Arts and cultural practice are gaining attention in numerous disciplines and sectors as a vehicle for community building, and to promote wellbeing and social change. In this article we overview the links between community and liberation psychologies, community arts, and public pedagogy. We put forward the notion of community pedagogies to capture where these areas intersect. The different contributions that make up this special issue are examples of the similarities and divergences in the mobilisation of arts and cultural practices across different countries and in relation to different issues. Community pedagogies seek to challenge oppression, marginalisation and social exclusion and it draws from diverse critical epistemological and methodological tools, is participatory, and guided by relational ethics.