How and why are arts and cultural practices meaningful to communities? Highlighting examples from Lebanon, Latin America, China, Ireland, India, Sri Lanka and beyond, this exciting book explores the relationship between the arts, culture and community development. Academics and practitioners from six continents discuss how diverse communities understand, re-imagine or seek to change personal, cultural, social, economic or political conditions while using the arts as their means and spaces of engagement. Investigating the theory and practice of 'cultural democracy', this book explores a range of aesthetic forms including song, music, muralism, theatre, dance, and circus arts.

A translation of The Book of the Civilised Man by Daniel of Beccles brings to light the social and cultural life of medieval people in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through a previously little-known text. Known in Latin as Urbanus magnus, it is a complex and illuminating text which covers an array of topics related to social mores in the Middle Ages, including: how to be a good and moral citizen, how to dine courteously, how to maintain standards of hygiene, how to regulate your diet, and how to run your household. Often described as one of the earliest 'courtesy texts', this translation will reveal a text which cannot be easily categorised in any genre but is relevant widely for anyone with an interest in medieval life. An expansive text of enormous breadth, this translation will provide scholars new insight in areas such as social hierarchy, citizenship, morality, friendship, family ties, household administration, food consumption, standards of etiquette, and much more.

A translation of The Book of the Civilised Man by Daniel of Beccles brings to light the social and cultural life of medieval people in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through a previously little-known text. Known in Latin as Urbanus magnus, it is a complex and illuminating text which covers an array of topics related to social mores in the Middle Ages, including: how to be a good and moral citizen, how to dine courteously, how to maintain standards of hygiene, how to regulate your diet, and how to run your household. Often described as one of the earliest 'courtesy texts', this translation will reveal a text which cannot be easily categorised in any genre but is relevant widely for anyone with an interest in medieval life. An expansive text of enormous breadth, this translation will provide scholars new insight in areas such as social hierarchy, citizenship, morality, friendship, family ties, household administration, food consumption, standards of etiquette, and much more.

How and why are arts and cultural practices meaningful to communities? Highlighting examples from Lebanon, Latin America, China, Ireland, India, Sri Lanka and beyond, this exciting book explores the relationship between the arts, culture and community development. Academics and practitioners from six continents discuss how diverse communities understand, re-imagine or seek to change personal, cultural, social, economic or political conditions while using the arts as their means and spaces of engagement. Investigating the theory and practice of 'cultural democracy', this book explores a range of aesthetic forms including song, music, muralism, theatre, dance, and circus arts.

How different are we from those in the past? Or, how different do we think we are from those in the past? Medieval people were more dirty and unhygienic than us - as novels, TV, and film would have us believe - but how much truth is there in this notion? This book seeks to challenge some of these preconceptions by examining medieval society through rules of conduct, and specifically through the lens of a medieval Latin text entitled The Book of the Civilised Man - or Urbanus magnus - which is attributed to Daniel of Beccles. Urbanus magnus is a twelfth-century poem of almost 3,000 lines which comprehensively surveys the day-to-day life of medieval society, including issues such as moral behaviour, friendship, marriage, hospitality, table manners, and diet. Currently, it is a neglected source for the social and cultural history of daily life in medieval England, but by incorporating modern ideas of disgust and taboo, and merging anthropology, sociology, and archaeology with history, this book aims to bring it to the fore, and to show that medieval people did have standards of behaviour. Although they may seem remote to modern 'civilised' people, there is both continuity and change in human behaviour throughout the centuries.

How different are we from those in the past? Or, how different do we think we are from those in the past? Medieval people were more dirty and unhygienic than us - as novels, TV, and film would have us believe - but how much truth is there in this notion? This book seeks to challenge some of these preconceptions by examining medieval society through rules of conduct, and specifically through the lens of a medieval Latin text entitled The Book of the Civilised Man - or Urbanus magnus - which is attributed to Daniel of Beccles. Urbanus magnus is a twelfth-century poem of almost 3,000 lines which comprehensively surveys the day-to-day life of medieval society, including issues such as moral behaviour, friendship, marriage, hospitality, table manners, and diet. Currently, it is a neglected source for the social and cultural history of daily life in medieval England, but by incorporating modern ideas of disgust and taboo, and merging anthropology, sociology, and archaeology with history, this book aims to bring it to the fore, and to show that medieval people did have standards of behaviour. Although they may seem remote to modern 'civilised' people, there is both continuity and change in human behaviour throughout the centuries.

As a figure of thought, the concept of freedom tends to shuttle between abstraction and ideal - the first exemplified by Isaiah Berlin's contrast between negative and positive liberty, and the second by Philip Pettit's neo-republican conception of freedom as non-domination. Located within the realm of lived experience however, freedom is invariably forged from context-specific constraints and takes the form of cultural practices. In this contribution to the Sireacht series, the collaborative platform Two Fuse examine the practice of freedom in the context of neo-liberal enterprise culture, focusing specifically on how this is shaped by power relations that sustain social suffering by generating an equality of inequality. Responding to this situation, Two Fuse look to socially-engaged art with a view to exploring possibilities to reimagine the practice of freedom, paying particular attention to the 2016 performance Natural History of Hope by Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and Brokentalkers.