With the greater push for arts practitioners to develop artistic projects in community spaces, it is essential to examine the skills and capabilities required of those engaging in the field today. Field study guest contributor Regina De Rozario—artist, writer and researcher—writes about the significance of cultural competence and how it might be fostered through arts-based community work.

Arts and Health is an interdisciplinary field integrating creative practices into community and care settings, aiming to transform health and experiences of healthcare. Field study guest contributor Salty Xi Jie Ng chats with Michael Tan—creative health practitioner, researcher and educator—about this promising field.

What does co-creation mean to you? At ArtsWok, we see co-creation as an important methodology guiding each of our programmes, such as The Greenhouse Lab, which had its second edition in Yuhua. We interviewed five of the Labbers, and this resulting article serves as a receptacle for their insights on how engaging in co-creation can bring value to arts-based community development. Read further for more ideas on how you too can co-create with others.

Fresh from her sabbatical and as the new Co-Artistic Director of Drama Box, Han Xuemei shares her underlying philosophies that guide her work with communities in our interview with her. Built into her practice with engaging communities is an innate sense of being human that forms the foundation to the relationships involved. Alongside her reflections on this, she offers advice to those wishing to begin working with communities using arts processes.

In this essay, Thomas Kong shares about his work in social curating and archiving projects. He charts how he and his collaborators discovered this concept and through community art and heritage project Curating Whampoa, developed it further. Deftly weaving art theory with experience, he reflects on the meaning of archives and how the process of compiling and sharing them is a deeply social and participative process.

Pre-Covid-19, socially engaged artist and interdisciplinary practitioner Fié Neo was journeying across America and Europe, where she started and contributed to projects driven by important causes. Back in Singapore now, Fié has many reflections on what she has learnt in her travels: both the beauty and the hard parts of working in, and with communities and wider systems. Get to know Fié, her work and reflections in this interview.