discurso de crianças do Ensino Fundamental

Music can be found in peculiar historical and social context with distinct functions, such as religious rituals, ethic-esthetic education of subjects, therapeutic elements, critic and maintenance of established patterns, among others. Considered as language, music acts on dialogue dimensions of the body, the senses, the affectionate-cognitive and of social interactions. Their uses reveal the social forces that cross the culture and constitution of subjectivities. The attribution of senses by the subjects to musical production reveals the cultural voices in dialogue, that circumscribe determined social places to them. Our aim in this work is to investigate the child musical appreciation, with children about 7 to 9 years old, and, by attributing uses and senses to music, unveil the voices that settle the places intended and assumed by infancy in contemporaneity The child constructs its musical appreciation through cultural access and mediation, possible by circulation in several socializing groups like family, school, church, infant groups, community groups and, more recently, publicity and media These last two spheres, enabled by the development of the technological means of communication, contributed to the dissemination of the set of consume ideas and for the emergence of the cultural industry, characteristic of the capitalistic production way in its present configuration. They develop new possibilities of perception of the world, in which the limits between childhood and adulthood are not anymore the same that have been established in previous centuries. So, the child musical appreciation is constituted by homogeneity regarding the senses built and disseminated by cultural industry and by the logical merchandizing, and singularities, associated to the construction of senses in interaction with global, local, and multiple contexts, through which the subject circulates and constitutes himself polyphonically

O contexto educativo e cultural da pobreza no ensino público municipal em São Bernardo do Campo

Pós-graduação em Artes - IA