Popular arts and education in community-based participatory research (CBPR): On the subtle craft of developing and enhancing channels for clear conversations among CBPR partners

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is a methodology hinged on flexible power relationships and unobstructed flow of expert and local knowledge among project partners. Success in CBPR depends on authentic dialogue, free flow of information, and trust. But accurate, unmediated, and timely channels of communication, while key to successful CBPR, are difficult to create and maintain. As participatory methodologies evolve, popular arts and education techniques have increasingly taken center stage as culturally fluent, bidirectional modalities for conveying information, building responsive channels for communication, promoting policy, and enhancing the effectiveness of grassroots organizing.