FutureMakers Glossary

Aesthetic

Stimulating the senses; the opposite of anesthetic, which dulls or deadens the senses

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld (influenced by the work of Dr. Ralph Bathurst, Massey University)

(The) Arts

Applied creativity that draws on, interrogates and/or extends (blends, bends and/or breaks) imaginative, creative and non-scientific branches of knowledge as expressed through a myriad of creative genres in the visual, performing and literature fields and disciplines.

Source: Produced by Elisabeth Vaneveld (drawing on various sources including Creative New Zealand; Brandt & Eagleman, The Runaway Species, 2017)

Arts centre

An arts centre is a functional facility that is located in a specific geographic location to encourage the practice of the arts usually in a defined arts discipline, e.g. visual arts, theatre, music.

An arts centre can provide one or more or the following: space for the exhibition and performance of arts-based creative work, workshop areas, educational facilities and technical equipment.

Source: Wikipedia

Arts infrastructure

(‘Hard’ and ‘soft’)

Dictionary definition of

‘Infrastructure’:

1. An underlying base or foundation, especially for an organisation or a system

2. The basic facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society, such as transportation and communications systems, water and power lines, and public institutions including schools, post offices, and prisons

Arts infrastructure can either be ‘hard’ or ‘soft’.

• ‘Hard’ connotes physical facilities and permanent or sustainable systems and organisations, e.g. theatres and galleries, arts and cultural arts institutions, resource agencies.
• ‘Soft’ infrastructure includes networks, intellectual capital, the known norms of a field or discipline, field/discipline knowledge, learning programmes, tools and equipment, incentive programmes, human resources and industry knowledge to utilise and / or manipulate and / or develop and / or adapt the conditions (the ecology) that generate, create and / or grow arts and cultural products (being a community’s cultural capital).

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld & Richard Howard

Arts sector

‘The arts sector’ includes all profit, nonprofit and public enterprise and institutions including incorporated and unincorporated enterprises as well as self-employed artists that:

(a) Use one or more of the arts as a primary factor of production, e.g. advertising, fashion, industrial and product design;

(b) Use one or more of the arts as a tied-good in consumption, e.g. home entertainment hardware, magazines and newspapers; and/or,

(c) Produce one or more of the arts as their final output, i.e. create, produce, distribute and/or conserve goods and services in the literary, media, performing, visual and/or heritage arts.

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld & Richard Howard

Clusters

Communities of practice

Source: Wikipedia

Communities of interest

A community of people who share a common interest or passion. These people exchange ideas and thoughts about the given interest, but may know (or care) little about each other outside of this area.

Source: Wikipedia

Community

The word “community” is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (cum, “with/together” + munus,”gift”), a broad term for fellowship or organized society.

The term has two distinct meanings:

• A group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household. The word can also refer to the national community or international community

• In biology a community is a group of interacting living organisms sharing a populated environment.

Source: Wikipedia

Community (The)

‘The community’ refers to the local authorities, central government agencies, the community and voluntary sector, the private sector and other organisations/agencies presented as a whole population in a locality, region or national setting.

Representative groupings of ‘the community’ can be local business interests, residents’ representatives, community groups and organisations and elected members to a range of agencies, organisations and groups.

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld

Community Cultural Development (CCD)

Describes a way of working together in communities using arts and cultural practices. It is based upon values that emphasise people doing things together that expand their awareness and understanding of the meanings life has for them, by making images and symbols which illuminate that meaning. It is people telling their own stories and expressing their vision of themselves.

CCD tends to emphasise the process of making work using arts and cultural practices as much as the product of making the work. In CCD work there is an important relationship between the quality of participation, the degree of community ownership and the relevance of the final product.

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld

Connection

A means or channel of communication to establish a rapport or relationship; to join or fasten together; to associate or consider as related.

Source: Online dictionary

Connective collaboration

“Refers to connecting with a broader community – the organization as a whole, or even more broadly than that. You may not know most of the people in this community. The goal of this type of collaboration is to connect dots – find expertise and resources as you need them. Discover unexpected relevance, connections or insights, and maximize the chances that information, resources and expertise find the places that they’re meaningful or critical.

