Face to Face: Making Dance & Theatre in Community

Six years ago the Preston Creative Living Centre, a small community agency in the diverse northern suburbs of Melbourne embarked upon a risky but exciting venture. It marshalled resources for people to engage in artistic and community processes together and became a performance venue for a series of vital and engaging performances. Over this time the space has become alive, filled with people and activity. Many a dance has been danced, many a song sung, many an object crafted and many a story told. Just as importantly, deep connections have been created between people, careful listening has occurred across deep divides of difference and new, shared understandings have been forged. This book is about creating partnerships between organisations, artists and communities for community artmaking. It is not a theoretical discussion of community cultural development. Instead it is the story of one organisation’s experience with community performance-making, from the philosophy that informs the choices, to the nitty-gritty of doing the work.The authors aim to inspire the reader, and give practical support in the development and administration of exciting, viable and fruitful community art.