We are using five creative tensions to frame a comparative transnational analysis of the practices of community arts in popular education. While these tensions, or dialectics, have often been constructed as binaries, we want to keep them alive, as they represent dynamics that characterize the deeper intentions of community arts and popular education work. The case studies will investigate how these tensions are understood, engaged and reconciled in specific projects.

There are five over-arching tensions to be explored: process/product, aesthetics/ethics, cultural reclamation/cultural reinvention, spiritual/political, and body/earth.

1) Process/product
Community arts is perhaps most distinguished from conventional fine arts by its emphasis on the process as opposed to the product, just as popular education emphasizes the metalearning that goes on through a liberatory process of education. The learning by participants is central, and embraces personal, social, technical and artistic development. The product still has an important place in the process, particularly as it represents peoples' stories and creativity. But what happens to people in the process - the development of confidence and connection, a sense of their own (individual and collective) power and their capacity to make their own history - is central.

2) Aesthetics/ethics
If community arts are contested within the art world, it often relates to issues of quality or 'standards.' There is a concern that if community members contribute to an artistic production, the aesthetic quality will be lost if it isn't controlled by a trained artist. In a multicultural context, the debate is even more complex, as definitions of aesthetics are certainly shaped by culture. European notions of aesthetics equate a certain notion of beauty with art, which has ultimately come to be seen as entertainment, or an ethic of the market. Questions of ethics feed this creative tension, because the predominant concern for process named above, implies a commitment to ethical issues, which prioritize democratic practice, equity, self-determination, and action for social justice.

3) Cultural reclamation/cultural reinvention
The greatest impetus for community arts in popular education has come from marginalized communities, who have not only lacked access to dominant education and art, but have had their identities suppressed and denied by mainstream media and art. The use of art and media in community cultural development with communities in a diasporic context involves the important task of recovering histories, practices, and expressions that have been negated by dominant culture. On the other hand, cultures are not static or one-dimensional. In a globalized world, we are all multi-cultured and the intersecting identities and intermixing of cultural practices means that we are constantly creating new hybrid cultures. This tension is an important one to explore, not only in our diverse diasporic communities in the north, but also through south-north exchanges, where the dominance of western (American) culture is a critical obstacle to self-determination in the south.

4) Spiritual/political
The mixing (and clashing) of cultural values has highlighted as well diverse cultural frames around what is considered 'spiritual' and what is considered 'political.' Western industrial democracies and the commercialized culture that defines them have promoted a narrow definition of politics, for example, often limited to electoral processes or representative democratic systems. The political has become commercialized in North America. Latin American educators and activists, on the other hand, usually approach everything as political, and see community arts and popular education as inherently political.

While popular educators may acknowledge the pervasiveness of politics in all activity, they is a resistance (rooted in Marxist rationality) to considering spirituality as integral to peoples' identity and a community's development. In the northern diasporic context, both Aboriginal peoples as well as new immigrants have challenged the separation of the spiritual and the political, as they have challenged the fragmentation of thought and action, spirit and matter, so dominant in western culture.

5) Body/earth
Another binary that is prevalent in western thought is the separation of humans from the rest of nature. Community arts not only engages people in more holistic ways (i.e., tapping physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energies) but also can make more conscious the connection or integration of our bodies with the larger body (environment) of which we are a part, challenging nature/culture and reason. Our projects can challenge human-centric ways of thinking and promote bio-centrism, which take into account all living things.

We are suggesting two additional creative tensions that speak particularly to the VIVA! Project, and that would help us maintain a critical perspective on the overall exchange.

University/community
The partners in the VIVA! Project include four NGOs and three universities (that have a community-based orientation). We want to be mindful of the contradictions created by our different locations within our particular work contexts. We each have access to different kinds of resources, and, in general, universities represent more elitist interests. There is always a danger that the project gets shaped more by academic interests, given that research is more legitimized and supported within universities, thus there is more time and resources available for such work. On the other hand, we believe that there can be fruitful collaborations between NGOs and universities, if we keep our communications open and honest, and attempt to redress the structural inequities underlying the relationship.

Diversity/equity
Just as we bring a critical analysis of power to the community projects included as case studies, we want to bring a similar analysis to our own dynamics as a team. There are many different relations of power intersecting within our relationships - north/south dynamics, gender, race/ethnicity, age, educational background, religion, etc. We need to be able to name these dynamics as they are impacting our work, acknowledge them, and find ways to work with them and beyond them.

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