Jon Dean

Jon Dean has been working in the overlapping fields of community-based participatory arts and adult education for over thirty years, developing and delivering experiential learning and cultural programmes across the UK, Romania and beyond. At the core of these diverse activities, he has consistently embedded the idea that community arts is an aesthetic methodology rooted in differentiated and negotiated strategies designed to place participants at the very core of creative expression and artistic production. Ultimately, a process of personal, social and critical engagement structured to create a living cultural democracy. Throughout his career Jon has worked within a wide range of public and social contexts, including schools, colleges, community centres, libraries, hospitals, day centres, residential units, therapeutic centres, play settings, museums, galleries, urban forests, art spaces and generic street/neighbourhood locations.