What is CCD?

Community Cultural Development (CCD) is a community-based cultural practice, which engages artists/animateurs and communities in a process of participation, transformation and self-determination.

Encompassing a diverse range of activities, CCD practice provides communities with opportunities to tell their stories, build their creative capacity and skills, address social agendas, express identity, and participate directly in the development of their culture.

CCD artist/animateurs work in partnership with a range of formal and informal community groups, cross-sectoral associations, and private or government bodies. The practice requires a capacity to work effectively cross-discipline and cross-boundaries, negotiate ethical principles and financial accountability measures with community, sponsors and stakeholders, operate in different cultural contexts according to different priorities and public policy themes, work in other languages, and navigate different expectations of process and outcomes.

The study of CCD practice references the visual and performing arts and also a range of related areas of study, such as public policy, public health, public evaluation, philosophy, social science, natural science, psychology, cultural studies and cultural geography.

Central to CCD teaching is the learning model of inquiry and the skills that are required to undertake an open-ended, interdisciplinary investigation.

Reflective inquiry is the engagement of the individual in constructing meaning, when inquiry itself integrates the reflective and collaborative aspects of thinking and learning (Garrison & Archer 2000). In line with this key concept is the use of diverse research methodologies, including action-based research, narrative evaluation and production-based investigation which uses the development of working designs and prototypes as method.

A recent British Academy report states that the arts, humanities and social science can provide high-level skills and groundbreaking research essential to the current knowledge-based economy. In addition, the report also shows how the cultural, intellectual and social wellbeing of the UK depends on the nurturing of these branches of knowledge. In Australia there are obvious parallels.

 
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