This thesis adopts a Cultural Industries framework to examine how Queensland's arts council network has, through the provision of arts products and services, contributed to the vitality, health and sustainability of Queensland's regional communities. It charts the history of the network, its configuration and impact since 1961, with particular focus on the years 2001 - 2004, envisages future trends, and provides an analysis of key issues which may be used to guide future policies and programs. Analysis is guided by a Cultural Industries understanding of the arts embedded in everyday life, and views the arts as a range of activities which, by virtue of their aesthetic and symbolic dimensions, enhance human existence through their impact on both the quality and style of human life. Benefits include enhanced leisure and entertainment options, and educational, social, health, personal growth, and economic outcomes, and other indirect benefits which enrich environment and lifestyle. Queensland Arts Council (QAC) and its network of branches has been a dominant factor in the evolution of Queensland's cultural environment since the middle of the 20th century. Across the state, branches became the public face of the arts, drove cultural agendas, initiated and managed activities, advised governments, wrote cultural policies, lobbied, raised funds and laboured to realise cultural facilities and infrastructure. In the early years of the 21st century, QAC operates within a complex, competitive and rapidly changing environment in which orthodox views of development, oriented in terms of a left / right, or bottom up / top down dichotomy, are breaking down, and new convergent models emerge. These new models recognise synergies between artistic, social, economic and political agendas, and unite and energise them in the realm of civil society. QAC is responding by refocusing policies and programs to embrace these new models and by developing new modes of community engagement and arts facilitation. In 1999, a major restructure of the arts council network saw suffragan branches become autonomous Local Arts Councils (LACs), analogous to local Cultural Industry support organisations. The resulting network of affiliated LACs provides a potentially highly effective mechanism for the delivery of arts related products and services, the decentralisation of cultural production, and the nurturing across the state of Creative Community Cultures which equip communities, more than any other single asset, to survive and prosper through an era of unsettling and relentless change. Historical, demographic, behavioural (participation), and attitudinal data are combined to provide a picture of arts councils in seven case study sites, and across the network. Typical arts council members are characterised as omnivorous cultural consumers and members of a knowledge class, and the leadership of dedicated community minded people is identified as the single most critical factor determining the extent of an LAC's activities and its impact on community. Analysis of key issues leads to formulation of eight observations, discussed with reference to QAC and LACs, which might guide navigation in the regional arts field. These observations are then reformulated as Eight Principles Of Effective Regional Arts Facilitation, which provide a framework against which we might evaluate arts policy and practice.

A partir de 1948 la société palestinienne est déstabilisée suite à la guerre qui voit la perte de la Palestine historique. La grande majorité des Palestiniens se retrouve dispersée dans les pays de la région et au-delà de la Méditerranée. Aussi l'élite ancienne construite à partir de fondements religieux, familiaux ou de richesses foncières se retrouve elle aussi expulsée de ses terres. Elle perd donc ses positions de privilèges, désemparée et désorientée, elle ne reviendra plus jamais au devant de la scène nationale palestinienne. Ce sont les hommes qui dirigeront la lutte pour la récupération de la Palestine de 1948, ensuite et à partir de 1967 contre l'occupation de la Cisjordanie et de la bande de Gaza (partie de la Palestine historique) d'abord sous forme de lutte armée ensuite par la diplomatie et la politique de négociations, qui deviennent les nouvelles figures sur la scène politique palestinienne. Ils sont originaires non de l'ancienne bourgeoisie religieuse et familiale mais de la classe moyenne des villes et des zones rurales qui vont recruter dans les camps de réfugiés les futurs combattants. Ce sont les nouveaux dirigeants. C'est un processus qui a commencé dès la moitié des années 1960 pour se consolider avec la création de partis et mouvements palestiniens opérant dans les divers pays d'accueil de la région. Cette nouvelle élite se conforme aux changements et aléas de la diplomatie internationale et d'un rapport de force inégal face à Israël tout au long du conflit israélo-palestinien. Pour comprendre l'évolution des élites palestiniennes il fallait donc adopter l'approche historique des événements et faits marquants touchant le peuple palestinien depuis 1948 jusqu'à l'après-Oslo (1993) ; vingt ans d'Autorité Nationale Palestinienne caractérisée par une souveraineté limitée aux principales villes de la Cisjordanie et de la bande de Gaza, au contraire de ce qu'avaient stipulé les Accords de 1993 : ceux-ci devaient progresser vers le statut définitif des Territoires occupés en 1967. C'est dans ces territoires occupés