Requires a broad, loosely connected community that can maintain awareness of activity, and ideally, technology that helps them find, discover or get pinged about relevant information, resources, insight and expertise –  that they may or may not have been aware of – elsewhere in the system.”

Source: Productfour.wordpress.com

Content

Is the presentation of information for a purpose to an audience or audiences through a publishing channel (i.e. genre plus media type)

Source: thewordfactory.com with additions by Elisabeth Vaneveld

Creative collaboration

See also “Connective collaboration”

Describes a relationship between two or more persons with a common purpose to create something new (e.g. object, performance, product, service) through the bringing together of intellectual and/or creative ideas, creative imagination, talent and skills, shared understanding and an agreed common goal.

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld

Creative community

Is made up of individuals, groups, collectives and organisations who are engaged in creating, presenting, distributing and/or promoting a creative practice and / or supplying tools that are directly relevant to a creative practice

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld

Creative ecology

An emerging concept that places the arts and creativity within a holistic worldview and reveals interdependencies with economic, social, cultural and environmental systems.

Source: Elise Sterback & Elisabeth Vaneveld

Creative entrepreneur

Four aligned definitions

• A professional working in the creative sector who is willing to take significant risks and who is exploring or using creative, social and/or cultural innovation(s) in order to generate and / or create products (and services) that derive their unique worth and economic value through their arts based appearance, form or content.
• Someone who takes risks by carving out their own, unconventional career path that allows them to exercise their creativity on a daily basis while also securing viable economic support for their enterprise.
• Someone who takes risks by using their imagination and developing original ideas to create something of cultural value while also sustaining themselves financially on a practical level.
• Uses the arts as a vessel for storytelling and conveying humankind’s relationship with social, cultural and environmental values, concerns and possibilities while ensuring that their methods for doing so are viable and sustainable.

Compiled by Elisabeth Vaneveld & Simone Ellen

Creative entrepreneurship

A visionary, enterprising and creative mindset that delivers tangible and intangible cultural, social and economic value through interdisciplinary collaboration that includes content and processes drawn from ‘the arts’.

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld

Cultural entrepreneur

Are cultural change agents and resourceful visionaries who organize cultural, financial, social and human capital to generate revenue from a cultural activity. Their innovative solutions result in economically sustainable cultural enterprises that enhance livelihoods and create cultural value and wealth for both creative producers and consumers of cultural services and products.

Source: Genevieve Tremblay

This definition first appeared in Cultures and Globalization: The Cultural Economy, Helmut K. Anheier (Editor) and Yudhishthir Raj Isar (Editor), published by Sage Publications in 2008.

Culture

The word ‘culture’ is most commonly used in three basic senses:

• Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities (also known as high culture)
• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, beliefs and behaviour that depend upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning,
• A set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes a people, an institution, organisation or group.

It is widely acknowledged that ‘culture’ is a difficult word to define; however in local government or central government policy setting, ‘culture’ commonly includes the following elements: community and individual identity, language, place, spirit, stories, symbols and the land.

When considering the combination of these elements, there is an understanding that culture defines and shapes both the physical and social aspects of a place and the communities to be found there. For example, cultural considerations determine the way people shape their environment through choices made about such things as land management, transport schemes, housing styles and community amenities, to name but a few.

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld

Curator

A qualified person (by way of professional experience and/or education) who chooses, content (existing or unique or new) and decides how it will be published, displayed or communicated taking into consideration the publishing platform (on and/or offline), technical considerations and intended audience/s.

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld

Sustainability

A term that through indiscriminate usage, no longer has a standardised single definition. The idea of sustainability is often expressed as series of principles or criteria as a sort of checklist. Criteria can include:

• The contribution of the item or project under consideration to material and non-material wellbeing
• Intergenerational and intragenerational equity
• Maintenance of diversity
• Maintenance of cultural system
• Recognition of interdependence

Source: Elisabeth Vaneveld

Viability

Capable of success or continuing effectiveness; practicable (which means: capable of being effected, done, or put into practice; feasible).

Source: Online dictionary