In the current context of neo-liberal policies, market deregulation and global flows, cities around the world have been faced with the increasingly complex challenges of fragmentation and marginalisation, while ideals of close-knit communities, belonging, and citizenship have become ever harder to sustain. To understand processes of marginalisation and resilience from a multiplicity of viewpoints, there has been a growing demand for inclusive ways of knowledge production, taking into account approaches advocated by the civil society sector and knowledges carried by communities which have been ... More

In the current context of neo-liberal policies, market deregulation and global flows, cities around the world have been faced with the increasingly complex challenges of fragmentation and marginalisation, while ideals of close-knit communities, belonging, and citizenship have become ever harder to sustain. To understand processes of marginalisation and resilience from a multiplicity of viewpoints, there has been a growing demand for inclusive ways of knowledge production, taking into account approaches advocated by the civil society sector and knowledges carried by communities which have been encapsulated in the term ‘epistemologies of the South’. This volume seeks to respond to this need by arguing that collaborations between scholars, activists, stakeholders and communities together with artists can be used as a springboard to strengthen resilience in vulnerable urban areas by taking into account different viewpoints expressed through creative practice. It proposes to employ ‘Co-Creation’, reconceptualised as an alternative way to produce knowledge by bringing together academics, activists and artists and involving them in generating shared understandings of neighbourhoods and wider injustices in the city, through commonly-created artistic outputs. The authors use a multi-disciplinary framework to explore the relevance and suitability of Co-Creation as a broadly applicable methodology to challenge marginalisation in various contexts, primarily in Western Europe and Latin America. This comparative approach provides opportunities to test Co-Creation in various contexts and to address different forms of marginalisation including ethnic, racial, social, postcolonial and generational inequalities, and to discuss these experiences in the light of international debates on cohesive cities and active citizenship.