What you are about to read…

In this chapter, arts manager and academic Anne Frost and dancer/choreographer and cultural worker Kevin A. Ormsby have collaborated to help learners to understand and carry out stakeholder engagement in community-engaged arts projects. Our bios appear elsewhere in this publication.

We begin by providing some definitions of the terms we later write about to give readers a common foundation from which to work. After commentary on how community-engaged arts have recently evolved in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the societal rise of several equity-based imperatives such as #metoo and #blacklivesmatter, we contribute “case stories” from two very different careers that include community-engaged arts projects in urban and rural environments, in theatre, music, dance, puppetry, and in storytelling, among other disciplines. These case stories illustrate both what worked well and what failed, or was otherwise less than great, emphasising that we all learn by doing. Next, we include some classroom (or online) activities for learners so that they can experience, internalise, and remember our content when aiming to do this work “in the field.” Lastly, we provide a glossary of terms and a list of current resources on stakeholder engagement at the end of the chapter.

Community-engaged arts projects rarely turn out exactly as planned, and that’s often a good thing because we learn much along the way. Serendipity is a wonderful concept to bear in mind as we engage in this work. Be open to change while maintaining control of your intent and the intrinsic merit of the work, and the result may be more than you could imagine. We encourage you to take note of your process and work as you go along, for your own reflective purposes, as well as for the inevitable reporting to external funders.