Creative Practices of Hope

Horsfall D¹*

1. University of Western Sydney, Penrith, NSW, Australia

This paper tells the story of a group of community workers, community activists and academics who came together to explore ‘good news stories of difference and resistance.’ Our process followed what we now call ‘creative action research’. Over the seven years we have worked together we have collaboratively planned and hosted a creative community conference, written and performed a play and are now in the process of collaboratively writing a book.

Using an organizing metaphor of ‘social change from the margins’ we have engaged in and collected local stories of hope, ordinary resistances and success. These stories include work against nuclear waste transportation, establishing a peace group, setting up a community house for people who have a disability and using circus work with asylum seekers.

We wanted to make public and visible the everyday practices that people are engaged in which challenge the dominant story of white western capitalism. Using simple strategies such as story telling, reflective listening, fun, laughter, food and creativity we sought to celebrate our successes and nurture each other. We believed that through both our process and our community practices we could move from the struggle story, which much of our community work was informed by, and instead develop a culture of hope. In this way we believe we can move from despair about oppression, intolerance, greed, violence and individualism to practices which are sustainable, creative and hopeful.

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