Ann-maree studied Community Development in 1995, working most recently in a men’s crisis accommodation service that allowed her to run (and play in) a number of community arts projects. She is studying the Graduate Diploma in Creative Art Therapies at the Melbourne Institute for Experiential & Creative Art Therapies (MIECAT) and practices and teaches a dance form called Contact Improvisation.

Petra Kuppers, community dance artist and activist from the USA led a workshop in Melbourne that was hosted by the Cultural Development Network and Ausdance. Ann-maree provides her response from the perspective of being a participant through the lenses of her community development work, dance practice and creative art therapy studies. An articulation of Petra’s approach to community art is given, with an emphasis that her work is political not therapeutic and primarily focussed on disability culture, although she also shared her creative inquiry processes and landscape connected responses, to people who were dying of cancer. Ann-Mares finds parallels in community cultural development (CCD) frameworks and similarities with her studies at MIECAT (The Melbourne institute for experiential and creative arts therapies) in the creative processes of change, concluding “Whether our aims are social or personal, therapeutic or political, I think the creative art therapist and CCD practitioner share the understanding that participation in creative arts offers meaningful ways of being in the world, and that collaborative processes offer powerful and respectful ways of being with others.” (pp 15-17)