The Arts and Youth at Risk: Global and Local Challenges is a contribution to the lively international dialogue about creative and arts-based interventions for young people categorized as at risk. It contains chapters written by internationally recognized researchers and practitioners in arts education, youth arts and criminology. The instrumental benefit of arts participation for disadvantaged and marginalized young people is an area of increasing interest worldwide. This body of research highlights the positive educational and social outcomes of arts programs within and outside the schooling system. It also interrogates the ethics of arts interventions in a diverse and socially inequitable global context. The book questions the motivations of those working with at risk youth and challenges practitioners to ensure that their work with marginalised communities is efficacious as well as socially and politically responsible. Professor Shirley Brice Heath describes this book as philosophically complex and pragmatically provocative. She commends the editors and authors for taking the brave stance of interrogating the consequences, trajectories, and effects of participation in the arts by young people - especially those who carry labels such as at risk. She calls attention to the critical need as outlined in this volume to consider contextual background as well as an international perspective on children and youth when planning and delivering social and arts-based interventions.
About the Author: Angela O'Brien Associate Professor Angela O'Brien is Deputy Dean of the School of Graduate Research and Foundation Head of Creative Arts at The University of Melbourne. She teaches in the areas of cultural history, writing for theatre and drama education and has undertaken leadership roles in many organizations associated with theatre and drama education. Her research and publications are in the areas of theatre history, theatre for young people and the social impact of the arts. She is also a qualified lawyer with an interest in restorative justice and creative, alternative ways of resolving personal and social conflict. She and Kate Donelan, recently co-authored Creative Interventions for Marginalized Youth, an account of a four year ethnographic study of arts programs with young people in custodial and community settings in Australia. Kate Donelan Associate Professor Kate Donelan is Head of Drama in the Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne. She is well known within Australia and internationally in the field of drama and arts education and has as held leadership positions in peak drama and arts organizations. She was awarded the inaugural Drama Australia President's award for outstanding contribution to Australian drama education. Her recent published research examines drama education in a context of cultural pluralism, and the social impact of the creative arts on marginalised young people. In 2007 she won the American Alliance for Theatre and Education Distinguished Dissertation award for her ethnographic study of intercultural education in a performance project in a multicultural secondary school.