Summary: | This thesis re-creates the memory of participatory arts practice in Northern Ireland over a one hundred year period. Participatory arts here refers to nonprofessional arts practice and production, outside of the established professional arts arena or marketplace, incorporating the voluntary art sector and the community art sector. Volume one of this research highlights the various funding trends through the decades that created many innovative arts programmes, and the origin and growth of the organisational stakeholders who directly affected the field of participatory art in the province through their ongoing sponsorship and/or facilitation of participatory projects. Volume two is a chronological archive of 1,442 participatory art groups or projects. This database shows the non-professional arts production funded by agencies and NGOs, and the archive is divided Into twenty-four timelines with five arts disciplines or categories including music, drama, visual arts, literary arts and dance. Each arts group or project entry in the database states the geographical location (either county or city) and the type of art facilitated to the local community-of-interest. It cites the original date when they started, the name of the group or organisation and reference source. Agencies attempted to extend local perceived 'heritage of identity' within the region during its thirty plus years of civil conflict. They paid artists and arts groups to facilitate arts projects to polarised urban and rural communities as an active policy of 'Informal education' and 'life-long learning' for many with participation in art projects leading to enhanced personal and social skills.
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