AS PUBLIC RELATIONSHIP APPLICATION COUNTINABILITY OF PARTICIPATED ART PROJECTS VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION METHOD: A Case of “Women’s are Meeting with Literature Project”

Observations of artistic activities’ transformative influence in social sphere by social
scientists have played an essential role in the rise of “participative art” works worldwide.
Within the scope of the public relations practices performed by municipal administrations
particularly in order to promote the cultural development of society, noteworthy examples
of works to enable citizen’s active participation in artistic activities occur in Turkey as
well. Within these practices, the project carried out by Antalya Municipality in 2009,
namely “Women Meet Literature” has been designed with a view to help women who are
living in disadvantageous districts build solution-driven behavior patterns instead of
perceiving the difficulties in their social life particularly in their family life, as
“irresolvable”. In the wake of the workshops carried out with the participation of Turkey’s
famous authoresses and poetesses, it has been observed that the act of writing has a
stimulating effect on women’s courage to diagnose problems.
This study evaluates, through the case of “Women Meets Literature” project as a public
relations practice, the project realization process and outputs of the case regarding the
use of “participative art” in mass education, within the context of ‘participative art’,
‘mass education’ and ‘public relations practices’; and it discusses the contributions of
distant education to sustainability of project based public relations practices.