Towards a Culture of Landcare: The Arts in Community Capacity Building for Natural Resources Management

This paper argues that the new generation of community based natural resources management (CBNRM) should involve the arts, and particularly the community arts, to better enable success in engaging communities in land rehabilitation and ecological sustainability. The paper is based on insights gained from a five-year research project which examined the role of the arts in affecting environmental behaviour. About 200 informant interviews were undertaken, and eight case studies were analysed to provide qualitative and quantitative data. The case studies presented in this paper show that a culture of landcare is gradually evolving and there is a general overlap, and perhaps even convergence, between the community arts and community environmental initiatives such as Landcare. There are now many community arts events that have an environmental focus, and increasingly CBNRM is using the arts to encourage greater community involvement in the issues and to provide an artistic voice of those involved in CBNRM.