Participatory Practice: Community-based Action for Transformative Change

Margaret Ledwith is Emeritus Professor of Community Development and Social Justice at the University of Cumbria.I live in Lancaster where I am Emeritus Professor of Community Development and Social Justice at the University of Cumbria. As a child, I was aware of social injustices around me, but had no understanding of the ways that power discriminates to privilege some at the expense of others. This pursuit of power followed me into classroom teaching, to work with Vietnamese Refugees in Scotland, to time spent in Nicaraguan communities after the Sandinista revolution... all of which changed my practice and my life. My thinking needed the flick of a switch, and this happened when I was introduced to the theories of Paulo Freire, Antonio Gramsci and feminism at Edinburgh University. From then on, I saw power as a tangible discriminatory force in everyday life, and began taking Freire into feminism, anti-racism and intersectionality, both as a community development practitioner and in my books. To date, the culmination of my thought is captured in this second edition of Participatory Practice and the third edition of Community Development: A Critical and Radical Approach, published 2020. Beyond this, I am working on my lifework. I am committed to emancipatory action research as a living praxis for social and environmental justice practitioners and activists, and extremely interested in the role of storytelling as provocation to trigger critical dialogue and action for change.Jane Springett is Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Healthy Communities, School of Public Health, University of Alberta.I respectfully acknowledge that this book was written on Treaty 6 territory , a traditional meeting ground, gathering place and travelling route for many indigenous groups, including Cree, Saulteuax, Blackfoot, Metis, Dene and Nakota Sioux and now for many peoples from around the world. I have been privileged to live here since 2011 when I came to take up a position of the Director of the Centre for Health Promotion Studies. I have worked in a number of countries, including Sweden, Germany , Kyrgyzstan and Mexico. I have been fortunate for such a rich experience that has opened me up to the impact of colonisation and to new ways of working, while confirming my commitment to participatory practice in health promotion and research. I am a co-founder of the International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research and a member of the coordinating group of the Collaborative Action Research Network. Indigenous cultures have an intimate spiritual connection with the land. I understand what that means and it is the land of my home country I have missed and to which I return. I take with me my new wisdom to share and inform practice in a different context.