Turning community stories into community art1

A broad range of community art projects and programmes have been documented around the world since I first reported on this project in 2012. However, it still remains that lack of time and/or funding means that most art teachers are unable to engage in community arts or generate resources and opportunities to teach community arts. This means that unless community art projects directly engage schools and teachers in their projects and time is put aside for students and teachers to go on excursions, visit sites and engage with these communities, there are few opportunities for students to engage in community arts-based learning. This article reports on an innovative community art project that engaged narrative, and sculptural form, as a way of learning about community, place and identity. The project is explained from the perspective of an art educator, researcher and artist who was employed in the project both as community artist and as facilitator. This ‘insider’s perspective’ aims to afford some context to relevant theories through which such projects can be understood as potentially beneficial to art education – particularly in the way people have used narrative to communicate issues of place and the ways in which artists have translated community narratives into sculptural form. The author’s insider perspective offers insight into this project to share how a community art project could be designed and facilitated for students to engage in their local region and therefore a way forward for teachers and students to engage in something similar, to learn about how community stories can be translated into contemporary art, and the important role of place and identity in this work.