The chapters in Art as an Agent for Social Change, presented as snapshots, focus on exploring the power of drama, dance, visual arts, media, music, poetry and film as educative, artistic, imaginative, embodied and relational art forms that are agents of personal and societal change. A range of methods and ontological views are used by the authors in this unique contribution to scholarship, illustrating the comprehensive methodologies and theories that ground arts-based research in Canada, the US, Norway, India, Hong Kong and South Africa. Weaving together a series of chapters (snapshots) under the themes of community building, collaboration and teaching and pedagogy, this book offers examples of how Art as an Agent for Social Change is of particular relevance for many different and often overlapping groups including community artists, K-university instructors, teachers, students, and arts-based educational researchers interested in using the arts to explore social justice in educative ways. This book provokes us to think critically and creatively about what really matters!

This book collects the artwork, research, and arts-based educational research understandings around the theme of "connections". It emerges from the 3rd bi-annual 2020 Artful Inquiry Research Group symposium on the theme of "connections". This symposium brought together artists, community members, teachers, students, researchers, and teachers through a virtual platform to explore the way(s) that the arts help to connect people, ideas, places, etc., in this pandemic reality. The book explores four themes: socially engaged connections, cultural connects, personal and pedagogical connections, and making connections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Art plays a predominant role in each chapter, as authors weave together their research and art-based understandings. This book is a valuable teaching resource for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in anthropology, digital ethnography, autoethnography, cultural studies, creativity, and communications. It is of interest to higher education students exploring methodologies and academic researchers and teachers in the fields of creative practice and creativity studies, communications, critical studies, sociology, and the arts.