NEW BOOK ALERT: Community Arts from the Margins

Community Arts from the Margins is a groundbreaking volume that centres the Global South as a hub of knowledge generation. This is a book by global south practitioners about practices emerging directly from the region.

The volume brings together scholars doing cutting-edge work in these communities, making radical and transformative art alongside marginalised populations. By focusing on the politically, socially, and geographically marginalised, this book positions them as the critical voices driving community arts practice.

Bringing together scholars and practitioners across three continents—Africa, Asia, and South America—the volume is edited by Professor Zindaba Chisiza and features contributions from Brazil, India, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Namibia, among others. It gathers titans in the fields of community arts, Theatre for Development, Theatre of the Oppressed, and educational theatre—such as Dr. Sanjoy Ganguly (Jana Sanskriti), Professor Ali Campbell, and Professor Prosper Kompaoré (Atelier Théâtre Burkinabé)—writing directly on their work with marginalised communities.

For the University of Malawi, this publication is monumental: it reclaims its space within community arts and Theatre for Development, asserting UNIMA’s capacity to lead these global scholarly conversations from the front.