For the past thirteen years, Quebec has had an annual ‘Journées de la culture’ (3 day) event designed to raise ‘public participation and engagement’ in culture-making. It appears to have been enormously successful, if measured by the numbers of people who engage on the day. Finally, after a feasibility study confirmed the obvious (commissioned in [...]

On 27/5/10, Kate Ellis, the Minister for Early Childhood Education and Child Care, announced that the Commonwealth Government is developing the country’s first Outside School Hours Care Learning Framework. I can find no details about what the content of this Framework will be, beyond the report in The Australian on 28/5 that ‘children in before- [...]

I’ve recently come across four books that look as if they will be well worth a solid examination by those involved in grassroots cultural action/policy making (those that have time to read, that is).  I haven’t had the chance to get my hands directly on any of them, but given what I know about many [...]