Book - An Outburst of Frankness: A Community Arts Reader

An Outburst of Frankness is the first serious attempt to gather together a wide range of views dealing with the history, theory and practice of community arts in Ireland. Not an academic book, the style, over twelve commissioned essays and the edited transcripts of two unique fora, is accessible and open, ranging from a general art-history perspective to the particular experiences of artists working in and with communities.

Besides the politics, the rhetoric and the debates, there are values around this activity called community arts which are as relevant today as they were forty or four hundred years ago. At the core of these values is the question of power and the right of people to contribute to and participate fully in culture; the right to have a voice and the right to give voice. From this point of view, arts and culture should be at the centre of all political, social, educational, individual and communal activity, particularly in this time of unprecedented and sometimes dangerous change, for Ireland and the world.

Sandy Fitzgerald has over thirty years' experience as a cultural practitioner and manager in Ireland and abroad. This experience includes: founder member and director of City Arts Centre, 1973 - 2002; founder member of CAFE (Creative Activity for Everyone, now CREATE) and executive committee member of TEH (Trans Europe Halles - a European network of independent cultural centres). Currently he is a board member of Public Communications Institute and a partner in the international arts consultancy group CultureWorks. He has contributed articles on arts and culture to a variety of publications including: The Irish Times, CIRCA, CAFE news and Kultur Risse.