Perilous Ideas: anthropological debates in cross-cultural arts projects. GARP2

My essay is concerned with the nature of cross-cultural exchanges and representation in arts projects which work with other cultures. I am using this exploration as a way of grounding some of the more abstract debates in anthropology around the politics of representation, and contemporary understandings of 'community', 'identity' and 'locality' within urban cultures. My analysis is based on personal experiences of three different projects which worked with the South Asian community in London - a London-wide arts festival about Bangladesh, the 'community arts' projects which formed a strand of it, and an exhibition of young British-Asian artists and the Whitechapel Art Gallery.