ABSTRACT
An official ‘rhetoric of positive transformation’ seems to dominate contemporary debates around the effects of artistic engagement and creative activities in the cultural policy and educational fields. In the West, over the past thirty years, this rhetoric has been explicitly called upon to underpin and justify several policy initiatives aiming at tackling social exclusion, criminal offending, educational underachievement and health-related problems through the encouragement of artistic participation (whether as audiences or creators) among targeted groups. For example, in 2003 (at the zeitgeist moment of the rhetoric of personal and social transformation through the arts in Britain), the Arts Council England’s (ACE) manifesto Ambitions for the Arts 2003-2006 explicitly put the ‘transformative powers’ of the arts at the heart of both its ‘vision’ and advocacy agenda:
We will argue that being involved with the arts can have a lasting and transforming effect on many aspects of people’s lives. This is true not just for individuals, but also for neighbourhoods, communities, regions and entire generations, whose sense of identity and purpose can be changed through art.
