Community Development Journal

doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy018pmid: N/A

Why a special issue on contemporary community work in Scandinavia? In this introduction we argue that present-day Scandinavian community work, e.g. the small-scale local bottom-up approaches to contemporary societal challenges, can make valuable contributions to global sustainability and our common future by facilitating creativity, joy, and communitas. By highlighting joy and creativity for social change, this Special Issue underscores the interconnectedness between global challenges and happiness, concepts when paired add new tools to the community worker’s toolbox. The argument is substantiated by a discussion of the common denominators in the eight different cases of practical community work from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and the theoretical discussion of the role of the civil society in developed welfare states included in this Special Issue. The introduction to this Special Issue commences with a recapitulation of the ‘rebirth’ of community work in Norway after 2000, followed by a discussion of creativity, joy and communities. The next two sections present the generative themes emerging for the collected articles and discuss the challenges ahead. The last section briefly introduces the articles and shows how they answer the call for new theoretical and practical tools and approaches for the future community worker. Community work, as a practical and theoretical approach to social change, is currently the focus of renewed interest in the Nordic countries (Hutchinson, 2009; Larsen, Sewpaul and Hole, 2014). Since the 1970s, community work has been one of three major approaches in social work: individual social work, group based social work, and community work. The majority of community workers have been social workers, and their activities and projects were often motivated by political standpoints, and activism towards social injustice, as in the UK (Ledwith, 2011; Larsen, Sewpaul and Hole, 2014; Newman and Clarke, 2016). In Scandinavia, community work as a theoretical or practical subject has not been included in the curriculums for professions other than social work, whether in learning disability nursing, teacher education, health professions or correctional services. All programmes educating professionals into the welfare state’s work force focus on the importance of multidisciplinary cooperation, and interdisciplinary common knowledge, but few provide theoretical or practical tools for accomplishing these aims. From our vantage point, community work is an underused theoretical and practical approach to contemporary challenges faced by the Nordic welfare states. Furthermore, we claim that multidisciplinary approaches will strengthen community work’s relevance – whether the aim is health promotion, neighbourhood renewal or to support communities of interest. Internationally, community work was never understood to be an exclusive method for social work (Turunen, 2004). While the English concept of community work is familiar across the English-speaking world, the corresponding Scandinavian concepts of samfunnsarbeid (Norwegian and Danish) and samhällsarbete (Swedish) are seldom used, or understood, outside the realm of Nordic social work. However, the practice of community work – as community planning and development, area development, neighbourhood renewal, social mobilization, self-help organization, or participatory learning and research, are well known. Today national official reports and white papers, and global strategies on sustainability, food security, health, and welfare are challenging all professions, NGOs and civil society to appropriate collective action to reach common benefits or to instigate and sustain social change. Paradoxically, in Scandinavia, as in the rest of the Western world, the neoliberal wave favours individualization, evidence-based approaches, and rapid solutions and ‘value for money’ – much of which is at odds with basic values of community work (Ledwith, 2011; Popple, 2015). The symbolic rebirth of Scandinavian community work was manifested by the launch of the first Scandinavian cross-disciplinary Master’s programme in community work at the former Bergen University College in 2007, now part of Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. The Scandinavian network of community workers contributed with support and ‘sponsorship’ since the birth of the idea at the turn of the twenty first century. By January 2018, nearly eighty students have completed the two-year programme, equivalent of 120 ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System), and many have taken sixty ECTS in community work and contemporary social theory. The majority of the students are Norwegians or residents in Norway (immigrants), with a few exceptions for students from the UK and Tanzania, China, and Spain. The programme has welcomed students with a diverse range of backgrounds, e.g. health care professionals (nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, health promotion), educators and teachers (all levels of education), and social workers and social educators. In addition to students with a background in applied sciences, students with qualifications in the humanities and social sciences have been enroled. This amalgam of experiences and interests have been challenging and rewarding for students and staff alike. The authors of this Special Issue have been affiliated to an extended network of the Masters’ programme in community work at Bergen University College/Western Norway university of Applied Sciences. We invited teachers, lectures, researchers, students, external evaluators and collaborators in the Nordic countries to submit articles on Scandinavian/Nordic community work which could be of interest to an English readership. We appreciate the effort made by many to answer our call for papers and are happy that we are able to present this edited supplement to the Community Development Journal. Why ‘go glocal’? The foundation stone for the Bergen version of community work is an understanding of humans as creative and capable of evaluating their own situation, envisioning an alternative, orienting themselves towards other people and their environment, and capable of acting and interacting accordingly – either by themselves or by delegating agency to assistants, friends, next-of-kin or others. We have defined community work as the process of inquiring into and affecting conditions for social participation together with those concerned (Henriksbø and Sudmann, 2011). As this issue will demonstrate, the interconnectedness between humans, non-human living beings, place and materiality, have the potential to affect living conditions and conditions for social participation – for better or for worse. Community work is collaboration – which by definition counters individualization and ‘quick fixes’. The fields of public health and integration, social inequality, climate change, loss of biodiversity and sustainable development, are pre-eminent cases for community work. Community work is an appropriate response once problems, solutions or implementations are defined in political and/or collective terms (Hutchinson, 2009: 32; McDermott, 2014; Shaw, 2014). However, community work is also an appropriate response to violations of microscale citizen participation – e.g. in the field of dementia care, service design and delivery for people living with intellectual disabilities, or other human services (Sudmann and Børsheim, 2017; Sudmann and Folkestad, 2015; Gubrium, Andreassen and Solvang, 2016). Violation or neglect of children and young people’s right to participation or to exercise their citizenship rights, is also a case for community work, not at least because the solutions chosen for today’s global challenges directly impact their everyday and their future. The common denominator between global challenges and everyday microinteraction is our interdependency. People, non-human living beings and the Earth are entangled beyond our imaginary capacity. Market forces cannot solve all problems arising from population growth, population ageing, migration, non-communicable diseases, social inequalities, climate changes, or large-scale catastrophes. Welfare states and civil societies need to reverse or restrain marketization in the wake of spreading neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005, 2007; Fraser, 2009; Knutsen, 2017), to create or sustain safe and healthy living and sustainable development. Contemporary calls for active citizenship, user involvement in service design and delivery, revived democracy, self-organized self-help, neighbourhood mobilization, strengthening social cohesion or saving public spending, necessitate social interaction, trust and accessible and existing community owned land and commons. Community work can contribute with knowledge production through research, and with practical tools for sustainable changes on all levels. The Nordic welfare states are partly born out of bottom-up mobilization, local uprisings and social movements. The labour movement, the temperance movement, the lay Christian movements, the first wave of feminism and the linguistic communities (e.g. Sami, Finish, Romani, Nynorsk Norwegian, Sign languages) were important forerunners for welfare states, and still serve as inspiration and source of knowledge for contemporary social movements, e.g. environmental movements, or local mobilization calling for or protesting against new infrastructure (e.g. roads, bridges, tunnels, transmission lines). Despite the fact that welfare states are a result of historical conflicts of interests, one of the hallmarks of modern day Nordic welfare societies is a low level of overt social unrest, a relatively high living standard, a high labour force participation, generous universal benefits, a high degree of equality, a high level of taxes and a high level of public spending on welfare (Greve, 2007). Nordic welfare states still appear prosperous and generous, facing fewer social challenges than many other European countries. Nordic welfare states face the same demographic changes as the rest of the Western world: longevity, decreasing birth rates, growing number of single person households, and expected increased needs for health and social services in the near future. A welfare mix (Sivesind, 2014) – i.e. welfare services provided by both public, private and voluntary sector – is already gaining momentum in Scandinavia. At a macro level, social problems or barriers for exercising citizenship may seem conspicuously absent or few in Scandinavia. However, at the micro level, the differences in life expectancy, health status and other socioeconomic differences are larger than might be expected in the Nordic welfare states. Differences in living years and in healthy years varies considerably between north and south, between city boroughs, and between indigenous people or other minorities on the one hand, and the majorities on the other hand (Popham, Dibben and Bambra, 2013). Health and societal differences can be experienced as particularly unfair or burdensome in societies were equality is a common value and ideology. These differences are recognized as unfair and unwanted by the polity and the public, and several community work projects aim at amending these inequalities, whereof some are presented in this Special Issue. Creativity, joy, and communitas for social change The Masters candidates from Bergen are equipped with a theoretical and a practical toolbox when they graduate. The theoretical tool box includes critical approaches to the analysis of social participation, inequality, social change, and inclusive research. The practical tool box includes methods to facilitate social, material, organizational or relational changes, and to make a positive difference in people’s everyday lives, together with those concerned. Following Minkler, Wallerstein, Wilson (2008) the hallmarks of community work is to facilitate empowerment and critical consciousness, community capacity and social capital, issue selection, participation and to make our work relevant (Minkler, Wallerstein and Wilson, 2008:294). Change, whether social or material, builds on more or less substantiated ideas about a better deal or future. Creativity Critical consciousness is necessary to detect and disarm our ‘Cop in your head’, as Freire called our self-censoring and unconscious acceptance of unfavourable life situations (Freire, 1972). When Antanas Mockus was elected mayor of Bogotá in Columbia in 1995, he stated that when there is nothing to be done, it is time to bring out the clowns (Goat, 2014). Mockus was inspired by Paolo Freire (Freire, 1995) and Augusto Boal, the creator of Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1985), and approached Bogotá as a classroom of 6,000,000 pupils, to launch a programme, The Theatre of Civic Culture. Mockus used the clowns to facilitate civic interaction and communication in the streets of Bogotá to make the city a safer and better place to live. By replacing corrupt police with mime artists, he demonstrated that interaction is communication, and communication is pedagogy, teaching and learning. Learning gives food for thought and inspires new relations, which in turn might facilitate social change and bettering of lives. Changes in everyday microinteraction affect the macro levels. Mockus’ clowns pawed the way for social change by way of bodily engagement, an approach also applied in several of the cases presented in this issue where participants are invited to step out of their comfort zone and engage in unknown activities in unknown terrain. The Masters programme in community work in Bergen has, since its very beginning, focused on creativity and the arts as important theoretical and practical tools for the community worker. Creativity has a long history in the realms of social or therapeutic change – e.g. as preparatory methods or as action and praxis. Creative methodology such as future workshops is presently gaining new momentum, as are similar methods such as critical utopian action research, action learning, and design thinking (Jungk and Müllert, 1987; Brown, 2009; Abbott et al. 2013; Ehn, Nilsson and Topgaard, 2014; Gunnarsson et al. 2016; Hansen et al. 2016; Nielsen and Nielsen, 2016). Creativity is emotionally laden with joy or indignation, and involves place, people, product (idea, issue), and process. Joy Arne Naess (1912–2009), a passionate Norwegian mountain climber, environmentalist, activist, and philosopher, perpetually reminded us about the importance of joy and cheerfulness, and of engaging oneself in meaningful activities. Naess worried about the health of our planet and all things living, and reminded us that no one can do everything, but everyone can do something. When we do something meaningful, such as caring for a plant, an animal or a person, we will experience joy and cheerfulness, and also add value to the bettering of the living conditions on Earth (Naess, Drengson and Devall, 2008; Setreng et al. 2014). Naess and Mockus both point to the physical body as a means for learning and critical consciousness. Moving our bodies always affects the context and facilitates imagination and creativity. In the book Idea Work (Carlsen, Clegg and Gjersvik, 2012), the authors present a comprehensive research-based theory about how to make ideas transform into practice or materiality. The steps to success are thorough preparation, to engage and animate as many different perspectives as possible, and subsequently to play, dramatize, scrutinize, and perform. And to laugh, contradict and be and do punk – e.g. be unconventional or politically incorrect. Daring to unleash the cop in our heads, and to do physical work and movements with our body, facilitates communication, learning in context, and creation of alternative futures or utopias. Having fun is productive, which several of the articles in this Special Issue substantiate. The late German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) used the concept of spiel, or play, to explain how we understand the world around us, and how we communicate and learn. Gadamer himself found great pleasure in talking with people with whom he did not share a common language. By focussing on the minutiae of micro signs and gestures, curiosity and aesthetic attention, communication is always possible, he argued. Gadamer provides a theoretical extension of Freire’s dialogical approach, stating that encounters with difference or alterity is necessary for learning and extension of one’s intellectual horizon. Difference or alterity facilitate creation of utopias and a different future (Hamlin, 2015; Vilhauer, 2010). All authors in this issue are relating their empirical and theoretical discussions to encounters with alterity or difference and to the importance of a curious and generous appreciation of the unfamiliar. Humans, like non-humans, are biological and social beings. Within the social sciences at large, the interrelationship between the biological and social body are taken into consideration to an increasing extent. The body is our public front which can be discriminated against as, e.g. the Sami people, the immigrants, or persons with intellectual disabilities know all too well. The body is also the prerequisite for social interaction, walking and talking, for dialogue and critical consciousness. Ramsden shows how walking and talking can open up strange encounters with the familiar, and prime people for communication and dialogue (Ramsden, 2017). Movement and mobility, particularly walking, stimulate perception and cognition (Ijmker and Lamoth, 2012), and henceforth support development of critical consciousness, learning and taking action. The physical body work in walking a city street, caring for animals, playing an instrument or climbing a mountain (as Naess did), stimulates creativity and critical consciousness. This issue presents several examples of how social change necessitates bodily engagement and movement, a topic relatively undertheorized in community work. Communitas Independent of theoretical grounding or preferences, community work resides in human relations and interactions, and in the relations and interactions between humans, non-human lives and places. The concept community is contested and hard to pin down, and often carries a naïve understanding of community as something generous, responsible and caring (Day, 2006; Stephens, 2010). When the concept of community is overused, it loses its edge. As will be seen in the articles, the authors operationalize the concept community through their writings about how people, non-human life and place affect each other, about how they are connected, and how different constellations facilitate or hinder social change. In this introductory article, we use the concept communitas to draw attention to the significance of these interactions and relationships – and to their precious and vulnerable character. Communitas is a Latin term, further developed by cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (1920–1983) to describe a society during a liminal period that is unstructured or rudimentarily structured (Killinger, 2010). Following Killinger, Turner (Turner, 2004, 2008) differentiates between several types of communitas. One of these is of particular interest to community work, existential (or spontaneous) communitas, which is often approached in the form of a ‘happening,’ or noteworthy event typically involving audience participation. Killinger (2010) states that optimal occasions for communitas are life in the fringes, interstices, and margins of structural forms. Communitas can also arise from inferiority, described as coming from beneath structure. The ability to give free rein to imagination, entertain, and hold the doubts, mysteries, and uncertainties of negative capability also provides the circumstances of and for communitas, (Killinger, 2010). Such moments of communitas can be created in future workshops, utopian action research or in physical theatre and music performance, or by engaging with animals, nature or art, all approaches presented in this issue. Following Edith Turner, communitas offers a number for possibilities (Turner, 2012), such as joy and the gift of knowledge. Experiences of communitas may give access to long term ties with others as others, and experiences of humanistic conscience that support, uplift, accept, sustain, and celebrate all of humanity (not just a small portion of it), and the ideals of human rights (Killinger, 2010). Killinger’s (2010) discussion of communitas relates to the idea work described by Carlsen, Clegg, Gjersvik (2012) above. According to Killinger, it should be understood that communitas as anti-structure really means it is an inversion of the normal, which resonates with the playing with ideas in Carlsen, Clegg, Gjersvik (2012). Communitas thus extends our gaze, including our backward gaze or regard. We are thus opened up to new experience and meaning-making such that we can work and play well with others (Killinger, 2010). Communitas is a treasuring of the immediate as a preparation for later change work. The idea of communitas is well suited for a discussion of how to initiate and accomplish community work as a research project or practice development project. The ephemeral and physical character of communitas is deployed in several of the projects presented in this issue. Generative themes: connectivity, materiality and affect Paolo Freire introduced the notion of boundary situations and generative themes, to refer to issues or experiences which elicited interests or created passion, and on which people were willing to take action. According to Beck and Purcell (2013), Freire identified domination and liberation as the overarching or global generative themes. Domination and liberation can be expressed at all levels of society, and people experience them as boundary situations, i.e. particularly interesting situations or paradigmatic experiences (Beck and Purcell, 2013). Examples of boundary situations are when people experience themselves as incompetent, without resources or unable to learn or make a difference in a social action. These experiences of lacking competency and social value, are learned, during upbringing, schooling, work life or by being ignored or belittled by public service providers or civil society at large. Community work is (most often) planned, carried through and sustained by face-to-face interaction in everyday life situations, and a deeper understanding of microinteraction (derogative and affirmative) is of value when ‘Cops in the head’ can be identified and counteracted. Everyday interaction is the point of departure for issue selection or creation of a common understanding of the situation at hand and holds the potentials to make any social setting develop or break down (Sue, 2015, 2010; Keller and Galgay, 2010; Goffman, 1983, 2010). While putting together this Special Issue, three concepts or themes emerged as particularly relevant: connectivity, materiality, and affect. These concepts are presently gaining (new) influence in several disciplines. The essence of these concepts is their reference to the interdependency between humans, non-human life, place and the health of our planet for our common survival and thriving. We are connected to each other, to our surrounding materiality and environment, and these connections are productive. They affect each other and create affects. Introducing connectivity, materiality and affect as key concept for community work, underscores the fact that any effort to create social change always affects a much large number of people, places, things, or interactions. Naess’ ecophilosophical standpoint emphasizing the importance of everyone doing something for themselves and their neighbours, reminds us about the interconnectedness of social life. Accordingly, any measure taken to better the health of the planet or the conditions for human and non-human life, must be locally adapted, i.e. must ‘Go glocal!’. The eco-pedagogical movement honours Freire for his contributions to critical pedagogy, and for his contribution to ecopedagogy as a means to develop robust appreciation for the collective potentials of being human and to foster social justice throughout the world (Kahn, 2010). Ecopedagogy (education) is future-oriented, building on an ecological political vision that radically opposes the globalization of ideologies such as neoliberalism and imperialism. Ecopedagogy has as one of its goals the realization of culturally relevant forms of knowledge. This turn towards ecology shows the relevance of the generative themes: connectivity, materiality, and affect. The built environment, whether social housing or a playground, is social and material, and affects and creates affects in the community. As an antidote to neoliberal individualism, focussing on connectivity explicitly values humans’ interdependency, and the dependency of all life on the Earth. Connections can be made across multiple dimensions, and assemblages can be composed of multiple bodies, machines, animals, places, or energy (Gibson, 2006). When one encounters alterity or experiences difference in culture, language, place, or temporality, we are given an opportunity to recognize Others as persons different from ourselves – but still the same. Several of the empirical cases in this issue shows how our ‘thrown-togetherness’ and ‘living-apart-together’ nurtures generosity, hospitality, and thriving. Challenges ahead – vitalizing community work through changing orientation? The collection of articles in this issue demonstrates that there is an increasing need to ‘think global and act local’ – to go glocal! We would like to point to a few challenges emerging from our collected articles, which also are of concern to community work scholars and practitioners outside the Nordic countries. Environmental challenges are particular threatening to young people’s futures. The increasing centralization and urbanization around the globe also increases pressure on the conditions for our livelihood in ways not consistent with a sustainable development. Ramsay and Boddy (2017) argue that changing our orientation from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism can support a sustainable future that acknowledges the interconnectedness of life and place. Ramsay and Boddy suggest an ecocentrism which is made up of creative application of skills, openness and work across existing boundaries and in multiple spaces. In their opinion, environmental social work assists humanity to create and sustain a biodiverse planetary ecosystem (Figure 1). Figure 1. View largeDownload slide Environment social work practice (Ramsay and Boddy, 2017:80. Reprinted with permission) Figure 1. View largeDownload slide Environment social work practice (Ramsay and Boddy, 2017:80. Reprinted with permission) The practical and theoretical approaches chosen in the projects presented in this issue can be seen as part of a change towards ecocentrism. Creativity, openness, and negotiations of place and boundaries are emergent in all projects. To instigate social change, we have to believe that a different future is possible, even when there are major threats to our existence. One of Freire’s later observations pinpoints the need for a new perspective: Freedom and the fear of losing life engender themselves into a deeper nucleus, one indispensable for life – that of communication. In that sense, the notion seems deplorable to me of engaging in progressive, revolutionary discourse while embracing a practice that negates life – that pollutes the air, the waters, the fields, and devastates forests, destroys the trees and threatens the animals (Freire, 2005:120). To be able to go glocal, anthropocentrism must be replaced with ecocentrism. The eco-philosophical approach put forward by Arne Naess and Freire’s ecopedagogy can foster creativity and joy, cheerfulness, openness and energy. Go glocal underscores the importance of local adaptations to preserve livelihood. Old slogans can be redressed to motivate everyone to go glocal in keeping with ecocentrism: ‘From users and choosers to makers and shapers’ (Cornwall and Gaventa, 2001) and ‘Movers and shakers’ (Bond et al. 2008). These slogans are way too potent not to be imported to the new eco-orientation. Ramsay & Boddy argue that important values and skills can be adapted in new ways. Environmental social work assists humanity to create and maintain a biodiverse planetary ecosystem. Core social work values, skills and knowledge can be adapted to promote social change, helping practitioners to respond to and mitigate environmental degradation. (Ramsay and Boddy, 2017:78) Lena Dominelli, who has inspired our critical thinking about anti-oppressive practice, continues to inspire community workers and others to go green (Dominelli, 2012, 2014). Community work is to create and design possibilities for learning and action. Freire (2005) anticipated the need to go green and to go glocal: Although none of that, in my judgement, makes those agents of cruelty any less responsible, the fact in itself that this tragic transgression of ethics has taken place warns us how urgent it is that we fight for more fundamental ethical principles, such as respect for the life of human beings, the life of other animals, of birds, and for the life of rivers and forests. I do not believe in loving among women and men, among human beings, if we do not become capable of loving the world. Ecology has gained tremendous importance at the end of this century. It must be present in any educational practice of a radical, critical, and liberating nature (Freire, 2005:47). Organization of the issue In the second edition of Keith Popple’s (2015),Analysing community work. Theory and practice, the concluding chapter describes the enormous changes taking place in our societies, and the future role of community work. Popple suggests that we look outside the traditional community work approaches and theories, to find new tools and inspiration. Amongst his suggestions are psychogeography (Solnit, 2001; Coverley, 2012; Beck and Purcell, 2015) and collective narrative practises. The articles in this Special Issue contribute in different ways to show the relevance of psychogeography and collective narrative practices, as well as the relevance of creativity, joy, and communitas as ‘go glocal’ responses in Scandinavian community work. To answer the call for new tools and inspiration, this issue suggests that ecopedagogy, ecophilosophy, and ecocentrism provide a new direction for community work – both theoretically and practically. The theoretical input from sociology and new materialism (Gibson, 2006; Fox and Alldred, 2017) points towards the interconnectedness of everything, and opens the possibilities for bringing the body into community work (Shilling, 2008; Thibault and Roberts, 2013). Social change is literally engaging bodies in action, often outside everyday routines and tracks, stepping out or our comfort zones (Hughes and Nicholson, 2016; Boal, 1995). The three first articles in this Special Issue by Nordgreen and Økland and Henriksbø and Sudmann, and Stenblom and Turunen, and Krüger, presents cases of inviting and including children and young people in defining the scope and aim of the change work. All three articles show how children and young people’s contributions leads to results not possible to plan or foresee ahead. The case of Kid’s tracks (Nordgreen et al.) is an example of how a variant of psychogeography were used to identify a special area for children and young people in Laksevåg in Norway, an area which later developed into a parkour park, according to their wishes. The participants in Krüger’s community music project in Bergen, Norway, combine collective narration and individual music lessons in preparation for their public performance. The young people share their stories with each other and the audience, inviting the audience to reframe their child care careers. Next Stenblom and Turunen’s project in Marielund in Sweden, is an arts-based approach to working with young people living in sociospatially segregated part of the city, where collective practices affect the neighbourhood, underscoring the importance of our material surroundings, glocal challenges and connectivity. As with Krüger’s participants, the young people in Marielund challenge the communities framing of their activities. The next three articles centre around the topics of collective learning and affective practices in intentional communities, i.e. communities which is actively created and sustained by collective efforts. Breivik and Sudmann’s article shows how engaging the students of community work in physical body work as part of the curriculum, facilitated out of the ordinary experiences for students and staff alike, and added value to the learning environment ant the overall learning outcome of the Master’s programme. Fallov and Jørgensen’s article present another ‘intentional community’ and applies MacFarlane’s concepts of a learning machine to show how the community are affected by and affect the persons with intellectual disabilities who are residing in Hjotshøj in Denmark. Next Lønning’s case study from Finnøya in Northen Norway, where residents have moved in from afar to create their own community, is an example of how ‘anti-structure’ and life in the fringes creates communitas in the community. All these intentional communities are dynamic, and the authors show how intentionality must be nurtured and preserved. The last three articles discuss different aspects of the Norwegian welfare state by presenting two examples of how marginal social groups, in this instance the indigenous Sami, and longstanding drug users, are poorly understood and encounter cultural insensitivity, derogative treat or untailored mainstream approaches. While Melbø’s article details experiences from the point of Sami people with disabilities, Sudmann’s article shows how ‘friluftsliv’ with horses create an alternative environment for welfare services. Finally, Loga’s article is a theoretical contribution to this issue, demonstrating the importance of an active civil society to preserve and reform the welfare state. Civil society is defined as a point of departure for bottom-up initiatives, and the welfare state represent the structural conditions for unleashing creativity and joy for social change. Community work in Scandinavia has benefitted from the development of the discipline in the UK. We hope that the research and development emerging from here is of interest to the English-speaking readership of this Special Issue. We are optimistic on behalf of community work and our common future. As Leonard Cohen puts it ‘There’s a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in’. Happy reading. Tobba Therkildsen Sudmann is a physiotherapist, and social scientist, with a Ph.D. from Department of Global Health and Primary Care at the University of Bergen. Her research interest is related to how people use their bodily resources to enhance their well-being and social participation, whether the means are physical activity, horses, or technology. Publications and research are directed towards social inequality in health and anti-oppressive professional practice. Jan-Kåre Breivik is a social anthropologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Oslo, Norway. Since 2012 he is a professor in community work at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. Since 2016 he has been deeply involved in theatre work through the company Apropos Theatre in Bergen, where he functions as an anthropologist by promoting research-based theatre and strengthening aspects of social engagement within the arts. His other research interests are diverse, dealing with homelessness, social movements, disability research, diversity issues, and more. Acknowledgements Thanks to our retired colleagues Helge Folkestad and Kjell Henriksbø for the first ten years of our Master’s programme, and for contributions and comments to this Special Issue. Thanks to the Editors of CDJ for the opportunity to edit this Special Issue and for valuable inputs and comments on the articles. Funding Western Norway University of Applied Science’s annual research grants. References Abbott , C. , Taylor , P. , Block , L. et al. ( 2013 ) Action Learning in Social Work , SAGE , London, UK . Learning Matters. Google Scholar CrossRef Search ADS Beck , D. and Purcell , R. ( 2013 ) Developing generative themes for community action, in Curran , S. , Harrison , R. and Mackinnon , D. , eds , Working With Young People , Sage , Los Angeles, CA, USA . Beck , D. and Purcell , R. 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doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy019pmid: N/A

Abstract The article is based on the designing of a parkour site at Leitet, in the borough Laksevåg, in Bergen, Norway. It explains the different stages of participation and the process of developing the Leitet parkour site. The Municipality of Bergen plays a significant role in involving children and young people in area development. Dialogue and collaboration with residents and other actors in the area are identified as essential approaches. Laksevåg was given priority on the basis of several years of mapping and statistical research, confirming the importance of a comprehensive and coherent area development, both social and physical. The area is distinguished, negatively, from Bergen as a whole by several variables. The article also emphasizes the connection between living conditions and good social networks, active involvement, and participation in society. Introduction Anchored in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the Norwegian Government White Paper: ‘Childhood and living conditions of children and young people in Norway’ (UN, 1989; St.meld. nr. 39, 2001–2002) concludes that the active engagement of children and young people is critical for an open and vital democracy. The Government, therefore, aims to encourage, amongst other things, coresponsibility and agency in individual lives and in society, starting from childhood and continuing through teenage years. In this article, the establishment of a new parkour site in a borough within the Municipality of Bergen, is used as a case study to show how pupils at the local secondary school (age thirteen to sixteen) and the municipality worked together in area development. The website Parkourpedia describes parkour as the combination of a philosophy/principles with a concept of movement, that concept being to move as if to escape or reach (Parkourpedia, 2017). Parkour involves moving around, pursuing and refining skills, and voluntary risk-taking. More importantly, it involves the deliberate use of urban environments and areas not originally designed for sport or leisure activities. Kidder (2013) states that parkour is a new and increasingly popular sport in which individuals athletically and artistically negotiate obstacles found in the urban environment (Kidder, 2013:1). Underpinning this is a philosophy of altruism and useful strength, longevity, self-improvement, and self-understanding (Parkourpedia, 2017). It is interesting to note that participation in the parkour project has a double meaning, not only to identify and overcome barriers in the development and design of Leitet, but also to overcome personal obstacles in the enactment of parkour as such. The article begins with a brief description of area and community development in the Municipality of Bergen. It then shows in detail how children and young people were invited to get involved in Barnetråkk™ (Kids’ Tracks™) and the development of Leitet parkour site. Kids’ Tracks™ (Norsk form, 2010) is an educational programme where children tell area planners, the municipality and local politicians how they use places where they live, and what is important to them in their local environment. The authors have followed the project from the Kids’ Tracks™ registration via the ongoing processes of participation in area development to the completion of Leitet parkour site. The article also highlights the process of young people’s involvement in and influence on the final result. Area development in Inner Laksevåg Bergen is the second largest city in Norway, with around 280,000 inhabitants. The Municipality of Bergen is organized in eight districts: Laksevåg is a borough near the city centre of Bergen. The area is planned to be more densely populated and compactly laid out, in accordance with the vision of Bergen as a well-functioning, urban, space-efficient and environmentally friendly city (Bergen Municipality, 2015). The state-initiated programme for area development is directed towards defined areas in the largest Norwegian cities. A similar ‘big city’ emphasis is found in other countries where significant challenges in living conditions are documented (Lawless, 2012). The White Paper The equalization report. Redistribution of income and living conditions in Norway (St.meld nr. 50, 1998-99) emphasizes that all inhabitants should receive a reasonable share of society’s material resources and that these resources should be distributed in a better and more just manner. In 2011 the Municipality of Bergen became part of a state programme and Inner Laksevåg became one of three main priorities for the city’s area development (Bergen Municipality, 2011; Husbanken, 2014). The work is politically anchored in the town council as owner of the area programme, and the municipality directors constitute the internal group of management (Bergen Municipality, 2012). Bergen town council has pinpointed objectives in area development (Bergen Municipality, 2012): Physical and technical upgrade and development Strengthening of social and cultural actions The establishment of arenas for dialogue and collaboration with residents and other actors in the area In order to establish closer dialogue and facilitate increased involvement, the Municipality of Bergen employed Coordinators for areas of community development. Among other tasks, they maintained the collaboration with local residents and organizations, which were bridgebuilders to the municipality’s system of decision-making, and played a coordinating role within the municipality and different service areas (Henriksbø and Grimen, 2014). Inner Laksevåg was given priority on the basis of several years of mapping and statistical research confirming the importance of a comprehensive and coherent area development. According to the report Living conditions and health in Bergen (Bergen Municipality, 2016), several variables distinguish the area negatively from other boroughs and Bergen as a whole. For example, the average income is lower (approximately GBP 4000 lower than the Bergen average of GBP 32,440), the involvement with child protective services is higher (Bergen 3.8 percent, Inner Laksevåg 6.8 percent), the level of child poverty is higher (Bergen 5.5 percent, Inner Laksevåg 13 percent), the level of physical inactivity among young people is higher (Bergen 17.4 percent, Inner Laksevåg 25.8 percent), as is the number of children entering school with insufficient language skills (Bergen 4.3 percent, Inner Laksevåg 8.11 percent). Around one in five (23 percent) of the inhabitants of Inner Laksevåg are immigrants, compared to the Bergen average of 13 percent. These immigrants are from Eastern Europa (and countries from former Eastern Europe which are now members of the EU), Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The municipality owns about 300 rental apartments in the area, and is one of five areas in Bergen with the most municipality apartments. The apartments are allocated according to a set of requirements and documentation of potential tenants’ limited opportunities in the open housing market. In addition, many tenants have problems with substance abuse. Oslo and Bergen are the Norwegian cities with the greatest problems of substance abuse and the only ones with downtown drug scenes. Bergen’s drug scene is presently located by the bridge between Bergen City and Inner Laksevåg (Nasjonal overdosestrategi, 2014-2017). In 2016 Inner Laksevåg had approximately 8700 inhabitants. A relatively high level of families with children (age zero to five years) were moving in and out of this area (Bergen 6 percent, Inner Laksevåg 9.4 percent). A high relocation index can hinder stable childhood environments and the development of good neighbourhoods. A resident survey (Ipsos MMI as, 2014) showed that 48 percent partially or completely disagreed that Inner Laksevåg had many good meeting places. The residents expressed a need for more local meeting places, this was also evident in the Kids Tracks registration. The two schools in the area will be demolished and reconstructed by 2020, and an additional meeting place could be a valuable contribution to the creation and sustenance of social networks. Kids’ Tracks™ – children’s own registration in outdoor spaces The Norwegian term ‘dyretråkk’ (animals track) refers to paths created by animals such as moose or deer over time, leaving visible trails in nature. Barnetråkk™ (Kids’ Tracks™, Norsk Form, 2010) is a methodological approach to children’s movements in outside spaces, which can be observed and mapped in the same manner as their parallels in the animal kingdom. It is a tool to get a better understanding of which areas children make use of when they move in their local environment. The purpose of the Kids’ Track™s registration is to encourage the involvement of children, to capture their experience and description of the local environment, and to register their information in order to take their interests into consideration in the municipality planning work. The Municipality of Bergen took the method developed by Norsk form as a point of departure (Norsk form, 2010). Through it, the municipality developed its knowledge about school tracks, short cuts, meeting places and other areas which are used or avoided. The hallmark of Kids’ Tracks registration is that the children themselves, in collaboration with planners from the municipality authorities, carry out the mapping of their local environment, with safe and unsafe zones in mind. In 2013 principals of the local schools gave permission to the area development project in cooperation with the Municipality of Bergen planning department, to carry out the Kids’ Tracks™ registration during school hours. Contact teachers for different grades were informed some days beforehand, so that they could prepare the children for the task. Seventy pupils from sixth grade and 115 pupils from ninth grade in the area’s two schools spent two days on mapping. The first day, after a common briefing about Kids’ Tracks™ by the Coordinator for Area Development and a City Planner from the Municipality of Bergen, the pupils formed groups based on residential area. The groups, (maximum eight young people) were given maps of the area in A3 format on which they drew school tracks, short cuts, where they like to hang out, places they avoided and physical changes they would like. The pupils then went outside with disposable cameras, taking pictures of the places they had previously marked on the map. The photos were printed that day, for use the following day. On the second day, in the same groups, the young people sorted the photos into categories suggested by the Area Coordinator: ‘like/love to be’; ‘needs improvement’; and ‘scary/dangerous’. They were then asked to choose two or three within each category. Some areas were marked with symbols: areas they especially liked (star symbol), and areas and school routes that were felt to be especially unsafe (lightening symbol). The photos were then glued onto a new corresponding map. After adding registrations, the maps looked as in Figure 1. After completing the registration, the planning department conducted an evaluation of the areas mentioned. The registration was and is used actively in Area Development as a work document for the implementation of improvements involving different departments. The registration revealed, amongst other things, that the young people desired improvements to playgrounds. Young people in the ninth grade (13–14 years) missed having a meeting place, such as a park, where they could spend time and hang out with friends. This last finding corresponded well with the resident survey that revealed a need for more meeting places. The process of designing a parkour site at Leitet As a consequence of the information received through the Kids’ Track™s registration regarding meeting places, the Coordinator of Inner Laksevåg contacted Holen School in February 2014, asking for permission to follow up on this topic by