depuis 1967, en Cisjordanie et dans la bande de Gaza, que se situe donc notre terrain de recherche. À partir de 1993 les dirigeants rapatriés de l'exil formant les membres dirigeants de l'Autorité nationale, vont favoriser les initiatives de palestiniens, en particulier, les figures proéminentes des villes, dans la création d'établissements universitaires. Ceci est entrepris non seulement pour répondre aux besoins d'éducation d'une population jeune dans un acte de résilience face à l'occupation, mais aussi pour répondre aux exigences du projet de construction des institutions du futur Etat à l'intérieur des Territoires de 1967. De nouvelles compétences, de nouveaux savoir-faire devenaient nécessaires dans cette nouvelle situation du post-Oslo où, en parallèle à la lutte politique, l'enseignement supérieur devenait un enjeu vital pour l'existence de la société palestinienne dont l'ambition est d'avoir une place à part entière parmi les nations modernes du monde. D'autres figures émergeront à partir de ces universités pour former une nouvelle et différente élite qui gouvernera dans un contexte de règles démocratiques où le pouvoir ne sera pas exclusivement dans la main de quelques dirigeants. L'OLP, dès 1990, va créer une Université pour tous, l'Université Ouverte Al-Quds (l'UOQ), se basant sur le mode ouvert et à distance. C'était un choix devenu urgent pour surmonter les difficultés et les entraves qu'imposait l'occupation. L'UOQ connaîtra un grand succès comme en témoigne le nombre grossissant de ses inscrits dans un contexte de tension. Plus tard et malgré son offre limitée dans les disciplines d'études, elle va attirer les jeunes à la recherche d'un métier, les adultes pour poursuivre des études inachevées, les femmes pour la proximité de ses centres d'études. / Starting from 1948 the Palestinian society is destabilized by the war which saw the loss of historic Palestine. The vast majority of Palestinians are scattered in the countries of the region and beyond the Mediterranean. The old elite originating from religious, family or land ownership backgrounds lost also all its possessions and, consequently, all its influential positions. Helpless and disoriented, this elite will never return to the forefront of the Palestinian national scene. It is the men who lead the struggle for the recovery of Palestine of 1948, and then, from 1967 onwards, against the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (part of historic Palestine), first in an armed struggle then through diplomacy and political negotiations, who become the new figures of the Palestinian political scene under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO. They come from outside the well-known religious families and the Palestinian bourgeoisie, but rather from the middle class of towns or from rural areas who will recruit in the refugee camps the future fighters. These are the new leaders. It is a process that began in the mid-1960s and was progressively consolidated through the creation of Palestinian parties and movements operating in various host countries in the region. This new elite adapts itself to the changes and vagaries of international diplomacy and to an imbalance of power against Israel throughout the years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In order to understand the process of the forming of Palestinian elites it was necessary to adopt the approach of historical events and facts related to the Palestinian people since 1948 until the post-Oslo (1993). The last twenty years saw a Palestinian National Authority characterized by sovereignty limited to the main cities of the West Bank and Gaza strip, contrary to what had been stipulated in the Oslo Agreements of 1993 : these were to lead to a final settlement concerning the status of the Territories occupied in 1967. The focus of our research is therefore the society in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Starting from 1993, the leaders returning from exile and who formed the ruling members of the National Authority supported the initiatives of Palestinians, in particular, the prominent figures of the cities, in the creation and development of academic establishments and universities as a way not only to meet with the need of education of the young in a resiliency act to face occupation, but also to respond to the demands of building the future State institutions inside the 1967 lines. New skills, new competences were required in this new phase of the post-Oslo evolution where, along the political struggle, higher education became vital to the existence of the Palestinian society who ambitions to have a full-fledged position among the modern states of the world. Other new figures will arise from these universities to form a new, different elite in a context of democracy rules where power will not be exclusively in the hands of a few rulers. The PLO in 1990, had created a University for all, the al-Quds Open University (QOU), based on the mode of open and distance learning. This was a choice made urgent by the restrictions and the obstacles imposed by the occupying forces. QOU became particularly attractive as evidenced by the large numbers of its registered students and as the situation grew more tense. Later on and despite its limited offer of study disciplines it drew students needing to secure job, adults wanting to pursue unfinished studies, women who found it easy to access the University study centers.