ABSTRACT
The notion of resilience has begun to provide an important conceptual framework for understanding how communities respond and adapt to changes. This chapter argues that participatory community arts should be considered in community development processes as a means for building community resilience. Resilience policy and practice have often focused on rebuilding the economic and physical infrastructure of a community. To provide a theoretical backdrop, the chapter begins by outlining the key aspects of social capital and how these relate to community resilience. In building an argument for participatory community arts in building resilience, the chapter examines two international participatory community arts projects: Closer and Connecting Places: Connected Lives. These projects illustrate dimensions of social capital (bonding, bridging and linking) that participatory community arts can generate, and how this contributed to the resilience of the communities where the projects took place.