giving lower secondary school pupils an opportunity to participate in a young people group to focus on creating a meeting place. The meeting was announced on an information board at the school, and the Coordinator visited all classrooms to recruit for the meeting. The Coordinator was a familiar face to those who had previously participated in Kids’ Tracks. The young people who showed an interest had diverse backgrounds and all the lower secondary school grades were represented (thirteen to sixteen years), five girls and ten boys. Given the background of the Coordinator (holding a Master’s degree in Community work) with an emphasis on Freire and his perspective on dialogue and awareness, this became a backdrop for the process into which the young people and the Coordinator entered (Ledwith, 2011). Freire (1972) emphasizes that the dialogue is a collective process, a meeting between human beings who give the world names, and that one cannot give names on others’ behalf. Consequently, it was important to highlight topics and ideas that were important to the young people, here in the context of their leisure time activities. At the same time, the young people need to reflect on the spaces, or lack of them, available for their leisure activities, and the possibility of influencing decision makers to change this. Leitet, located approximately 100 m from the shopping centre, was a place well-known to the young people, where they already spent time (as shown in Figure 1). The playground was near an intersection, with regular traffic and heavy goods vehicle traffic. It contained a scuffed bench, two swings and a sandbox, and was in need of a major upgrade, which was already included in municipality plans. In the first meeting the young people expressed a wish for a place to spend time and meet others, and we discussed Leitet as a potential location for such a meeting place. Figure 1 View largeDownload slide Kids Tracks registration (Bergen Municipality, 2013). Holen School, Shopping centre, Leitet, Damsgård School Figure 1 View largeDownload slide Kids Tracks registration (Bergen Municipality, 2013). Holen School, Shopping centre, Leitet, Damsgård School The young people sat in smaller groups of three and four for the assignment to draw or write about the perfect meeting place. They presented a trampoline, skate ramp, tables and benches, a soda and water-vending machine, an open and illuminated place, access to sunlight and protection from rain. They described activities as well as the possibility to remain inactive if desired. Before the meeting finished, another meeting was set up a month later, where a representative of Barnas byrom (The Children’s City Space, department of the Municipality of Bergen) would participate. It employs an interdisciplinary working group, including architects and landscape architects. The Children’s City Space is a prioritized commitment for the Municipality of Bergen on upgrading public playgrounds. In the second meeting, there was an inspection of Leitet by the young people together with the Coordinator. The young people presented reflections about the space, commented that there was noise due to traffic, the sandbox was in bad condition, the space was wet and muddy, and much space was under-used. On the positive side, they reported a large and open space with swings, located near the shopping centre. After the inspection the meeting moved indoors and new suggestions were presented from the young people regarding the content of the space: for example, seats under a roof, a noise barrier, grill, basketball hoop, new ground surface (asphalt/grass), flowers, garbage bins, air hockey tables, swing set, toilet, slack line and facilities for climbing and table tennis (Figures 2–6). Figure 2 View largeDownload slide The planning process from February to March 2014 Figure 2 View largeDownload slide The planning process from February to March 2014 Figure 3 View largeDownload slide The final part of the planning process in April and May 2014 Figure 3 View largeDownload slide The final part of the planning process in April and May 2014 Figure 4 View largeDownload slide An ordinary afternoon in August 2016 at Leitet parkour site Figure 4 View largeDownload slide An ordinary afternoon in August 2016 at Leitet parkour site Figure 5 View largeDownload slide The figure shows the process of consultation, planning, design and implementation from autumn 2014 to summer 2016 Figure 5 View largeDownload slide The figure shows the process of consultation, planning, design and implementation from autumn 2014 to summer 2016 Figure 6 View largeDownload slide Different phases of the making of the parkour site at Leitet Figure 6 View largeDownload slide Different phases of the making of the parkour site at Leitet The third meeting took place in April: the young people were informed of place and time via text message. The representative from The Children’s City Space presented a first draft of possible solutions of the playground. Young people responded with several additional comments, such as including a hammock and painting colours on the ground. The draft included a half pipe (skate ramp), but a number of young people expressed a preference for a skating box or rail for skateboarding. As these elements would have occupied much space and left little room for other functions, parkour was suggested by some of the young people. Jeffrey Kidder (Kidder, 2013) has studied parkour and those who practice the sport. He writes that parkour can resemble skating, only without the skateboard. The skateboarders of the young people group in Inner Laksevåg preferred to have a good skateboarding park than a second-rate one, and suggested other local areas more suited for skating. When the representative from The Children’s City Space returned in May for a fourth meeting to have a closer look at different drafts, it was time for the young people to make a choice between skateboarding and parkour. It was a finely balanced decision but parkour was the final choice. The young people considered that there were already spaces for skateboarding, but few for just hanging out. After a discussion it was decided by the young people that the site should include parkour, as well as other elements. The decision was influenced by several young people who knew about parkour and had seen it on film. As a result of the group choice of parkour, the original plan of the municipality was amended. The municipality had planned to upgrade what was already on the site rather than introduce new elements such as a parkour pitch. The Leitet parkour facility was designed as a colourful site with new lighting, several parkour structures, seats that could also serve as tables, a basketball hoop, a trampoline, balance balls, a hammock, a parasol, grass, plants, and rubbish bins. Leitet parkour site is now a place for rehearsal and demonstration of new skills, which can later be expanded to free movement in an urban and natural environment. The local newspaper interviewed ninth-grader Sebastian Vaksdal at the opening of the parkour site. He summed up his experience of the process: I think this is fantastic. It is good that they include us and ask us, the users, about our interests (Edvardsen, 2016). Sebastian Vaksdal also attended a short movie about the parkour site at Leitet and the prior process. The movie was published in January 2018 (Pandora Film AS, 2017). Engaging in making and shaping Cornwall and Gaventa (2001) remind us that some participants have limited influence, despite efforts to include everyone. In their view, more voices are heard and more people included if collaborative work is undertaken. Seeing the potential of working in collaboration with active residents in order to find new and better possibilities for the local community is important in community work. In a discussion of the Scandinavian welfare model, Sivesind (2016) points to the centrality of the democracy perspective, and especially the importance of local democracy. The democratic processes are also emphasized by writers of a Nordic book in English on community work (Hutchinson, 2009; Ronnby, 2009; Økland and Henriksbø, 2009). The accentuation of local coparticipation is a central element in the area development and has, in our view, encouraged the effort to include young people in the process. Participation is a key word in community work (Larsen, Sewpaul and Hole, 2013; Ledwith and Springett, 2010; Minkler and Wallerstein, 2005). Through participating processes, young people were given influence on decisions affecting themselves in their local environment. Efforts were also made to give an insight into and knowledge about democratic processes and, hopefully, a certainty that their participation would generate positive changes for the community as a whole. It was essential to the result that the young participants would work with the Coordinator and the representative from The Children’s City Space. Young people contributed experience and knowledge about their local environment and interests, previously unknown to the Coordinator. The Coordinator, on the other hand, brought knowledge about what was possible and the challenges to be resolved. Implementing the young people Leitet project, the municipality has to deal with a number of premises, laws and regulations concerning budgets, location, design, etc. In addition, the proposition has to pass through different processes of detailed planning, projection, bidding, and construction, extending the time frame of the project. The project consisted of three phases: phase one was planning, phase two was designing and phase three was the implementation. The degree of coparticipation varied according to the phase of the work (Figure 7). Figure 7 View largeDownload slide Roger Hart’s Ladder of children’s participation (Hart, 1992) Figure 7 View largeDownload slide Roger Hart’s Ladder of children’s participation (Hart, 1992) The process of young people’s participation occurred in the planning phase. During this phase, the young people were given influence on what a particular space (Leitet) should include. But in this phase, there were also limitations related to the fact that the location was already defined and that the space was restricted physically. The space was regulated as a playground by the municipality, which meant that other functions would be out of the question. Given these limited conditions, Leitet acquired its present form with involvement from the young people in the local school. The development of phase two was carried out by the representative from The Children’s City Space. From this phase onwards, leading to implementation in phase three, young people were informed about the plans, but were no longer offered the opportunity of affecting the final result. This meant that they were given a passive role, while adults performed the work. The Municipality of Bergen is obliged to act in accordance with specific demands related to construction and execution. Ideally, the young people should have had the opportunity to participate in all three phases, in order to gain a greater sense of ownership of the space. The different degrees of participation in the process leading to the creation of the parkour facility can be illustrated using the ladder of children’s participation in planning, developed by Hart (1992) (Figure 7). His point of departure is the following: ‘A nation is democratic to the extent its citizens are involved, particularly at the community level. The confidence and competence to be involved must be gradually acquired through practice. It is for this reason that there should be gradually increasing opportunity for children to participate in any aspiring democracy’ (Hart, 1992: 4). Hart has thus designed a children’s version of Sherry Arnstein’s famous Ladder of Participation (Arnstein, 1969). Participation should, he argues, be a resident’s privilege. ‘It might be argued that ‘participation’ in society begins from the moment a child enters the world and discovers the extent to which she is able to influence events by cries or movements’ (Hart, 1992: 4). As expressed by Hart, children are social actors who affect and are affected by their environment, and one can consequently conclude that individuals and structures influence each other. Parts of the Leitet process are located high up on Hart’s ladder, where the young people were given free rein to influence. Nevertheless, steps four to six in his ladder are most evident in the process. Step four is assigned but informed, characterised by adult-led activities in which young people understand the purpose of participation and the decision-making process, and have a role. Step five is consulted and informed, characterised by adult-led activities in which young people are consulted and informed about how their registrations will be used and outcomes of adult decisions. Step six involves adult-initiated activities where decision-making is shared with young people. Brownill (2009) highlights the project Cowley Road Matters (Oxford, England) as an example of participation in city planning. Contribution was emphasized through different processes of participation, including interviews, workshops and user surveys. Similarly, in the context of Leitet, evaluations such as Kids’ Tracks™ and the resident survey were conducted prior to the workshops. As we can see, the projects Cowley Road Matters and Leitet share some characteristics at this stage of the process. The project Cowley Road Matters demonstrated that the processes of participation strengthened involvement in the local environment, as well as the principle of frontloading. Frontloading refers to project plans where the greatest effort is concentrated early in the process. However, the project also showed that the processes of participation had limited influence on the final result. The Coordinator of Cowley Road Matters was interviewed once after the processes of participation had ended, and again after the implementation. In the first interview the Coordinator saw the influence of local residents as substantial, while in the second the influence was perceived to be minor. It is thus relevant to ask to what extent the possibility of influence on the final result was real, and what may have affected this. Brownill (2009: 373) writes: ‘The Cowley Road example has shown new roles, relationships and tensions are emerging within current attempts to increase participation in planning.’ In Cowley Road as well as in Leitet, most consultation activities occurred during the planning period, when participants were informed about the municipality plans (frontloading). The representative from The Children’s City Space handled the technical implementation at Leitet, based on the knowledge and experience expressed by the young people. Contrary to the findings of the Cowley project, the Coordinator of Inner Laksevåg found that the young people had a great influence on the contents of the space. The dialogue and development of ideas produced through the young people group became the critical factors. The main task of the municipality was to look at options to accommodate the young people’s ideas. Through the processes of participation, the young people could see results from their involvement. What inspired the decisions is uncertain, as the group had several voices. It was not given that parkour would be the ultimate choice. At the same time, it is important to emphasize the question of how representative the processes of participation actually were, as only a few young people attended the meetings. That said, we all influence our environment by our mere presence (Hart, 1992: 4), and in many cases the competence and ability to participate of children is underestimated (Hart, 1992: 15). Although all the young people spoke at some point, some were more active than others. According to Cornwall and Hart, being involved in a process is not equivalent to actually having a voice. People need to feel able to express themselves without fear of reprisals or the expectation of not being listened to or not being taken seriously (Cornwall, 2008: 278; Hart, 1992). Taking into account that the group was made up of ten boys and five girls, it is possible that the choice of parkour was a result of this particular composition, and would probably have been a different choice had the group composition been different. If other ideas had been presented, the municipality would have accommodated them to the same extent as the proposals of parkour and other elements present at Leitet. Parkour and participation Parkour involves movement in urban space, but it distinguishes itself from ordinary movement by the purpose of its practice. In addition to movement, parkour accentuates the ability to escape (Parkourpedia, 2017). In the description of Højbjerre Larsen (2016: 295–309), play and voluntary risk taking has an important role in developing parkour skills. Many will see parkour as a high risk activity with a high probability of injury. Lupton (1999) has portrayed people who seek out and practice activities considered to be of high risk, and comments that much academic literature carries a notion that risk is something negative and synonymous with danger (Lupton, 1999: 148). ‘In some social contexts, risk-taking is actively encouraged as a means of escaping from the bounds of everyday life, achieving self-actualization, demonstrating the ability to go beyond expectations of performing gender’ (Lupton, 1999: 171; Lyng, 2014). Lupton continues; ‘Risk positions may be important to people’s sense of self-identity as part of a social group or sub-culture. People who live in areas designated as high risk may define themselves positively as ‘survivors’ and ‘battlers’, as part of a community that has chosen to ignore experts’ warnings and continue to live in these areas’ (Lupton, 1999: 112–113). The idea of parkour as an urban sport and a philosophy has resonance with aspects of community development and democratic participation. Along similar lines, Hart (1992: 9) emphasizes that adults sometimes underestimate young people’s capabilities and the actual degree of their participation. On the contrary, the concept of parkour encourages independent thinking and the choice of life paths; ‘this concept allows for a great amount of creativity and freedom within what we do, it also calls for us to think for ourselves and make our own path our own way’ (Parkourpedia, 2017). In an interview, David Belle, considered the founder and leading pioneer of the parkour discipline, says that with practice the athletes of parkour will see what is possible and what is not. ‘You learn through good technique not to take stupid risks. I wanted to show that there’s a method that allows you to overcome obstacles, to navigate obstacles without taking major risks’ (Parkourpedia, 2017). Based on the premise that young people want the best for themselves and their local environment, they can contribute if given the opportunity. This notion has a parallel in the underlying thinking of parkour, which can be defined as a philosophy of altruism involving mutual help and care of others (Parkourpedia, 2017). Sudmann and Henriksbø (2015) emphasize the role of children, arguing that community work builds on the conviction that everybody, including children, has knowledge and competence, determination and the ability to influence their environment and improve their life conditions. In addition, social communities are based on the idea that every single individual is capable of evaluating her own situation and orient herself towards other people and her environment, and capable of acting and interacting according (Henriksbø and Sudmann, 2011:2, my translation). It is, however, important that adults also participate in the process. The article ‘A place for young people in the social policy life of their communities’ (Sullivan et al. 2011) argues that the adult approach to support and acknowledgement is an important factor in young people participation. According to Hart participation of children is not meant to substitute that of adults (Hart, 1992: 31). Children and young people as important collaborators Brian Head (2011: 543–544) presents three aspects that are important for the increased participation of children and young people in issues that affect them: rights, efficiency, and development. As an example of rights, Head points to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In terms of efficiency, he shows that services that directly affect young people become more efficient when young people’s perspectives are included in the planning process. Municipality services could thus be performed in a more cost-efficient manner. The third aspect is connected to the benefits of development, as young people’s experience of collectively participating in a democracy in cases that affect them. MacNaughton, Hughes, and Smith (2007) have taken a special interest in childhood and children’s voices, and discuss different ways in which children have been addressed in Western thinking. Children have the right to participate and their inputs represent important contributions. In the processes of participation leading up to the parkour facility, the adults’ perception of young people as competent actors was a crucial factor. Head, as well as MacNaughton, Hughes, and Smith, see children and young people as social participants, agents, whose participation is important and meaningful. Similarly, Hart, whose work has focused on children’s development in relation to the physical environment, sees participation as a fundamental right for members of society (Hart, 1992: 5). Area Development is about forces pulling in the same direction, be that the municipality or local young people (Økland and Henriksbø, 2009; Økland, 2012; Henriksbø and Grimen, 2014). In the planning of Leitet, as community work, emphasis has been on working together, and not just on providing young people services. Processes of participation are challenging, as they require competence, time and resources, as well as the theoretical and value-oriented foundation needed to see young people as resources, and not just passive recipients (Camino, 2000; Sullivan et al. 2011; Augsberger et al. 2017; Brennan, Barnett and Lesmeister, 2007; Checkoway, 2011). When young people’s suggestions and efforts contribute to the improvement of an area, they can learn something about how they can affect systems and decisions, and make their voices heard. Aasen, Grindheim, and Waters (2009) write about outside environment and children’s democratic participation. Their examples are taken from kindergartens, but nevertheless witness to how demanding it can be to implement processes of participation. In their own words; ‘When children and practitioners are working together the practitioner’s attitude towards the child should be characterized by sensitivity, nearness, ability, meaningfulness and respect’ (Aasen, Grindheim and Waters, 2009: 11–12). Young people’s perspectives provide an important foundation of knowledge concerning which local areas they make use of and what they miss, within a given period of time. The collaboration between adults and young people that we have described in the context of the Leitet process has been of importance for the final result (Camino, 2000; Sullivan et al. 2011; Augsberger, Collins, Gecker, and Dougher, 2016). Within the municipality, collaboration and the ability to see potential opportunities are perceived as important for implementation. In the context of community work, Camino (2000) emphasizes the importance of young people participation in their local environment, in close collaboration with adults. Camino features three dimensions of collaboration; principles and values, skills and competences, and an action-oriented method. In her research, Camino found that; Mentioned in interviews by nearly all youth and adults, were respect and equality. It is working with youth and not for youth (Camino, 2000: 14). She concludes; Youth and adult participation is a principle asset that all communities have the potential to tap (Camino, 2000: 19). Good results are not only due to young people participation; it is also a matter of accentuating the competence they possess. The Coordinator makes collaboration possible through facilitating the employment of municipal resources at the right time. Financial funding was available in Inner Laksevåg through the Area Development (grants from the Husbanken) that could be used to follow up on the Kids’ Tracks™ registration and other processes of participation. Even though the Municipality of Bergen is the major investor, supplementary funding stimulates constructive local processes and adds quality to investments and enterprises such as parkour. The realization of the project would have been difficult without clear political commitment to priority areas. Through dialogue, young people presented their ideas and overcome obstacles, and therefore experience agency in their own daily life. The process contributed to a strengthening of the sense of belonging and community, and probably also to a sense of individual and collective agency. Observing the process, from the Kids Tracks’ registration to contact with schools and collaboration with the representative from The Children’s City Space, it is evident to the Coordinator that many actors and departments have been involved. Planning, designing and implementation took more than two years. Perhaps several of those who participated were no longer interested in using Leitet? Judging by the previously-mentioned statement of pupil Sebastian Vaksdal, and the busy daily activity at the site, young people do make use of Leitet. Whether these are the same young people who participated in the process, however, is not clear. But what can nevertheless be concluded, is that many other children can enjoy a new and exciting space for play or, in the words of Twelvetrees, get a better deal (Twelvetrees, 2008: 2). As we write this, the site is used on a daily basis by young people of all ages and it is easily accessible for children and young people who want to meet and move around outside. Parents also bring younger children. Concluding remarks The process of making Leitet into what we see today shows some of the experiences from the area development of Inner Laksevåg. The commitment has assumed a comprehensive perspective that corresponds to the municipality objectives of physical, social and cultural enhancement, and of including different municipal departments as well as local residents. Area development is guided by long-term planning perspectives and predictable budgets. Leitet would never have become what it is today without the processes of participation from the young people, and the support and funding facilitated by the area development. The Coordinator role is important as instigator and facilitator for both residents and municipality. Such experiences with processes of participation can hopefully contribute to providing knowledge to local planners, who can again offer the conditions for increased participation in future projects. To make sure that all voices are heard is a challenge, but it is even more important to increase young people’s opportunities to influence democratic processes. The participation of children can be useful in particular cases, but of even greater value are the social long-term effects of cultivating democratic attitudes, abilities and knowledge from which society may benefit (Kjørholt, 2010: 19). The Kids Tracks™' registration and the group process indicates that participation and mobilization can provide results which are also important to others, and can constitute fundamental education in democratic principles. In this context, small projects, such as Leitet parkour site, are meaningful contributions both in terms of process and result. This project has provided new content to the space Leitet, which is still the only existing parkour site in Bergen. Leitet was planned with young people, based on their desires and needs, within the boundaries set by the municipality. Linda CM is a pre-school teacher and holds a master’s degree in community work. Her practical interests and research are related to children’s participation in area development, and to their possibilities for participation and contact with incarcerated fathers. Mary Alice Økland is a social worker, and holds a master’s degree in sociology. Her practical interests and research relate to area development and social housing. She has contributed to several articles, chapters and a book on community work and social housing. Kjell Henriksbø is a social worker and holds a master’s degree in political sciences. His practical and scholarly interests relate to anti-oppressive practice and local and social mobilization. Tobba Therkildsen Sudmann is a physiotherapist, and social scientist, with a PhD from Department of Global Health and Primary Care at the University of Bergen. Her research interest is related to how people use their bodily resources to enhance their well-being and social participation, whether the means are physical activity, horses, or technology. Publications and research are directed towards social inequality in health and anti-oppressive professional practice. Acknowledgements We would like to express our gratitude to Dr Penny Bayer for copy editing and final quality check on this article. Funding Mary Alice Økland’s and Linda Cathrine Nordgreen’s contribution is funded by the Municipality of Bergen, Kjell Henriksbø’s and Tobba Therkildsen Sudmann’s contribution is funded by his employer Western Western Norway University of Applied Science’s annual research grants. References Aasen , W. , Grindheim , L. T. and Waters , J. 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doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy022pmid: N/A

Abstract In the Masters programme in Community Work at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, students and teachers engage in interactive learning and problem-solving together. Paolo Freire showed us how learning is achieved through critical dialogue and praxis, i.e. action and reflection. Two different experimental workshops offered to both regular and visiting students, used alternative forms of dialogue and action. Through dialogues produced with words, bodily gestures, props and movements, and reflection upon action, generative themes emerged. These themes concerned ecological and social challenges faced by community workers. Students in the first workshop engaged in ‘skip diving’ with an aim of transforming skipped food into a gourmet food festive dinner, and in the second workshop students and teachers chose to create a socially relevant parade around the main street of a city borough. In both workshops artists with experiences in community participation were involved. The article discusses how arts-based workshops facilitate creation of context-sensitive tools for community workers as creative agents of change. Introduction: ‘Encountering the strange, and making a difference’ It is so important in professional community work training to meet the strange and encounter the unexpected. By doing art-inspired skip diving and making a street gallery, and walking-talking the city as in psychogeography, we saw surprising things happen before our eyes and learned a lot. Making Torgallmenningen, Bergen’s central spot, into a space for sharing stories and wasted food, made a real difference (Pedro, student, 2014). In January 2007, the first Scandinavian cross-disciplinary Masters programme in Community Work was launched in Bergen. Since then, the programme has focused on creativity as an important theoretical and practical tool for the community worker. However, to equip students with art-based tools for practical work, the teachers decided to change the curriculum. In 2014 and 2016, experimental four-day action-learning workshops were offered as part of an elective fifteen ECTS course, and regular and visiting students could sign up. The course included themes such as community art, social movements, hope and utopias, and international solidarity. The learning activities aimed to prepare students for an expanded social reality and enable them to explain how social movements and art-related activities contribute to broadening knowledge of community work, in practice and theory. Learning outcomes were acquirement of skills, knowledge and general competency, contributing to critical thinking and innovative practice and the ability to ‘work independently on practical and theoretical problems’ and to ‘use relevant methods for research and scholarly and/or artistic development work’. In achieving this, we acknowledge, as student Pedro stated above, how important it is ‘in professional community work training to meet the strange and encounter the unexpected.’ This article presents a practical outline of the two workshops and discusses impact of location and methodology on production of the material used in this article. It then presents and discusses workshop key activities; skip diving (also called dumpster diving or skip salvaging) in 2014, and a parade in 2016. In conclusion, the author suggests that experimental workshops in regular educational programmes can inspire use of more context-sensitive tools, and facilitate the development of community workers as creative agents of change. The experimental workshops The specific learning outcome for the two workshops was to obtain creative group work skills through action learning and action research (Revans, 2011; Abbott and Taylor, 2013; Gunnarsson et al. 2016; Nielsen and Nielsen, 2016). Collective action, working and learning together are pinpointed as key values in community work by Popple (2015, pp. 118–119), and are hallmarks of action learning and research. Through dance, music and playful and creative ways of solving tasks and performing together, these values can be strengthened. The workshops aimed to unpack a key concept in community work, i.e. participation, by examining how participant expertise, resources and critical consciousness could be built and mobilized through creative, bodily, and physical means (Cohen-Cruz, 2013; Conrad and Sinner, 2015; Gielen and de De Bruyne, 2011; Ledwith and Springett, 2010; Nicholson, 2005; Shaw and Meade, 2013). Creative working methods facilitated and demonstrated the necessity of cocreation and coproduction of social change. Students engaged in applied theatre, music, filming, photography, and creative writing, and did exercises, readings, seminars, and public actions together. The boxes below provide an outline of the workshops. Proposals for key activities were discussed between colleagues in the Master’s programme and suggestions were presented to the group of students for further discussion, changes, and implementation. Workshop 2014 Workshop 2016 Key activities: Skip diving and ritual sharing Key methods: Physical ensemble work, photo-voice and documentation through film Monday to Thursday from 9:00 to evening (flexible) at Apropos Theatre Key activities: Making parade and ritual sharing Key methods: Physical ensemble work, community music, creative writing and psychogeography Monday to Thursday from 9:00 to evening (flexible) at Apropos Theatre Workshop 2014 Workshop 2016 Key activities: Skip diving and ritual sharing Key methods: Physical ensemble work, photo-voice and documentation through film Monday to Thursday from 9:00 to evening (flexible) at Apropos Theatre Key activities: Making parade and ritual sharing Key methods: Physical ensemble work, community music, creative writing and psychogeography Monday to Thursday from 9:00 to evening (flexible) at Apropos Theatre Workshop 2014 Workshop 2016 Key activities: Skip diving and ritual sharing Key methods: Physical ensemble work, photo-voice and documentation through film Monday to Thursday from 9:00 to evening (flexible) at Apropos Theatre Key activities: Making parade and ritual sharing Key methods: Physical ensemble work, community music, creative writing and psychogeography Monday to Thursday from 9:00 to evening (flexible) at Apropos Theatre Workshop 2014 Workshop 2016 Key activities: Skip diving and ritual sharing Key methods: Physical ensemble work, photo-voice and documentation through film Monday to Thursday from 9:00 to evening (flexible) at Apropos Theatre Key activities: Making parade and ritual sharing Key methods: Physical ensemble work, community music, creative writing and psychogeography Monday to Thursday from 9:00 to evening (flexible) at Apropos Theatre In workshop 2014 the fulcrum activity was skip diving as a vehicle for a critical discourse on food waste, and a transformation of thrown-away food into a gourmet meal in a ritual sharing and celebration at the farewell dinner. In workshop 2016 the fulcrum activity was to make a public parade in a Bergen borough. In line with the action learning tradition, students and staff together designed workshops that related to real world problems. The workshops addressed the shortcomings of ‘learning by doing’ (Dewey, 1916), and introduced an alternative ethic of ‘learning by responsibility’ (Revans, 2011) and reflective empathic actions in solidarity (Freire, 1995; Krznaric, 2015). The workshops demanded long hours by students and staff, including a late-night dinner. The students said that the organization of the workshops outside the University in an unusual environment furthered critical reflection and learning. The programme staff designed the workshops, and J.K.B., the first author of this article, was responsible for the course. Facilitating praxis, i.e. action and reflection, students were active in making amendments to course plans. Redesigning or negotiating plans were both means and aims of the programme. Workshop environment, ethical considerations, and methodology The workshops were located outside University facilities, in the theatre house of Apropos Theatre, where J.K.B. has vested interests as producer and part of the artistic crew, and his wife, Solvei Stoutland, is artistic director. She contributed as a teaching artist on physical ensemble work in both workshops. This article relates to experiences and materials made available through J.K.B.’s composite roles; as professor in community work, course initiator, collaborative partner in the Apropos Theatre, and experienced skip diver. These roles share common obligations; to engage in critical self-reflection, to learn from failure, accomplishment and experimentation, and to suggest improvements for better community work in the future. The arrangement and facilitation of the workshops probably benefited from all these roles and the author’s longstanding interest in social activism and community art. Overall, students, teachers, and artists evaluated the course positively, whereas there were differences of opinion about some of activities. Some students experienced physical ensemble work as challenging or a violation of private space and boundaries. The staff saw that bodily copresence and touch could be threatening and difficult for everyone to deal with, even if some welcomed the challenge. Making the learning environment both safe and challenging, while respecting personal limits and needs, became important. In dealing with this as an important issue and a welcome critique, the staff designed legitimate and alternative participation as a regular option, e.g. taking short self-selected breaks, and changing between action and observation. In the skip diving sessions, a variety of tasks to choose from was provided, that made direct contact with garbage fully optional; e.g. observing, preparing the festive meal, damage control or Facebook-activism. Students and teachers collectively agreed to establish a Facebook group to heighten awareness of food waste. The material underpinning the arguments in this article is produced through participant observation and interviews with students, staff and artists, during and after the workshops, and with community members when conducting actions in public. As a teacher, artist, and researcher, J.K.B. made participant-observation notes, conducted and transcribed interviews recorded on film by the teaching artist Raúl Capote Braña from Cuba, conducted informal and formal conversations, and walking-talking and non-verbal communication during activities (Pink, 2015). The compiled material from the workshops constituted a case study. Case studies are well suited to explore complex material that includes a diverse set of methods (George and Bennett, 2005). Participants in the workshops were Masters students from Norway, China, and Spain, and teachers/artists from Norway, Cuba, and Portugal. Data production complied with the ethics of informed consent. Students have been assigned fictional names in this article, since consent to use real names was not systematically obtained from all participants. Motivation and inspiration Motivation and inspiration for developing creative arts in the Master’s programme came from many sources. The main motivation for creating these experimental workshops came from a wish to strengthen the Paulo Freire-inspired pedagogy, by taking his ideas out into the public realm, as did his theatre companion, Augusto Boal (1995). Boal saw the use of the body as vital to achieve the reflective learning outcome described by Freire, arguing that counter-acting banking-education (one way preaching and teaching) necessitated physical engagement. The exercises used in the workshops resemble those detailed by Boal and developed in the strand of physical theatre (Boal, 1992, 2006; Callery, 2015). Further motivation and inspiration for the workshop 2016 parade came from the political street theatre developed by Dario Fo and Franca Rame (Mitchell, 2014). From the community work toolbox, inspiration came from future workshops (Jungk and Müllert, 1987), the labour movement and adult education workshops, and feminist consciousness-raising groups, which originated the slogan ‘the personal is political’ (Haug, 1999; Danielsen, 2013). The Scandinavian participatory design model from the 1970s, starting with action-research collaboration with trade unions at the workplace, represented another inspiring practice in this context (Ehn, Nilsson and Topgaard, 2014, p. 7). The pedagogical development practice was also fertilized by the international Living Lab´s thinking and doing, as types of participatory laboratories ‘ranging from market-oriented labs for user testing of new products to long-term engagements between designers and diverse groups of citizens and their concerns’ (Ehn, Nilsson and Topgaard, 2014, pp. 8–9). The latter groups could be neighbourhoods and diverse groups of people that represent marginalized or stake-holding positions, and students, as in this case. Living labs grapple with the practical doings of democracies in the making, in similar ways as does our workshops. From the field of socially engaged arts different versions of art laboratories inspiration came from community music workshops, physical ensemble work (Lecoq, 2009), ritual sharing (Barba, 1995, 2013; Watson, 2002; Turner, 2012), participatory theatre (Boal, 1995), the photo-voice method (Purcell, 2009), making parades (Van Erven, 2013), and creative writing and poetic praxis (MacKenzie, 2013). An important part of this was to immerse students, teachers, and artists into the practice of psychogeography as place-making (Popple, 2015; Coverley, 2010; Beck and Purcell, 2015; Purcell, 2012; Cresswell and Merriman, 2011; Cresswell, 2004) where socially engaged arts and community work have joint interests and shared practices. The workshops combined strategies, actions and models through a mix of community work methods, action learning and action research methods, and artistically developed methods for team-building and collective performance in public, as in ensemble work inspired by Boal, Fo, Lecoq, and Callery (Boal, 1992; Callery, 2015; Mitchell, 2014; Lecoq, 2009). Ensemble work and the exercise with bamboo sticks ‘When we had the bamboo exercise, we were totally dependent on communication without talking’, says Master’s student Marie, referring to a concrete collective bamboo exercise in the 2016 workshop. She continued to reflect upon how the physical ensemble work became a key experience in understanding how to mobilize people’s own resources in collective action for social change. First and foremost, she stated that it was ‘a lesson in how professional community workers must dive into their own repertoire of resources’ to become better guides or facilitators in change-work with others. We had to give and take. We coproduced movements through talking through our fingers. You make mistakes and you build it up again. Losing the grip on the bamboos and getting laughing kicks when we shouldn’t became good learning experiences. It felt more real and we experimented with new ways of doing things that we wouldn’t have tried without the mistakes. We were challenged and tried new things repeatedly. It was good but also a bit scary. I would never have done this without being in that workshop (Marie). Valuing ‘mistakes’ and ‘doing’ are important: the latter deal with embodied learning and action learning, in companionship, enabling key experiences in thinking and doing community work (as relational group work) differently, through concrete exercises. Another student put it this way; Working with bamboos was very inspiring. I saw a lot of bamboos in China. Everywhere. We are building houses by using bamboos and Pandas eat bamboo, but I have never thought about using them as a communication tool, in an action learning workshop, like that. I was moved, because it represents people’s relationships in a society (Jiang, student 2016). The bamboo-exercises occupied a significant position during the workshops. As part of different playful exercises, participants were introduced to bodily sensuous awareness of positions, postures and expressions in space with others, through a series of designed activities and preparations. Some exercises made us sense space in different way, e.g. acting blind, being led by a bamboo stick, crawling on the floor/ground, walking the space in different tempo and emotional states, and creating a dense crowd and dispersing by removing quickly from the central crowded spot. The explorative awareness aspect of this has a strong affinity to psychogeography as spacial awareness. The action part refers to how we prepared ourselves and the available space to make an impact. The impact came through place-making, where the space was turned to a meaningful and interesting place where togetherness, curiosity, and excitement, could emerge. The art director and teaching artist explained how participants transformed greeting routines into something special: We have done this since we were small and learned how it works. Take her hand, shake it, and tell your name. We don’t reflect about what we do, and we forget the name of the other person. To restart this process is interesting. You give them the task; walk the room, find eye contact with somebody, walk towards that person, shake hands and say your name, and walk away! We can do this for hours. Because it is so interesting to see how you can develop yourself through these encounters, and how two persons can be, in this very special moment, recognizing one and another. The bodies tune in and listen while keeping eye contact. It’s like musical sensation where you can experiment, fail, and repeat (Solvei). A small routine activity takes on a new and deeper meaning that values co-recognition and copresence. ‘Greeting someone will never be the same after this’, one student reported. Solvei also made a connection to how the community music sessions contributed in similar ways, preparing and tuning in participants for collective performances, and attaching meaning to it. As training in body-emotional awareness this worked well: the participants opened for an expanded sensuous presence, together. We were simply better prepared to perform collectively in public, as in the skip diving actions in 2014, and two years later, in making a socially relevant parade. Emerging themes – issue selection The hallmark of community work is to facilitate empowerment and critical consciousness, community capacity and social capital, issue selection, participation, and work that is relevant (Minkler, 2012). In focusing on issue selection, you should ‘identify winnable and specific targets of change that unify and build community strength’ and enhance participation by community members as ‘part of a larger strategy’. In conducting parts of the repertoire of physical ensemble work (see above), and introducing the main activities in the workshops, the project tried to facilitate an environment where the participants’ experiences, senses, and resources became activated. This echoes the advanced preparations artists subject themselves to when creating a performance with participants considered equal in terms of resources, experiences and skills. When looking at collective actions in this context, the participants transformed space into place through a series of open activities and designed preparations. Students and teachers did the same but sensed the actual space in different ways. Some of these techniques contributed to an emptying of space for established meanings and routines (Brook, 1995; Lecoq, 2009) in order to remake the space, and create strange encounters with the familiar. These processes are seen in ritual preparations and performances (Turner, 1982; Boal, 1995) and in psychogeography (Beck and Purcell, 2015). The theatre rehearsal house, where the common meals, seminars, and conversations were held, facilitated the flourishing of ideas. By doing interchanging indoor and outdoor activities (skip diving, preparing parade, psycho-geographical walking) issues emerged, that united the group in terms of shared meanings and emotions (Minkler, 2012). In the two workshops, development of common meaningful goals for our collective actions appeared. These were: to raise awareness of how to relate to each other in everyday life and in the public; be aware of urban spaces as sites of oppression and resistance; and to appreciate and acknowledge personal resources and skills in making a difference. In 2014, the skip diving activity gradually changed character. From being an action to transform garbage to gourmet food for a festive dinner, students, artists, and guest teachers, transformed the activities to something more; a public action to facilitate critical awareness and dialogues on how food waste and consumption can be connected to the emergent environmental crisis and global inequalities. Skip diving 2014: ‘What do you think about wasting food?’ Skip diving or dumpster diving has become a ‘popular form of modern salvaging of waste’ in the Global north (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumpster_diving), addressing important global concerns. As a group activity combined with preparation and eating of a common meal, the project’s joint activities in 2014 were fertile ground for dialogue around environmental issues combining local actions and global issues. When skip diving was introduced to staff, students, and teachers as the key workshop activity, reactions ranged from hesitation to curiosity. Some students were strangers to the idea of digging for food in garbage. One voiced a common concern that ‘It could be dangerous and probably illegal’, hinting towards both unhealthy consumption and violation of private property rights. The staff addressed the first objection by ensuring that it was done with care, avoiding taking meat, or fish or other products that had stayed too long in the dumpster bins or been exposed to heat. The diving, thus, had to be prepared – choosing bins unexposed to direct sunlight, and making quality control procedures. The workshop was held in September when the temperature is a liability, and the weather changes from ‘Indian summer’ to rainy storms in half a day. In Norway, skip diving is best done in the cold season, or as soon as possible after food disposal. Finding high quality food in bins triggered reflections. Students, teachers, and artists soon became comfortable with the activity. An emerging issue was overcoming the fear of what others would think of you, related to shyness, shame and embarrassment: ‘What if someone I know sees me doing this?’, or ‘What if the people working in the supermarket approach us – and tell us to bugger off?’, as two students said. For the participants, all these worries and expectations provided food for thought, and challenged all of us to step out of our comfort zone and engage. The activity provided good opportunities to discuss ‘who's crime is the throwing away of eatable food?’ both within the workshop, and with friends and family. Occasionally participants encountered reluctant or even hostile staff – and got the chance to explain, argue, inform and sometimes slip into interesting dialogues. As such, the activity created opportunities to critically reflect upon our sense of community, consumption, and power-relations. However, a boundary situation occurred when the participants found bins closed with a locker, and the objection towards the legal status of the activity was animated: What now? Is it time to break the law? And call upon civil disobedience and engage in acts of resistance? The legal argument was of course important: ‘If the garbage bin is open in a widely available place, there is probably nothing wrong with removing items from it. But if you need to enter clearly marked private spots, break up a locker, or get into someone else’s property, dumpster diving in such places is illegal.’1 In 2014, J.K.B. consulted Judge Noss, who confirmed that thrown-away food should be regarded as de-relinquished goods, and not illegal to acquire. If, however, the bins were locked, acquiring was a violation of private property rights. The moral argument (in face of social injustice and food waste) could, however, be a trump in court, she said. So, the workshop participants dived for food, but didn't break the law or any locker. Nonetheless, an important dialogue took place on law and democracy, and on the nature of private property rights in terms of formal law, general (in)justice, and local and global inequalities. Due to shop routines, skip divers were active on afternoons, Monday to Thursday, after the regular workshop hours. Students, artists and teachers took part as much as they could, considering other duties and obligations, and the teaching artists Braña from Cuba and Marquez from Portugal documented the activities on film and photo-voice. Several themes for critical dialogues emerged about the consumer society: the throwing away of edible food, linked to the politics of putting ‘safe’ expiring dates on products to keep production high, a possible critique of capitalism; and the hard work of food production by farmers worldwide whose products ended up in Bergen’s dumpster bins. A turning point? During the second day of skip diving something happened in the group, voiced by a student: It was interesting because we felt confident. We talked about it from the beginning and we did the skip diving in the evenings. It was not a bad experience – on the contrary! We didn’t have much time to plan, but we did it! We went to some supermarkets and ‘dived’ into the dumpster bins. After the second action, we put the food on the ground and it was like a picture: one that you could have on the wall, like those old still-life pictures. It was so powerful! And it pushed us to think about how it relates to community work and critical consciousness in the group. I think we did something great in those few days (Pedro). From this first realization of the power of a photo an idea of enlarging the issue grew. What about a public exhibition in a central place in Bergen – combined with dialogues with the public around food-waist and consumerism? What about Facebook-activism? What about a documentary film on skip diving? Diverse decisions were suddenly made within an enthusiastic collective spirit. Photo-voice and community actions in public spaces swiftly became more than contemplative possibilities within a University setting. A lot of interesting things came out of the ideas and emerging plans, and in the early afternoon of the third day an exhibition of food-waste was set up at the main city square, Torgallmenningen. Students and teachers collectively agreed to establish a Facebook group to heighten awareness of food waste. The Internet community group, named DumpsterArt-Project, with elements of the photo-voice method for voicing peoples' concerns through photos and videos (Purcell, 2009), became an integral part of the exhibition as an expanded place-event.2 All students and teachers/artists participating in the exhibition/street-gallery had prediscussed how to present the project to local people. In dialogue with the public, the students Siri and Catrine presented the action in this way: We have done dumpster diving in the containers behind the supermarkets in Bergen. We bring it here. What do you think about wasting the food? This is about how to use the arts in community work, and we made this exhibition and want to document people's reactions. We would like to take a picture of you and if you agree you will become part of the artwork – on Facebook (Siri). We want you to present a feeling concerning the wasted food. If you don’t know what to say, you don’t have to say a thing. It is just your picture (Catrine). Besides filming photos and video-shots, people from all walks of life also vocally expressed their concerns. A woman from Bergen simply stated that we all throw too much, and an immigrant woman from Poland reacted with horror: ‘It is not even sad. It is shocking, unbelievable!’ A male refugee from Syria simply stated that his family now ‘lives on the borders between Turkey and Syria, and Jordan, and needs food’. A young man from Bergen says that, luckily, we have the City Mission, who ‘take in groceries like this and helps the poor’. Finally, a man from Uganda, points to another compelling concern: Look at this sweet potato! It is disrespectful to throw it away and against human rights. We only cook food we are going to eat. And we recycle. In Norway, you recycle paper, plastic, and bottles. Why don’t you recycle food? In a long conversation with the students, the participants touched upon a range of action learning benefits in bringing skip diving into an academic course on community work. First, the activity was recognized as an interest-driven fieldwork technique that made you take specific perspectives on the environment and people encountered. Then, the value of experiencing a neighbourhood from the perspective of someone looking for wasted goods like a beggar or poor person making the best of their situation, or from a spectator point of view as in the street exhibition action, was recognized as important. By walking in the imagined footsteps of a poor or desperate person, the participants staged encounters that confronted and begged for response. This gave way to new approaches and encounters with the environment. By doing this, the workshops used peripheral vision and elements from psychogeography; where wandering the streets with a loose aim (Coverley, 2010; Solnit, 2001; Debord, 1983) makes you realize unexpected traits of both the familiar and the strange. By performing such actions the space transforms into a specific site; a place. For participants and people encountered this was an example of genuine place-making, i.e. making the space into a site of meaningful exchange, worthy of remembrance. This resonates with an understanding of the concept ‘place-event’ (Pink, 2015) where ‘thrown-togetherness’ adds value to participants’ life projects or ‘sense of place’ through movements (Cresswell, 2004; Cresswell and Merriman, 2011) and ‘sense of community’ through engagement (Day, 2006). This project exemplified environmental affordance and ‘learning in context’, in ways similar to those Sudmann explores in her article on friluftsliv and horses, and to explorations by Fallov and Jørgensen in their article on urban spaces as ‘learning machines’ (McFarlane, 2011), both in this issue. By choosing skip diving as a social action the workshop accomplished different tasks and reached both planned and unintended goals. Participants dealt with an issue that aroused both enthusiasm and concern, the task was challenging but simple in terms of explanation and doing, and the emerging issue united group members and connected them to a wider community in the spirit of dialogue, joint consciousness raising, and pursuing relevant community actions (Minkler, 2012). Making parade 2016 In 2016 teachers and students agreed to make a friendly intervention or a parade at Nesttun, a refashioned Bergen borough. The lack of activity in the (old) outdoor market square had become obviously problematic after most commercial activities had moved into the shopping mall, and teachers and students considered that a friendly parade would highlight this, and provide ways of engaging residents to voice their own concerns on the matter. Van Erven (2016) defines parades, in line with some psychogeography practices, as groups of people ‘moving through public space with an explicit intention: to draw attention to a particular political or social issue, to commemorate, to celebrate, to reclaim an area, or to fill a place with moveable collectively created artistic expressions’. In preparing for the parade in the 2016 workshop a mix between physical ensemble work, community music, and creative writing sessions, were facilitated. The teachers also invited all participants (students, teachers, and artists) to a precourse evening where we discussed and amended the plan, and shared ideas on the purpose of the parade. The centre of Nesttun, a borough in Bergen, was chosen because several participants knew the area, and the distance from the workshop location was relatively short. Agreeing upon the purpose of the parade was trickier; a distinct political action would not be feasible for the group. Eventually we settled on making a friendly ‘intervention’ that could invite residents and users of the area to engage in a dialogue around problems and prospects of the space and place. Preparation included a field-trip and walk in Nesttun centre, inspired by community work psychogeography (Beck and Purcell, 2015); looking for paths, edges, nodes, and landmarks that regularly slip out of view. We ended up with three core observations inspiring the parade; the old outdoor market place was empty (needing attention), the shopping mall was busy (needing a challenge), and the new light rail (a new rhythm), all occupied paramount centrality. By walking the area and talking to people, participants sensed how different spaces were inclusive or exclusive toward different persons, and how people moved in and through the area's localities in different ways. The participants soon realized that the most populated area was inside the shopping mall, and the least human traffic was at the old outdoors market place. Talking to residents revealed sorrow about how the market place had declined and a subsequent change of temporality and rhythm. Inspired by ‘rhythmanalysis’ (Lefebvre, 2004), participants explored what happened in that space in terms of flow, sound-scape, and emerging cultural material practice. And our community musician Lars Kolstad made us listen; In making music, the most important thing is when we are not playing. That’s when we listen, to ourselves and to each other. We need to approach communication as a dance and with attendance to rhythms. That’s why the silence is so important. The silent part of our parade, as we did inside the shopping mall, was so powerful (Lars). The invited teacher of creative community writing, Berit Bareksten, gained the experience of being with a group of enthusiastic students and artists/teachers, willing to experiment and fail to reach the goal of creating a community relevant parade; The great thing was that we worked together as a group, regardless of whether we were teachers, artists or students. We made a parade together and were initially challenged and prepared by working physically and emotionally together through community theatre, music and writing exercises. (Berit). Being inspired by both the community music and physical ensemble exercises, Berit, embarked on a very productive session with the students and the other teachers/artists in making the parade work. We worked with a goal of making slogans or texts that the group could use to accompany the parade. It became: take the square back – come and have some cake! And we baked apple pies and shared, and it was all a very creative, powerful and funny. At the old market place, outdoors in rain! (Berit) The participants welcomed people who came to the square and we asked them if they could write proposals for a better Nesttun on some small apple-hearts on red cardboard. We got many good proposals, and good conversations flourished. At one moment, a man came out from where his work mates had been watching the finale of the parade – the fall of the bamboos – and he said it ‘created very good dynamics and very much joy into our workday’. As an act of reclaiming the square, however mildly, we felt connected to the subversive aspect of psychogeography that originated with the situationalists’ political art-movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s (Debord, 1983). One of the students, Irene, who lives there, stated; ‘Nesttun will never be the same again after this, ever’. Concluding remarks In our experimental workshops, one aim was to value other ways of communicating and doing, e.g. communication without talking, use of bamboo sticks and other ways of bodily coordination became central. Improvements came quickly by practicing. In developing tactile responsiveness to others, regular failures were expected. Instead of putting a negative mark on it, regular dropping of the bamboos was made into a learning opportunity. This credo, failing as a virtue, was a central leitmotif in both workshops, regularly accompanied by playful comments such as ‘Perfection is boring’, ‘That’s good, we failed’, and a lot of laughter. Through this and other playful activities, the workshops managed to build a productive atmosphere and a mindful body-awareness that made collective action both desirable and effective. Instead of being afraid of making mistakes the workshops tried to make the participants more open towards the necessities of failing as a route to exploration of teaching and learning community work. This point is important for laboratories as spheres of experimentation where failures are expected, necessary, and welcomed. The willingness to experiment and to be open to the possibilities of learning from failures is highlighted by many scholars (Dunkley and Franklin, 2017; Miller, 2015), and has been an integral feature in our workshops. This is, perhaps, the most important lesson learned in creating more context-sensitive tools for community workers, as creative agents of change; play and experiment more, and make students, artists, and teachers alike more comfortable with the art of failing and falling, together. Important to note is that FAIL is an acronym for First Attempt in Learning. Another lesson is that dialogues, even if primarily related to spoken and written languages, always and already are embodied and physical. Oral discourse, however, tends to disqualify those who do not fully master other aspects of knowing, talking, interrupting and arguing. Some may be muted and have less opportunities to affect collective achievements. Through the workshop, participants tried out different ways of dialogical interaction to promote an expanded democratic model by promoting sensuous diversity, and an anti-discriminatory practice (Dominelli, 2002; Breivik, 2005; Ledwith and Springett, 2010; Popple, 2015). But exclusion might also happen when bodily, non-verbal performances are privileged. Working with spoken and physical dialogues and practices gave participants an embodied experience of principles for exclusion and inclusion in a group, and a personal understanding of why inclusion and exclusion are tricky concepts in (everyday) life (Day, 2006). In this perspective, the arts-based workshops certainly helped in creating context-sensitive tools for (future) community workers as creative agents of both change and reflection. The challenge is to implement this insight, and to make regular community work education, at all levels, more sensuous, and experimental. Physical teaching and learning is an untapped resource in community work, which equips students with practical tools for dealing with social change. We hereby encourage our fellow community workers and socially engaged educators to take their fill from this ‘horn of plenty’. In Giesler’s (2017) opinion, applying Boal’s exercises to the practice classroom ‘heightens students’ self-awareness and awareness of the other, which, in turn, brings into sharper focus concepts such as empowerment, empathy, and social change. Jan-Kåre Breivik is a social anthropologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Oslo (2001), since 2012 professor in community work with particular responsibility for scholarly development and innovation at the Master’s programme in Community Work at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. He has also been a member of Apropos Theatre since 2006. His research interests are related to experimental learning, homelessness, social movements, disability, minority issues, and more. Tobba Therkildsen Sudmann is a physiotherapist, and social scientist, with a Ph.D. from Department of Global Health and Primary Care at the University of Bergen (2009). Her research interest is related to how people use their bodily resources to enhance their well-being and social participation. Tobba was head of the Master’s programme in Community Work 2006–2016. Acknowledgements Thanks to community work colleagues Kjell Henriksbø and Berit Bareksten, theatre partner Solvei Stoutland, community musician Lars Kolstad, artist Raúl Capote Braña (Cuba), the professors in applied theatre Stig Eriksson and Tor-Helge Allern, community art scholar Eduardo Marquez (Portugal), and the visiting students from Spain and China, and enroled Master’s students, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, from community work, applied drama, and music. The workshops could not have been made without your valuable contributions. Thanks to reviewers and editors of CDJ. Funding Western Norway University of Applied Sciences annual research grants. Footnotes 1 Translated from https://www.ung.no/oss/kriminalitet/240,808.html 2 See https://www.facebook.com/DumpsterArt-Project-687,553,091,330,889/. References Abbott , C. and Taylor , P. ( 2013 ) Action Learning in Social Work , SAGE , Los Angeles, USA . Google Scholar CrossRef Search ADS Barba , E. 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doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy020pmid: N/A

Abstract Increasing sociospatial polarization, segregation and marginalization are challenging community workers to respond to complex social needs and problems across the world. This article focuses on examining sociospatial polarization and community art as a form of community work in Sweden through the case study of Konst-PIMPA (Art-PIMPA). The inquiry studies how Art-PIMPA emerged and developed, working together with young people in a sociospatially divided residential area in the city of Norrköping. The study shows that community art deals with imagination, creativity and co-creation, in order to explore, express and visualize the invisible factors in social development and change. The focus of Art-PIMPA was on participation, human rights and the democratic right to self-expression, requiring a glocal cosmopolitan outlook, which includes both global and local aspects. This meant taking an ethical–political stance of recognizing our common humanity and rights as citizens of the world regardless of background or context. Additionally, the study is a reminder of the need to generate a structural analysis of both exogenous and endogenous forces that impact our ‘glocal world’, in which global and local forces interact daily. Background: the Swedish welfare state in neoliberal transition Sweden has an international reputation for having a high standard of living, comprehensive welfare policies and low inequality, which is the hallmark of the Nordic welfare state model (Esping-Andersen, 1990; van Kersbergen and Vis, 2014). However, the Swedish welfare state, like others, has been strongly affected by global economic forces pushing towards a neoliberal restructuring of welfare policies and services, including marketization, privatization, technologized management and informalization (Larsson, Letell and Törn, 2012; Meagher and Szebehely, 2013; Johansson, Dellgran and Höjer, 2015). The standard of living in Sweden is still high, but the country is no longer a ‘welfare paradise’ of equality or equity. Marklund (1988) indicated this risk as early as 1988 in his study Paradise lost? The Nordic welfare states and recession 1975–1985. Since then, differences in income have become greater in Sweden than in other OECD-countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) (Edling, 2015; OECD, 2011/2015). The OECD has also highlighted other challenges, such as poor labour-market integration of refugees (OECD, 2016). Additionally, the segregation between residential areas has also increased, particularly in suburban areas built during the Million Programme period between 1965 and 1974, during which 1,000,000 apartments were built to address the housing shortage following urbanization and modernization. A number of these Million Programme residential areas are today socioeconomically, spatially and ethnically segregated, creating challenges for integration and social sustainability (Righard, Johansson and Salonen, 2015; Andersson, Bengtsson and Myrberg, 2016; Turunen, 2017). The Million Programme residential areas have a larger proportion of ethnic groups than other suburbs, and are to a large extent sociospatially separated from other suburbs. The socioeconomic and ethnic residential segregation tend to intersect with a number of social problems as income poverty and social exclusion, and increasing rates of violence and criminal offences and radicalization (Rikskriminalpolisen, 2014). The continuing polarization and segregation of residential areas is not only socioeconomic and socioethnic but also sociospatial, bringing about new challenges and issues for social sustainability, social justice and human dignity (Soja, 2010; Listerborn, 2013; Turunen, 2017). One of the most challenging contemporary issues, both globally and locally, is the fact that an increasing number of people in segregated residential areas are being turned into resident aliens, losing their given rights and opportunities for employment, in the ongoing marginalization and exclusion processes. The unemployed are becoming part of the precariat, a new unstable group characterized by chronic socioeconomic insecurity and uncertainty, a new class-in-the-making (Standing, 2014). These processes are also occurring in Sweden. Therefore, there is a great need for integrative work, not only on the labour market but also in people’s everyday lives. In this article, we present and discuss the community art project with young people, Art-PIMPA, in Marielund, one of the housing areas belonging to the Million Programme. The Art-PIMPA initiative was taken by Eva Lundgren Stenbom, a resident of Marielund and author of this article. The project was carried out by a close partnership between the municipality of Norrköping, and the Somali Youth Association (Somaliska Ungdomsföreningen), financed by the Inheritance Fund 2012–2015 (Ansökan till Allmänna Arvsfonden, 2012). The project had a steering group, with an advisory role, consisting of members from the municipality (the Department of Culture and Leisure), the public housing company Hyresbostäder, the Art Museum, the Somali Youth Association, the youth centre Diversity House (Mångfaldshuset) and two art associations (V.O.D.K.A.N. and KiFiN). The project label PIMPA stands for ‘Projektet I Marielund med Påverkan för Alla’ (the project in Marielund with influence for all). The acronym deliberately plays on the meaning of the English word ‘pimping’ as well, meaning improvement and embellishment. For participating young people, the project label PIMPA sounded both exciting and provocative – particularly the connotation to prostitution and drinking. Finally, it could refer to the TV programme, ‘Pimp my ride’, meaning doing something better or being more cool (Ansökan till Allmänna Arvsfonden, 2012; Åkerblom, 2014, 2015). Aims and methods This article examines community arts as a form of community work in the Nordic context, which have not been discussed at the same length as in other countries (cf. Turunen, 2004; Hutchinson, 2009; with e.g. Borrup, 2007; Clover, 2007; Meade and Shaw, 2007; Conrad and Sinner, 2015; Sewell and Harris, 2015; van der Vaart, van Hoven and Huigen, 2017), even though diverse forms of community art have been implemented in community work practice (Turunen, 1988, 1992, 2004). Community art, also called dialogical art, interactive art, participatory art, or relational art, can include performing arts such as music, dance and theatre, but also visual arts such as drawing, painting, ceramics and sculpture, and even digital arts in virtual spaces. We will discuss community art as a community-based art activism supporting community work, within which various art forms can be implemented to stimulate development and change. The article is written interactively by a community worker and a researcher within the Nordic tradition of practice research, where the emphasis is laid on the interplay between the practical and theoretical knowledge that is generated when studying social practices (Svensson et al., 2002; Turunen, 2004, 2013; Martinsson and Julkunen, 2012). The style of writing developed here is a form of participatory cowriting where the authors create common space and interactivity between practice and research as well as between community art and community work. This type of writing is not typical within the academic tradition, but has been experimented within participatory action research and interactive research into diverse types of community strategies (Matthies, Närhi and Ward, 2001; Swedner, 1982; Turunen, 2013), feminist writings (Chahill, Quijada Cerecer and Bradley, 2010; Sewell and Harris, 2015) and community arts (Åberg and Alfreds, 2014; Conrad and Sinner, 2015). Conrad and Sinner (2015) have pointed out that artistic community-based approaches and research make use of aesthetic, experiential, embodied and emotional ways of knowing and creating knowledge that differ from traditional academic approaches. Traditional academic research tends to emphasize research from a distance, objectification and the generation of theoretical knowledge that is explicit and codified by external scientific experts (Svensson et al., 2002). The alternative approach developed by Conrad and Sinner (2015) encourages scholars to work together in order to create spaces of possibility and interactivity with other professionals and community groups within which to explore questions, generate knowledge and express shared understandings of phenomena, particularly in everyday life. It also allows a multilayered and interdisciplinary collaboration and analysis from diverse perspectives. In the case of Art-PIMPA, the collaboration between authors stemmed from our common interest in community art activism and knowledge generation of practice from two perspectives. Eva Lundgren Stenbom has a background in cultural science studies and is a former manager of business development in a small municipality, as well as being a practically engaged citizen of Marielund. Päivi Turunen is a social worker with a migrant background, and lecturer and researcher in social work with a focus on community work. She has also worked as a social worker and community worker in practice. The empirical material underpinning the arguments in this article is drawn from the project and evaluation reports of Art-PIMPA and of Eva’s practical experiences of the project’s processes (Ansökan till Allmänna Arvsfonden, 2012; Åkerblom, 2014, 2015). This research material has been complemented with a literature search, research reports, scientific articles and Internet sources in the field. Our research can be considered a case study of everyday urbanism that is situated, conversational and utopian (Lehtovuori, 2010). In the following, the residential area of Marielund and the project Art-PIMPA (its beginnings, progress, processes, outcomes and new initiatives) are described. After this, the case of Art-PIMPA will be reflected upon and analysed using theories of community arts and community work. Finally, the reflection and analysis of Art-PIMPA is discussed in relation to sociospatial segregation from a glocal cosmopolitan perspective. In this study, this perspective means combining both global and local aspects of common humanity in a glocalised world, where global and local processes are increasingly expanding beyond their traditional national boundaries, constantly creating new types of transnational glocal spaces, policies, processes and practices (Robertson, 1992; Kenny, 2016; Livholst and Bryant, 2017). Marielund – a divided residential area in Norrköping With approximately 139,000 inhabitants, Norrköping is the ninth largest city in Sweden. The city has an industrial history, best known for its textile industry, which closed down in the 1970s. A new start as a city of culture and education has been in the making since the 1990s. Since 2012, Norrköping has presented itself as a global municipality. In 2016, 25,2 percent of Norrköping’s inhabitants had foreign background. (Norrköping kommun, 2017a,b) Marielund, unlike other similar areas, is situated near the centre of Norrköping (Norrköpings kommun, 2017c). The older part of Marielund, called Röda stan (the Red Town), was built in 1917–1918 as detached and semi-detached houses for the working class. Today, this area has been gentrified by an influx of middle-class inhabitants, who have replaced the working class, transforming this part of Marielund into a quaint, middle-class neighbourhood, inhabited by a majority of ethnic Swedes. The newer part, called Marielund, was built in 1968–1969 during the Million Programme era. This part of Marielund is further divided into two areas owned by two housing companies, a private company, Östgötaporten, and the public housing company Hyresbostäder. Both of these newer sub-areas of Marielund are mainly inhabited by people with ethic minority backgrounds. Marielund is therefore a clear example of the contemporary socioethnic–spatial division of Swedish cities, also including an ‘us and them’ mentality. It is also characteristic in that the whole of Marielund is lacking any form of public art. This fact is of general interest, because the governmental guidelines from the 1930s state that all residential areas should include some kind of public art (SOU, 1936: 50). The emerging Art-PIMPA ‘Well, I don’t let my children walk through Marielund on their way home from town.’ This statement by a resident in Röda stan, was the starting point for the Art-PIMPA project, designed as a sociocultural and spatial bridge between the new and old areas of Marielund. The belief in universal human rights and the creative imagination of the residents have been the projects’ leading ideas. Inspiration have been found in William Cochran, who has expressed this idea as ‘Imagination is the most powerful force available to humankind’, adding that this is a force ‘that everyone without exception has access to’, in relation to his example of the mural arts around a community bridge (Shared Vision, 1995). Eva became the project manager for the Art-PIMPA project. After moving to the area, she noticed immediately that the old residential area, Röda stan and the Million Programme area, Marielund, were completely different worlds. There are no physical barriers between the areas, but hardly any contact exists between the residents of these two neighbourhoods. One can even discern a fear of Marielund among the residents of Röda stan. The statement at the beginning of this section became the ultimatum for action: Something had to be done to change the situation and to improve relations between the two neighbourhoods. The first effort was a networking initiative accomplished by establishing a citizens’ group at the cooperative food store (Coop Nära) where all the residents of the two neighbourhoods could meet naturally. Thereafter, contact was established with the municipal Culture and Leisure Office in order to set up activities among young people aged thirteen to nineteen. Officials from this office decided that the municipality would endorse an application to the Inheritance Fund (Allmänna Arvsfonden). Eva contacted both the private and public housing companies and anchored the project idea with them. The Tenants’ Association (Hyresgästföreningen) also showed great interest in the project from the beginning, but due to staff changes they later withdrew. By coincidence, Eva got in touch with the Somali Youth Association, which has many members living in the area. The Culture and Leisure Office suggested that a young adult with an immigrant background could be employed for the project. The choice was a twenty one-year-old man called Said. An old Portakabin, painted with funky graffiti, was placed in the middle of Marielund to recruit young people from the area. Both Eva and Said sat there in the afternoons, expecting that the youngsters would come running in, curious and interested, but this didn’t happen. So, how to reach them? Said proved to be the right person in the right place. He talked to young boys and girls who passed by, he even ran to catch up with them at times, and explained what the project was about, sticking a flier in their hands and urging them to come to the first meeting in September 2012. Finally, a group of excited girls and boys, most aged fourteen to sixteen years, some seventeen to eighteen, sat around the table in the apartment provided by the public housing company. All had a migrant background. The first artwork undertaken by the group was to paint and decorate chairs, which thenceforth constituted the furniture during the three-year project period. Processes and outcomes Many of the youngsters who lived in the area were upset if someone spoke badly of their home district. One girl exclaimed: ‘If you come to Marielund in the summer, and people are out barbecuing, and all the children playing everywhere, you’ll just love all this!’ On the other side, those who have moved away from the area have had another picture to convey: ‘It’s so dirty and untidy there, people just fuck things up all the time.’ One activity that attempted to change this picture was to organize a major art exhibition in the area with a famous artist, which would attract a pilgrimage of interested art lovers to Marielund. A number of artists were contacted by the participating youngsters, who worked for a whole year to prepare the exhibition. Finally, the artist Kristoffer Zetterstrand became interested and allowed Art-PIMPA to put on an exhibition of his paintings (Zetterstrand, 2013). The youngsters were to choose the paintings. They went to the artist’s studio in Stockholm, made posters and banners, and placed advertisements in the local newspapers. In autumn 2013 it was finally time for the opening of the art exhibition. The media rallied massively, the project and the exhibition were reported in all the local newspapers and also on television. Despite all the media attention, people did not flock to this fantastic art exhibition. Even more surprisingly, none of the residents themselves came to see it, not even the parents of the children organizing it. One of the boys said: ‘if my dad came here he would just laugh and say that he could make better pictures than that!’ But they kept the exhibition open to visitors every day during the autumn half-term school holiday, and all of it was undeniably a great experience for everyone involved. Throughout the project, numerous workshops were organized featuring various artists and a number of different forms of expression were practised: making collages, illusion painting, creating mosaics, soapstone carving, still-life painting, graffiti and much more. Picturing Marielund The museums in Norrköping were interested in the project from the start, with a focus on attracting youngsters. They also wanted to create a partnership with Art-PIMPA. At the Museum of Work, the youngsters made pictures for an exhibition about the future. They also worked closely with the City Museum, around a photo exhibition. During its anniversary in 2013, the Art Museum invited Art-PIMPA to participate in the great Culture Parade through the city. For this, the youngsters from Marielund made a huge banner, ‘KONSTPIMPA’ (Art-PIMPA), which they proudly carried through the city streets. During the summer of 2013, the Art Museum asked if they wanted to become art guides. The youngsters hesitated, but after the summer, six of them signed up. This project was initiated, led and filmed by a Norwegian artist, Unni Gjertsen (Verkstad konsthall, 2015). Throughout the autumn of 2013, the youngsters displayed the artwork ‘Moves of Norrköping’ every week to the public, something that boosted self-esteem. Gjertsen later followed this up by making another art project, consisting of six interviews with the young guides, called ‘Lessons’. During these, the youngsters described what it meant to them to be a part of the project and learn how to guide an audience to explore art. The next step was to produce a photo exhibition, entitled ‘My Marielund’. With borrowed cameras, the youngsters went out into the field to take photos during the course of an entire year. Their photographic images of Marielund were turned into a very successful exhibition, and attracted many visitors, not only from the residential area but also from the rest of the city. The exhibition also mixed in a number of old black-and-white photos of Marielund in the 1960s, taken before the new apartment houses were built. This exhibition of local history appealed to many, including the area’s new residents. The youngsters really appreciated working with the photo exhibition. They became proud of their part of the city, and of being an important part of it. This kind of method is internationally known as photovoicing (Sewell and Harris, 2015). The final project of Art-PIMPA comprised ten short films, called ‘I am Norrköping’. This aimed to explore how young people express themselves as being a part of the city’s identity. It is not unusual for young people to speak in terms of ‘you Swedes’, ‘we the immigrants’, etc. In these short films, one or two minutes long, the youngsters tell something about themselves, about a favourite place in the city or something about their dreams for the future. Ten short films were later presented to municipal officials and politicians. They can also be found on Youtube, ‘Jag är Norrköping’ (I am Norrköping) (Norrköpings kommun, 2015). Art-PIMPA initiated a variety of activities over the years: trips, soccer tournaments, movie nights, participation in community days by providing face-painting and making balloon animals. Bus trips to other, larger cities, such as Stockholm and Gothenburg, were especially appreciated. The project was evaluated twice by a consultant, Åkerblom (2014, 2015). These evaluations showed that all the project’s partners were satisfied with the outcomes, but identified that the project had not succeeded in building bridges with surrounding neighbourhoods (amongst others Röda stan) more than marginally during its active period of 2012–2015. However, some informal relationships with Röda stan and other city neighbourhoods were established (Figure 1). Figure 1 View largeDownload slide A painting done by the youngsters, as a gift to the head of the Art Museum in Norrköping Figure 1 View largeDownload slide A painting done by the youngsters, as a gift to the head of the Art Museum in Norrköping Opinions of young participants on outcomes The most tangible outcomes amongst youngsters were specific events, such as exhibitions, artistic decoration, activities such as soccer tournaments, cultural days and films. But for the youngsters themselves, it was the non-artistic activities, such as opportunities to meet each other, to plan and make things together that mattered. What also mattered was the leaders’ attitude of always listening to the youngsters, letting them have their say and take part in decision making. The participative and democratic spirit of the project was empowering: ‘Everyone who’s here can decide, even the youngest ones. Everyone’s equal’, said one interviewed participant (Åkerblom, 2014: 7). The strengthened self-esteem of the participants, trust in others, as well as a widened knowledge of the community, were also important outcomes. The progress made in terms of confidence and skills was impressive. Those who participated most actively and became engaged in social issues showed good results in school. The majority of these were girls. It was more difficult to reach the boys, and particularly to maintain continuous contact with them. Some quotes from Åkerblom’s evaluation (2014:9) exemplify further outcomes that were important for the participating youngsters: ‘I’ve become more social, I speak more, make contact with others. I’ve got more self-confidence here.’ ‘I’ve become better at daring to stand up in front of others and speak my mind. Before, I never dared to stand in front of the class and talk, but ever since I worked as an art guide at the museum I can speak anywhere.’ ‘Here, I’ve got many friends to speak Swedish with.’ ‘I learned to understand other people.’ (…) ‘The diversity is important.’ Throughout the project, youngsters were encouraged to make an impact in their own neighbourhood, but things take time, such as when they wanted to get basketball hoops in the playing field. It took about six months before these were set up. It took more than year before the long-awaited evening lighting on the artificial turf pitch was installed. Regardless of the delays, they did not give up their claims or voicing their endeavours (Figure 2). Figure 2 View largeDownload slide The first art experiment, decorative painting of chairs Figure 2 View largeDownload slide The first art experiment, decorative painting of chairs ‘I’m not only proud of being a part of Art-PIMPA, I can change my own neighbourhood, Marielund. We’re always trying to make it better.’ ‘No matter what, we’re like a family. Everybody is nice to each other. I’m really proud of how much we’ve achieved together.’ (Åkerblom, 2014: 8) New initiatives and processes After the project, a number of youngsters became engaged in other activities or organizations, such as Back-Up, a local network training young people to support other youngsters, in an out-reach work on the streets of the city. Others took an interest in Save the Children, and underwent leadership training. Some joined BRIS (Children’s Rights in Society), while others started fundraising for the Cancer Society or the Red Cross. The project became a process of ‘learning by doing’, or ‘action learning’, which is central in community work, based on the theories of Dewey (1916/1944) and Freire (1972). It took a long time to establish a relationship with the parents. Several attempts were made to invite them to the Open House, or to join excursions, but with poor results. But one summer day, the mother of one of the young girls came to Eva and asked if they could start something that would be an opportunity to meet other women and to practise their Swedish language skills. Eva helped them to gain access to a room in the Youth Centre (the Diversity House), where the women gathered every Friday afternoon. Three volunteers were engaged, for language teaching and to help with sewing and handicrafts. Eventually, twenty participants (from Somalia, Syria and Turkey), joined this women’s group. They have met regularly every week since 2014. A new association, IMAGINE, was organized to assist in starting new projects, such as the project Neighbourhood Cooperation (Grannsamverkan) for creating contacts between neighbours (Swedes and immigrants) in Röda stan and Marielund. The families have been to children’s theatre, visited museums, gone on trips together and had meals together, in order to get to know each other. The Women’s Group relocated to the local YMCA, close to Marielund. A Somali Association, Hornafro, located in the same building, wanted to co-operate with IMAGINE, in order to help teenagers and adults with school homework once a week. This service had been requested by parents and youngsters for a long time. A recent initiative is the Urban Farming Project, which was started in May 2016. Four Somali women and a couple from Bangladesh, all residents of Marielund, have joined the farming project together with some Swedish families, not far from Marielund. In spring 2016, IMAGINE organized a recreational weekend for female asylum seekers in Norrköping, visiting the countryside, learning about the Swedish Right of Public Access and learning traditional Swedish handicrafts. This project turned out to be very successful. The participants greatly appreciated being both recognized and treated as equals (Figure 3). Figure 3 View largeDownload slide Art-PIMPA was part of the Culture Parade in 2013, with this banner they had painted themselves Figure 3 View largeDownload slide Art-PIMPA was part of the Culture Parade in 2013, with this banner they had painted themselves Community arts and community work Respect for human dignity, the participatory principle and collective action are some of the core values and foundations of community work across the world (Hutchinson, 2009; Pyles, 2014; Breivik and Sudmann, 2015; Popple, 2015). Swedish community work is influenced by international traditions of community development, community organization, community planning and, since the 1990s, by an increasing diversity of community-based approaches (Turunen, 2004, 2009, 2017). Art-PIMPA was carried out as community work, including relationship building, identifying, articulating and visualizing ideas, needs, and problems as well as interests, organizing activities and cooperation, encouraging interrelationships and social action in order to empower people, in this case youngsters, adults and other stakeholders in acting together to achieve common goals of social development and change. In fact, using the arts is not a new phenomenon within community work. At the end of the nineteenth century, the settlement movement started cultural activities and art galleries in segregated local communities (Addams, 1910/1981). The settlement movement was initiated in London. It spread to the United States and other countries, including Sweden, where it continues as the youth and cultural centres of today (Turunen, 2004; Fritidsforum, 2017). Internationally, community art has been developed in diverse forms from North America to China, from capacity building (Borrup, 2007) to mobilizing community activism (Cohen-Cruz, 2002, 2010) or the political mobilization of women (Chang Fung Yi, 2012). Earlier examples of community-based art within community work in Sweden are music performances and the sewing of Roma clothes by Roma people in Stockholm (Turunen, 1992), community theatre (play writing and performance) by young people within community work in a newly built suburb, Skarpnäck, in Stockholm (Turunen, 1988, 2017) and arts and craft by immigrant women at an expanded family centre, Gemensamma Krafter (the Joint Forces), in Jakobsgårdarna in Borlänge (Turunen, forthcoming). In 2012, a special issue of Nordic community arts was published in Journal of Arts & Communities (2012). In 2013 and 2014, a collaborative project ‘Visualize the Invisible’ took place in Sweden and Albania (Åberg and Alfreds, 2014). In this project, video, performance, music and dance were created in residential areas, Roma communities and social institutions such as prisons, schools and care institutions. The latest Swedish initiatives in the field of community art are taking place within the programme ‘Art is Happening’, managed by the Public Art Agency of Sweden, which offers financial support for public art, participation and community involvement, particularly in the Million Programme areas (Statens konstråd, 2016). Borrup (2007) identifies five areas for art projects that have enhanced community development and change: using local assets, arts and culture for promoting interaction in public space; increasing civic participation through celebrations; engaging young people in the community; promoting the power and preservation of place; and broadening participation in the civic sphere and community planning. Art-PIMPA mainly fits into the area of engaging young people in the communities. This process engaged young people in interacting, participating and mobilizing both resources and themselves for local development and change, as well as for self-directed knowledge creation and empowerment. A glocal cosmopolitan outlook Based on the case of Art-PIMPA, a glocal cosmopolitan outlook in community art requires a cosmopolitan respect – instead of national preoccupations – for human beings and their needs regardless of background or context. Historically, cosmopolitanism meant being a ‘citizen of the world’ as in Ancient Greece, implying that all human beings belong to a single community, based on a shared morality. According to Appiah (2006), cosmopolitanism is more complex than this, and requires both moral and political reflection on human obligations in the face of a diversity of backgrounds and beliefs. In Appiah’s view, contemporary cosmopolitanism provides us with a politico-ethical challenge in dealing with both the universal and particular human needs with which we are faced. In our understanding, this outlook can help us to reflect on both human similarities and differences and even to bridge gaps, in our cities and further afield, across continents in a world of strangers. Beck (2005) criticizes naïve cosmopolitanism in terms of the cosmopolitanization of the world. According to Beck, our reality is cosmopolitanized from global politics to everyday life, giving rise to complex processes of globalized (in our understanding glocalized) interconnectedness, including conflicts and risks, but also opportunities for change. One example of cosmopolitanization is seen in contemporary residential areas with a plurality of diverse nationalities and languages, such as Marielund. Therefore, a cosmopolitan outlook is necessary, not only in politics and science but also in everyday life, implying that even gated communities must come to an end. Within community development, the cosmopolitan outlook is discussed by Kenny (2016) from a socioeconomic perspective, conceiving communities as hybrid entities with multiple identities and loyalties, rather than as fixed entities. In Marielund, cosmopolitanization was recognized as an ethical–practical and civic challenge in order to enable respect for human rights and action, leading successively to the creation of Art-PIMPA, a place and space for gathering, communication and transformative action. Summary and conclusion Art-PIMPA is a small-scale example of community art in Sweden. It dealt with both the universal and particular needs of people in a glocally divided and segregated residential area. Its multifaceted characteristics have been contextualized and described in order to provide a holistic understanding of Art-PIMPA in a transitional Swedish society. With reference to Appiah (2006), Beck (2005) and Kenny (2016), the concept of a glocal cosmopolitan outlook means in this study an awareness of the complex interconnectedness and interdependence of people in glocal contexts, where people from diverse parts of the world shape their lives transnationally and transculturally. It requires a holistic understanding of the context as well as ethical–political reflection and action beyond the national and cultural preoccupations of strangers at all levels of society. Art-PIMPA required a cognitive and emotional conception of varying endeavours by residents with diverse backgrounds, problems, needs, interests, fears, wishes and emotions in their everyday lives. Additionally, the initiative of Art-PIMPA demanded a glocal cosmopolitan empathy and engagement in order to take initiatives, to enable possibilities and facilitate practical action together with those concerned. Even though the three-year project period of Art-PIMPA is over, the empowering and mobilizing activities and processes have continued to expand in Marielund. The example of Art-PIMPA shows that making community art is a form of community work that can help in meeting needs, exploring places, and facilitating creative change. Art-PIMPA shows that imagination and the arts can be used for visualizing the invisible; that is, the needs and interests of youngsters and women who are marginalized on the Swedish labour market and poorly recognized within society. The most appreciated art activities among the young people were participation in films, exhibitions and soccer tournaments, along with excursions. Among the women it was excursions, sewing and urban farming. For the participating youngsters, what mattered most was the opportunity to gather, participate and make decisions. The glocal cosmopolitan outlook of humanity and citizenship does not only deal with theories of human rights, but also with acting for and promoting human dignity and social change in practice. This is also our argument for why it is necessary to generate ethical–practical knowledge from everyday life and its practices. This means that one must also be aware of the risks of making use of community arts for aesthetic reasons only, by forgetting the need for real change when it comes to poverty and segregation. Meade and Shaw (2007) warn against utilizing the arts as means of political displacement and distracting attention from the real causes of social problems. On the other hand, it is also argued that creativity needs to be recognized as an integral part of social activism, which can encourage the emancipatory potential of the aesthetic activity and experience (Clover, 2007). The specific aim of Art-PIMPA was to explore possibilities for empowering young people and creating space for artistic activities that would encourage participation, self-expression and collective action, not to study the effects of the project on Marielund or its inhabitants. In order to create new space, skills and confidence in ‘visualizing the invisible’, the youngsters were encouraged to express their own needs as well as to explore new places and spaces of action in order to empower themselves and transgress both mental and sociospatial boundaries. Engaging young people also meant gradually involving more and more adults, particularly women, for further creative exploration and transgression. Eva Lundgren Stenbom, project manager/producer, Juste a’Fair, Norrköping, Sweden. Päivi Turunen, Department of Social Work and Psychology, University of Gävle, Sweden. Acknowledgements Our thanks go to colleagues at the University of Linköping (LiU) and to the editors of the Special Issue for helpful comments on draft versions of this article. Funding The article has been completed by Eva Lundgren Stenbom within her firm Juste a’Fair, and by Päivi Turunen within her position as an assistant professor at the University of Linköping and from August 2017 at the University of Gävle. References Åberg , C. and Alfreds , L. ( 2014 ) Visualize the Invisible , Art Agent Press , Stockholm . Addams , J. ( 1910 /1981) Twenty Years at Hull-House , Penguin Books, Signet Classic , New York . Åkerblom , J. ( 2014 ) Utvärdering av Konstpimpaprojektet År 2 (Evaluation of Art-PIMPA Year 2). Åkerblom , J. ( 2015 ) Utvärdering Konst-PIMPA 2015 (Evaluation of Art-PIMPA 2015). 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doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy027pmid: N/A

Abstract Recent years have seen an increasing interest in how civil society can contribute to the renewal of welfare states. Civil society and grassroots' initiatives and organizations played a central role in the original establishment of welfare states, but gradually the roles of civil society in welfare decreased. In Norway, there is still a high level of civic participation, but engagement is strong in the fields of culture and leisure, especially in children’s leisure activities in communities. In current public debates in Norway, as in many other European countries, the potential roles of civil society in the welfare state have been high on the agenda. Starting from studies of Norwegian white papers and official reports, in which civil society is increasingly seen as an untapped resource for ideal welfare production, coproduction between sectors, social innovation and entrepreneurship, voluntary sector and advocacy, the article will discuss how key values and practices in community work can add to or challenge this endeavour. The example of Norway is used with some comparative references to other countries. The article highlights not only the economic preconditions for future development for welfare, but also structural preconditions for a renewal of community work and possible new collaborative relations between civil society and the welfare state. Introduction Discussions about the potential of civil society in the renewal of the Norwegian welfare state are not new. In the Scandinavian countries, where the main responsibility for welfare production lies in the public sector, this debate has appeared regularly since the 1970s. The debates have varied in strength; they have had different content and have led to various policy developments. In recent years the EU Commission has focused on the untapped potential (from an economic perspective) of the voluntary sector and highlighted concepts such as cocreation, coproduction, and social innovation. Signals from Europe also effect Norway, as a member of European Economic Area (EEA). Besides economic aspects, attention is also linked to new governance reforms in the public sector with the aim of strengthening the welfare state’s legitimacy and to promote more active citizenship (from a democracy perspective). One of the hallmarks of the Scandinavian social democratic model is a close interaction between public authorities and civil society organizations. Historically, this interaction is characterized by several informal and formal arenas for cooperation and dialogue, e.g. related to health, work life or sports. Numerous councils, boards and committees act as dialogue forums between the State and voluntary organizations, at a national, regional and local level (Trägårdh, 2007). This interaction also effects how civil society is structured. Large and established organizations often reflect public administration structures, including the vertical structure with local, regional and national links, with corresponding meeting points between state and organizations at all levels. A close and consensus-based cooperation between the state and the organizations is thus one of the characteristics of civic forms of participation in northern Europe, commonly referred to as the ‘Nordic membership model’, and the process of how the welfare states developed historically (Seip, 1984, 1991; Kuhnle and Selle, 1992; Selle, 2013). This backdrop has a bearing on future roles of civil society in the Scandinavian welfare states. Cultural and historical traditions for civic participation may produce path dependency for the development of future engagement (Martin and Sunley, 2006); i.e. that earlier decisions or circumstances which may not be relevant still influence future development. Community workers in the Scandinavian countries have traditionally had a close relationship to civil society, or third sector, organizations. The empirical material supporting this article is drawn from research on the voluntary sector in Norway (including the author’s), and analysis of the welfare policy as it has emerged in white papers, public reports and parliamentary reports of recent decades. Policy development has been affected by experiences from countries within or outside the EU, which provide a comparison to the Norwegian case. This article discusses the different roles of civil society as a producer of welfare and fulfiller of democratic functions in a process of restructuring the Norwegian welfare state. The discussion centres around four different roles: (i) ideal welfare production, (ii) co-production between sectors, (iii) advocacy, and (iv) social innovation and entrepreneurship. Civil society’s function as welfare producer and democratic engine will be central in the discussion of the different roles. Origins of the relations between state and civil society It is commonplace to make a distinction between civil society’s political and democratic function on the one side, and welfare production on the other (Selle, 1998: 160). The third sector’s role as a producer of welfare services, different from the public sector and the commercial market, refers to services provided by non-profit organizations; e.g. substance use treatment, mental health, elderly care, disability, or child welfare. In such areas, non-profit organizations have played a crucial role in the development of the welfare state and in building institutions such as hospitals, kindergartens and nursing homes. The democratic functions, however, refer to voluntary organizations roles as political agents, influencing opinion, promoting and defending the interests of different social groups, and being a consultation body for the government. Corporatism in the Nordic model, commonly called democratic corporatism, refers to the formal and informal participation of voluntary organizations in governance and decision-making processes (Rokkan, 1970). When voluntary organizations are referred to as an interest organization, it is within this democratic perspective where civil society’s main function is to bring forward needs and demands from the grassroots and up to decision makers. In this bottom-up perspective, civil society also plays an important role as a manager and guardian of social values and therefore also as a socialization arena. Civil society can, thus, be a ‘school in democracy’ (Kuhnle and Selle, 1992; Enjolras and Strømsnes, 2018). Collaboration between civil society and public authorities takes a number of forms which may also vary widely between different municipalities in Norway (Selle, Strømsnes and Loga, 2018). In third sector research, it is common to distinguish between funding, service production, and control as different forms of interaction (Selle, 1998). Voluntary organizations may receive public grants for taking a role in the interests of society, e.g. for strengthening recognized social values and outcomes. Through the historical development of this sector in Norway, one finds examples of cooperation between organizations and the gradual developing ‘welfare municipals’ through funding as early as the 1820s (Nagel, 1991). Funding has eventually come in many forms, as public grants, purchase of services, project support or through free rental of public premises. Most of the early voluntary organizations receiving public grants in Norway performed public tasks tied to socialization measures (Raaum, 1988), e.g. for homeless people or people with alcohol-related problems. In producing welfare services, they also played an important role as representatives. Organizations developed a proximity to the groups they worked for (and with) and could thus act as ‘ears and voice’ mutually between the social groups and the authorities. One association receiving grants from the municipalities for this was The Royal Norwegian Society for Development (Det Kongelige Selskab for Norges Vel), founded in 1809. These organizations provided books and facilitated reading groups for the education of peasants. In many local councils, the organizations were considered to contribute to the interests of society, by delivering education or welfare services not otherwise accessible. Municipal councils therefore granted direct financial support (Raaum, 1988: 241). Long before the larger expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s, they functioned as important supplementing service producers. In the development of the ‘welfare municipality’, voluntary organizations functioned as the voice of vulnerable groups, consultation body, service providers as well as agent for governmental control (Nagel, 1991). The relations between civil society and the welfare state were first systematically discussed in Norway in the late 1970s as a specified third sector between the state and the market. The attention toward this sector increased during the 1980s (Selle, Strømsnes and Loga, 2018) due to the global economic recession. In the 1990s interest continued, but now also linked to ideological factors and the emergence of anti-statist attitudes that appeared in the wake of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Emphasis was given to the importance of protecting the autonomy of the third sector, and a focus on its institutional logics, different from, and independent of, both state and market. The new conservative/liberal wave, which in Norway was revealed in the Willoch government in 1981 (The conservative Party of Norway), also drew attention to the fact that both the market and civil society can produce welfare services more cheaply than the public sector. In addition, it was argued that voluntary organizations, with their proximity to different user groups, could capture people’s interests and needs better than the public sector. Civil society organizations were promoted as better producers of person-tailored services. From the 1980s, New Public Management (NPM) reforms led to outsourcing of various types of welfare services, and a growth in market actors who competed with the established non-profit welfare providers, for public assignments (Hood, 1991). This was an international trend emanating from Anglo-Saxon countries. It’s interesting that it became influential in Scandanavian as well as more obviously neoliberal societies. In the 1980s, the fall in oil prices and the subsequent bank crisis were reasons for the further actualisation of the potential of civil society in welfare. The white paper ‘Perspectives and Reforms in Economic Policy’ (St. meld no 4 (1987–1988)) highlighted the need to mobilize the voluntary sector, and a government appointed committee delivered the first Official Norwegian Report (NOU) on the sector, ‘Voluntary Organizations’, in 1988: It is important to stimulate and mobilize the forces that exist in the local community (.) For example, agreements with voluntary organizations can be undertaken to perform specific tasks defined in cooperation between the affected parties in the local community and in the municipality (NOU, 1988: 17, p. 223). The report illuminated the scope of economic values produced by the third sector, identified the roles it has played historically in the development in welfare and democracy, and the present significance of the sector. According to the report, an increase in cooperation between municipalities and voluntary organizations became an ‘economic necessity’. An increased involvement of volunteers was called upon to contribute to the renamed welfare state, welfare society, as an important ‘supplement and ideological alternative’ to public services (NOU, 1988: 17). The report used concepts and arguments which resemble neoliberal ideologies and ideas in the UK debate in the 1980s, including the use of the concept of ‘welfare society’ as opposed to ‘welfare state’ (Ishkanian and Szreter, 2012). The ‘rediscovery’ of civil society and voluntary organizations has often been a response to critical discourse on the welfare state and arguments about its high costs, inefficiency and its production of passivity and clients. These arguments appeared in Norway in the 1980s, as in other parts of Europe, and created political attention to both the economic and social potentials of the third sector and how civil society might play new roles in society (Kuhnle and Selle, 1992; Rothstein and Trägårdh, 2007). From supplement and alternative ideology, to coproduction and social innovation The renewed interest in civil society’s potential and discussions about possible changes in the division of welfare production between the sectors, has culminated in what is now called ‘the welfare mix’ (Evers, 2005; Trägårdh, 2007; Selle, Strømsnes and Loga, 2018). The debates are tied to questions about economic issues on future sustainability, but increasingly also about democratic aspects and questions around diversity, enhancing user involvement, and individual adaptations, as well as involving stakeholders from different sectors in a cooperative approach to welfare production. This implies that civil society’s actualization in current debates concerns more than just a matter of economic ideological pluralism in welfare services. Arguments tied to participation and empowerment are increasingly highlighted, and an Official Norwegian Report explicitly suggests community work as means for these ends (NOU, 2011: 11 ‘Innovation in caring’). In the following, the four different roles are identified. The first role is about institutional welfare production performed by non-profit actors after contracting with the public sector, e.g. health or education. Civil society performed the role of service provision in various welfare areas long before the welfare state expanded. This role is also relevant today even though at a smaller scale, and far smaller than in many other European countries. Today, arguments promoting non-profit welfare services often state that they represent an ideological alternative to public welfare. In this way, the arguments also refer to democratic representation. Most political parties support the existence of ideological alternatives, but the extent is subject to political disagreement. The second role is about the development of voluntary work as a supplement to public welfare services as part of recent political visions on the revitalization of civil society. The third sector’s role as coproducer of welfare is promoted both in the form of voluntary work within or outside voluntary organizations and institutions. Voluntarism is, for example, promoted as something that can take place within public institutions or under the auspices of private companies. Mobilization of this type of voluntary work has gained attention in many countries in recent years and is often described by new concepts such as cocreation, governance, coproduction and active citizenship (Torfing, 2016; Torfing and Triantafillou, 2016). Community work has contributed to the development of this role. The third role concerns voluntary organizations as advocates to authorities in processes of public decision-making. This role has been performed by actors in civil society since the gradual development of freedom of speech, beliefs and organization in the nineteenth century. The role of advocacy is equally important in today’s democracy. There is a growth in the number of organizations promoting issues, such as patient rights, and exercising political pressure, for example by organizations such as the Cancer Society, Association of Transgenders or the Fibromyalgia Association (Enjolras and Strømsnes, 2018). Advocacy is also well known in community work, through social mobilization or neighbourhood work. The fourth role is about innovation, which has gained renewed political and public attention in recent years (Hartley, 2005). Civil society was a central arena for innovation in the early stages of the welfare state, as many initiatives for establishing new services came through private initiatives of citizens and through civil organizations. With the development of the welfare state, this role has gradually become less significant. Today’s renewed interest in innovation is strong both in the market and in the public sector, and attention is increasingly directed towards the voluntary sector and collaboration between sectors. For community work, this fourth strand is of particular interest in the form of social entrepreneurship and responsible innovation. The role of non-profit service producer and supplier of alternative ideology to the welfare mix As the importance of non-profit organizations as service providers in the Norwegian welfare state has gradually diminished, there has been less focus on welfare and more engagement in culture and leisure activities in Norwegian voluntary engagement (Grønlie and Selle, 1998; Kuhnle and Selle, 1992; Selle, 1993; Knutsen, 2017; Sivesind and Saglie 2017; Selle, Strømsnes and Loga, 2018). This development reflects the development of the welfare state, which, especially in the 1960s, accelerated nationally and led to inclusion of several of non-profit welfare institutions such as hospitals, in the public sector. This development was welcomed not only in politics, but also by non-profit organizations. It was Social Democratic policy to take public responsibility for vulnerable groups. Further to replace the social responsibility through the goodwill of philanthropy in favour of public services. Arguments to strengthen non-profit service production have therefore mainly belonged to the right-wing parties, such as The Conservative Party of Norway (Høyre), The Liberal Party of Norway (Venstre), and The Christian Democrats (KrF). Their arguments target promotion of non-public service (non-profit and for profit), strengthening service pluralism and ideological diversity. Despite political aspirations of the 1980s to strengthen civil society’s roles in the welfare state, non-profit welfare production continued to weaken. This was partly due to the emergence of New Public Management reforms in the 1980s. In Denmark, where non-profit welfare is greater than in Norway, political steps were taken to protect non-profit institutions from competition from profit-making enterprises in health and care. In Norway the non-profit institutions had to deal with this competition on their own (Seegard, 2017; Sivesind and Saglie, 2017). NPM reforms increased pressure on this part of the voluntary sector, and more and more non-profit organizations lost in competition with the profit-making actors. Protection of non-profit welfare production is a hot topic in contemporary debates in which private employers and workers’ unions join forces. The Solberg II-government (appointed 2017, The Conservative Party of Norway, The Liberal Party og Norway and The Progress Party) has recently announced introduction of legal instruments to facilitate growth in non-profit welfare production. Non-profit welfare providers, as ideological alternatives to the public services, have been subject of debates on several occasions in recent decades. There is increasing scepticism, especially on the political left, to arguments of including alternative religion, philosophy and pedagogy in the conduct of welfare services both in schools, kindergarten and in healthcare (Selle, 1998: 155). This scepticism has been fuelled by health workers’ freedom of choice and reservations about their duty, e.g. to assist in abortion. The demographic development shows that in 2018 17,3 percent of citizens are either immigrants (approximately 14 percent) or first-generation descendants of immigrants (approximately 3,5), a proportion which is rapidly increasing (SSB, 2018). This contributes to development of multireligious communities and provides a new basis for service production on an alternative ideological basis, not least because immigrants make up a substantial part of the health and care workforce. This adds new momentum to scepticism that religion and alternative ideology may occupy a larger space in welfare production. The challenges facing current political debates are to facilitate further development of a welfare mix through legal instruments, and at the same time protect ideal non-profit actors and stakeholders. The role of coproducer of welfare When attention is directed towards civil society’s potential as a supplement to the welfare state, the discussion is not only about the non-profit welfare institutions. Another potential is to increase voluntary work and to mobilize and develop volunteering on a larger scale (Dahlberg, 2005; Pestoff, Brandsen and Verschuere, 2012; Pestoff, 2014). An example was the Norwegian election campaign, 2017, when The Norwegian Labour Party argued for a best practice example from the Netherlands where student housing was connected to nursing homes and students could live for free in small apartments in exchange for a certain amount of hours spent on voluntary elderly care. While civic engagement in Norway has gradually moved from welfare to culture and leisure, another markedly change concerns the hallmark of the Nordic civic engagement model. The so-called ‘membership model’, where people participate as (active or passive) members in numerous organizations, has also seen a decline (Selle, 2013; Selle, Strømsnes and Loga, 2018). This does not mean that voluntary work is declining in Norway, rather, it shows that the social structures for civic participation is changing, and that participation through membership is supplemented by more time-limited, ad hoc, and individual-based forms of participation. In civil society research, voluntary participation is measured both through a record of the number of organizations and characteristics of these over time, and through investigations of individuals’ voluntary efforts. This research shows that the Nordic membership-based model is under pressure and that more civic engagement is exercised without membership of an organization, compared to previously (Enjolras and Strømsnes, 2018). Therefore, civic engagement is carried out both within voluntary organizations, such as the Red Cross, but increasingly through, for example, a volunteer centre, or for a limited period within public institutions such as hospitals or nursing homes. This is of particular interest to community work, which is based on social mobilization for a common cause. If citizens are increasingly motivated to engage in time-limited projects, community workers might get access to resources, not available when the membership model prevailed. In Norway, mobilization for more active citizenship and voluntary work as a supplement to public services has been particularly prominent in the field of health and care, in areas such as elderly care and public health, but also in terms of inclusion and integration. The authors of the parliamentary report ‘The care policy of tomorrow’ (St.meld No. 29 (2012–2013)), seems inspired by, among other things, political initiatives taken in Britain in recent years: In the municipal sector, cocreation and coproduction has been used in England, where local authorities consider this as a method that can change the constraints of today’s organization and production of welfare services. Cocreation has an innovative potential for renewing the structures and changing the quality and content of services. A wide range of challenges, such as environmental issues, crime, social problems and health cannot be solved by the public sector alone. This has created the need to trigger other social forces in society and develop approaches to municipal service production where those directly affected by the services are involved in a more concrete manner in the design and implementation of the service (St. meld No. 29 (2012-2013), pkt. 4.1.4). For example, the white papers from the Solberg I-government on Public Health (St.meld. No. 19 (2014–2015)) and on ‘The Coordination Reform’ (St.meld. No. 47 (2008–2009)) by the second Stoltenberg-government emphasize that welfare production in the future is a responsibility the public sector cannot bear alone. Instead, these white papers argue that more and different forms of cooperation between the public sector and civil society must be developed (St.meld No. 25 (2005–2006)). Further, the Official Norwegian Report, ‘Innovation in Care’ (NOU, 2011: 11), argues for more local care services, co-production and active citizenship through development of more partnerships between municipalities and voluntary organizations. With reference to the UK, community work is suggested as a new promising practice in health and care. In the new national strategy for housing social work, ‘Housing for welfare’ (KMD, 2014), the voluntary sector is emphasized as a public service partner which can fulfil different roles in social housing work. The white paper from the Ministry of Children-, Equality-, and Social Inclusion ‘A comprehensive integration policy’ (St.meld. No. 6 (2012–2013)) further underlines civil society’s important function as an arena for integration and social capital. The role of advocacy Voluntary organizations as interest organizations play a crucial advocacy role in the democracy, and in the history of community work in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. Different types of organizations fulfil different functions. Firstly, following the International classification of Non-profit organizations (ICNPO), organizations grouped as interest organizations and political organizations include political organization outside the parties such as disability or gender organizations, ICAN, or the occupy movements (Enjolras and Strømsnes, 2018). Second, interest organizations also include professional and trade organizations, e.g. employers’ organizations, fishermen’s, or nurses’ organizations. Third, there are an increasing number of healthcare associations, e.g. the Norwegian Women’s Public Health Association and other social service organizations in substance abuse, the Red Cross or self-help-groups. Since the 1990s there has been a decline in Norwegian civic engagement in interest organizations tied to political activities and union, and an increase in neighbourhood-related engagement and in interest groups in social services and health (Enjolras and Strømsnes, 2018). While unions still hold a strong position in the close, so-called tripartite cooperation (employers’ organizations, unions and government) developed in the postwar period, the increase in civic engagement is seen, e.g. in self-help groups and patient groups receiving services in the welfare state, as well as engagement for vulnerable social groups such as refugees and different minority groups both through formalized organizations and more loosely organized online groups. The trend is that civic engagement in Norway is moving away from class and conflict-related engagement. The interest organizations performing advocacy in welfare may lead to renewed importance for civil society actors in setting the agenda in welfare-related politics and as important actors in interaction and cogovernance with health and social workers in the public sector, private sector and within professionalized non-profit organizations in the voluntary sector. The flip side is s drift from collective concerns and common goods, to asserting individual rights or resources at the expense of the community. This is a pressing issue for community workers who on the one hand are well equipped to assist interest groups in their efforts, but at the same time have a commitment to see to the health and welfare of all. The role of social innovation Civil society’s fourth role is innovation and entrepreneurship. In Norway and other European countries, there is renewed interest in the voluntary sector as an important arena for the development of the welfare society/state. The term ‘social entrepreneurship’ has gained political attention, as it points to a renewal of the social commitments of the welfare state. Social entrepreneurship is not new to civil society: pioneers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries established their organizations, e.g. Norwegian Women’s Public Health Association (established in 1896). Historian Anne Lise Seip (1984, pp. 91) has described the emergence of the Norwegian welfare state in different phases and points, including epochs when civil society represented an innovative potential. The early phases of the welfare state, from 1837 to 1890, are described by Seip (1991) as a time when many new voluntary organizations were established in fields such as lay person church missions, sport, work unions and women’s affairs. Welfare initiatives pioneered creation of new solutions and services, such as orphanages or services for the poor, were led variously by public actors in municipalities, voluntary civilians and organizations, or private companies and philanthropists. Some initiatives developed as a collaboration between these actors. Later there was a change in what had been a balanced cooperation in initiative and development of new solutions between actors in the different sectors. While civic agents were initially the foremost innovators in the first phase, municipalities took a stronger initiative in the second phase. From 1920 to 1940 Norwegian society experienced economic crisis. In this third phase, voluntary (non-profit) organizations providing welfare services suggested for local authorities to take over their services and thus securing the stability for the institutions. Thus, the real decline in the initiatives from civil society happened in this third phase, and the period when civilians and voluntary organizations represented the front of social innovation, ended. Civil society’s potential as an arena for innovation has become a key issue in contemporary European voluntary research focussing on social entrepreneurship and innovation, and new concepts such as coproduction and cocreation. Research projects on hybrid organizations with so-called intersector stakeholders, collective action following the solidarity economy and new models for governance and interaction between the public, voluntary and private sectors have become central research themes. In other words, civil society is devoted attention both as an arena of innovation tied to the so-called SE concepts (social entrepreneurship, social enterprises, social economy, solidarity economy), and also in interaction with both public and private sector. This is especially noticeable in countries affected by the 2008 financial crisis, but it is a topic that is increasingly discussed in the Scandinavian countries, even though cooperatives, as a form of third sector organization, have been little prevalent in health and social care in Norway compared to countries in southern Europe (Loga, 2016; Eimhjellen and Loga, 2016). The renewed interest in civil society also includes a focus on charity and philanthropy, that is, new forms of philanthropy, which are more directed towards investment and social innovation, compared to previously (Salamon, 2014). Philanthropy, as a form of social engagement, has not been widespread in Norway compared to most other Western countries and especially countries like the United Kingdom and United States. This applies both to before and after the development of the welfare state. Among other things, this has to do with norms and social structures in Norwegian society. Historically, there have been relatively small social differences, and as a former poor country, there has been a lack of a large bourgeoisie with an economic surplus. Philanthropy has also been partially disdained in Norway, as in the rest of Scandinavia, especially in the labour movement and the later social-democratic regime, which has been strong throughout the postwar period (Stenius, 2010; Sivesind, 2015). With the emergence of the welfare state in the 1960s, the goal was precisely to develop a public system that could replace the former support for schemes for the ‘unworthy’, where socially disadvantaged groups were at the mercy of privileged groups. New frontiers of philanthropy are growing in western countries, and gradually also in the increasingly affluent Norwegian society, which lead to new forms of interaction between civil society and the market different from traditional philanthropy. These are forms of interaction where private firms, e.g. through corporate social responsibility (CSR), or wealthy individuals, seek to contribute to new solutions and social innovation alternative to the existing public services. Comparative studies of philanthropy in different countries also show that philanthropy holds a rather weak position in Norway, compared to many other developed countries, but recent years’ research shows that attitudes on philanthropy is changing in Norway especially in the highest income groups (Sivesind, 2015; Loga, 2016). The public agency, Innovation Norway, promoted social entrepreneurship as one of six key focus areas in their so-called action programme of 2015, ‘Smart Society – Dream Promise (Innovation Norway 2015). This report outlined the future public commitment to innovation and change management in both public, private and voluntary sectors in Norway. The municipal interest organization, KS, has similarly raised social innovation and social entrepreneurship on the agenda, e.g. through development of a so-called ‘cookbook’ for social entrepreneurship called ‘Paths for collaboration’. Another example of public facilitation is the Directorate for Management and ICT’s development of a so-called ‘#Stimulab’ to support and stimulate municipalities on user-oriented experimentation and innovation in management’. In addition, the Ministry of Local Government and Modernization has launched a promise to develop more expertise in social innovation and entrepreneurship in municipalities, and has established new public grants for social innovation directed at both social entrepreneurs and municipalities (Ingstad and Loga, 2016). Conclusion In recent years, attention has been paid to the potential of civil society in the interaction and renewal of the welfare state. Questions about which roles volunteers and voluntary organizations can play are discussed in various debates, and in public reports and white papers. In the late 1970s civil society was ‘rediscovered’ in Norway and through the work of different public committees, civil society was described as a separate third sector in need of a more enhanced and holistic policy design. The subject of mobilizing civil society has appeared on a regular basis in Norwegian public debate since the 1970s, as in other European countries. The recent actualization is linked to economic downturns, followed by criticisms of the welfare state and its economic sustainability. In addition to this, the actualization is also tied to the focus on innovation and the need for renewal and change management in both private and public sectors. In this article, I have illuminated some of the past relations between civil society and the welfare state in Norway and tried to discuss some potential future roles. Current debates focus on public facilitation to increase non-governmental welfare producers with a not-for-profit mission, who also may contribute to greater ideological diversity in service provision. This debate on the share of welfare production from different sector, also referred to as the welfare mix, is the first role discussed in this article. Arguments against increasing non-profit services include, among other things, a defence of public services at the expense of private and profit-driven providers, a defence of public sector jobs and public pension rights, and scepticism that religion or alternative strong ideology will become prominent in welfare production. The second role I have discussed refers to arguments that civil society in the future must contribute more to welfare production as a supplement, not a replacement, of public services. This role can be linked to current concepts such as cocreation, co-production and active citizenship, and can be ambiguous in the sense that arguments are linked to economic savings on the one hand and (increasingly) democratic participation, empowerment and user involvement on the other. Arguments against this role include, among other things, that co-ordination processes are often presented in an ambivalent way as both a concern for empowerment and for public spending. Furthermore, critical arguments are raised with reference to the problem of organizing these complex collaborations involving actors working from different logics, and also that the co-productions do not mobilize and empower new social groups as promised. The third role is the traditional one that organizations have filled in the democracy model as a voice for interest groups. The development of organized civil engagement in Norway shows that from the 1990s this type of organization gradually turned away from traditional political issues, occupational and business engagement, and turned more towards neighbourhood activities, commitment to health and welfare and to strengthening interests of vulnerable groups, among other things. The role of civil society as an arena for advocacy in the welfare state’s various areas, is in other words a role with increased potential for development. The fourth and final role is about innovation. Attention to innovation, renewal, and change management has for some time been a strong interest of competitive markets (especially related to the oil business in Norway), and in recent years also in the public and voluntary sectors. The importance of civil society as an arena of innovation is a theme that is well-known in the history of the welfare state. The new focus on innovation in the voluntary sector has been both welcomed and met with critical arguments, e.g. that innovation in welfare services should primarily take place within the framework of the public sector and that the welfare state’s success has shown that civil social responsibility and philanthropy is no longer needed in the developed social-democratic welfare state. On the other hand, the number of hybrid organizations such as social entrepreneurs and social enterprises is currently increasing in cooperation between voluntary actors, municipalities, private enterprises and new philanthropists. The scope of social entrepreneurship is larger in other parts of Europe and in the United States, than in the Nordic countries. However, it is now a field of growing attention in Norway, and illustrates that the voluntary sector may receive a renewed pioneering role in a gradually more affluent society with a large-scale welfare state. The relationship between civil society and the welfare state constitute an important structural and ideological backdrop and frame of reference for community workers in Norway as in other European countries. This article has presented the historical and present challenges faced by Norwegian society, which have contributed to the development of our present-day welfare state and to the status of community work. Community work in Norway is both a precursor and a result of the past relations between civil society and the welfare state, and the future roles of civil society are expected to have a bearing on community work as a practical and theoretical discipline. Creative and innovative practice development and research are welcomed to further the development of the third sector’s roles, as a further development of future roles, values and practices of community work. Jill Loga is Associate Professor at Western Norway University of Applied science and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Bergen (2005). She was the coordinator of The Centre for Research on Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector in Norway (2013–2017) and has published books and articles related to participation and inclusion in civil society, and in later years on social entrepreneurship and innovation. Acknowledgements Gratitude goes to the editors of this volume, Tobba Therkildsen Sudmann and Jan-Kåre Breivik, as well as my colleagues at The Centre for Research on Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector in Norway (Bergen and Oslo). Funding Western Norway University for Applied Science has funded the work undertaken for this article by annual research grants. The content of the article relies on former research performed at The Centre for Research on Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector, funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture. References Dahlberg , L. 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doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy026pmid: N/A

