Creative practice initiatives are difficult to finance. They bring together practitioners from a variety of disciplines and do not scale readily. Thus it is difficult to satisfy funding criteria for impact and public engagement, which usually require a growing number of members of the public to be reached by funded interventions. Such guidelines set up by definition a “them” and “us” between artists/performers and the spectator public and perpetuate the dividing line such projects aim to break down. Creative practice is a qualitative, subjective reality made up by individuals, with the potential for profound transformational learning in a diverse group of participants, which in turn may affect attitudes in a local community and, incrementally, in society at large. This special interest group aims to provide an effective vehicle for influencing funding bodies to develop flexible funding mechanisms more suited to such initiatives.
