The transition taking place within the Dutch healthcare system has been a central theme in politics and public debate for decades. The recent changes again demand the full attention of researchers and educators in the field. In this article, we reflect on the current ideology and goals of the transition and link these to the range of ideas that lie behind the ideal of “community care”. Additionally, we pose the question of what these changes may mean for research and education within the social care domain in general and for our research group in particular. The AUAS Community Care Research Group covers a variety of research topics that are clustered into three “streams”: informal care, social inclusion and network strengthening. Within these streams, we focus on care by society and link this to professional caregiving. We will also explain why our research interests are specifically relevant in the context of the transition of the healthcare system, as this transition explicitly accentuates the importance of a “caring society” and thus a change in role for the care professional. We will also reflect on how we can best translate our research results into the curriculum of education programmes for students who will soon work as professionals in the social and/or care domains.
In 2017, Denmark sent the first digital ambassador, Casper Klynge, to Silicon Valley. The aim of this move of ‘techplomacy’ was, as Klynge explained, not simply to distribute greetings notes by the Danish queen. Rather, the intention was to ‘update diplomacy’ based on the recognition that a few tech companies have obviously become much ‘more influential than some nation states’. Klynge framed the new political course in the manner of a well-known old but still utterly contemporary mantra: ‘There is no alternative’. In a similar vein, Denmark’s Foreign Minister Anders Samuelson highlighted the importance of the step as follows: ‘Just as we engage in a diplomatic dialogue with countries, we also need to establish and prioritize comprehensive relations with tech actors, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and so on. (…) The idea is, we see a lot of companies and new technologies that will in many ways involve and be part of everyday life of citizens in Denmark.'
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Een stoet van kleur en klanken is een documentaire diehet muzikale en maatschappelijke traject beschrijft van Luc Mishalle (1953), een Belgisch saxofonist, componist en bezieler van de muziekeducatieve organisatie MET-X die bekend staat om zijn multiculturele en UrbanArts projecten. In het boek krijgen belangrijke thema's van het recente culturele leven in België vorm. Je ziet de zich ontwikkelende verhouding tussen de autochtone en de nieuwe Belgen. Je ziet de geboorte en de wildgroei van culturele hoofdsteden en de doorbraak van de ideologie van de creative cities. Je ziet de institutionalisering van de culturele marge en de recuperatie van de anarchistische energie van de jaren zestig en zeventig. Er wandelt een parade van kleurrijke muzikanten en beeldenmakers voorbij, die samen elk op hun eigen wijze toeteren en blazen, trommelen en slaan.
