2^nd International Symposium on Arts, Culture, and Community Engagement 2021

Call for proposal

With the support of the National Department for Culture and Arts (JKKN), Universiti Malaya Faculty of Creative Arts will be holding its 2^nd International Symposium on Arts and Culture. The symposium will be held on 20 & 21 November 2021.  Due to the covid pandemic still present in Malaysia, the organising committee decided to hold the symposium online instead of in person.  Information regarding the platform, including links and passwords, will be provided once registration is complete.

In 2019, the Faculty of Creative Arts, known as the Cultural Centre at that time, held its first symposium on Arts, Culture, and Community Engagement. The first symposium focused on Reaching out to the Community and Sustainability.  One of the many discussion threads from the first symposium is that Academia needs to think differently about Research and its place outside of Academia. This leads to questioning Research by Practice, Art Teaching, Sustainability of Traditions, Academic outputs, and School outreach programs. These discussions and questionings led us to the second 2021 symposium on Arts, Culture, and Community Engagement.

With the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic, which spread after our first symposium on Community Engagement, we also realised that the more usual community engagement practices were heavily affected and many had to reassess how to reach out to communities.  Part of our discussion will also include broad issues of community engagement as well as online community engagement and the sustainability of community engagement projects while social distancing.

Objectives: To bring together scholars and researchers of all disciplines, practitioners, and members of the Arts Community.  In this symposium, presenters will explore the different practices and experiences of Community Engagement. Community voice, alongside practitioner and academic voices, are essential to the core community engagement researches. The reciprocity from all parties are crucial in recognizing, respecting and the democratising knowledge. However, community-related arts projects, with strong community presence and voices, are rarely presented at academic conferences.

Themes or Questions

This symposium welcomes all proposals that consider the multiple ways your work intersects with each of the following themes:

1. Design and delivery of Community Engagement projects
2. Sustaining CE projects – Funding and Advocacy
3. Sustainability of Traditions and Culture through CE
4. Reflection of CE during the pandemic
5. Learning from Community Partners – role, importance, challenges
6. Mutuality and reciprocity
7. Appreciation of community involvement in academia
8. Community engagement research by practice
9. School outreach programs
10. Industry involvement with communities
11. Any other topics related to Community Engagement