Cara Courage
Dr Cara Courage is a placemaking, and arts, activism and museums academic and practitioner.
Biography
I am a placemaking, and arts, activism and museums academic and practitioner, and Executive Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. I am author of Arts in Place: The Arts, the Urban and Social Practice (Routledge, 2017), and the co-editor of Creative Placemaking and Beyond (Routledge, 2018), and editor of Placemaking Handbook (Routledge, 2021).At Tate Exchange, I have developed its specialism in particular in social practice arts, social justice, climate emergency and creative aging through its curation and programming and across international practice and research networks, in the museum and arts sectors.
I speak internationally on topics covering the C21st museum, the civic and activist museum, socially engaged art in community and museum settings and arts and urban design, placemaking and planning.
Education
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Phd, Arts in Place, University of Brighton, 2016
MSc, Psychosocial Studies, University of Brighton, 2012
BA (Hons) Social Anthropology, University of Sussex, 1997
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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My research interests principally span the arts, the urban and placemaking, in relation to co-production, arts practice and process, civic participation and social movements.
I have published with academic journals including: Irish Journal of Arts Management & Cultural Policy; Arts and the Public Realm; engage; and Cultural Trends Journal; and spoken at Royal Geographic Society, American Association of Geographers and Arts in Society amongst many others. I have written for Guardian Cities and Culture Professionals Network; Happy City; Times Educational Supplement; AN - Artists News Letter; ArtsProfessional; Frame and Reference; Arts Council England; Conran&Partners; Global Urbanist; and This Big City.
All research news, events and publications can be found via the academia.edu link in the Media section of this profile.
Personal Interests
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I am an avid Look Up photographer and have an exhibition of such images from over 25 international locations; I am founder of Brighton and Hove Urban Ramblers, a group of 900-plus people in the city that walk its streets; and instigator of the Modern Brighton and Hove map, a map of the city’s contemporary architecture with a tours and socially engaged arts programme.
I am also co-founder/organiser (with Dr Nicola Headlam) of Academic Archers, a community of fans of BBC Radio 4’s The Archers with more than a passing interest in the lives and issues of Ambridge. Cara and Nicola run the annual Academic Archers conference and have co-edited four books on the programme.
Websites
Books
News
Next Placemaking Handbook event is up and open!
By: Cara Courage
Practices of Placemaking: affect, antagonism, attachment
A Routledge Handbook of Placemaking discussion probing some of the dominant and tropes narratives of placemaking
Date: 17 June
Time: 5 pm BST / 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT
Duration: 1.5 hours
Reserve your place here: https://buytickets.at/theroutledgehandbookofplacemaking/531930
The dominant and colloquial narrative of placemaking is that it arises from and/or results in happy and healthy place attachment and community cordiality. However, as placemakers attest, places are contested. Any work in place can generate tension and has to wrestle with social complexities.
Place is not a level social, political, or economic topography: this discussion, with contributors to the Routledge Handbook of Placemaking, seeks to trouble notions of place(making) in relation to affect, antagonism, and attachment.
Acting in the role of ‘interloper’, we are led by Roberto Bedoya, Cultural Affairs Manager for the city of Oakland, CA, a theorist on inclusion and belonging, and art-based civic engagement projects. He frames the conversation for the Handbook panel to respond to via a series of provocations on practice, the audience, and the placemaking sector.
Hosts: Dr Cara Courage, Editor, Tom Borrup PhD, Section Editor, Practices of Placemaking
Interloper: Robert Bedoya
Provocateurs:
Dave Loewenstein, muralist, printmaker and community organizer, Lawrence, Kansas
Jonathan Jae-an Crisman, artist and Assistant Professor of Public & Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona
Further speakers TBA.
The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking - YouTube channel
By: Cara Courage
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Built Environment, Environment and Sustainability, Geography , Museum and Heritage Studies , Other, Tourism, Hospitality and Events, Urban Planning, Urban Studies
Throughout 2021, the Handbook of Placemaking team will be running a programme of virtual - and eventually, face to face - events, using the topics in the Handbook as a stepping point into placemaking discussion and action. All the events will be filmed, and you can find them on this YouTube channel, alongside short films from the Handbook contributors: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpI6ohTGEAzPsuTmmP_ERKQ.