Abstract A green care farm creates a temporal ‘thrown-togetherness’. Farm-based welfare services provide contact with animals and nature, supportive environments, social acceptance, fellowship with other participants, and meaningful activities. Most green care farms in Norway have horses, and equine-assisted activities are known to add value to green care for people with addiction and/or mental health problems. Farms facilitate connectedness between place and people, create ‘place-events’, and resemble friluftsliv activities. Friluftsliv creates a different temporality and rhythm, where nature is cared for and befriended. This article presents and discusses two different approaches to equine-assisted activity for drug-users from an inpatient treatment programme, and for guests from a drop-in centre, respectively. Participation was non-conditional, and following the world view underpinning community work, the participants’ evaluations of benefits are the most significant outcome measure. The equine-assisted communities are both ephemeral and long-lasting, and have given many participants the motivation to stay in therapy and reduce their drug use, or they have gained access to new social arenas, volunteering, or to sheltered employment. Community work at farms offers possibility for communitas, i.e. a groups pleasure in sharing common experiences with one’s fellows, learning-in-context, friluftsliv and serendipitous benefits – the last adding an important contribution to participants’ health and well-being. Introduction: ‘I’d be dead by now, if I didn’t have the horses’ The cases presented in this article are based on the author’s experience of assisting guests from a low threshold activity centre, and inpatients from an addiction treatment facility, in equine-facilitated activities at green care farms. The author’s position is a composite of roles: an organizer of farm visits alongside the farmers, a riding physiotherapist, a researcher, and a witness of both positive life changes and death by overdose. We have reason to believe that a number lives have been transformed during these five years, and several persons have been supported to qualify for a craft certificate, some have successfully combined sheltered employment and disability pension, others have been supported in applying for disability pension or housing, and some work as volunteers at the farms. These people have, on their own initiative, related these critical life changes to the horses, the farmers and the farms, and the sense of community with people, places and animals, as illustrated by the quote in the heading above. Horses become friends, confidants, spiritual advisers, teachers, therapists, and coaches. Horses communicate and interact in a non-judgmental way, they receive and give compassion, excitement and joy. As one man said: ‘I can tell the horse everything, and it stays in the stall’. Using farms as an arena for outreach work is uncommon in Norway, even though there used to be several farm-based long-term drug treatment facilities a few decades ago. Research has shown that participation in equine-assisted activities can contribute to incremental life changes for people with addiction and/or mental health problems (Kendall et al. 2015; Kern-Godal et al. 2015; Maujean, Pepping and Kendall, 2015). Within a biomedical paradigm, individualization of problems and therapy are predominant, and it has been difficult to isolate elements of ‘what works’ when horses are used in therapy. The key message from research on equine-assisted therapies and interventions, is that horses and stables represent a non-medicalised arena which increases retention in treatment programmes, and increases motivation to take part in other treatment activities (Kern-Godal et al. 2016; Carlsson, 2018). The human–horse relationship is also believed to add value to the human’s life (Davis and Maurstad, 2016). However, the collective and creative dimensions of farm life and contact with nature, and the joy, excitement and risk involved in grooming, riding, or being around horses, are less explored. As a riding physiotherapist, my experience is that the therapeutic benefit emerges from this combination of activities, which allows for devised encounters with compassion and daring (Sudmann, 2018). Horse farms offer an arena where people can connect to themselves, to animals and nature, and to other people, which may empower them to make incremental changes in their lives. Below, two cases of equine-facilitated activities for drug-users on green care farms will be presented against a short backdrop on Norwegian green care farming and drug policies. The cases build on experiences gained at three different green care farms in the outskirts of a Norwegian city, offering equine-facilitated activities or sheltered employment to people with drug-related problems. During the last five years, the author of this article has participated in equine-facilitated activities with participants from drop-in centres from 2013 onwards and continuing, and inpatient drug treatment facilities (2014–2016). The research and development projects were funded by Regional Research Fund Western Norway and Innovation Norway (2014–2016), and Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (2013, continuing). The farms represent rich and complicated environments (Chemero, 2003), and offer a particular healing contact with nature (Ottosson, 2007). The concept ‘place-event’ (Fors, Bäckström and Pink, 2013; Pink, 2015) will be used to discuss how the ‘thrown-togetherness’, and the affordances of the environment and ‘learning-in-context’ add value to the participants’ life projects – whether they include changes in drug habits or not. The place-events are further discussed with consideration of friluftsliv and communitas at the farm. Background Drug policies in Norway Norwegian drug policies differ from policies in most western countries, particularly on criminalization of using and possessing drugs for own use. The penalties for violating the Medical Products Act (LOV-1992-12-04-132) or The General Civil Penal Code (LOV-2005-05-20-28) are high, up to twenty one years imprisonment for drug trafficking, distribution, or large-scale possession. Users are fined for possession for personal use, and fines are converted to a prison sentence if unpaid. Users are often barred from certain down town areas in the largest cities. In Norway, there are nearly 260 drug-related deaths each year (population 5300.000). Many of these are related to injection of dirty drugs or miscalculated dosage. Heroin is usually injected, which increases risks of death. Access to alcohol is also strictly regulated. Beverages containing more than 4.7 percent alcohol are only available in state-controlled monopolies or restaurants and bars. Furthermore, beverages containing 2.5–4.65 percent alcohol are only available from grocery stores between statutory time limits. Buying or selling any amount of alcohol is only legal for persons above the age of eighteen (twenty one for spirits). Moderate use of alcohol is accepted as part of Norwegian culture and policies (Schiøtz, 2017: 5). Since the I970s drug use has been a contested political issue, with proponents for zero-tolerance, criminalization and medicalisation on the one hand, and proponents for moderate use, damage control, social and medical approaches on the other hand (Fjær, 2010). Most of the attention has been given to the users, leaving structural conditions out of the discussion, i.e. living conditions, unemployment, or international trafficking. Since 2004, the regional health trusts have been responsible for treatment of alcohol and drug-related problems. Previous acts and care systems for people with drug problems were set aside when Health and Care Services Act (LOV-2011-06-24-30) was enacted. The municipalities are now responsible for general health care, which includes drop-in centres in the cities, and the regional health trusts are responsible for specialized multidisciplinary drug treatment. Additionally, there are drop-in centres run by NGOs. Street-dwellers and drifters are offered bedsits in shelters in many cities in Norway, often run by NGOs such as the City Mission or the Salvation Army. Some private for-profit, non-religious agencies also offer shelters at relatively high nightly rates. The municipal social services pay for short term stays at these shelters. There are long waiting lists for permanent stay in council houses. Drop-in centres offer various daytime activities, provide food and coffee, clothes, attend to minor health concerns, and offer judicial counselling, aiming at reducing harm and contributing to incremental changes in the lives of their guests (Kaltoft et al. 2015). All the participants in the equine-facilitated activities had been guests at drop-in centres, been inpatients for treatment, and/or had served time for drug-related offences. Green care The use of farm environments as arenas for community work are cognate with therapeutic horticulture, therapeutic communities and with collective treatment methods where social interaction, strength-based approaches, and harm reduction are core elements (Hassink et al. 2010; Sempik, Hine and Wilcox, 2010; Sempik and Bragg, 2016). Farms have been part of the Norwegian welfare system for centuries, from historical mandatory relief, production farms at mental health hospitals, to the modern day green care farming. Green care farms currently offer services related to children and adolescent’s education, elder care, mental health, correctional services, and sheltered employment. Steigen, Kogstad, Hummelvoll (2016) identified five interrelated components of green care: (i) contact with animals, (ii) supportive natural environments, (iii) the service leader as significant important other, (iv) social acceptance and fellowship with other participants, and (v) meaningful and individually adapted activities in which mastery can be experienced (Steigen, Kogstad and Hummelvoll, 2016). Farmers may have green care as their main income or as an extra income. Green care farms in Norway have their own trademark, Inn på tunet (Into the farmyard). Use of the trademark and logo requires certain HSE standards to be met. The farmers’ body Matmerk ensures farmers follow around 1800 statutes and regulations for health, safety, and environment (HSE) for people, animals, land, and produce. Special accreditation for green care must be renewed every second year. The ‘green’ in green care refers to nature and to environmental sustainability. Friluftsliv The idea and practice of friluftsliv is an important backdrop for green care. Friluftsliv refers to the Scandinavian outdoor life, which is to care for and befriend nature, to walk and ponder, and rest and talk. The Scandinavian way of being outdoors is connected to public right of access to all land (since 1957), and to an understanding of nature as something to be befriended, cared for and to cooperate with, as opposed to other kinds of outdoor life focusing on nature as something to be exploited, conquered, or mastered (Gelter, 2000). Being outdoors is an important part of Norwegian culture, as shown by the establishment of large associations for hiking, skiing, fishing, and hunting 150 years ago, which are still active. Additionally, there are many environmental associations. The report to the Norwegian Government on Friluftsliv (Meld. St. 18 (2015–2016)) states that friluftsliv is the most common form of physical activity in Norway: more than 60 percent of the population enjoy walks outdoors in nature. Friluftsliv is cost free, and does not require expensive equipment or props. The right of public access is balanced by a duty to take care of nature, not to disturb or destroy paths or environments. Motorized access is restricted, but horses and bicycles are welcomed with the same duties. The concept of Friluftsliv is to be engrossed in nature, not acquiring or demonstrating skills or straddling between safety and risk. Friluftsliv is to be placed in and connected to nature, to see nature as sacred, to walk and find nice places to rest and light a campfire or go fishing (Meld. St. 18 (2015–2016), Gelter, 2010). Friluftsliv is to be attentive to the present moment, to sounds, scents, movements, weather, animals, or people. Friluftsliv is to experience a different temporality and rhythm, and to be like the Norwegian Ash-Lad (and similar to Jack the Numbskull or Jack the Dullard), who won the prize or princess due to his curiosity, generosity and serendipity (Kvaløy-Sætereng, 2007). Friluftsliv has also been compared to slow adventure (Varley and Semple, 2015), to just being outdoors, enjoyed individually or as a collective experience (Henderson and Vikander, 2007). According to Gelter (2010), the basics of friluftsliv are slow, flow, and peak experiences, in combination with a deep appreciation of nature and the outdoors. It’s a mode of being in contact with and to preserve nature, which facilitates a deep personal satisfaction. The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (1912–2009), a keen climber and environmentalist, has contributed to the appreciation of friluftsliv. Naess was emphatic about the intrinsic values of nature, and of meaningful and necessary engagement with nature. Naess, referring to global environmental challenges, stated that joy in the forms of cheerfulness and pleasurable excitement is the reward for engaging in the world around us. Even in a world of facts, hardship, and social inequality, he argues that being active and trying to do something is meaningful, and leads to joy. Whether the aim is to seek peace of mind or address larger environmental questions, there is no size that fits all. Locally adapted activities may contribute to the bettering of one’s own life, or one’s peers. This is not connected to living conditions or consumption, but meaningfulness and quality of life (Naess, Drengson and Devall, 2008). This idea of how being in action may be rewarding, ties in with the Norwegian idea of friluftsliv, but also to the idea of offering equine-facilitated activities to drug-users at farms. Research methodology The cases which are presented below, are built on data produced by participatory methods on three farms (2013–continuing); participating in equine-facilitated activities, studying green care from the perspective of buyers, providers and users, and developing guidelines for equine-facilitated activities on farms for drug users (Sudmann and Agdal, 2015; Giskeødegård et al. 2016). The farms are family-run, all close to different city centres, and close to nature. During opening hours, the farms are teeming with guests, participants, case handlers, employees, suppliers, pupils or students, or passers-by, varying considerably by farm, day of the week, weather and season. At farm A, the husband works fulltime. The farm has six horses of different breeds, production sheep and hens, and domestic animals (cats, dogs, pigs, rabbits), and produces firewood. The farm offers pedagogical services, mental health/substance abuse services, sheltered employment, and riding physiotherapy. The farmer has an agricultural education. Farm A has offered green care for twenty five years. At farm B, both husband and wife work fulltime. They have sixteen horses of different breeds, production cattle and sheep, and domestic animals (cats, dog, hens). They offer riding for the disabled, riding physiotherapy, and a riding school. The farm offers pedagogical services, sheltered employment, mental health services, and elder care. Both husband and wife have an agricultural education and continuous education in dementia care. The farm has two to three employees who combine disability benefits and farm work. Farm B has offered green care services for ten years. At farm C, the farmer works fulltime. The farm has fifteen horses of different breeds, and production sheep and domestic animals (cats, dogs, hens). The farm offers pedagogical services, mental health/substance abuse services, sheltered employment, riding for the disabled, and riding physiotherapy. Farm C offers temporal housing to some of the participants. Farm C has offered green care for twenty five years. Case studies and field work Case studies are well suited to the mapping of unknown terrain, and complex material, (George and Bennett, 2005), both of which apply to green care and equine-facilitated activities for drug users. Case studies are compiled by using a diverse set of methods; informal and formal conversations with participants, walk-along conversations, mini-focus groups during activities, e.g. when weighing hay together, observation, working together, or document analysis. The author of this article has visited at least one of the farms every week since 2013, and has participated in feeding animals, weighing hay, cleaning stables, mucking out, grooming, tacking up, riding out, riding for the disabled, riding physiotherapy, cooking and eating indoors, or by a campfire. Between visits, contact with farmers and participants is done by e-mail, phone, or social media. During activities, we became acquainted, and small talk was facilitated. When explicit consent has been given, photographs have been taken of people, horses and farms to be used as illustrations in online articles (Kvam and Sudmann, 2017) or platform speeches. Faces are edited/censored according to the participants’ preferences. During the last five years, around one hundred people have participated in the horse-facilitated activities; one person has participated more than thirty times, several are regulars, many just visit a few times, others appreciate the offer but don’t manage to turn up at the right time. Staff from a drop-in centre followed the participants, as did staff from treatment clinics. Staff played a low key role, preparing food, coffee or helping out when asked. Analytical strategies The empirical material consists of notebooks, photographs, farm webpages, and documents (contracts, health, environment and security documentation, authorizations, rules, and regulations). Surnames, addresses, date of birth, age, drug use history, or other personal information is not asked for. Text messages or social media have been used according to participants’ initiatives or needs (e.g. transport). In qualitative research, production and analysis of the material are part of the same process. Participants and farmers have served as critical companions in the analytical process. Field research is embodied, and sensuous knowledge production and revisiting the field add value to the process. Walking and talking facilitate creativity in both researchers and participants (Pink, 2015). Alvesson and Kärreman (2011) have inspired the analysis with their comparison of qualitative data analysis with mystery solving. Furthermore, Hansen and Ingemann (2016) suggest that the whole of the world can be observed in a grain of sand if we pay heed to the minutiae of social life. e.g. appropriating Goffman’s microsociology (Hviid Jacobsen, 2010). Ethical considerations People present at the farm (farmers, users, staff, students) have given written or oral consent to participation and for publication of the findings. The study is ethically approved by NSD Norwegian Centre for Research Data, and by Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL) and follows the research rules and regulations set by NSD and HVL. Into the farmyard – equine-assisted activities Below, two different approaches are presented. Inpatient Addiction Treatment: ‘Being with horses on Mondays saved the week’ Every Monday at 9 am the minibus picked up two staff members and up to eight men at the specialized multidisciplinary treatment facility. The men were enroled in a twelve weeks treatment programme, including ten weekly 6 h visits to a horse farm. One of the researchers/facilitators (T.T.S.) was picked up along the route. The driver always brought a large thermos, and the men always offered me coffee when I entered the bus. Some Mondays there was a large box of chocolate to go with the coffee. The drive from the hospital to the farm took around 40 min. There was a lot of banter and puns, some deprecation, and talk about what people had been up to during the week-end. I initiated conversation about the horses, repeated their names, asked if they wanted the same horse as last time, and asked for ideas for what to do when we arrived. Staff usually kept quiet. When possible, I would place myself on a seat near to the men, rather than near staff, to remind them that I was not part of the treatment team. During the drive to the farm I would text the farmers and tell them how many passengers there where in the bus (participants, staff, and me). Additionally, one or two participants were picked up in a private car at the other end of the city by the second researcher. When we arrived at farm B, some of the men ran into the stables to treat their chosen horse with an apple or carrot, while others walked in the yard to smoke, or entered the yard house to grab a cup of coffee. On average, there were four or five participants (range: three to nine), two staff members, two researchers, and the farmers. After greeting horses or smoking, everyone assembled indoors or outdoors (depending on temperature and weather), more coffee was served, and we talked about experiences from the last ride or farm visit and made plans for the day, e.g. go for a hack (trail ride), carriage driving, look after the fireplace, tend to other animals, prepare food. Needs and wishes were accommodated as far as possible with respect to animal welfare and seasonal challenges (temperature, precipitation, ice/snow). During the ten Mondays, everyone took part in mucking out, feeding, grooming, tacking up, and riding by lead rope and by themselves. All participated in one or more basic riding lessons in an indoors hall or fenced outdoor arena, and one or more trails with horses walking on lead rope, if necessary. Each Monday, a hot meal, prepared by hospital staff, was served indoors or outdoors by the fire place. Meals were preprepared, or made at the farm. At 2.15 pm we left the farm. The drive back was always quiet, most of the men fell asleep, or talked in a low voice. The men themselves, and the staff, corroborated the words of one of them: ‘I sleep much better on Monday nights, I look forward to going to bed’. While in the riding arena, we heard surprised comments, such as: ‘It was stunning to see the world from above’. Several men believed the horses to be small while they were grooming them, and were surprised to find them big when mounted, and surprised by their experiences: ‘I could feel something in my body’. When the men got their diplomas for their riding lessons, one of them said: ‘I have actually learned something!’. View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide Drop-in centre guests: ‘It’s lovely to get out of the city, there are so many different scents’ Since autumn 2013, and continuing today, guests from a drop-in centre are offered 3 h visits to farm A or B (the farm changes every second year). Every fourth week, staff at the centre put in extra effort to remind the guests about the farm visit on the Wednesday. Guests often sign up to participate, but forget to turn up, or they join at the last minute. Participants may jump in or out of the minibus before it leaves the city. The maximum number of participants is eight, plus two staff (ten seat van). During the last five years around 100 different men and a handful of women have visited the farms. One man, Hector, has taken part in nearly all the farm visits, and he always rides the largest horse: ‘I’m always coming, you know, Tobba’ he says and hugs me. Many of the guests come back at irregular intervals, depending on their general health condition, treatment periods, serving time, housing situation, and so forth. Farmers’ hospitality and generosity is appreciated, poignantly expressed by one man: ‘It’s taxing to always be singled out, to be assessed and corrected – here we’re welcomed as ordinary people’. Once at the farm, participants look for the horses and go and greet them: Hector always brings apples. After greeting horses, dogs, cats, roosters, and hens, there is coffee by the fire place in the yard, or by the hearth in a 400 year-old building. Staff always bring some food. Due to safety precautions, riders must eat before riding, and be relatively ‘clean’. While drinking coffee, we make plans for the day; who wants to ride, carriage drive, watch the fireplace, visit the sheep, walk next to the horses, or walk near the horses and so forth. Then participants, volunteers and the author of this article fetch the horses from the fields or paddocks, and bring them to their stalls. Horses are groomed and tacked up. Participants are shown how to use the equipment, e.g. the hoof pick and bridle, and are encouraged to try it out. Depending on how the participants feel, they ride by lead rope in walk or trot, or they go for a trail ride, or hack, in the woods with a volunteer or the author of this article. Horses behave quite differently on a hack, they become more ‘horsey’, more alert and eager, and sometimes less obedient. Some of the guests prefer this kind of experience, and when possible, we ride out with them in pairs. One of the guests loved to go in the woods, it nurtured his dream: ‘I wish I could ride away from everything, just me and the horse, and live in the wilderness’. During the last five years, some participants have been recruited as volunteers, others have brought their children, or acquired sheltered employment at one of the farms. One man told me how the horse farm had changed his life for the better: ‘After I got sheltered employment, my life is better, and I can see my children and my ex-wife’. One of the farmers often prepares traditional thick pancakes made of sour milk, served with coffee, or pizza from his wood fired oven. The weather may be rough on the western coast of Norway, and knowing that there will be pizza or pancakes served indoor by the fire is an extra attraction for coming to the farm. There are occasional puns about horse (heroin) and horse (animal). The pleasure of being with horses was summed up by a young woman: ‘Horses are better than heroin, benzo and alcohol!’. Drug-related talk is seldom heard, apart from when some of our riders are lost to an overdose or other unexpected deaths. Some of our keenest riders have died during the last five years. Discussion: ‘I’ve been thinking of horses every day since my last visit’ The aim of the equine-facilitated activities are to give the participants new bodily and social experiences in an everyday arena, with no hidden agenda of control, assessment or treatment. The farm visits are offered as a possibility for personal growth and learning, and for contemplating another future. Our experiences, as illustrated in the quotes, are in line with what is found in other studies. Horse-farms provide a non-judgmental environment where participants’ positive characteristics, personal strengths and abilities can be highlighted and encouraged while they interact with the horses (Maujean et al. 2013). Our ‘thrown-togetherness’ facilitates interaction with a range of people, e.g. farmers, volunteers, suppliers, farriers, or passers-by. The purpose of community work is to facilitate change, and to make a positive difference in people’s lives. Following Minkler, Wallerstein, Wilson (2008) the hallmark of community work is to facilitate empowerment and critical consciousness, community capacity and social capital, issue selection, participation and make our work relevant (Minkler, Wallerstein and Wilson, 2008:294). Interestingly, the Prochaska step-wise model for changing health habits resembles the process of collective action and community work. There is an upward learning spiral with steps of pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and relapse. The model pre-supposes relapse, and stresses that change is the result of learning, which in turn reduces the harm of relapse, or the period or severity of relapse (Prochaska and Prochaska, 2016). Relapse is part of the game for drug-users, and being welcomed back to the farm after relapse is of vital importance. Community work or outreach work with drug users necessitates social interaction and dialogues to facilitate learning and critical consciousness, and it necessitates bodily and cognitive activity to create utopias of a different future. Horses force people to pay attention to animals’ and humans’ whereabouts and needs, and to cooperate and communicate with patience and generosity. Communication with horses demands communicative and embodied presence to avoid scaring the horse and so to prevent dangerous situations, which may be rewarded with sense of community across species. Accordingly, horse-farms offer opportunities for connecting with the horse from the ground, through a lead-rope, or when mounted. Farms also offer opportunities for connecting to people, nature and place, and for communitas. This amalgam is fascinating. Friluftsliv and nature: ‘It’s like friends riding out on a hike’ Changing one’s life-style, picking up new and healthier routines, or getting new friends is not easy. Keeping up good intentions involves a struggle to overcome old routines (Fleig et al. 2016; Prochaska and Prochaska, 2016). Anecdotal and scholarly evidence alike, show that even incremental changes must build on the needs and wants of the person in question, preferably within supportive environments (Kaltoft et al. 2015). Farm-based activities for people who lead rough lives creates a break in daily routines. When new possibilities for leisure and voluntary or sheltered employment are introduced, this underscores the reality that incremental changes are always possible, and that relapses are not detrimental. In Norway, ‘Go for a stroll’ or ‘Take a walk in the woods’ is advice given to people who are uneasy or distressed. The back drop of this advice is related to the healing potential of activity in nature, i.e. friluftsliv. The link between nature, health and well-being has been theoretically outlined by several scholars (Ulrich, 1993; Kaplan, 1995; Ottosson, 2007; Barton, 2016). The characteristics of Kaplan’s attention restoration theory is cognate with the philosophy of friluftsliv; being away, fascination, extent and compatibility. The pleasure of being away from the city is articulated by someone at every occasion, often followed by comments on sights, smells, tastes, the animals or the people at the farm (including the author of this article). Even though the city is nearby, people remark on a feeling of being far away. As illustrated above, participants are fascinated by farm life, by their own feelings, and by weather and temperature or the fireplaces. The feeling of extent relates to the sense of being in a place with sufficient scope to dwell for a while; farms and friluftsliv obviously stimulate this feeling. The last characteristic, compatibility, relates to how the setting supports the participants’ needs, inclinations, or purposes in the moment. Friluftsliv is sharing experiences and gadgets or helping out in a seamless manner. Farms offer rich environments or affordances (Chemero, 2003), where the amalgam of nature, animals and people can be understood as friluftsliv and attention restoration, or combined as green exercise (Barton, 2016). The notion of ‘free space’ in utopian action research or collective action has a ring of friluftsliv as well (Bladt and Nielsen, 2013; Polletta, 1999). Free space stimulates creativity and may be empowering – and health promoting. View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide Communitas and microrituals: ‘I’ve got a completely new life, I’m a new person’ Several authors have identified common denominators at green care farms: (i) contact with animals and nature, (ii) supportive environments, (iii) hospitable farmers and leaders, (iv) social acceptance, and (v) meaningful activities (Sempik and Bragg, 2016; Steigen, Kogstad and Hummelvoll, 2016; Sudmann and Børsheim, 2017). Social interaction is communication, where microrituals and microsigns determine whether interaction is destructive or empowering for the persons involved. Greeting participants and staff alike by name, exchanging glances or jests, giving and receiving hugs – all contribute to a sense of community. While making plans for the day, we talk about being missed and longing to come back, we help each other with coffee and we share food. We ask questions, tell stories about the horses, the weather, the farm, the people. We do this to catch up on events since the last ride – and to create and sustain a situational definition and sense of community. Drugs or drug cravings are never an issue, unless used to compare the flow or peak experiences of being on horseback with being high on drugs. When we sit on sheepskins by a hearth in a dimly lit old farm house, this attunes everyone to slow experiences. The difference between sharing cups in a stable and the sanitized cups-for-staff and cups-for-guests in the drop-in centre/hospital is striking. If we accidentally pick up the wrong cup and take a sip, the cups in the stable will still be used by either of the two staff whereas in the centre/hospital a new cup would be provided for staff at once. Goffman (1983) saw the interaction order as sacred, as a set of rituals which preserved the social standing of everyone present. Microsigns and actions, such as glances, smiles, touch, micromovements, grins, winks, utterances, or sounds, are necessary to uphold a situational definition, and to agree upon who we are or may become in this communal setting. Sharing of food and coffee, gloves, hats, or deer skins necessitates attention towards others’ needs in relation to one’s own needs, and illustrates the ‘thrown-togetherness’ and the sacred and ritual character of social interaction. Victor and Edith Turner’s concept communitas (Turner, 2008, 2012) is well suited to capture the temporal and ephemeral facets of our ‘thrown-togetherness’. When aligned in the activities, we may experience collective joy of a particular kind. All present join efforts to create a break in the everyday routines of living with addiction problems. When emerged in place and activities, joy and cheerfulness creates a particular community of shared experiences, as communitas. Communitas is created and sustained through microinteraction and communication in which human and non-human animals and place are involved. Concluding comments Equine-facilitated activities on green care farms are multifaceted events, holding the potential for life-changing encounters with self, others, nature or animals. In the present projects, the horses are the key motivation for joining in. The horses at the three farms live in herds, some of them in loose housing with run-in sheds. These horses are more like wild horses than regular horses at a riding school, and are kept separately around the clock. The farm horses’ enactment of belonging to their flock and pasture plays into the human interaction in several ways. The horses are usually reluctant to leave the pasture, and are always very eager to go home. Even the horse at the bottom of the pecking order will rather be harassed by peers than leave their herd. Their demonstration of the importance of belonging to peers and place, is a reminder of the significance of communitas and place, and about the importance of being and belonging. For the participants in the projects, observing the horses’ behaviour opens up conversations about family, homes or friends. The imaginative power of the present, as a lever to change the future, emerges in these equine-facilitated encounters. When participants claim that being on horseback gives a greater kick than injecting heroin, they skip a fix of amphetamine to go riding, or when street dwellers tell how they have been dreaming of horses every night since their last ride, the sense of community between human and non-human participants emerges as a potentially life-changing encounter. The equine-assisted communities are both ephemeral and long-lasting, and have given many of the participants motivation to stay in therapy, to reduce their drug use, or to gain access to new social arenas or to sheltered employment. Maujean et al. (2013) are not pleased to detect that many equine-assisted programmes continue to rely on serendipitous therapeutic benefit rather than planned therapeutic interventions. Building on the knowledge and insights gained by offering equine-facilitated activities at green care farms for drug users, I believe that the possibility for communitas, friluftsliv and serendipitous benefits like the Norwegian Ash-lad, are valuable to the participants’ health and well-being. Drug users have lots of experiences with bad luck, serendipity is always welcome, and deserved. Tobba Therkildsen Sudmann is a trainer in Norwegian Equestrian Federation, riding physiotherapist, and social scientist, with a Ph.D. from Department of Global Health and Primary Care at the University of Bergen. She is currently affiliated to the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. Her research interest is related to how people use their bodily resources to enhance their well-being and social participation, whether the means are physical activity, horses or technology. Publications and research are directed towards the person(s)’s agency, and towards anti-oppressive professional practice. Acknowledgements Thanks are due to guests and employees from the drop-in centre and the treatment facilities, to the farmers, employees and volunteers at the farms, and to editors and reviewers in the Community Development Journal for valuable comments and suggestions. Funding Western Norway University of Applied Sciences annual research grant, Regional Research Council of Western Norway (Grant no. 239068), and Innovation Norway (Grant 2014/107605). The research project is approved by NSD-Norwegian Centre for Research Data ref. no. 41885. References Alvesson , M. and Kärreman , D. ( 2011 ) Qualitative Research and Theory Development. Mystery as Method , Sage , London, UK . Google Scholar CrossRef Search ADS Barton , J. ( 2016 ) Green Exercise: Linking Nature, Health and Well-being , Routledge , Abingdon, US . Bladt , M. and Nielsen , K. A. ( 2013 ) Free space in the processes of action research , Action Research , 11 , 369 – 385 . Google Scholar CrossRef Search ADS Carlsson , C. ( 2018 ) Equine-assisted social work counteracts self-stigmatisation in self-harming adolescents and facilitates a moment of silence , Journal of Social Work Practice , 32 , 17 – 30 . Google Scholar CrossRef Search ADS Chemero , A. 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doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy023pmid: N/A

