ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on practices that involve different people, facilitate communication, and encourage new thinking and experiencing. It presents a spectrum of different practices, with many differently nuanced and weighted ways of thinking about communal practice and community performance. Art workers and art agencies have to negotiate the issues of community, as they relate their practices and politics to themselves, to their audiences, and to their constituencies. Community arts and cultural development encompasses collaborations between professional artists and communities based on a community’s desire to achieve artistic and social outcomes. In particular, many contemporary community performance practitioners recognize that there are no “basic” and given communities: most community projects will emerge through self-selection, through provisional and temporary identification with a specific group’s aims.
