Paul Cooke is Centenary Chair of World Cinemas at the University of Leeds, UK. He is currently the Principal Investigator on Changing the Story, a project looking at the ways in which heritage and arts organisations can help young people to shape civil society in post-conflict countries. Inés Soria-Donlan is Project Manager of Changing the Story at the University of Leeds. Since 2008 Inés has worked internationally across the academic, cultural and creative sectors as a producer, project manager, creative practitioner and researcher, with a continual focus on youth, diversity and arts-led participation.
This important and timely book brings together arts practitioners, academics and senior research and policy figures from NGOs with first-hand experience of the power of the arts to disrupt and refashion neoliberal development paradigms. They analyse projects that put a premium upon indigenous knowledge derived from grassroots participation as an antidote to the colonial models, releasing forces of self-development in order that different futures may be imagined where equality and social justice are not sacrificed to short-term profits. While the book is a significant resource for makers of development policy, it also reminds us of Arnold Wesker's dictum: 'Not to be a poet is the worst of our miseries'. - Tim Prentki, Emeritus Professor of Theatre for Development, University of Winchester, UK