Abstract This article is about how to understand community action and development of the commons can play a key role in societal integrative processes in increasingly segregated Scandinavian societies. More specifically it relates to the residents’ integration of sixteen young adults with intellectual disabilities in Hjortshøj, what we might call a Danish intentional community. What might be learned from the example of Hjortshøj is, that it is not the segregation of residents in an ecological village, which alone accounts for the success of the experiment, nor is it solely due to the altruistic orientations of the existing residents. Rather, the integration process is dependent on inter-related affective practices of belonging, relating to the dimensions of local attachment, a common good, and normalization. Thus, integration is dependent on complex forms of relationality and how these affective practices form an affective subject characterized by emergence, flexibility, and diversity. By applying a conceptualization of Hjortshøj as a learning machine, the article provides insights to the complex assemblage of materiality, spatiality, and relationality in the local community of Hjortshøj, underlining how communities become machines for learning acts of citizenship. Introduction This article is about how to understand social integration processes as these relate to the integration of sixteen young adults with intellectual disabilities in an local community. More specifically, the article is based on an evaluation, undertaken by the authors of an experiment with social integration of people with developmental disorders and learning disabilities in a suburban ecological village co-operative called Hjortshøj (hereafter Hjortshøj), north of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark (Jørgensen and Fallov, 2017). While other localized social integration projects are initiated from above, and suffer from the effects of neighbourhoods not wanting to assimilate social deviants in their local area (Not in My Backyard) (Jørgensen, 2006), this experiment is built around a resourceful village welcoming the young adults in an attempt to develop the village as whole. Therefore, as a direct response to the NIMBY-effect the villagers named this experiment ‘Welcome in my backyard’. The young adults form a new residential group (group 6) who joined seven already established residential groups eached formed around a common house and each with their own aesthetic expression. The empirical material of this study consists of semi-structured qualitative interviews with the residents in Hjortshøj that has been conducted within two periods (2012 and 2013). The first round was conducted when residential-group 6 was under construction whereas the second round was conducted after the residential-group 6 has been in Hjortshøj for a year. This means 18 interviews with the neighbours to the new residential group through two rounds of interviews. The informants are sampled so that they represent residents from all residential-groups. In comparison with the Camphill villages, now found in twenty-five countries, and which are built around offering people, and especially children with learning and intellectual disabilities, other possibilities than institutionalization (Snellgrove, 2013), Hjortshøj started primarily as an ecological village built around the principles of ‘living-apart-together’. The village was initiated by the first residential group in 1992 and presents itself as a laboratory in sustainable living. The village is, therefore, not built around the anthroposophical philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (see, e.g. Steiner, 2004), although some of these principles guide the village self-understanding. It should, therefore, be understood rather as an intentional community, taking on further social integrative tasks. Intentional communities are here understood as people living together sharing some common resources on the basis of explicit norms and goals. There are 350 inhabitants in the co-operative society in Hjortshøj approximately 200 of whom are adult inhabitants. The houses of the area vary from terraced houses, twin-houses and single-houses which is the most common type of houses. The ownership range from rental houses related to a social housing association over co-operative dwellings to private ownership which again is the most common form of ownership in the co-operative society in Hjortshøj (Figures 1–3). The socioeconomic status of the inhabitants in the co-operative society in Hjortshøj is quite typical for a Danish middle-class suburban area. The general picture is one of resourcefulness in terms of educational background and socioeconomic background as well as local engagement. But the way the inhabitants have joined in the co-operative society are quite untraditional or unusual for a typical Danish middle-class suburban area. When it comes to lifestyle, sense of community, ecology, resident democracy the co-operative society has clear ideals. They want to live and build in a sustainable way ecologically as well as socially. At the same time they want to balance between personal freedom and the needs being a part of a community. We will return to the significance of these ideals below. This is an interesting example of community work and action, because it can be used as a launching pad to discuss how local communities can play a key role in societal integrative processes. What we want to draw out in this article is the way in which the affective practices of neighbouring are decisive factors for the success of this integration project. Affective practices relate here to practices of belonging, affinity, care and identification. Although the village of Hjortshøj is also interesting from the point of view of residential patterns in an ever more urbanized world. Moreover, we want to emphasize how these affective practices are key elements to how we can understand this and similar local projects as ‘learning machines’ (McFarlane, 2011) for dealing with what could be termed ‘the urban crisis’. McFarlane conceptualize urban environments as urban learning machines because of the density and intensity of the urban experience. Here, we argue that the aspect of what he terms urban learning machines similarly can be used to explain and analyse processes in a more rural setting. Figure 1 View largeDownload slide Area of the residential groups in Hjortshøj Figure 1 View largeDownload slide Area of the residential groups in Hjortshøj Figure 2 View largeDownload slide Houses in residential group 6 Figure 2 View largeDownload slide Houses in residential group 6 Figure 3 View largeDownload slide Houses in residential group 1 Figure 3 View largeDownload slide Houses in residential group 1 The urban crisis is borne from the twin processes of reconfiguring welfare states pushing responsibilities for dealing with social integration and social problems to local, urban and regional levels, on the one hand, and, on the other, an urban pattern formed by processes of segregation making reducing our everyday experiences and encounters with ‘otherness’ in different forms. Here related to how we deal with the perceived ‘otherness’ of people with intellectual disabilities. Thus, although the empirical material, here, relates to a specific Danish village, the tendencies exhibited there mirror international patterns for urban change and community action that promise a broader learning potential for future handling of social integrative tasks. This is the focus of the first section, while the second section elaborates on the importance of the affective practices of neighbouring. In the third section we discuss how this relates to the idea of the village as a learning machine before the concluding reflections. The dilemma of governing through communities with increasing urban segregation Not only is there a general process of urbanization that concentrate populations in ever growing urban areas, but urban areas themselves are becoming ever more segregated (Andersen, 2005). In the socially differentiated and segregated cities, social and cultural groups live geographically close to each other but without much mutual interaction. Settlements in traditional societies were characterized by social diversity, while settlement in the modern society tends to create socially and culturally homogeneous areas. Social-spatial segregation brings together people with similar social background in determinate locations, and the part of the population, which is dependent on different forms of help and support, is no longer socially integrated in a local community, which they have historical or tradition based connections to. They are, as anyone else, settled among socially similar residents. This often means public housing with cheap rental accomodation, or publicly funded institutions separated from the rest of society. For the well-off, and for those who are strongly attached to the labour market, the problems of segregation are less threatening. For these groups issues arising out of segregation concentrate on lacking local participation in associational life. For those who have a weak or non-existent connection to the labour market, and who find themselves in challenging situations, the consequences of social spatial segregation are different as it matters greatly not only where they live but also in which type of housing (Samson and Andersen, 2010). From a welfare state point of view, increasing social segregation also means lacking moral imperative for the well-off acting and taking responsibility for other sections of the population, as they have little everyday knowledge and interaction with social groups not similar to them. Therefore, social segregation is not only a question of increasing general inequality; it is also a challenge to social cohesion at local, national, and supranational levels (Böhme et al., 2011, see also COHSMO website). Strong social cohesion and trust in relation to state institutions are the condition of possibility for the principles of equality and a strong public sector which is the foundation of the Scandinavian welfare states (Hutchinson, 2009). These relations of trust enable community work to develop, in a Scandinavian setting, not in opposition to but in collaboration with public authorities. However, collective strategies for dealing with social problems is under pressure across Europe, and even in the Scandinavian countries there is a call to engage active citizens and other sectors in the welfare mix (Sjöberg et al., 2016). Governmental intervention aims to boost local and individual responsibility for social and health related problems by enhancing public engagement and community involvement (McDermott, 2014; Breivik and Sudmann, 2015). Partnerships are in the Scandinavian setting based not only on increasing engagement of non-state actors but on a mandate which relates social problems to collective responsibilities (Hutchinson, 2009; Fallov, 2013). Therefore, even though trends towards responsibilization and relying on partnerships are similar to many other Western European experiences (Rose, 2000), Government play a more direct role in funding and facilitating partnerships and community initiatives in a Scandinavian setting and especially in Denmark (see Turunen, 2009 for differences between the Nordic countries). The partnership between the community in Hjortshøj and Aarhus municipality and the private foundation Real Dania is an example of this rationality, were the municipality, as part of the broader national deinstitutionalization strategy, empowers local communities to take an active part in and to partly take responsibility for the social integration of the 16 young adults with intellectual disabilities. In the case of Hjortshøj, the local community defined the initiative as socially and practically valuable for themselves from the beginning and this project were therefore less prone to the common dilemma of mediating between the interest of the surrounding society with that of the local community. This means that the community was already there and that residents were fully aware of societal challenges as well as individual challenges and needs of young adults with intellectual disabilities and had some idea how both could be reworked to become aligned with the ideas, wishes and needs of the community of Hjortshøj. The question of insecure funding and the quality of the community work is also a well-known dilemma (Henderson and Glen, 2006) and it is a central issue to which the so-called self-help, provide a substitute for, or accompaniment to, community services and challenge mainstream ways of working (Blackshaw, 2013). It is also common to worry if this gives local authorities excuses to under-invest in services (Shaw, 2014). The collaboration between the community in Hjortshøj, the local authorities and Real Dania is a powerful triumvirate that implies local endorsement, financial, and professional support and also the development and distribution of knowledge and experiences of the project. Therefore, what is at stake in this experiment is not power struggle over resources or rights (although such issues always loom in the background) but ways to understand how communities themselves take on board integrative tasks. This role of the community is related to ideas of the commons (Shaw, 2014), understood here as the way the residents deploy and become elements of a human made resource system (Van Laerhoven and Barnes, 2014; Mies, 2014). Moreover, the residents of Hjortshøj perform in this experiment not only active citizenship in their self-governance of the commons, but through their partnership with the Municipality of Aarhus they take on board social integrative tasks that expand the commons beyond issues relating to land management and sustainable living ecologically to issues relating social responsibility and care for vulnerable groups. In this experiment, active citizenship become tied to capacity development; that is the development of competencies, common understandings and resources for action (Fallov, 2010). Cruikshank argues that this form of capacity development aimed at empowering neighbourhood communities is part of what she calls ‘technologies of citizenship’; discourses and programmes and other tactics aimed at making individuals and collectives who are capable of self-government (1999). This raises three central points for the present discussion: Firstly, that technologies of citizenship work through the subjectivities of citizens: by moulding motivations and interests they seek to maximize particular types of action (Cruikshank, 1999). Secondly, that citizens are imagined as bound to communities through ties of allegiance, moral obligations, affinity and recognition, and as acquiring identities through these identifications with community (Rose, 2000). Thirdly, that the urban is not simply the background for the development and acting out of citizenship but is a constitutive part of the forming of social groups. At the same time, the acts, tactics and strategies of citizenship and the struggle for citizenship are played out materially and become part of the urban assemblage (Isin, 2002). In what follows, these three points about citizenship form the background for an exploration into how, through the local example of Hjortshøj, we can understand and describe the processes involved in integration of vulnerable groups. They are relevant because they emphasize the role that identification and belonging play for performing these dimensions of active citizenship, and the way that assemblages of relationships and materialities play in these. Developing this form of commoning, as is the case in Hjortshøj, emphasizes the importance of conviviality, friendliness and liveliness, not only as demarcating a difference to pure state intervention, but also as important often overlooked dimensions of such types of active citizenship (Sudmann and Breivik, this issue; McDermott, 2014). Moreover, it becomes an exploration of how we do this not by a politics of seclusion but by developing local community around the integration of such others. In this way, this example becomes an exploration into ways of understanding the relationship between community development and the development of the commons. Affective practices in Hjortshøj The importance of affective practices of belonging, affinity, recognition and identification are important but often overlooked aspects of developing active citizens. Most research is concerned with the problematic related to the development of social capital (Taylor, 2002; Kay, 2006), the politics of exclusion in building the entrepreneurial citizen (Andersen and Pløger, 2007; Brenner et al., 2009; Kenny, 2011), or the disciplinary practices related to acts of normalization concerned with participation in the labour or housing markets(Blokland, 2008; Mckee, 2009; Levitas, 2012; Corbett and Walker, 2013). Fortier (2010) is one of the few exceptions in that she dwells upon the forming of the affective subject of the good neighbour as a constitutive part of the politics of dealing with multicultural encounters and ensuring social cohesion. In this section, we will explore the affective practices involved in establishing and maintaining local community in Hjortshøj. The conjunction of these practices form affective subjects, which are central to the integration process of the new residential group of young adults with intellectual disabilities. We suggest that there are at least three different overlapping dimensions to the affective subject, worthy of consideration: Belonging Relating to a common good Normalization Belonging: Feelings of local attachment and local belonging together form an important dimension of the affective subject, because these feelings are constitutive elements of calling the community into being. Moreover, integration becomes contingent on these feelings of attachment as they form the community that the new residents should become part of. When asked what the best thing about living in Hjortshøj is, most informants refer to neighbour relations as what matters most to them. The neighbourhood is characterized by a dense web of social relations stretching from interest groups oriented towards the many activities involved in the up keep of the local community to relationship oriented groups formed around common meals and other social activities. Social relations formed around labour intensive activities, related, e.g. to maintaining the farm land or the common heating system, turn into friendships, which sustain feelings of local belonging. Moreover, new inhabitants get to know existing residents through joint activities. Local social relations are sustained and underpinned by regular festivities and local traditions that also form the identity of the community in relation both to the outside world and the inhabitants themselves. Inhabitants emphasize that what characterizes a good neighbour relation is ‘that if you know that the other is having a hard time, then you knock on the door and say; should we not have a cup of coffee or go for a walk’ (resident of Hjortshøj). They emphasize relations of mutual care, and that this care not only involves attention in good times, but also attention and flexibility when life becomes difficult. Neighbour relations are thus both central to and the vulnerability of the local community. The relations offer both possibilities of friendship and social capital for the inhabitants, but at the same time these benefits do not come for free, because they are followed by a range of obligations that demand both time and energy of residents. These are similar to findings in other forms of intentional communities (Christie, 2002), and within community development more generally (Blokland and Savage, 2008; Warr and Robson, 2013; Jørgensen and Mølholt, 2007). Many studies of neighbour relations emphasize that people seek out others similar to themselves in terms of socioeconomic background and educational attainments, maybe not always out of conscious or reflexive choices, but because residential and social preferences are formed by the socioeconomic background and general habitus (Bourdieu, 1999; Mazanti, 2005; Wacquant, 2010). Contrary to this, what are emphasized by the inhabitants of Hjortshøj are values relating to diversity in terms of tolerance, flexibility, and acceptance of difference. ‘The best thing is the diversity here, it is all from the buildings that are varied to that we ourselves are diverse, and that is one of our decisive qualities’ (resident of Hjortshøj). Another resident underlined that ‘in relation to the common single owners home or flat I would say that we are more tolerant’. The informants express that the main difference between this area and general suburbia is the tolerance towards people who have different kinds of needs, or are vulnerable in different ways. Where the surrounding society considers the residents from the new residential group as people in marginal positions, they are in Hjortshøj considered to be people with different types of resources. This emphasis on tolerance might, of course, stem from the fact that many residents of the area have an upper middle-class background. Our suggestion is that the emphasis on tolerance is also related to the motives for moving to this area in the first place. Our informants report that all residents, except those assigned there by the municipality, have actively chosen to move to this particular local community, often with the motive of wanting to engage with their neighbours and to live among others with similar social preferences. Relating to a common good: Principles of social and ecological sustainability are values characterizing the understanding of the common good in the local community in Hjortshøj. Many residents had a connection to ecological lifestyles before moving to Hjortshøj, but many have also changed preferences after moving there. Ecological preferences were, therefore, not the decisive factor for all, and for many their principles have changed and modified during their residency. What is characteristic for this community is a pragmatic approach to the principles of sustainability, where there is room for different approaches ranging from political orientations to spirituality, and where ecological principles have to be weighed against available resources. The important point for residents in Hjortshøj is to see results and to get their hands dirty, so to speak, and not reduce principles to words exchanged in endless meetings. Contrary to many intentional communities which are built around dogmatic principles, then, what is important in Hjortshøj is to convince each other through good ideas and good examples (actions speak louder than words). Consequently, the importance of ecological sustainability is not so much a question of changing the world as ecological missionaries but, rather, of what feels right generally and in private everyday relations. One of the residents frames this as follows: ‘…there are some for whom it is a fundamental vision of living here. I do not need to expose it so much, I do what I do, because I live here, and because it important to me now. Then [when it comes to] the example of the integration of residential group 6 [the young adults with intellectual disabilities] this could be an example for others to follow’. We want to argue that the principles of ecological sustainability function as a regime of justification (Thévenot, 2001) that shapes affective practices within the local community and the way they engage with newcomers. Furthermore, that the pragmatic orientation to the ecological principles underpin the social values of diversity and tolerance, and that such values shape the expectations towards the young adults with intellectual disabilities, and consequently the integration process. What is reported in the interviews with residents of Hjortshøj, is an expectation to be more than just the person living on the other side of the fence of the new residential group. ‘…We want to see the value of all people, and this is also what I hope will happen when we get these people with intellectual disabilities out here… that we can measure each other directly with the heart’ (resident of Hjortshøj). The existing residents want to become an active part of young adults’ lives in residential group 6. The new residents are therefore met with expectations rather than feelings of insecurity. They expect that the new group will bring more ‘immediacy’ and ‘warm-heartedness’ to the area. In his classical work, Schutz argues that our meeting with ‘the Other’ is shaped by the systems of classification we use to orient ourselves in the world with (Schutz, 1976/1964; Jørgensen, 2006). The expectation to form we-relations on behalf of the residents becomes part of their orientation towards their new neighbours. This is an orientation towards neighbour relations that move far beyond the anonymous relations characterized the classical understanding of urban social life. The values associated with social responsibility underpin particular integrative practices that do not seek to annihilate the strangeness of the newcomers (Bauman, 2000, 2001), as what is often the case in community development, but to let the meeting with strangers, in the form of young adults with intellectual disabilities, shape both partners. Thévenot (2001) argues that the regimes of justification include different moral and value-based regimes addressing different aspects of the worlds that can be described as a kind of cultural perception defining disposition and action in the social world. A component in the total number of regimes of justification is the domestic world and the civil world. Justification in these worlds is related to familiarity; that is, how we shape familiarity out of local milieus, use the surroundings for capacity, and relate the surroundings to personality (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). In the examples from Hjortshøj, there is a clear conjuncture between the pragmatic principles of ecological sustainability and the ethics of social responsibility that governs their interaction with new experiences, such as the integration of the new residential group, and how such input and new relations are integrated into their regime of familiarity. To ensure a social balance that does not solely rely on idealism, compassion and gratitude and in order to ensure that the project facilitate the development of self-esteem among the residents with developmental disabilities, there was an element of exchange and interdependence incorporated in the project from the very beginning. In the community, the new residents are involved in the running of a common farming project with cattle and the growing of ecological vegetables and an ecological bakery. The products coming out of these activities are sold to inhabitants of the community and nearby neighbourhood. This kind of exchange-relation is based on what Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) describe as the possibility to achieve a position and obtain value depending on the specific regime of justification that exists in a given context. In Hjortshøj working with the surroundings as a common resource creates not only and exchange of goods and services, but relates the material surroundings to personality in ways that sustain the regime of familiarity (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). Dignity and worthiness is achieved for all members of the community by sharing benefits and burdens connected to the maintenance of the community, socially and practically and the young with developmental disorders are no exception to this. Following Mies it is exactly this type of exchange relationship which form Hjortshøj as a commons and sustain the relations of community that sustain it (2014). Normalization: Normalization is here used to refer to the process in which residents become attuned to and member of the community in Hjortshøj (Jørgensen and Fallov, 2017). What is particular is that the community is constantly emerging and changing. Normalization is, thus, in this case not a question of the inculcation of common norms, but rather a complex process of becoming. Learning to handle the balance between engagement in the local community and personal freedom is an important dimension of the affective practices in Hjortshøj. There are many activities and relations in the local community, and many residents report that becoming part of the local community is also about finding the right balance between proximity and distance (Fallov, 2015; van Eijk, 2012). This is not only a question of social proximity but also the question of physical proximity, as the residencies are built closely together: as one resident puts it, ‘it is like the local community pours in as soon as you open the window’. There is always something going on or someone who would like to interact with you. Closeness and interdependence creates disagreement and conflict but, at the same time, and as a consequence of the social and physical proximity, withdrawal is difficult. This is the ambivalence of the local community; on the one hand, it is a quality of the neighbour relations that they are engaging through values of recognition, diversity, and openness, but, on the other hand, it is a challenge to handle this closure without being totally engulfed (Scheff, 1997). The value of flexibility on behalf of community expectations becomes central to handling this ambivalence. That is to say, the local community is characterized by movement and change rather than stasis. Members have different path of participation that follow life events and life courses change. While some have a constant engagement and activity level, for others it is necessary to withdraw from community activities from time to time. This is reported as a quality by residents, because there is constantly some that have the energy to engage, and because the community is then constantly fed with new energy, which prevents inertia. The freedom associated with the local community is therefore not simply associated with the sharing of competencies and resources that present new opportunities and shield against the demands of the outside (Bauman, 2000), it is also related to the ability of the members to negotiate between engagement and withdrawal, proximity, and distance, and so forth. In relation to the integration of the young adults with intellectual disabilities, the emergent character of the local community means that there is not a pregiven unit or norm of participation that the new residents should normalize and adhere to. Rather, their own paths of participation (which in some instances have meant full participation, whilst in other instances this varies) form constitutive elements of the community itself. Hjortshøj village life as a learning machine If we think of an integration process as something that combines and merges individual elements into a collective, then the affective practices outlined above becomes of central importance as they shape the encounter between elements. Moreover, the different dimensions of the affective subject form constitutive parts of the community. What can be said to be central to all three dimensions is their emergent character. The affective practices in Hjortshøj are characterized by constant reinvention and dynamism. In that sense, being part of this local community is not a static membership but a constant learning process, and even more so when we think of how the new residential group have not only to become members of the community but also to change the character of this community in that very process. Local community processes as acts of citizenship are not simply something you have to learn to become part of, but something through which learning is generated. When we think of the social responsibilities associated with the integration of the young adults with intellectual disabilities as act of citizenship, it might be useful to follow Colin McFarlane and think of the local community as a learning machine. McFarlane argues that: ‘…cities – as spaces of encounter and rapid change, of concentrations of political, economic, and cultural resources, and of often perplexing unknowability – are constantly sought to be learnt and relearnt by different people and for often very different reasons, from coping mechanisms and personal advancement to questions of contestation and justice. It is in this very concentration and demand of and for learning that the city is cast as a learning machine’ (McFarlane, 2011: 362). McFarlane foregrounds learning not simply as a question of knowledge diffusion, but rather as something that has to be understood as a distributed, material and spatial relationality. His conceptualization is useful in the present context, because his understanding of learning mirrors the complexity and relationality of what is going on locally in Hjortshøj. He proposes that learning involves the three aspects of ‘translation’, ‘coordination’, and ‘dwelling’. Due to considerations of space, we will not go into detail here with the theoretical arguments underpinning each of these three aspects. Instead, we will briefly relate each of the three aspects to the example from Hjortshøj. Through this appropriation of his conceptualization, a certain element of reformatting takes place, but probably one that is in line with the ethics of his idea concerning dynamic learning. The aspect of translation involves, among other things, that learning is positioned as a constitutive act of world making, that learning is related to practice, and that various forms of intermediaries play constitutive parts in the processes of learning (McFarlane, 2011). In relation to Hjortshøj, we previously outlined how the local community has a pragmatic approach to the principles of ecological sustainability and social responsibility. In relation to learning, we would propose that this pragmatic approach represent a translation in relation to the local practice. Rather than a dogmatic diffusion of a moral regime of justification, their approach becomes a conjuncture emerging from the practical engagement with buildings, materials, and ideas. This allows the local community to displace any predefined procedures in their evaluation of their encounters with the new residential group, and thus provides room to develop through their integration rather than for it. Coordination refers to the functional systems that work as functional tools in relation to domain shifts involved in learning, and enables learning as a collective agency (McFarlane, 2011). In relation to Hjortshøj, there are several interesting aspects of coordination important for understanding the learning processes within the local community, but also how we might learn from their experiences with the integrative process. Internally, the residential groups function as coordinative systems in several senses. Firstly, they allow the domain shift between public and private spheres and thus the balancing act between individual freedom and the demands associated with the obligations of the wider local community. Secondly, each residential group has their own system of coordinating information and labour intensive activities, and within the local community all residential groups are represented at the general assembly. The young adults with intellectual disabilities have their own residential group, materially represented by the patterns of the buildings and their own communal building. This layout functions both as a meeting point between the new residents and existing residents, but also as a boundary tool to maintain balance between public proximity and privacy; there are periods when this building is closed to others. Learning is coordinated externally by exchanges with other ecological villages and interactions with national and international networks, through the residents offering courses and tours presenting their experiences with the new residential groups and their ecological principles to the outside world. The practical engagement with the lived-in environment is what is referred to in the aspect of dwelling. Here the focus is on how ways of seeing is related to ways of inhabiting (McFarlane, 2011). In Hjortshøj, flexibility in terms of social relationships is underpinned by recognition of variations in the material aesthetics. There is not a search for perfection and many buildings and infrastructures appear unfinished or in process. Each residential group has their own look and paths between buildings are unpaved and unlit. This physical infrastructure shapes residential identification by marking differences to surrounding suburban areas, and to the physical and social conformability associated with them. Moreover, the material infrastructure shape encounters and everyday routes, since it induce a sense of informality and immediacy. In relation to the introduction of the new residential group, this entail a greater acceptance of other more immediate ways of approaching people in the local environment, which, e.g. short-cut normal ideas of courtesy. Moreover, the new residential group is not integrated in a predefined space, but have, with their special needs and ambitions, changed the infrastructure of the local community, bringing with them new buildings and facilities such as a workshop and a bakery. These three aspects underline the dynamic, material, and relational character of learning in the local community in Hjortshøj. Furthermore, the affective practices involved in the process of integration form part not only in the constitution of the community itself, but also in how village life in Hjortshøj function as urban learning machine. Concluding reflections In his book about the intentional communities in Norway, Nils Christie (2002) argues that the advantage of such intentional communities in terms of the integration of people with disabilities is that they allow these groups to live relatively independent lives, and that through the interdependencies of village life they experience recognition of the resources each has as a person. In that sense, Christie argues, voluntary segregation similar to that of the enclave allows for integration. What might be learned from our example of Hjortshøj is that it is not the segregation of residents in an ecological village, which alone accounts for the success of the experiment of integrating young adults with intellectual disabilities, nor is it solely due to the altruistic orientations of the existing residents. Rather the integration process is dependent on inter-related affective practices of belonging, relating to belonging, a common good, and normalization. Moreover, these affective practices form an affective subject characterized by emergence, flexibility, and diversity. The pragmatic orientation of non-dogmatism is, therefore, one of the keys to the success of the Hjortshøj experiment. By applying McFarlane’s conceptualization of the aspects of translation, coordination, and dwelling we have come one step closer to providing insights to the complex assemblage of materiality, spatiality, and relationality in the local community of Hjortshøj, underlining how urban communities become machine for learning acts of citizenship. Lastly, the example of Hjortshøj indicates, moreover, that new forms of social integration are possible which are not simply an extension of municipal or state power, or private initiative but something different. Even though the resourcefulness of the residents is a contributing factor to the success of the experiment, it is not the sole explanation. The dimensions of translation, coordination and dwelling can be replicated in other contexts, and although they might have different outcomes than in Hjortshøj, it entails the promise of ways to expand the commons with social integrative task without dismantling welfare. 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doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy025pmid: N/A

Abstract The aim of this article is to increase the understanding of the participation barriers Sami people with disabilities experience in encounters with the Norwegian welfare system. According to the Sami Act of 1987, § 3–5, the Sami in Norway have a legal right to receive equitable health and social services adapted to the Sami language and culture. The focus of this article is the experiences of disabled Sami citizens in encounters with welfare services. Cultural differences and a historically recent and draconian assimilation process seem to influence Sami people’s experiences. According to our informants, mainstream society’s limited cultural competence has a negative impact on these encounters. The welfare system offers standardized services adapted to the majority in society, involving the homogenization of an impairment, where disabled people are treated the same regardless of their cultural background. This does not lead to equitable services because services are not adapted to Sami thinking, values, attitudes, or life philosophy of life. Due to the lack of cultural sensitivity, Sami people with disabilities risk experiencing double discrimination in Norwegian welfare services, experiencing barriers to participation related to both their disability and their ethnicity. This makes an intersectionality perspective relevant, treating oppression and subordination as due to the combined effects of being Sami and having an impairment. Our study indicates that the lack of knowledge about Sami culture, language, and identity among Norwegian service providers leads to an oppressive practice and results in participation barriers to Sami people with disabilities. Introduction In Norway, both the indigenous Sami people (Minde, 2005) and disabled people have a history of experiencing oppression (Owren, 2008). However, knowledge specifically about the experiences of Sami people with disabilities has been absent (Nordens Välfärdscenter, 2014) and requested (Barne- ungdoms- og familiedirektoratet, 2013; St. meld. nr. 45, 2012–2013). In a research study of the situation of Sami people with disabilities we explored the everyday life, transitions between life stages, and democratic participation of disabled Sami people (Melbøe et al. 2016). Based on thirty-one qualitative interviews with Sami disabled people and/or their next of kin, this article seeks to examine the following research question How do different barriers to participation contribute to create and maintain an oppressive situation for Sami disabled people in Norway today? One of the general principles in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is full and effective participation in society (article 3). The point of departure of this analysis of the participation of Sami disabled people is Sudmann and Folkestad’s (2015) understanding of community work. They define community work as: (i) a method for practical change together with those concerned, and (ii) a critical perspective for research on different viewpoints of equalization, discrimination, and community participation. The article builds on the last part of the definition. We need to understand community work as a critical approach for research, as it is crucial to gain thorough knowledge about the basic factors of equal and culturally based community work. This study can thereby be defined as oriented basic research with Sami people with disabilities, i.e. that ‘carried out with the expectation that it will produce a broad base of knowledge likely to form the background to the solution of recognized or expected current or future problems or possibilities’ (OECD, 1993:50). Even though the intentions are good, welfare services might partly contribute to create oppression (Sudmann, 2015). To answer the research question the article will discuss how Sami people with disabilities experience community welfare services. The Sami are the indigenous people of Sápmi, a territory stretching over the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Today, the Sami population is estimated to comprise between 60,000 and 110,000 individuals (Hassler, Kvernmo, and Kozlow, 2008), and the majority of Sami people live in Norway (Statistics Norway, 2010). Over the last twenty to thirty years, there has been migration from traditional Sami municipalities to urban areas. Consequently, currently there are significant Sami (or multiethnic) populations living in Norwegian towns and cities (Sørlie and Broderstad, 2011). The traditional Sami ways of life – fishing, hunting, and reindeer herding – are in retreat. Today, only approximately 10 percent of the Sami people in Norway are engaged in these traditional ways of living (Statistics Norway, 2010). Many Sami have adopted the Western lifestyle and have modern professions and food habits (Sjolander, 2011). From the mid-1800s until after World War II, the Sami policy in Norway was based on forced assimilation (NOU 2000:3). Cultural Sami characteristics and Sami language were to be replaced with corresponding features of the (Norwegian) majority culture (Josefsen, 2006; Minde, 2005). For example, in school there was a systematic eradication of Sami language and culture, and all Sami children had to learn to read, speak, and write Norwegian. Not until 1969 was the right to learn the Sami language reintroduced (NOU 2000:3). Today the number of Sami speakers is estimated to approximately 24,600 (Ministry of Local Government and Modernization, 2014). The assimilation policy implied such a stigmatization of Sami identity (Eidheim, 1969) that many Sami did what they could to hide and suppress their Sami background and identity, especially in encounters with Norwegian society (Bjørklund, 1994). Due to the more recent revitalization and integration of Sami culture and identity, the Sami have now progressed to being generally treated as equals (Pedersen and Høgmo, 2012). Even so, the outcomes of the assimilation process still have an impact on Sami life and ways of thinking, and many hide their Sami identity out of shame (Minde and Nymo, 2016). However, the outcome of the assimilation policy and the revitalization movement varies according to the different Sami regions (Turi et al. 2009), and Sami today deals with at least two ‘worlds’: that of traditional Sami culture and the Westernized Norwegian culture (Hansen and Sorlie, 2012). The Sami in Norway do have, according to the Sami Act of 1987, § 3–5, a legal right to receive equitable health and social services adapted to the Sami language and culture. Yet, in assessing the extent to which this occurs, it is important to understand that the comprehension of illness and health is culturally conditioned (Archetti, 1986; Olsen and Eide, 1999). In traditional Sami culture, illness is understood to be dependent on the relationship between the individual and the community, and is interpreted as disharmony and lack of balance with the world in which one lives (Minde and Nymo, 2016). Thus, determining appropriate treatment depends on one’s understanding of illness. For example, in Sami traditional medicine, healing by being ‘read on’ is a common way to cure illness, and for Sami people this means they have received healing from a traditional healer for a somatic illness or other kinds of torment, or the prevention of illness or bad happenings. The origin of the term ‘to read’ is said to have come from the belief that traditional healers were supposed to have secret written formulas they used in the healing. Historically this practice coincides with the role played by the noajdde or shaman in the pre-Christian Sámi religion (Myrvoll, 2015). The traditional healer often perceives this treatment as related to supernatural forces or God (Mathisen, 2000). Method We chose to use qualitative interviews to answer the research question. Altogether, the eight members of the research group conducted thirty-one interviews with a total twenty four disabled Sami people, and thirteen next of kin of disabled Sami people (eight mothers, two fathers, two sisters, and one guardian). While twenty of the disabled persons were interviewed on their own, four persons with disabilities were interviewed with a relative or guardian as support, and the last seven interviews were with the next of kin of disabled persons. The latter was due to: (i) the informants’ young age, or (ii) because it was challenging for the disabled person to answer the questions with spoken language, and we as researchers had limited competence in augmentative and alternative communication. The informants received an information letter in Norwegian, Sami, and an easy-to-read version (a way of writing developed for people with learning disabilities using plain language). Regarding individuals with learning disabilities, we first sent an information letter to the person’s guardian or next of kin. In this we specified that valid consent implied that the person could possess sufficient information, understand the information given, and be able to understand the implications of their consent (Helse- og omsorgsdepartementet, 1999). The guardian or next of kin then consented for those assessed (by them) as not being able to give informed consent themselves, or presented the easy-to-read version of the information letter so they could decide whether to participate or not. Recruiting Sami informants is known to be difficult (Minde, 2010). We recruited informants through public health and social services, the media, and Sami and disabled networks. There is no public register in Norway for people who are Sami or disabled, which made the recruitment process rather complicated. Requests to participate were therefore sent to those known to identify as Sami and have an impairment. In this study, impairment is understood as the functional limitation within the individual caused by physical, mental, or sensory impairment (Goodley, 2011). Further, disability is defined as ‘a gap between individual functioning and societal/environmental demands’ (Tøssebro, 2004:4). The article focuses on the situations of ten females and twenty one males with a variety of impairments, such as sensory (e.g. sight and/or hearing), physical (e.g. paralysis), or cognitive (e.g. learning disability). Furthermore, the cohort of thirty-one men and women represents age groups from children to the older people (seven to eighty eight years old), coming from the north-, mid- (mainly known as lule-), and south-Sami areas. We used semi-structured interviews as these ‘are well suited for exploration of the perceptions and opinions of respondents regarding complex and sometimes sensitive issues and enables probing for more information and clarification of answers’ (Barribal & While, 1994, p. 330). Knowing that stigmatization is experienced both when it comes to being Sami and having an impairment, we were aware that some of the interview topics might be delicate for the informants. Therefore, besides using semi-structured interviews, we were also open to storytelling. There is a strong tradition of storytelling in the Sami culture (Nergård & Eriksen, 2006), and storytelling is a well-recognized strategy in community work (Ledwith & Springett, 2009). We hoped storytelling would allow the informants to speak more freely about their own experiences and feelings on being Sami and having an impairment. The informants chose whether to be interviewed in Norwegian (twenty seven) or Sami (four). The study was carried out in accordance with the National Ethical Committee for the Social Sciences, and was approved by the Norwegian Social Science Data Service. All informants in the article were given pseudonyms. Findings All of our informants have experience with Norwegian welfare services, including health and social services, kindergartens, schools, and labour services, among others. The need for help amongst the disabled informants differs widely, especially when it comes to what type of help is offered. Some only need practical help a few hours a week, while others have needs far more extensive. Some of the informants reside in assisted living facilities for older people, others in sheltered houses or in traditional family houses or flats. Disabled people with a Sami background experience many of the same challenges as disabled people in Norway in general, such as barriers that prevent full and effective participation in work, education, leisure activities, etc. (Molden, Wendelborg, & Tøssebro, 2009). However, in addition, they experience oppression connected to their Sami culture and way of living, as I show below. How to understand and communicate about illness and impairments One topic that often arose during the interviews was how the Sami traditionally do not speak of illness or impairments. Øyvind’s father told us that talking about illness would have been considered nourishing the illness. According to him: ‘One is not supposed to focus on negative things in life, but rather use one’s strength on what is positive.’ Furthermore, Øyvind’s mother stressed that the Sami are more withdrawn when it comes to exposing themselves to strangers. This coincides with the opinion of Marit’s guardian, who claims ‘(…) the family is supposed to take care of itself and also not to talk about illness or weakness. It is very taboo’. According to Rakel: ‘The Sami prefer not to speak about illness. We are not very open on such things.’ Rakel suggests that this might be connected with traditional Sami culture where the belief is that ‘(…) the evil ear might hear’, and so you risk the illness getting worse or even infecting relatives. A negative consequence of not talking about illness was experienced by Rakel when most of her relatives, except her closest family, withdrew when she became ill. However, many of the younger informants spoke more openly about their own health and impairment. In addition to a tradition of not speaking about illness, our informants also pointed to a general Sami style of indirect communication, which is sometimes a challenge in meetings with Norwegian welfare services given their use of very direct communication. According to Øyvind’s father, Norwegians are very direct and straightforward, while in Sami culture, indirect communication is more usual with one speaking ‘a little around things’ and by using metaphors. Øyvind’s father describes how, in meeting with the welfare services’ direct way of communication, they often end up ‘a bit paralyzed or despondent’ and sometimes even furious. Furthermore, a mismatch of concepts might be another challenge in meetings between Sami people with impairments and the Norwegian welfare system. For example, there is no equivalent term in Sami for the concept of learning disability. They sometimes use terms like doimmaheattigun, which is a metaphorical term referring to a person that does not walk in the same rhythm as others. As this is not necessarily equivalent to the term learning disability, to avoid misunderstandings it becomes important that service providers get each Sami person to elaborate their understanding. Opinions are mixed when it comes to how one attends to people with impairments inside Sami communities. According to Ketil’s mother, impairments are much more accepted here. In her opinion, diversity is considered a part of human variety and acceptance of deviance is typical within Sami culture. She also stresses that from a Sami point of view: ‘(…) it becomes idiotic to compare normality and deviance like one does within the Norwegian heath care system’. Anna’s mother also describes the Sami community as more tolerant towards deviance: ‘You do not get a label glued to your head, as we are good at inside the Norwegian society.’ However, other informants have not experienced such acceptance of impairments. For example, Jon’s sister claims that how the Sami community relates to people with impairments is far behind the attitudes of Norwegian society, especially when it comes to accepting people with learning disabilities. According to her husband, this is why their family moved to a Norwegian area after having a child with learning disabilities. What does one comprehend as adequate treatment and/or services? Several of our informants mentioned the tradition of ‘read upon’. According to Ragnar, ‘reading is healing’ and takes away many different kinds of strains from people, adding, ‘It is the Sami who have made me well, not the doctors’. Stopping bleeding and removing pain or infection are examples of what a reader can do. Øyvind’s father points out that even today reading is so common and normal within the Sami culture that people from his area name the local reader ‘municipal doctor no. 2’. Many of our informants make use of both traditional Sami medicine and Western medicine, and are pleased with this. However, Ketil’s mother wishes that the public health care system was less judgmental towards this practice. ‘The important thing is that the persons involved are helped’, she said. She herself has used readers on both herself and her son. In her opinion, this form of healing does not come into conflict with Western medicine: ‘Norwegian doctors should try and understand the patients’ situation and be much more tolerant towards the alternative’. Several of our informants emphasize the importance of nature as a part of their Sami culture. For example, Nicolai describes how a rehabilitation centre made use of nature and Sami traditions, and how helpful this felt in his rehabilitation process. Being in nature makes him feel good and close to his ancestors and to himself. Øyvind’s parents also ask for more use of nature in treatment, in line with Sami tradition and what is important to them. Sadly, Nicolai’s experiences of welfare services that take Sami culture into consideration are not typical. Most of our informants report meeting a Norwegian welfare system that is sensitive only in limited ways to Sami culture. According to some of our informants, there is, for instance, still a long way to go before mental health services can offer Sami patients assistance they experience as helpful. Ragnar points out that it seems that the psychiatrists know nothing about Sami culture and ways of thinking, and feed him medication that he considers to be of no real help. Rakel found it difficult to talk with psychiatric professionals about her family without being misunderstood, and ended the consultations as she experienced talking to professionals that lack knowledge of Sami traditions as a waste of time. Øyvind’s mother gives an example on how insight into Sami culture might be useful within psychiatric services. She tells about a Sami patient who was admitted to the psychiatric ward, and was then deprived of his personal belongings, including his knife. The patient withdrew completely until a nurse gave him back his knife. In a blink, the patient became himself again. Within Sami traditions, a knife is not only a tool, but something that protects. ‘You never go into the forest without a knife. It is the steel in the knife that protects against evil spirits, not the knife itself’, she explains. Having to choose language The informants in this study speak primarily Norwegian or Sami, while some speak both languages. In some cases, professionals had told the parents that their child, because of the impairment, would struggle to cope with more than one language. Most of these parents were advised to let their child learn Norwegian. Per describes how professionals in the 1970s advised him to learn Norwegian rather than Sami, arguing that being bilingual was not possible for people with his kind of impairment (hearing loss). Thus, he never learned Sami. This decision has had a major impact on his whole life. According to Per, not speaking Sami has limited contact with his own family and excluded him from many other settings such as gatherings with friends, political committees, and organization work. In contrast, Ketil’s parents had the choice of whether Ketil should learn Norwegian or Sami. They chose Norwegian because they live outside the core Sami areas, but the mother describes this as a very difficult decision as it affected the whole family. They originally spoke Sami at home; but then had to switch to Norwegian. Consequently, Ketil’s siblings learned much less Sami. According to Ketil’s mother, much of their sorrow associated with their son’s diagnosis is connected to his loss of the Sami language and the strong link between identity and language. Understanding of information Informants, especially older people, have experienced not understanding the information given by welfare services. For example, Mattis’s sister describes how the professionals gave her parents all the information about her brother in Norwegian. Because Sami was their first language, the parents understood only parts of the information they received. According to Mattis’s sister, this influenced the choices her parents made regarding him, such as treatments and dealing with life situations. Consequently, she has involved herself quite a lot in her brother’s situation. She says, ‘all messages go through me now’. Furthermore, she points out, ‘this reluctance amongst older Sami to admit not understanding Norwegian is something the Norwegian society lacks understanding of’. Another of the stories an informant shared is about an older woman who only speaks Sami. All her adult life she brought one of her children to translate at consultations with the doctor. When she met a doctor speaking Sami for the first time, she burst into tears. Never before could she talk to a doctor about her personal problems without her children present, and she felt liberated. All her life she had felt degraded by the fact that she was forced to expose herself and her personal problems in front of her children. Nikolai is especially concerned about older Sami people who suffer from dementia, because many of them go back to speaking only Sami. For example, he told of a Sami woman who was very thirsty when her family came to visit her at the home for the elderly. When the family asked the staff why they had not given her any water, they answered that she had not asked for it. She had asked in Sami, but the staff did not understand her request. Having to choose between professional help or Sami culture It appears there are large geographic differences connected to access to the professional welfare system. Some of those with impairments that require special competence experience being ‘forced’ to choose between adequate professional support or access to Sami culture. For example, Anna’s mother told us how their plan had been to bring up their daughter within Sami culture and with the Sami philosophy of life, teaching her the Sami language, etc. When their daughter received her diagnosis, however, they soon realized they had to choose between professional support and access to Sami culture. They chose professional support and moved south. The mother sadly admits that her daughter lost her chance to develop a Sami identity because of this lack of professional help in the northern region where she was born. She states According to Norwegian tradition and Norwegian laws, I have done all the right things relating to my daughter. However, when I look upon my Sami heritage, I have done it all wrong. I have taken her away from her family and her roots. Ketil and his family live in the north, but not in a place where the Sami culture has a strong foothold. Nevertheless, his mother describes how she and other Sami parents living in Norwegian surroundings experience gaining access to Sami culture as a fight or battle. For example, as Norwegian schools have limited knowledge of Sami culture, parents must teach their children about Sami traditions and ways of living. Discussion A common feature of the stories of the informants in this study is their description of the cultural meeting with welfare services, where they experience barriers connected to a lack of cultural knowledge amongst the service providers. Important knowledge in the cultural meeting Drawing upon the material, we find expectations amongst our informants that the individual Sami will meet a system that has enough cultural competence to provide good services adapted to the Sami philosophy of life. Based on our interviews, I will now present some aspects of Sami culture that are important to Sami people with disabilities, of which the service providers are aware. First, knowledge of the traditional Sami way of communicating in general and, specifically, how they communicate about illness. Our material shows, in line with other research (Bongo, 2012), that Sami people would rather not talk about illness. Sami reluctance to talk about illness may have different underlying reasons; for example, that to discuss illness among Sami can be understood as showing weakness (Minde, 1995), that illness can be spread if put into words (Dagsvold, 2006), or because one is not supposed to give other people worries on one’s own behalf (NOU 1995:6). Another identified challenge is the contrast between the typical Norwegian style of direct communication and the typically indirect Sami manner of communication (NOU 1995:6). Both the indirect communication and the reluctance to speak about illness harmonizes poorly with the principle of user participation that is strongly underlined in Norwegian patients’ rights legislation (Helse- og omsorgsdepartementet, 1999), where patients are expected to actively promote their own case within the welfare system. If the welfare system is met with silence due to traditional Sami ways of communicating, Sami people with impairments might not receive the services needed. Second, it is important that service providers know that understandings of illness are culturally conditioned (Nergård, 2012; Olsen and Eide, 1999) and, thus, what is regarded as appropriate treatment will depend on how one understands the illness (Myrvoll, 2015). As mentioned earlier, illness in traditional Sami culture is understood as disharmony with the world one is living in and a lack of balance in life (Minde and Nymo, 2016). Thus, Western medicine, with its thinking in diagnostic terms, is not common inside Sami society. The Sami originally had their own methods to treat illnesses that might be read as traditional Sami medicine (Myrvoll, 2015). Oral transmission across generations has developed an understanding of illnesses and treatments that are closely connected to forces within nature and thoughts about balance in the universe (Henriksen, 2014). An example of one such tradition is the knife-steel as protection against evil spirits. This is an example of a holistic attitude towards living, meaning that people have a special connection to nature and experience a spiritual world within nature. ‘Reading’ is an experienced, spiritual world that is still very much alive and an important part of traditional Sami medicine. The perception of good and bad spirits is very alive inside the Sami understanding of reality, but is seldom communicated when meeting a Norwegian health system that only focuses on diagnoses and experimental facts, because the Sami do not believe that their understanding will be taken seriously (Nergård, 2012). Professionals treating Sami patients are recommended to include nature in the therapy (Dagsvold, 2010). Third, one has to be aware of the importance of access to welfare services provided in the Sami language, or of offering interpreter services at the meetings with welfare services. Even if Sami people with longstanding disabilities have been under the language domination of mainstream society, their understanding of Norwegian varies. In our material, for example, we find parents who have Sami as their first language (like Mattis’s parents) exclusively speak Norwegian throughout the upbringing of their disabled child and meetings with welfare services. Consequently, the parents may not understand important information about their child’s condition and treatment. A study on self-experienced discrimination amongst Sami people in Norway shows that approximately one-third of the respondents experienced health staff who did not speak Sami and that one in fifteen Sami-speaking respondents did not get a translator at doctor consultations or hospital consultations even though they had requested one (Josefsen, 2006). The study points out that it could be a risk to life not to have access to a translator when meeting with the health care system. Receiving services in Sami also means that Sami people with disabilities get the chance to receive professional help and discuss private matters without an interpreter present, as in the story of the doctor consultation with the elderly woman presented earlier. Language, culture, and identity are closely connected, and the legislation known as the Sami Act (Kommunal- og moderniseringsdepartementet, 1987) secures and strengthens the legal right to access the Sami language both in school and in the rest of society. The Sami language and understanding the Sami language becomes the glue that connects culture and identity. The competence within the schooling system regarding Sami conditions is very limited (Lile, 2012), and our material shows how Sami people with disabilities are especially at risk for not getting access to their own language and cultural habits. Fourth, the welfare system needs to understand that in Sami culture it is the norm for one to manage their situation and not be a strain on others (Bongo, 2012). Ketil’s mother points to this as a reason why so many families are reluctant to ask for help from the welfare system if they suspect something is wrong with their child. However, one should also keep in mind that the choice to manage by one’s self might also be a consequence of Sami people with disabilities experiencing service providers who do not understand the Sami way of living, offering treatment and/or services that are difficult to combine with how they live (Dunfjeld & Møllersen, 2010). Risk of double discrimination As in this study, earlier research of Sami peoples’ experiences with health and social services in Norway also identifies a lack of knowledge about Sami culture (Hedlund & Anne, 2010; Nergård, 2012). Important findings in our study, therefore, are not only how the limited competence in Sami cultural knowledge among service providers contributes to create and maintain an oppressing situation for this group in Norway, but also how the combination of being Sami and having disabilities sometimes poses the risk of double discrimination. Their access to Norwegian society and welfare services is hindered both by disabling barriers due to lack of facilitated environments, as well as by cultural barriers such as a lack of knowledge about Sami culture. I will now present two examples of double discrimination. First, because of large municipal differences and a lack of special competence in welfare services, some families with disabled children (like Anna’s family) become ‘welfare refugees’, moving to other municipalities to get needed services (Funksjonshemmedes fellesorganisasjon, 2014). Having to move is demanding on all families with children with disabilities. However, to Sami families, the consequences might be even more extensive, as they experience it as being ‘forced’ to choose between moving away from traditional Sami areas to get adequate professional support or having access to Sami culture by continuing to live in traditional Sami areas. The choice to move, moreover, reduces both the disabled child’s and any siblings’ chance to grow up as a part of the Sami culture and with a Sami identity. This can be defined as a sort of structural discrimination, where the superior structures are shaped so that discrimination is built into the effects (NOU 2002:12). In this case, welfare services discriminate against them as disabled persons because it prevents them from choosing where to live, and against them as Sami because it limits their access to Sami culture and identity. Second, some Sami people with disabilities (like Per) experience barriers to participation in areas such as school and work. Schools and the labour market are not facilitated for people with impairments, limiting their access to equal education possibilities, a proper job, etc. Additionally, some Sami people with disabilities feel excluded from the Sami community and their Sami family as they, by the educational services, are not given the chance to learn Sami. Our informants have not always agreed with the advice of choosing Norwegian over the Sami language. The scientific knowledge that establishes that gaining access to one language strengthens the capacity to learn other languages is rather new (Solstad et al. 2012). Consequently, many Sami children with different types of impairments have not received the necessary support to be bilingual in Sami and Norwegian, and speak only Norwegian. Standardized services as equal services? Our disabled informants experience barriers to participation and oppression related both to their Sami background and to their impairment, which makes an intersectional perspective relevant. Intersectionality underscores the multidimensionality of marginalized subjects’ lived experiences (Crenshaw, 1989:139). Belonging to an ethnic minority and having an impairment, our disabled informants are at risk of experiencing two different marginalization processes. Fuentes (2016) describes these as: (i) a culturalization of the impairment, where the focus on the disabled is mainly related to the individual’s culture, or (ii) a homogenization of the impairment, where the attention is drawn almost entirely on the impairment, and the disabled people are treated the same regardless of their cultural background. The informants present numerous descriptions of how they experience welfare services as standardized to the majority in society, and not adapted to Sami culture. For example, how service providers communicate, what they communicate about, how they understand illness, what treatments they offer, the use of the Norwegian language, etc. Accordingly, our disabled informants mainly seem to experience an extensive homogenization of the impairment. This means that service providers focus almost exclusively on the impairment, and treat all disabled people the same and as having identical needs, independent of their cultural background and linguistic needs. In our study, there are several consequences to this homogenization process. For example, some of the informants describe how the welfare service’s direct communication style provokes them, and does not make them come forward with their actual needs. Others tell of how a lack of understanding the Sami culture makes them end or decline the treatment offered. To understand the strong emotional reactions to being offered standardized services adapted to the majority culture, one must keep in mind the collective history of the Sami, with a century of harsh assimilation processes and discrimination. These sorts of memories can be roused, especially in meetings with service providers who have a majority background (Hedlund and Moe, 2010). Thus, even with the recent revitalization of Sami culture and identity (Pedersen and Høgmo, 2012), the history of dominance and oppression are also very much present in today’s encounters with welfare services. The consequence of the described homogenization process, reducing Sami disabled people to recipients of treatment and care regardless of their ethnic background, is that their needs are not met and might actually contribute to maintaining oppression. Nevertheless, the solution is not to provide standardized services adapted to Sami culture, treating all Sami people with disabilities the same. As our findings show, how Sami people with disabilities relate to their Sami background and Sami culture varies greatly (Melbøe et al. 2016). What we have identified as important knowledge about Sami culture is essential to some Sami with disabilities, but not to others. For example, some Sami speak freely about illness, prefer Western medical treatment, and receive their services in Norwegian. Consequently, if service providers are to contribute to equality and eliminating oppression, they must be very sensitive and adjust their help to each person they meet (Hedlund and Moe, 2010). Providing adequate services to Sami people with disabilities implies providing quite different services adjusted to each individual. Concluding remarks This article builds on community work as a critical perspective on participation, discussed in the setting of the encounters Sami people with disabilities have with community welfare services. The study reveals an oppressing practice wherein several barriers in the Norwegian welfare system hinder them from equal participation compared to those of the majority, because the welfare system mainly offers standardized services adapted to the needs of mainstream society. To move from oppression to equal practices, the service providers need to develop a sensitivity and consciousness about the aspects of culture and language that the Sami bring to the meetings. According to our findings, community work must be based on: acknowledgment of the Sami culture; knowledge about how Sami traditionally communicate about illness and impairments; knowledge about what Sami comprehend as adequate treatment or services; and use of the Sami language in welfare services. This knowledge is necessary to contribute to equal community work, in order to reduce the marginalizing practices in encounters between the service providers belonging to the majority population and the Sami people with disabilities, which currently maintains a barrier to participation. Line Melbøe leads the Arctic Centre of Welfare and Disability Research, and the research group ‘Diversity and Tolerance’ at UiT, the Arctic University of Norway. She has been an associate professor at the Department of Social Education at the same university since 2011. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the informants who contributed stories of their everyday life, to the members of the research group ‘Diversity and Tolerance’, who participated in the data collection: Gunn-Elin Fedreheim, Bjørn-Eirik Johnsen, Ketil-Lenert Hansen, Gunn-Tove Minde, Tone Dinesen, Kari-Anne Opsal, Marit Rustad, and Leif Lysvik. 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doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy021pmid: N/A

Abstract In this article, I will focus upon a case narrative described as ‘Trine’, and her participation in a community group called Come Closer. I relate the discussion within a broader context of Community work and Community music therapy. The article combines vignettes taken from music therapy practice and various theoretical views. I argue that music has a potential as a force for social change and spans an unlimited number of combinations. Music can function as a practice that involves the activity of personal reflection processes and music can function as a sociopolitical force, able to change social realities and alter power relations. In sum, the article concludes that three strategies which might be appropriate for further investigation and implementation regarding music as resource in child welfare work. First, there is the need for an individual strategy. The individual strategy includes person-oriented activities such as conversation, song writing, and the use of music technology. Second, there is the need for a community-oriented strategy wherein activities such as playing in a band or song writing comes into focus. Third, there is a need for a strategy which implies working with networks, social environments, and power relations. The third strategy is very closed related to ideals taken from a traditional community work perspective, whereas ideas such as Arnsteins ladder of participation is prominent. How can anybody else like me when I don’t even like myself? When nothing goes my way and everything turns grey? I need some kind of push to get me out of here (Excerpt taken from the song ‘Is there somebody there for me’? by Trine) Introduction The above lyric is borrowed from a song written by ‘Trine’. Through the song, written in a music workshop called ‘Come Closer’ (described later in this article). Trine expressed thoughts and feelings related to sorrow and low self-esteem. The song was performed in front of a live audience – peers, family, and friends. The performance gave Trine a possibility to communicate to her social environment a message about her loss and suffering. Trine’s participation in Come Closer can be seen as examples of what is labelled as community music therapy and community work. Community work can be described as a meta-theoretical perspective on how young person’s participation can be developed, supported, and evaluated within the modern welfare state (Sudmann and Henriksbø, 2011). On the other hand, community music therapy is a perspective within the field of music therapy that is ecological in a Bronfenbrenner way, and seeks to find ways of using music as force for the promotion of health and participation (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Stige and Aarø, 2012). In the perspective of community music therapy, music is more than a stimulus to which humans react, or a vehicle for action and interaction; it is a multidimensional and continuously changing milieu where an aggregate of biological, psychological, and sociocultural processes interact (Stige and Aarø, 2012, s 138). Trine’s story is also relevant as seen from a human rights perspective. Previously, I have highlighted the importance of music as a tool and medium for increasing the awareness of the rights of children, especially regarding those with disabilities as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (UNCRC) (Hart, 1992; Percy Smith, and Thomas, 2009; Krüger, 2012). The UNCRC can be considered a useful and guiding Document both as a means for developing music therapy practices as well as developing music therapy theory regarding children and young people (Krüger and Stige, 2014). In my doctoral thesis, a qualitative study consisting of interviews with young people living under institutional care, arguments related to how and why music can be important in child welfare practices were constructed (Krüger, 2012). Based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with fifteen young people, different themes were explored. A main theme was that music may be viewed as a medium for the promotion of participatory practices (Krüger and Stige, 2016). Findings illustrate in various ways how music may be used to help young people to mobilize resources for action, cope with everyday living and to gain an own voice in a community. In my thesis, the concept of community work was not part of the discussion. Taking the above mentioned into consideration, I ask the following question; What implications does the approach of the theatre group Come Closer have for the multidisciplinary perspective called Community Work within Norwegian child welfare practice? In search of reflexivity The author of this article has functioned as one of the facilitators of Come Closer. His role has been related to fundraising, planning, and evaluation. Because of the several roles of the author, a degree of reflexivity is needed. One place to start examining reflexivity, is to make clear for the reader my background both as a musician and as a music therapist. Since I was a teenager I have played in various rock bands. I have experienced both joy and suffering, and not the least, valuable learning experiences. As an adult professional music therapist working in the field of child welfare, I find myself using experiences from my own past in order to help others and to facilitate participatory practices. As an adult, I work as a music therapist, mainly in the field of child welfare. As an academic field and profession, music therapy was developed in the United States after the Second World War (Stige et al., 2010). A main reason for this development was the successful treatment of trauma-related symptoms suffered by war veterans, through the use of music. Over the past few decades, music therapy has been developed towards being a broad interdisciplinary field, in which many ways of defining and understanding the roles, relationships, and rituals that characterize practices are found (Bruscia, 1998; Bunt and Stige, 2014). As seen in conventional music therapy perspective, music therapists address the needs of their clients and the situations in which they find themselves by providing a safe therapist–client relationship, where therapeutic goals may be achieved (Rolvsjord, 2007). Very often the promotion of health and well-being is the main goal for the music therapy process (Elefant et al., 2013). Norway is widely recognized as an important country for music therapy research. Its two major research centres are the Centre for Music and Health located in the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, and the Grieg Academy Centre for Music Therapy (GAMUT), at the University of Bergen. In Norway, a relatively new discourse labelled ‘Community music therapy’ has gradually evolved. The perspective has developed as a human rights based approach in which the music therapist is working musically with people in context: acknowledging the social and cultural factors of their health, illness, relationships, and music (Stige and Aarø, 2012). In community music therapy, it is important to find ways of working together with other professionals through interdisciplinary collaboration (Stige and Aarø, 2012). This implies being able to work together with community workers, community musicians as well as professions such as teachers, nurses, or psychologists. What kind of music practice one sought for, is found in close collaboration with the users, the local community and relevant persons involved. Available resources are mapped, evaluated, and used. A second influence on my reflexivity are child welfare oriented theories. From an international perspective, the challenges in the child welfare system are increasing, and there is a need for sufficient solutions (Kristofersen, 2005; Kayed et al., 2015). Especially, there are severe difficulties linked to the use of child welfare services such as foster care and institutions (Backe-Hansen et al. 2014). In Norway, Clausen and Kristofersen (2008), for example, have shown that individuals who have been living in an institution have worse life conditions than those living in home with biological parents. The situation of young people under welfare care is not sufficiently aligned with the rights and values of the UNCRC (United Nations, 20). According to the CRC, children and young people have several rights, including rights concerning participation, which include the right to take part in everyday activities as well as the right to be heard concerning important decisions (Krüger and Stige, 2014). Different views of participation may be seen as mutually constitutive and music may be regarded as giving structure to a complex set of participatory practices, including aspects related both to community, health, well-being and values related to democracy (Krüger, Strandbu, Stige, 2014). Regarding child welfare solutions, findings show that music therapy can be an important resource in the way children and young people organize and better understand their everyday life situations (Hargreaves and North, 1999; Juslin and Sloboda, 2001; Juslin and Laukka, 2004; Laiho, 2004). Music can also be used to create personal reflection and engage in individual self-care (Rolvsjord, 2007; Saarikallio and Erkkila, 2007). The use of music provides activities for working with identity and narratives (Ruud, 1997). As such, music may be seen in relation to treatment of anxiety or depression (Sutton, 2002). A main ingredient in trauma-related treatment is facilitating storytelling, where the participant may be able to make meaning of lived incidents such as experiences from war or violence (Krüger, 2012). Music may also facilitate help and support from adults and peer’s (Krüger and Strandbu, 2015). Moreover, music therapy gives opportunities to establish meeting places where young people experience that their skills and knowledge may be used in new communities of practice, such as school or work (McFerran, 2010). Playing music and writing lyrics together offers the young participants the opportunity to see themselves and their actions in light of people’s feedback. Finally, music therapy makes it possible to establish meeting places where music can be used as a resource to challenge established positions of power (Krüger, 2012). Letting young people speak through music and music performances, provides structure to and affords acceptable protest actions, such as giving the message of an alternative child welfare identity (Krüger, Strandbu, Stige, 2014). Profile of the come closer theatre group I will now return to the musical theatre group Come Closer. Previously I have discussed Come Closer in relation to Boals Theatre of the oppressed (Boal, 1985; Strandbu, Krüger and Lorentzen (2016)). Come Closer offers activities such as musical instrument instruction, song writing classes, rock band instruction, and the opportunity to perform in concerts. Participation may lead to the development of various social roles and social identities. As an example, participants in Come Closer are provided with a stage and thus their voice can be heard in ways that enable their social identities to be negotiated and changed. Through participation in the workshop, acceptable protest actions, such as creating an alternative child welfare identity, can be achieved. This is important, because the identity of ‘a child welfare user’ is closely related to processes of stigmatization and marginalization in Norway (Backe-Hansen et al. 2014). As seen from an organizational point of view, Come Closer is funded by Bergen municipality and several private parties, including The Grieg Foundation and Aleris Ungplan & BOI. The organization has its own board, consisting of both previous users and adult social workers. Since it was formed in 2002 Come Closer has staged a number of performances, released CDs and toured in Norway. The message from the group has been communicated to politicians, people in charge of welfare institutions, teachers, health care workers as well as family and friends. The activities Come Closer facilitate may be understood as what Bronfenbrenner called molar activities. A molar activity is: an ongoing activity…perceived as having meaning or intent by the participants in the setting (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 45). Learning to play music is an example of molar activity. Learning music or writing lyrics can be seen as a ongoing activity, which has personal meaning for the learner, and may grow increasingly more complex in nature. Through the development of working phases, the participants may experience entering new roles as musicians, singers, song-writers, or performers. The new roles give possibilities for learning and the development of self-understanding. Music’s role in the process is complex; it can be used for a variety of purposes where the use may change in relation to contextual factors. The persons involved may use their experiences taken from the music workshop in new settings, such as school or work. In this way, several levels of what Bronfenbrenner labelled an ecological system are involved and activated (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Planning phase This phase is about recruiting members who are interested in participation. Come Closer arrange meetings every second Sunday of the month, and may thus be regarded a leisure activity. For many of the participants, Sundays are a beneficial day of the week because they report ‘having little to do that particular day’. There are several ways of being a member. Firstly, members are recruited via child welfare services who want to present Come Closer for their users. The instructors working for Come Closer are available for telephone contact and appointments are made on behalf of potential users. Second, recruitment is also possible through friends and peers. Members of Come Closer have the possibility to invite people to join. This phase is also about identifying individual needs in the quest for practical solutions. Some individuals will feel insecure and not motivated for meeting the whole group. If so, individual sessions are arranged in order to prepare the participant for further group process. Sometimes there is not enough motivation for joining the group and individual sessions are chosen as further alternative. In order to plan in collaboration with the young people and the child welfare services, collaboration meetings are organized in order to find solutions and make decisions. Among those involved are representatives of young people, instructors, and students. It is also appropriate to invite people from school and social work institutions. In the planning phase, participants are prepared so that they can join Come Closer as long as they want, and they can quit when they want, participants who have joined for more that two to three years, are asked to take on more responsibility regarding activities for the new-comers. Preparation phase The preparation phase is about getting to know the young people. Most of the activities are so called ‘low-threshold’ activities. It is possible for the young people to join without knowledge or skills in, for example, playing the guitar or singing. This phase includes activities such as ‘get acquainted activities’, ‘presentation rounds’, ‘music café’ or tours. It is also a phase where trips to concerts in the community are arranged. At this stage, the young peoples’ interests and goals become known. The participants are able to understand how the music workshop works, and in which ways they can influence the activities. Participants are encouraged to make suggestions for the activities. Throughout this phase, relationships and trust amongst participants are developed. Potential conflicts among members and personal interests are included in further planning, as well as individual adaptations and adjustments. Working phase During this phase, active efforts are made in order to meet the needs discovered in the previous phase. The phase includes activities such as music rehearsal, song writing, recording, and performance. Participants collaborate with music therapists in order to find artistic expressions in which they can convey their ideas. Central to this stage is the facilitation of the individual, so that he or she can cope with the activities in a group. An example of this would be to play a 4/4 beat on the drums or to learn ‘one finger’ guitar chords. Another example might be to write lyrics or record music using music technology. Each participant is invited to find ways to work that suits his or her need of expression or artistic ambition. Some people want to be a singer, and thus use the facilities of Come Closer in order to learn to sing and perform, others want to write drama or songs. It is also possible to combine singing, playing and composing. Realization phase This phase is about involving the local community and society at large. The phase facilitates the performance of songs, texts, or recordings. The phase depends on an active audience that may provide feedback on what is written, rehearsed, or recorded. Music, text, drama used to convey stories are listened to by an audience consisting of peers, relatives, and professionals who work in schools and within the fields of child care, as well as others who might be of significance for the young people. The evaluation phase Central to the evaluation phase is feedback from the audience and the participants themselves as a basis to adjust and adapt to new practices. It is crucial that the young people’s voices are heard in terms of changing practices. Evaluation may be conducted as focus groups and/or as individual interviews (Krüger and Strandbu, 2015, pp. 93–94). Messages from the members of Come Closer may be reported to the local media through interviews or as written essays. Trine’s story I have known Trine for four years. Through these years Trine has learned how to use aspects of her own life story in order to express feelings and thoughts, join the peer community and to communicate important messages to an audience of significant adults, such as social workers, family members, and teachers. During this time Trine learned how to play instruments, she learned how to use music technology such as recording equipment, and she developed skills in song writing and performing. Through these years Trine went from being a quiet child living in a child protection institution, to become confident in performing her own views and attitudes in front of others. Introductory sessions Trine was recruited to Come Closer through the child welfare services who wanted to help her gain a positive and meaningful leisure activity in a community with others. At first, Trine joined several individual sessions where she worked with the music therapist in order to gain motivation and confidence to meet the community of Come Closer. In the beginning Trine was insecure and stated many times that she really did not want to participate. She would say things like; ‘I can’t sing, and I have no belief in myself’, or, ‘I’m so afraid of doing anything in front of others’. Despite Trine’s lack of self-esteem, after a while, she was collaborating with the music therapist in order to decide how many individual sessions she needed and when she wanted to join the community. She was also presented with the option of not joining the community. The music therapist was her collaborator and facilitator in helping her decide if and when she wanted to participate. In the preliminary phases, Trine was given several options on how to participate, and what was needed from her in order to participate in the group. She received instructions on music instruments as well as singing lessons. Trine gradually increased her belief in expressing herself through music and conversation. Playing with the group After two months, Trine took the step towards meeting the Come Closer group. She participated in meetings and rehearsals where she met peers who had experienced what she had experienced; loss and lack of dialogue with adults. The meetings with Come Closer became important for her because she could take control over parts of her life that she previously had been unable to deal with. As an example, knowing how the other participants felt about the child welfare system, she could express what was wrong with her own situation and she could thus mobilize resources in order to have a better life situation. At the time when the lyric referred to in the introduction was written, Trine felt confident in using musical instruments, and she liked to perform with the others who at that time had become her friends. Through participation in music making processes, Trine gradually developed confidence in the art of storytelling and the construction of important collective stories. Through song writing, Trine found a language for her experiences, thoughts, and feelings in a community. ‘It’s like someone is lifting a stone from my heart’, she once spoke. After a while she became able to tell stories about her life she otherwise did not feel very confident about, for example, being labelled as a child of the welfare system, or being called a troubled child at school. Through various music activities, Trine found ways to communicate her experiences to an audience. Trine’s music hence became a tool for managing potential difficulties in her life situation. Through demonstrating her abilities and capabilities in music, Trine could stand up for what was especially challenging; being a troubled young person living under difficult conditions. Music enabled Trine to use her skills as a musician and songwriter to tell a different story about being alone and having low self-esteem. In collaboration with members of Come Closer, Trine wrote a song called Moving. This particular song became a tag for naming what was challenging in her life, namely, the fact that she had been forced to move around as a child. By the age of 16, she had already moved eleven times as a consequence of her situation in the care of the child welfare system. In the song, she tells a story that informs the listeners of the difficulties of moving around from place to place, never to be given the opportunity to settle down and find peace for herself and her needs. The following lyrics are an excerpt from the song. Where do I go? Where am I coming from? How long shall I stay? I’ll stay a while Then I must go That is why I always keep my jacket on. Because family members, social workers, and teachers from school were invited as members of the audience when the song was performed, important people in Trine’s life could take part in her storytelling. As the audience for Trine’s story, the people closest to her could give her recognition for her performance. The performance became a way for Trine to show an alternative identity to her well-established identity as a ‘child welfare user’. Through her music she could stand out as someone worth listening to, someone with a voice and a story to tell. Outcome At one point, Trine decided that she wanted to leave the Come Closer community. She left the community at the age of 20, but returned as a visitor several times. She also volunteered as an assistant at some events Come Closer organized. In conversations afterwards, she referred to Come Closer as a stable factor in her life in times of turmoil and frustration. She told me things like: ‘Come Closer has become my family’ or ‘Without them I wouldn’t have been where I am today’. She explained Come Closer as a community where she could meet peers with more or less the same experiences as herself. She also reported that joining the Come Closer group gave her experiences of being an important figure for other people. This experience was important for her because she felt that the child welfare system had taken such aspects away from her. Being under care of the child welfare system had labelled her as a burden on society. The experience of being important and useful for others helped her mobilize resources in relation to school and work. As an example, Trine expressed on one occasion that having performed in front of audiences in a Come Closer setting, helped her gain strength and motivation for coping in the setting of a stressful job interview; ‘When I talked with the job interviewer, I got very scared, but after a while, I remembered how it was to sing on stage, and I got calmer, I started to believe in myself’. Performing music and the concept of boundary learning A key feature of the situations described above in the case story can be described as a form of boundary meeting. A boundary meeting can in this sense appear between the therapist and the young person, and between the music workshop and home/community. These boundaries afford possibilities for Trine to participate in a group where she can organize and process her thoughts and feelings. Music then, can be understood as also tool for getting help and support from adults and peers. Moreover, as a social tool, music gave Trine opportunities to challenge established positions of power, namely, the dominant position of adults in the child welfare system. Rule (2004) calls boundary meetings ‘a dialogic space’. The dialogical space is as a zone of engagement, underpinned by values of trust, openness, and responsibility. By engaging in the dialogical space, the participant is enabled in dialogues at both an interpersonal and intrapersonal level. The notion of the boundary is also a key to understanding Bakhtin’s ideas about dialogue (Bakhtin, 1981). For Bakhtin, the boundary is between the self and the other, and function as a venue for engagement and conflict. The boundary is not permanent, but is rather a shifting threshold of communication and relation building. By elaborating the boundary, participants may learn each other’s words as they widen their respective understandings; ‘the process of selecting and assimilating the words of others’ (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 341). We can use this understanding to look at how Trine used music in order to transform and interact with her social environment. For Trine music and lyrics became tools she could use in order to participate in a dialogical space. Through musical participation she could engage in and influence power relations and intrapersonal relations. Such a view leaves therapy as a form of political action, which echoes Freire’s idea that therapy or education can never be neutral (Freire, 1995). For Freire, a goal is to overcome inequality. In