scholarly journals Organisational Leadership: Expanding the Multicultural Arts Milieu

Author(s):  
Cecelia Cmielewski
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Halifu Osumare

As the longest section, chapter 6 covers sixteen years of the author’s career as dancer, choreographer, dance educator, and arts administrator. During this period, she solidified her reputation in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area as a leader in the growing black dance and multicultural arts movements when she founds the non-profit dance institution Everybody’s Creative Arts Center (ECAC). She assess her development as a dancer-choreographer, discussing some of her key dance works as well as the creation of the center’s resident dance company, CitiCentre Dance Theatre, which was an important contemporary dance company that operated from 1983 to 1988. She also explores her simultaneous adjunct dance position at Stanford University and several of her choreographic and directorial commissions. The chapter articulates how, in 1989, her accumulated artistic and administrative experience culminated in her founding a major national initiative in black dance: Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century. She concludes with how she eventually transitioned from the arts to academia after going to graduate school, and how dance and “writing dancing” are similar.


Author(s):  
Monica Wulff

In October 2002 I performed and exhibited Troppo Obscura: A Peepshow of Historical Perversity at the Performance Space as part of the multicultural Arts festival, Carnivale, in Sydney, Australia. Troppo Obscura is a multimedia installation that explores some aspects of the complex relationships between the West and Asia. The work looks at a large range of possibilities, from the colonial gaze through to personal relationships forged through artistic endeavor. This paper—the first of two extended mediations on the topic—focuses on one such personal relationship addressed in the installation, namely that between traditional master mask dancer Ibu Sawitri from Cirebon on the West coast of Java, Indonesia and myself, a Sydney based contemporary dancer and performance artist. Between 1992 and 1999, the year Ibu Sawitri passed away, I spent many long-term visits learning dance and living in Ibu Sawitri’s house in Losari. This essay focuses on Ibu Sawitri’s family and dance background and how she, the younger generation of dancers, the dance context, and the dance itself, have been transformed over time as a result of rapidly changing socio-historical conditions. In the second half of this paper I move the discussion to the broader issues of cross-cultural encounters in what Pratt terms the ‘contact zone’ (1992). This includes looking at dance as an embodied practice and its function in the ‘contact zone’ as well as dealing with Spivak’s debates about the subaltern voice in reference to my telling of Ibu Sawitri’s story, both in the installation and in text. A closer analysis of the dynamics of my dance with Ibu Sawitri in the ‘contact zone’ is addressed here.


Author(s):  
Narayan Gopalkrishnan

Refugees are people who move involuntarily from their country of residence often witnessing disasters, wars and the deaths of immediate family members prior to fleeing. In each of these instances, refugees experience traumatic situations that provoke strong reactions and emotions. This is often exacerbated by difficult refugee processing systems, detention and waiting in refugee camps, all of which make migration patterns and settlement processes for refugees are very different from those of other migrants. The psychological effects of the trauma experienced by refugees tend to be enduring and long-lasting. This paper explores the link between refugee mental health and wellbeing and multicultural arts in the tropics. The contention of the paper is that multicultural arts allows for sensitivity to a person’s identity, heritage and experience and is an important component of healing and well-being. The paper uncovers how multicultural arts enable a dialogue around issues with forced migration, powerlessness, humiliation and anger and promotes social inclusion and belonging. The paper concludes by arguing that multicultural and multidimensional approaches are needed to achieve an integrated approach to the mental health of refugees.


Author(s):  
Hurriyet Babacan

Australia is known as a multicultural country with over 40 percent of its population being either an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. Tropical Australia is unique in its landscapes, psyches and cultures. It is also a place of cultural diversity, with some areas where people of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds make up to 15 percent of the population. When people migrate, they bring along their cultures- reflected in language, poetry, music, fine arts and other creative mediums. The settlement process of immigrants in complex and multidimensional. The transplantation of multicultural arts in host society poses challenges and opportunities. This paper explores some of the key issues in multicultural arts in Tropical Australia. Particularly the policy context, recognition and display of multicultural art and role of artists in communities will be examined.


2021 ◽  
Vol 933 (1) ◽  
pp. 012044
Author(s):  
I Rachmayanti ◽  
O SC Rombe ◽  
L Henry ◽  
S Meliana ◽  
A A S Fajarwati

Abstract Many aspects of the Pasar Baru community were influenced by the mixed ethnicity. Churches, Chinese temples, Sikh temples, and mosques, as well as architectural, gastronomic, and religious institutions, expanded across the Pasar Baru, resulting in a multicultural existence. The goal of this research is to see if there is a link between sacred space and community nodes as a signifier/signified of diversity in a multicultural community in order to enhance sustainable urban life. Also, based on the discovery of similar impacts, see if there is a strong recommendation to use the relationship between religious buildings and multicultural ethnic as a basis to construct a multicultural collaboration space. Pasar Baru and Geraja Ayam served as the case study. The semiotic theory of Ferdinand Saussure is employed as an analytical tool in this work. Gereja Ayam has become an icon of Pasar Baru district. Religious sites and community hubs have a strong association. While liveliness and livability can be improved, the (social) sustainability of tourism must be considered. The collaborative venue, which incorporates multicultural arts and designs, is proposed as a means of bringing those many traits to life and strengthening the concept of “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” to generate income and employment.


Author(s):  
Audrey Yue ◽  
Rimi Khan

Multiculturalism has become a charged arena in recent times with proponents and critics focusing on the value of its utility. Existing models measuring the outcome of multiculturalism emanate from the social sciences that attempt to assess the degree of inter-cultural integration through cultural indices on ethnicity and tradition. This article argues that arts impact studies in general, and emergent cultural indicator frameworks in particular, provide a more robust arena for considering the utility of multiculturalism to claims of social, cultural and economic wellbeing. This article examines the impact of multicultural arts through the quality of cultural participation. It begins by critically surveying global, national and local indicator frameworks on measuring multiculturalism in recent developments of cultural policy. It suggests that current frameworks for thinking about cultural diversity and cultural participation are inadequate, and there is a need to develop a more nuanced understanding of these relations as they are played out in the context of people’s everyday cultural lives. It proposes a new framework that highlights a bi-directional theory-based approach to cultural citizenship and tests its utility against original fieldwork conducted in the growth corridor outer suburb of Whittlesea in Melbourne, Australia.


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