order to overcome inequality, the therapist should use stories and songs that the participant knows, for example, from a home setting. Because the music workshop was close the Trines home and because she could use her own story as a part of therapy, it could be argued that the dialogical space was established based on equality. A relationship based on equality led to the development of ways to articulate an identity as someone else as a problem with a conflicting life situation. The use of music provided her with a continuity of autobiographical stories including narratives about places, people, and events (Ruud, 1997). As such, music gave structure to help and support situations from adults and peer relations. Moreover, by giving Trine a voice to be heard through her music, acceptable protest actions, such as creating an alternative child welfare identity could be attained (Baines, 2013). Being able to be heard also helped her mobilizing a set of resources needed in order to cope with everyday life and to manage potential difficult transitions towards independence and adulthood. The role she was giving as a resource person, able to help others, contributed in that very process. As such, her identity as a child welfare user was negotiated in the community towards an identity as someone useful and helpful for others. Community work or community music therapy? If we look at Trine’s story in relation to community work and community music therapy, we find some interesting similarities and differences. Community music therapy aligns with the idea of community work in many ways. In a broader sense, community work can be described as an approach occupied with the idea of building structures for participatory action (Cornwall, 2000; Cornwall and Coelho, 2006; Shaw, 2014). Community work traditionally takes a critical approach to the analysis of social inequality, social change, and inclusive research (Sudmann and Folkestad, 2015). As such, community work may represent a perspective on de-stabilization in order to create new possibilities for participation and self-presentation (Cornwall, 2000). Central to the movement is Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of participation. Arnstein originally developed her ideas in the late 1960s, and still retains considerable contemporary relevance, for example, in relation to child welfare practice. On the top step of the ladder we find ‘Citizen control’, and on the lower steps we find a category called ‘non-participation’. Interestingly, in context of the theme for this article which is music therapy, Arnstein places the concept of therapy alongside with manipulation. So, how could music therapy be seen as an activity, representing the higher steps on the ladder of participation? In order to answer such a question, we have to look deep into human history. Music is a profound part of every society and can be traced back to the earliest civilizations (Horden, 2000). Music is described as a therapeutic medium in Christian, as well as Islamic texts. One example is the famous story from the Hebrew bible, where David plays the harp for Saul who is suffering from depression. In ancient Greece, many philosophers were occupied with the idea of music’s healing and educational powers. For Aristoteles, music, and especially the Dorian scale, were suitable for the upbringing of young men (Aristotles/Jowett, 1999). In medieval times, music is mentioned a number of times in relation to medicine and treatment. Robert Burton (1621/2001) relates music to treatment of mental illness and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), wrote that music helped him during times of depression after experiences of loss and neglect in childhood (Mill, 2014). In modern times community music therapy may be described as a non-medical tradition of music therapy, focusing on health promotion and social change in and through musical participation (Stige and Aarø, 2012). The approach involves an awareness of the system the music therapists are working within, a view that imply that music therapy is not only directed towards the individual, but often aimed at changing the system that is sometimes part of the situation of the client (Ansdell, 2002). As such, community music therapy offers a contextual approach for working with individuals and institutions, and in relation to different levels of analyses (Stige and Aarø, 2012). One basic idea is that resources for change can be mobilized in and through communities of practice, such as in the case with a rock band or a choir. In the case of Trine for example, music therapy may be regarded as a way for promoting a voice that can be heard and have an impact in the child welfare system. Trines voices is given a possibility to have an impact on the way practices are formed and evaluated. And, resourced developed as a result of her participation may be used to mobilize resources in her social environment. We can for example, argue that resources she developed in therapy was used by her ‘outside’ of therapy, as illustrated in the case story. This makes community music therapy participatory and performative, and the possibilities and limitations of music as a vehicle for human agency comes into focus (Stige and Aarø, 2012). It is also important to remember the place music has in our culture and with young people in particular (Ruud, 1998). Concluding comments – the need for various strategies I have argued that community music therapy may represent a perspective combing aspects of music therapy and community work needed to meet the demands outspoken from someone like Trine. As an interdisciplinary field, community music therapy offers possibilities for both working with the individual through health promoting processes, as well as facilitating participation and collaboration as a part of social work. In the process of facilitating participatory practices, community music therapists may benefit from collaborating with community musicians, community workers, and other professions. Being able to shift between individual and communal perspectives opens up the possibility of maintaining a distinct theoretical perspective while simultaneously being able to change the perspective. Further, I have highlighted the importance of listening to young people’s voices in order to facilitate better practices in the context of child welfare work (Skivenes and Strandbu, 2006). The argument of listening to the voices of young people to decide the content of practice is taken from the UN Child Convention, especially regarding articles concerning children’s rights to be heard and to be empowered. Because child welfare practices in general are related to the CRC, supporting approaches should also be based in the same value system. Drawing on Trine’s story, I suggest three strategies. First, there is the need for an individual strategy. This strategy includes person-oriented activities such as conversation, song writing, and the use of music technology. The individual approach is aligned with what previously has been called the conventional music therapy perspective. Second, from the case example with Trine we learned that there is the need for a community-oriented strategy wherein activities such as playing in a band or song writing comes into focus. The community-oriented approach is important because it implies the facilitation of peer group relations, and contact with school community, family members, or adults from a child welfare institutions. Third, there is a need for a strategy which implies working with networks, social environments, and power relations. The third strategy is very closed related to ideals taken from a traditional community work perspective, whereas ideas such as Arnsteins ladder of participation is prominent. Taken all this into consideration, community music therapy may be seen as an approach which might be able to solve a paradox inherited in a theory many social workers rely on. If Trines story is valid, therapy may in some extent be seen as a force and resource for social change and protest against the system. Viggo Kru ̈ger completed his PhD on music therapy in the context of Norwegian child welfare in 2012. He holds a position as associate professor at GAMUT, University of Bergen. Since 2002, Krüger has facilitated music workshops for children and young people living under the care of the Norwegian child welfare system. Acknowledgements I thank Aleris Omsorg for their financial support in writing the article. I also thank my colleges at GAMUT, Grieg Academy University of Bergen for great support over many years. Many thanks also to Jan-Kåre Breivik and Tobba Therkildsen Sudmann for inviting and inspiring me to write this article. 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doi: 10.1093/cdj/bsy024pmid: N/A

Abstract This article analyses the two fundamental contemporary challenges, and tries to outline a possible development strategy targeting these challenges. First, how do we build community in an age of individualism? Second, how can a small remote community counter the massive structural forces of centralization and urbanization? The first of these challenges is faced by all community developers today, whilst rural developers, in order to succeed, need to address them both. Drawing on experiences from an innovative rural development project in Finnøya, Northern Norway, a project that resulted in growth in a very peripheral village, the author argues that a focus shift is necessary, from the natural and material resource base to the human one. Ultimately, positive place and community development is about engaged, active and interested human beings. How can the creativity and deep engagement of the individual become an asset for the whole community, asks the author, and outlines a network-based community development model, aimed at maximizing the individual freedom to create and at the same time producing new community goods and values. Introduction: from structural to human-near perspectives The public discourse on rural depopulation in Norway, is primarily focused on structural factors. Lack of appropriate infrastructure (roads, public transport systems, etc.), lack of ‘interesting’ jobs, as well as distance from a major town and/or regional centre, are arguments that are repeatedly used. Such arguments are often presented as ‘facts’. Being generalized assertions about development trends and directions, neither of them are, seemingly, amenable to local human beings. Thus, debates about rural development quickly turn into large scale value discourses and therefore also into party politics, making general elections the arena of influence for ‘ordinary people’. Furthermore, neither are grand structural theories particularly useful when it comes to accounting for differential development between places within the same region (with more or less the same infrastructure, job-market, and proximity to larger centres/towns). With structural conditions being more or less the same, why are two neighbouring villages in the same region still performing so differently? Why are people and businesses leaving village A whilst village B – located only a few miles down the road – experiences an opposite development with in-migration, business innovations and optimism? Having been involved in action oriented rural development research in Norway for almost two decades now, I have repeatedly come across local communities/places that are performing remarkably better than their neighbours – despite having the same structural advantages/disadvantages. Endogenous development (van der Ploeg and Long, 1994; van der Ploeg and van Dijk, 1995; van der Ploeg and Renting, 2000) is used as a collective term for initiatives and activities coming from within a community (‘bottom-up development’). It is a plausible hypothesis that intra-regional development differences between communities/places are caused by different endogenous strategies. Regarding the case mentioned above, a higher level of involvement in endogenous development initiatives is expected in village B. However, to produce knowledge and information that is directly relevant to development practitioners in small rural communities in Norway and elsewhere, we need to dig deeper than that. We need to identify, first, why people in village B are far more actively involved in participatory practices than people in village A, second, what strategy/procedure/methodology is used for mobilization, and third, who the original actors were and why they got involved. A human-near development strategy Most practitioners would probably agree with the statement that ‘rural development is ultimately about people’. Dedicated human actions are necessary to turn potential resources into active development assets. And yet, only very few of the many rural development projects I’ve been involved in as an action researcher, have put primary focus on the human dimension of development. The importance of local people may be mentioned, but the emphasis is on capitalizing on local nature qualities and/or on cultural heritage attractions. Local involvement is seen as tool, not as an end. Often, too little emphasis is put on the mobilization phase, and on the many different potential ways to participate. Too much is decided before people are asked to get involved, leading to a too narrow ownership base to ideas and aims. The result could be that too few actors take part, and the process then fails to deliver its defined aims (Lønning, 2014). In my experience, the communities that succeed both when it comes to in-migration and business development – the village Bs – do have a clear strategy on mobilization and involvement. They also put individual and collective wellbeing – both in a short and long term – as number one on the agenda in their development activities. For the Bs, happiness/wellbeing and creativity is the ultimate goal of local development activities. This observation is in line with overall trends within international development. Schroeder (2015: 1) argues that the economic growth paradigm is being challenged by ‘multidimensional approaches to development that place people, not economic growth, as the ultimate end of development’. It does not necessarily have to be either or, however. A human-near perspective may aim to do both; achieve growth (social, cultural, economic) through putting primary focus on human happiness and wellbeing in a local community. The main idea is simple, and has repeatedly proved effective (Lønning, 2014): people who feel involved, welcome, integrated and listened too, will develop a stronger love of place and therefore become more dedicated and engaged community developers in the long run. In the following I will explore some elements of such a strategy. The case I will rely on, is the recent positive development history of the peripheral community of Finnøya. Finnøya – from decline to new optimism Structurally, there is nothing unique about Finnøya. Like so many rural communities in Northern Norway it is characterized by peripherality (almost 20 km to the nearest store/gas station, 70 km to the municipality hall, and several hours of travel to the main regional town), small size (about sixty people), very rudimentary infrastructure (when I first came there, the road to Finnøya was a 17 km gravel road full of deep holes and big rocks). Finnøya has no grocery store nor any public institutions like school, kindergarten, post office or old age home, and people are used to travelling considerable distances for these services. There are also many empty houses (only used as holiday homes) in Finnøya, mainly due to outmigration and an aging population (at the time when the active development initiative started). The first time I heard about this community, was in a conversation with the Mayor of the local municipality. At the time I was involved in a cultural project in the region. The Mayor spoke about a very special community that I – being a rural development researcher – definitively ‘had to visit’ due to the positive development taking place there. The Mayor also told me that people from Finnøya were renowned locally for their high level of participation in voluntary development work and cultural activities: - The people from there are unique. When we have a cultural activity in the town centre, they have to drive for an hour to get there. And still it is they who volunteer as guards and not the people living only a few minutes away. A little later I got an invitation to speak at a local mobilization event in Finnøya. The event was to take place in ‘grendehuset’ – the community hall built through voluntary labour by community members. ‘A place to make a home’ I will not forget the welcome. ‘Standard’ serving for a local meeting like this, is coffee, tea and biscuits. In Finnøya, a third of the community’s 60 members – all organized through ‘Grendelaget’, the community club – were involved in the kitchen setting up a large evening buffet – made up of homemade delicacies. Everybody had brought something special in from their own kitchen. The buffet was big enough to feed 150, and still I was the only external guest. People told me that the buffet made the mobilization meeting into a feast, thereby tying people even closer together and increasing wellbeing/happiness and sense of place in the community. Instead of delegating the task of preparing food to one person or a small group of people, the buffet became a manifestation of the Finnøya development model: each individual’s involvement in and responsibility for producing community and collective goods. At the meeting I heard several personal stories from people who had moved in to Finnøya. One had moved in from the regional town. He talked about a difficult past involving drug-use. A couple had come from Mid-Europe, originally as tourists. The ‘fabulous reception’ made them stay, they said: - In a time of flux, we have found a place where it just felt right to make a home. We are tired of searching. I feel we’ve found what we were looking for. Now they were building, virtually, a half house – ‘more than big enough for a family, and at the same time a visual statement saying just that’. Another couple came from the Baltics, originally as seasonal workers in agriculture. But when a dairy farm was up for sale, they chose to stay. They were still combining dairy farming with helping out at other farms when I met them, and were able to make a living out of this combination. A third couple was from Norway and the United States, and had settled in Finnøya to have a base for eco-tourism activities, nature philosophy and practicing shamanism. What makes Finnøya ‘successful’? Between 1999 and 2015, the population in Finnøya has varied between fifty two and sixty eight (Lønning, Barstad and Evans, 2012). It has increased a bit over the last few years, but the figures are so small that quantitative indicators are of little relevance when it comes to measuring and evaluating change. A number of new small-scale business have been established, most of them linked to tourism, local food and green care in agriculture. The main reason Finnøya has become known regionally as a success story, however, is not because of numbers of people or businesses, but because of high scores on community characteristics that people, locally, see as positive and desirable. When so many people I talked to in the surrounding region mentioned ‘all the exciting things happening in Finnøya’ or ‘the success of Finnøya’, what they were referring to was the diversity of the population, with so many in-migrants, and the high frequency of new activities starting up. A number of local festivals and very frequent use of Grendehuset for community feasts was mentioned. A concrete example that several talked about was the initiative taken in Finnøya to create a wheel-barrow relay through all the local communities in the region – many of them much bigger than Finnøya – over a whole day. The initiative turned into a large regional family feast with all sorts of local activities being linked to the relay. Start and finish was Finnøya, with Grendelaget as main organizer. This initiative has been so successful that even national Norwegian TV has covered it. People I talked to from neighbouring communities who were registering what took place in Finnøya, told me that they were ‘envious’ in relation to ‘how much they are able to do out there’. Here are some of the assessments that I collected: ‘They are very creative’ ‘They have a very developed dugnadsånd’ (a strong local culture for participating in voluntary community labour) ‘They are known for their hospitality’ ‘They always say yes to come and help out at our activities’ ‘It’s always an experience to go there’ When I was encouraged to visit Finnøya, I was told by a municipality official, that ‘It is impossible to describe the place and the people. You need to go there and experience and feel it yourself’. Being welcomed so warmly, I understood what the person meant. Like others, I experienced the community as warm, welcoming and united. In a way I felt like an insider from the first moment. From the outset I was invited into activities, given tasks, asked personal questions about my life in general and my interests in particular. I’ve felt close to local communities through my work before, but that ‘bonding’ never happened so quickly as it did in Finnøya. Consequently, the first meeting led to a number of other visits, and many conversations with community members. At a later national rural development seminar that my institution was involved in arranging in Finnøya, we were presented with more personal mobility stories from in-migrants. People were asked to tell us where they came from, why they left, and, then, why they had settled in very small and very peripheral Finnøya (ibid). In one aspect the stories were highly different; people came from very different places, the reasons for moving were also highly different. They also had different plans for how they wanted to conduct their new lives in Finnøya. One theme recurred in every personal history, however. In different words all inmigrants who took part talked about the importance of being, now I’m using ‘Shelly’s’ words, ‘allowed to be who I am, do what I do and think what I think’. In her testimony, Shelly delineated what she felt was so special about Finnøya: - Many people think that small communities are dominated by a few moral stories about how one should behave and not behave to be accepted as a local citizen. Maybe it’s a stereotype. I don’t know. Here, anyway, there is no such thing. On the contrary, you are actively encouraged to ‘Be yourself!’. Diversity is an active strategy here in Finnøya. And this is what makes it such an interesting place to live’. Albeit in different words, all the in-migrants who presented their stories at the seminar touched upon this ‘being allowed to be oneself here’ – aspect of living in Finnøya. What made Finnøya such a unique place – in the context of their own life stories – was nevertheless the combination of – in the words of ‘Jürgen’ – ‘room for diversity and individuality AND a welcoming and warm community where you feel that you are seen as a human being’. Finnøya’s strategy Finnøya is definitely not a problem-free Shangri-La. Finnøya is part of a municipality of more than 1000 km2 acreage but with less than 1800 people. Of all the small communities forming this structure, Finnøya is furthest away from the municipal centre. Like people from so many structurally similar places, the people of Finnøya continually face the challenges of being very small and very far from any mayor centre in an era of urbanization where business and public administration both go through processes of centralization. Still, the recent history of the place shows that active and strategic human agency can go a long way in creating a community that is very attractive to locals and in-migrants alike, so attractive that it mediates the distance people need to commute to get to community centre, shops, regional towns and communication hubs. The development work in Finnøya has not gone unnoticed. One public recognition, was to award the people of Finnøya, represented by two of the most active community members, the regional rural development prize. Another was the local and regional willingness to finance a new paved road to Finnøya – replacing the ‘tractorroad’ (local term) that was there before. Commenting upon the new road, both people in Finnøya and local politicians argued that the community succeeded not through complaining about lacking a good road, but through showing what they could accomplish even without it. One of the locals who had lobbied for the new road through a number of years told me the following: - We couldn’t just sit on our asses and wait for planners, politicians and bureaucrats. We’ve just kept going, and en route we’ve told them: See what we have done without a proper road? Think what we can do when we have one! To identify and describe the way of thinking that has informed the rural development work in Finnøya, a serious of individual conversations and focus-group interviews with members of Grendelaget was performed. The conversations confirmed that Finnøya has followed a path that is very different from the current market- and product-oriented paradigm. It is also very different from the one followed in most other projects I’ve been involved in, where focus has been on one or more clearly delineated and planned goals. As a contrast, in Finnøya, paraphrasing Gandhi, the path has become the goal. Focus has been on involving people and always having ongoing activities in the community in general and in Grendehuset in particular, not on any overarching ‘final goal’. Here are some central elements in Finnøya’s way of working. The establishment of an umbrella organization taking charge of all activities Civil society in rural Norway is rich and varied, and the people in Finnøya, like in most other small communities, are organized in a wide range of different organizations and interest groups, from professional ones, like the Farmer’s Union, to music or sport’s organizations. However, few, if any, of these, despite being local, have their main seat in Finnøya. These organizations are possible to mobilize for single activities, but it is very difficult to use an organization built to serve a whole region, for a set of on-going development activities in one community. The people in Finnøya therefore decided to build their own local organization, Grendelaget, taking charge of all activities, and involving other organizations when relevant and necessary. Grendelaget is open to everyone in the community, both regular citizens and owners of holiday homes. This means that every member of Grendelaget is an ‘owner’ of all activities. This seems to breed responsibility and sense of belonging in the community. The involvement of a minimum of very engaged and resourceful people And still, in a small rural community, and here Finnøya is no different than other similar places, dedicated individuals are very important. The Norwegian term ‘eldsjel’ translates to ‘firesoul’ in English. The eldsjel is a very interested, engaged and dedicated person who develops a strong personal involvement in a collective project/task. An eldsjel is, virtually, a person who does (much) more than what is expected. In any successful rural development initiative, there is nearly always one or more eldsjeler (plural) involved. This is also the case in Finnøya. A group of people have been very active over a number of years. Focus on broad involvement And yet, Finnøya has succeeded, in an almost unprecedented way, in getting a large proportion of the local population involved in Grendelaget or in other activities. People are regularly invited to collective work parties. There is also a clear focus on inviting people to get involved in community development based on what their abilities and interests are. i.e. instead of asking people to adapt to the existing offers, the focus is on adjusting activities and offers in correlation with people’s interests. Working with individuals on a one to one – basis This focus on individuals and diversity is a characteristic for the way Grendelaget and the rural development organization has worked in Finnøya. The general idea is that people are different, and that difference is a development resource to promote and use, not something to suppress and/or under-communicate. When someone has come in with a new focus/idea, the work of Grendelaget has been expanded to include this idea. The active appreciation of diversity has become a strategy in its own right, summarized by a community member in the following way: - Diversity is what we want and work for, not something we ‘tolerate’. Using a phenomenological terminology, the focus in Finnøya has been more on ‘becoming’ or ‘coming into being’ than on what is or what was (Merleau-Ponty, 2000). Focus on doing, not on planning and/or financing The focus in Finnøya has been on the process itself, and on ad-hoc opportunism; grabbing and making the most of opportunities when they are there. Thus, thorough planning of activities before they are initiated has not been overly emphasized. Neither has applying for external funding. At the point when I first came to Finnøya, the community had not received a single krone in public support for their activities. In the national rural development seminar in Finnøya, several public figures presented the ‘Finnøya-model’ as the ideal one: A local initiative and organization with many local people involved, is a foundation that vouches for sustainability. If necessary, public funding can be used to support activities that cost more, thereby possibly increasing reach, effectiveness and efficiency. A clear vision A very interesting contrast to other rural development projects I have studied, was the resource inventory list created in Finnøya. The ‘classic’ number one on these lists is ‘beautiful nature’. With only 3 percent of the landmass being arable, a large part of Norway is definitely ‘nature’; forests, valleys, mountains, fjords. Experiencing ‘beautiful nature’ is also the main reason why foreign tourists come to Norway (Innovasjon, 2015). When it comes to making the community more attractive to businesses and newcomers, however, nature-qualities is something most Norwegian rural communities can offer. It is also quite difficult to distinguish oneself from one’s neighbour – in the same region – by the use of nature. The people in Finnøya saw this. On the top of their resource inventory list, was, in contrast, a human quality. We are, people said, renowned around here for our hospitality. Doors are still open. We invite each other. Perhaps we can use this quality also to attract new people? A vision followed from this decision to promote human qualities before nature qualities: We will welcome every single person who comes here in such a way that he or she will want to remain! This vision has informed the rural development work in Finnøya over a number of years, and the testimonies from in-migrants that we collected, indicate that the strategy has been effective. What can we learn from Finnøya? The challenge of our time: building community for postmodern individualists Are we postmodern beings at best ‘ships that pass in the night’ (Longfellow, 1874), and our communities, thus, merely floating ‘meeting-places’ on an ocean of everlasting change? Zygmunt Bauman (2000b, 2001) has repeatedly discussed the challenge of creating human communities in our postmodern age of consumerism, individuality and individual freedom. As individuals, says Bauman, we cherish our freedom and are not willing to relinquish it. On the other hand, the human beings is still a social creature. Our dreams of communities are still very much alive. However, Bauman continues, community, at least in the traditional form that we still dream of, was never possible without moral control, i.e. without giving up full individual freedom. In a particularly astute description, Bauman’s volume on liquid modernity (2000a) discusses that postmodern identity grows on the grave of community, and primarily due to a wish for the resurrection of the dead. ‘Anxiety’, ‘stress’, ‘restlessness’, the most common illnesses of our time, are they the results of us finding ourselves entangled in the almost Gordian knot that Bauman describes (Lønning, 2010; Skårderud, 1998)? Suffice it to say that the challenge of creating community for ‘individualists’, postmodernity’s demanding consumers, is indeed a formidable one. In my own experience as researcher and evaluator, the probably most common reason for a project and initiative failing to deliver its stated goals, has to do with a lack of focus on and discussion of both the consequences and requirements of individualism (Lønning, 2014). As a social, cultural and economic driving force, individualism has tremendous implications for community development. One of them is ‘postmodern amorality’ (Lønning, 2007). In the age of individualism, what collective sanctions do we have to deem one action ‘better’ than another? When we freed ourselves from ‘the yoke of morality’, we also lost our ability to present participation in community activities as an individual obligation. Participation was made completely voluntary. Secondly, individualism has the potential to alter what we experience as the main building blocks of local community life. Today, ‘tradition’ is no longer a state, but an ‘asset’ for development in the experience economy (Pine and Gilmore, 1999) or a nostalgic denominator for ‘the glorious past’. The opposite concept in the classic dichotomy, ‘change’, is no longer an under-communicated aspect of local lives, but has rather become the new ‘state’. Change permeates our lives and metaphors of change our language. Similarly, plurality has become ‘normal’ both when it comes to economic activities, gender roles and the ways we use our leisure time. Is change something to tolerate or something to promote? And yet, the same tremendous changes are not necessarily reflected in the strategies, goals and organizational models of community- and place-development activities. The classic and most attractive in-migrant is still the person ‘moving back’. Similarly, the ‘fire-soul’ who most often receives the annual voluntary work prize from the local Mayor, is still the person taking special responsibility in the traditional sports club or the marching band playing at Constitution Day, 17th of May. Only very rarely have I come across public development strategies that actually seek to promote diversity, or even strategies that officially recognize diversity as a resource for community development, be it economic, cultural or social. Finnøya is definitely one of these rare exceptions. And even if we cannot generalize from this single case, we can still try to identify some of the planning goals and actions that probably were instrumental in producing the community’s relative success. First, the premise that people are different, have different values, backgrounds, interests and aspirations, has been fundamental in the way Grendelaget and their work has been planned and organized. Individual differences are seen as assets for development, the building blocks of a community that, therefore, is seen as always ‘becoming’ – always changing relative to the values, interests and activities of the people living or visiting. During the rural development seminar that we arranged in Finnøya, the following themes were present in all presentations from in-migrants: All emphasized that they had been welcomed personally, and they all felt that like all local doors and homes were open. Likewise, all emphasized that they felt included in a community, and they experienced this community as highly tolerant and actively promoting individuality and diversity. Another recurring narrative, here in the words of ‘Silvia’, was ‘our human need to be seen and valued as the unique individuals we all in reality are’. ‘I have felt this very strongly here’, Silvia continued, ‘and this definitely motivates me to active part in local development to give something back to this fantastic community’. Grendelaget, and the many active individuals in the Finnøya community, were in several presentations and speeches, both by in-migrants, local politicians and other locals, presented as ‘extraordinary’ in their successful integration of newcomers. Returning to the more theoretical, overarching discussion on the potential schism between community and individualism, Finnøya was presented in this seminar as both a strong local community and as a place where ‘you can be yourself fully’. In the Finnøya case, community and individuality are not counter poles, but processes that actually reinforce each other. What all local developers I talked to emphasized, was that this synthesis between individuality and community, would not have been possible without Grendelaget’s active strategy to found community development on the idiosyncracies (interests, competences, visions, activities, aims) of each individual community member. The local community seen as a network In his pessimism on behalf of the ideal of community, Bauman could be criticized for not putting enough emphasis on our creative powers as human beings, powers that have led us to overcome the most extreme of challenges, physical as well as cultural and social. The case of Finnøya indicates that we also have the capability to untie Bauman’s Gordian knob. The network society (Castells, 2004; Himanen, 2004) is a concept often used to describe our age. As individuals, we are part of many networks. The network consists of individual nodes with individual aims, but the network as a whole is established around aims and values that the individual participants share. The network can therefore survive the replacement of nodes. ‘Programmers’ and ‘switchers’ Two functions are crucial for the network to succeed in creating new values, says Manuel Castells (2004). He calls these functions ‘programmers’ and ‘switchers’. The programmer’s role is to steer the network towards one or more common themes. If creative use of local resources is the focused theme, the programmer needs to make sure that access to and innovative use of these resources is possible. The switcher is the connection to other networks. In the case of community development in a remote rural area, the switcher may, e.g. be asked to link up with networks of people internationally who search for a new and ‘different’ place to settle. The development of Open Source Software programmes, is often used as an example of productive online networks (ibid). The individual node gets involved due to personal need for the tool. By participating the node also produces common network goods, however, as a flow of new versions and updates are distributed through the entire network. The work started by one node is followed up by another. Programmers and switchers are involved to, respectively, steer the work to one or several similar goals, and make sure that the tools being developed are also answering to real needs outside of the network itself. Individual interests are the modus operandi of the network There is no need to give up on individuality to participate. On the contrary, individual interests and needs are the modus operandi of the network. Summarized, the network as an organizational model is so productive because each node, de facto, has an individual interest in producing common goods. Grendelaget’s model for the development of Finnøya, has much in common with Castells model for a value-producing network. Diversity is seen as productive and therefore an end in itself. To promote diversity, individual self-interest is actively encouraged. Grendelaget, being network programmers, try to link individual nodes and steer individual activities in a common direction: ‘Use our landscape, history and culture in following and developing your own personal values and projects!’ Through this approach a wide range of highly different individual projects can be linked. In Finnøya, participants have been local historians, outdoor enthusiasts, artists, computer freaks, active pantheists, farmers, story tellers, film makers, etc. All have been following their own projects, but Grendelaget has succeeded in creating a vibrant and interesting local community out of all these different perspectives on and utilizations of the local resource base. The active promotion of change Secondly, Grendelaget’s perspective on change as not something to accept but something to promote, has probably been equally important in the development of contemporary Finnøya. The proactive human creator changes the world (Ingold, 2000; Lønning, 2010; Nietzsche, 1996, 2001, 2003). The resource base is revalued, stories and interpretations are altered, and thereby also our understanding of place. In Finnøya, new place meanings and place usages have challenged established ideas on the drawbacks of peripherality. The small, remote community presents opportunities for immense individual freedom, to live your life in ways that the density of the city prevents. In this sense, Finnøya, and similar places out there, become rural postmodern ‘laboratories’, experiments in living in an age where both community and individuality are in flux. Can the case of Finnøya be reproduced? American novelist Eric Hoffer (2018) once said: ‘In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists’. Finnøya is a very apt expression of Hoffer’s aphorism. The case of Finnøya is an example of active use of the human resource base, and, therefore of practices and attitudes that need time to develop. Tolerance is definitely a practice. It is one thing to call for new ideas and activities at the local public meeting, it is something else to welcome them as your neighbour. People who come as in-migrants to contemporary rural Norway, represent a diversity of cultural backgrounds, interests, experiences, religions and life views. Is this diversity ‘a potential’ or ‘a problem’? If diversity becomes a problem, the in-migrant will be asked to relinquish parts of his identity and engagements. Thus, the likelihood of him becoming a local innovator, in the Finnøya sense, is greatly reduced. It is perhaps more likely that he moves on, in search of a place where individuality is more appreciated. Seeing diversity as potential, on the other hand, means being open for continuous change, for new interpretations, new meaning. It implies actively applauding the innovative use of local resources. Burning and burning out. The active and the passive As a figure, eldsjela (the fiery soul) go all the way back to the philosopher Heraclitus 2500 years ago. Heraclitus’ metaphor for change was fire (Heraclitus, 2003; Lønning, 2015). Fire brings the novel into the world, he said. Fire represents liveliness and restlessness, but fire is always demanding. It has continuous need for energy. The dead, the object, is what is left when the fire has burned out. When Eldsjela burns out, the energy and creativity is gone. The metaphor is familiar. When we human beings ‘burn out’, we lose focus and motivation. We become passive, even lethargic. This is a fundamental human challenge. Choosing between becoming, evolving, and therefore the world as it potently develops, or the static, perhaps ‘safe’, but still impotent. This is the eternal human challenge; finding our ways between the active and the passive, between being the creator of values, or the one who is created by them (Nietzsche, 1968, 2003; Lønning, 2010). Eldsjela is the person who do more, often much more, than ‘what is expected’. Whilst others come to communal work parties out of a sense of obligation, eldsjela is the organizer. She is the person who invites, coordinates, even clears up the mess when the activity is finished. Eldsjela is a character in more or less all human communities, small and big. She is found in the tiny remote village and in the neighbourhood in a big city. She is nearly always in a minority in her strong engagement to community development. In Finnøya, however, I met so many of her. So many who burned. So many people with an almost personal ‘urge’ to create, develop, organize. When many fiery souls burn at the same time and coordinate their activities, change can become a manifest force, strong enough even to offset the negative structural effects of peripherality. Keeping the flame alive But then, again, the question of fire and energy becomes acute. A small place like Finnøya is so dependent upon the fire burning. If it burns out, the forces of positive change are gone. The story of eldsjela burning out, is familiar to all people involved in community development. The fire starts burning, changes happen, the fire burns out, and positive change is replaced by statics or even degradation. No effective ‘cure’ to prevent the fire from burning out, has ever been found. The case of Finnøya shows us that there are potential ways to nourish the fire, however. Presenting change as wanted and necessary may be one. Change is a process, not a project. There may be milestones along the way, but community development cannot have a final goal and date. Putting the individual, with his or her idiosyncracies, at the centre stage of development may be another. Participation in common activities could be ‘fun’ and even personally rewarding, not something one does merely out of duty. Giving the individual credit for the work that he or she does on everybody’s behalf, could be a third. Credit is energy for the fire. Our need to ‘be seen’ was discussed above. If all the hours you, as an individual, put into community work go unnoticed, ‘burning out’ is probably inevitable in the long run. The creative commons Ultimately, we all depend on human creativity. In a small peripheral rural community, survival in the long run depends on our ability to mobilize and utilize this creativity productively. To summarize the discussions in this article on the delicate balance between individuality and community, I will present a concrete model that illustrates how a local community can be understood and developed as a ‘creative commons’ (Lønning, 2010, 2014; Lønning og Barstad, 2016). The creative commons is a network where the individual nodes actively use the local resource base in accordance with their own aims, interests and values. Engagement is actively encouraged, as is free play with the local resource base. The model visualizes place and community as a balance between public and private goods. Public goods are our common resource base. We need people to produce them, reproduce them, change them, even to define them. We need to ‘see’ and give credit to all those engaged individuals and active NGO’s who maintain and expand our local histories, our cultural heritage, our popular culture. We need to focus on popular culture, on providing room in the local landscape for the new ideas and experiences. Public goods are, therefore, our community ‘seeds’. They are the common network content. Our local programmer’s role is to make sure that these are sown and cared for, and that there are enough actors who do it and who get community credit for it. But we also need to encourage the individual nodes to grow and harvest their own fruit from these seeds. A wide range of new rural products and services have over the last couple of decades been developed, both in Norway and in many other countries, as entrepreneurs and innovators have been able to identify and develop new experience qualities in the rural landscape. The model below, shows how these entrepreneurs could become even more local, producing community values and new local identities: Our local landscape is our common pool of symbols, interpretations and practices. On the seed side of the model, NGO’s, fiery souls, public development agencies, and a range of other potential actors cooperate in the development and definitions of a communities cultural, social and natural resource base. On the fruit side, these public resources are refined by private actors as, e.g. product development or as leisure activities The resources come from the same common pool, but the way they are used could vary considerably. In this network model, values of individual freedom and community can be developed and expressed simultaneously. ‘Programmers’ are needed to make sure that the local resource base is the focus of network activities, ‘switchers’ to link local activities with extra-local trends and needs. The resultant place and community is always in a state of becoming, corresponding to the interests and activities of the people taking part. Perhaps this is the closest we can get, in our age of individuality, to a community model that can keep the flame alive? 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