29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
How Are We Becoming Idiots in Arts Education? Issues of Democracy and Interculturality in a Collaborative Self-Study
Ana Paula Caetano1, Ana Luísa Paz2
1UIDEF, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal; 2UIDEF, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Presenting Author: Caetano, Ana Paula;
Paz, Ana Luísa
What have we learned from the work we set since 2016 while teaching collaboratively and developing participatory projects with our PhD students in the Arts Education? This initial question resonates an open process, often experienced in discomfort, through the imponderability of the creative and participatory processes that two teachers originally from Education area experienced during their commitment to a PhD in the Arts Education.
This paper aims at contributing towards a discussion of the research training within Arts Education, by setting the example of the idiotic events as proposed by Atkinson (2022) as a core to a democratic, participatory and intercultural teaching and learning environment in Higher Education.
By idiotic events Atkinson (2022, p. 762) means “a provocation for thought and practice, a questioning presence”. As an idiotic event “does not tell us how to proceed but confers on a situation the power, the challenge, to make us think, as do some art practices produced, performed or orchestrated by artists, or some art practices of children or students”. Then again, this notion “is one that may have the power to make us think or act differently, but it does not offer criteria or guidance by which to do so”; otherwise, this sort of happening “punctures established procedures and produces the potential for a space of speculation in which we might conceive practice beyond the rules and grammars of established practices, a speculative space in which practice can be re-imagined and reconstructed beyond the borders of established thinking” (p. 762). By sorting a way into the idiotic events, Atkison updates and extends the idea of the events of learning that has also been amplified by other researchers (Pardal, 2022; Paz & Caetano, 2019, 2020).
Having the notion of idiotic event as an inspiration to tackle our professional development narratives, built within a self-study, we aim at discussing our learning - and unlearning (Biesta, 2014; Baldacchino, 2019) - processes, considering our intercultural and collaborative class environments. In fact, all class groups carry important cultural differences, such as the country of origin (mostly from Europe and Latin America), and come from a wide spectrum of areas, such as Dance, Theatre, Visual Arts, etc. This heterogeneity continuously makes us experience idiotic events, as the cultural gap is very easily provoked during the class dialogues.
Ever since we started to teach at this course we kept diaries, notes, and also developed a wide range of other sorts of productions (drawings, paintings, etc.), which give an account to this sort of events and that are to become the main sources of this research. The main aspect we wish to understand acknowledges the importance of our student’s defying presence and collaboration, but is centered at our own learning processes as teachers and researchers.
Questions such as: 1) how have we produced a teaching and learning ethics? And 2) How have the idiotic events borne a negation within a democratic framework? are to be key elements of this inquiry.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedWe departed from the idea of reflecting together in a more traditional collaborative self-study project (Withdrawn to ensure anonymity) but ended up absorbing an important lesson from our teaching: to embed our self-study study within an arts-based approach (Samaras, 2019). We initially intended to write narratives, but soon opted for a wide variety of processes (Hamilton et al., 2008). In fact, as we planned a self-study centered in our narratives, we soon found we both kept personal/professional diaries. Therefore, we developed the work based on writing diaries centered on the same universe of experiences, compiling extremely fragmented and dispersed records, focused on a multiplicity of spheres of action. The material produced included fieldwork notes on the educational processes, transcriptions and talks and interactions, poems and poetic narratives, reflective texts on the writing itself, drawings, paintings, photographs, among other kinds of records.
At the same time, the collaborative work is considered an important frame of our teaching and research, and thus the ethical and knowledge implications between teachers and teachers and students are also to be considered within participatory processes (e.g., Caetano & Paz, 2018; Caetano et al., 2019, 2020).
To gather and analyze the material, we focused on selected idiotic events that were picked by us. The process of selecting idiotic events is in itself a challenge, as sometimes we are not syntonised into classifying the same happenings as such, or have not mentioned the same events in our writings. Thus the highly subjective process of the identification of these events was a collaborative challenge.
We will revisit our previous writings, our diaries and our publications, but also others emerging from our actual practices where we experience new disruptions and regain new insights and will bring them to develop new questionings.
Ethical procedures were considered and all the persons involved are to remain anonymous and they were all contacted and given permission to publicly expose their contribution.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIdiotic events made us reinvent our work, and reflecting on them even today brings new insights to continue learning with them. Especially by approaching teacher issues and class contents with a writing strategy, we found “that poetic communal self-study extended reflection and engendered reflection" (Coogler et al., 2022, p. 258).
One idiotic event relates to an interest we both share outside classes, the writing of poetry. In a very spontaneous way, we started to include poetic writing in our classes, but the frontal rejection or resistance to this practice came many times the response from all the students, or the majority. They did not claim that they shouldn't write in that genre, but not there, inside the classroom. This refusal happened in different years, in different settings.
For example, in 21/22, the class proposal was to write a collective poem on the motto “how I am becoming a researcher”. The idea was received with huge enthusiasm, but working on the text in the classroom, a cold silence was felt… Would we be able to take the students on this poetic adventure? And we were reminded about another year in which the teachers proposed a free written text to the Art Education PhD class and as the students did not share their writing, the teachers decided to go ahead with their poems, creating a negative effect in the class. We realized afterwards that the class felt intimidated. We could not repeat the same mistake, especially as we became aware, as the academic year went on, of the same decorum and circumspection as regards sharing. So, it would make no sense for the teachers to write the poem based on what the student said; instead we would all have to participate horizontally in this process
ReferencesAuthor & Author (date). Withdrawn to ensure anonymity.
Atkinson, D. (2022) Inheritance, disobedience and speculation in pedagogic practice, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 43(5), 749-765.
Baldacchino, J. (2019. Art as Unlearning. Routledge.
Biesta, G. (2014). Freeing Teaching from Learning: Opening Up Existential Possibilities in Educational Relationships. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 34(3), 229–243.
Caetano, A.P. & Paz, A.L. (2018). Investigar em Educação Artística, construindo uma comunidade dialógica, rondando os abismos. In J. P. Queirós & R. Oliveira, Arte e Ensino: Propostas de Resistência (pp. 49-60). CIEBA.
Caetano, A.P., Paz, A.L., A., Rocha, A. & Marques, C. (2020). Narrativas de investigação e formação em Educação Artística, no Ensino Superior – A escrita dialógica em devir. Educação, Artes e Inclusão, 45, 8-32.
Caetano, A.P., Paz, A.L., Narduela, A., Pardal, A., Rocha, A., Ré, S., Silva Correia, C., Marques, C., Silva, H.R., Andrade, J., Carvalho, M. & Meireles, T. (2019). As Artes no Ensino Superior – ‘Pedagogias do evento’ no Doutoramento em Educação Artística. In S. Gonçalves & J.J. Costa (eds.), Diversidade no Ensino Superior (pp. 239-260). CINEP/IPC.
Coogler, C.H., Melchior., S & Shelton, S.A. (2022) Poetic Suturing: The Value of Communal Reflextion in Self-Study of Teaching Experiences. Studying Teacher Education, 18(3), 258-275.
Edge, C.U., & Olan, E.L. (2021). Learning to breathe again: Found poems and critical friendship as methodological tools in self-study of teaching practices. Studying Teacher Education, 17 (2), 228-252.
Hamilton, M.L., Smith, L. & Worthington (2008). Fitting the Methodology with the Research: An exploration of narrative, self-study and auto-ethnography. Studying Teacher Education,4 (1), 17-28.
Hopper, T. & Sanford, K. (2008). Using poetic representation to support the development of teachers' knowledge. Studying Teacher Education, 4(1), 29-45.
Paz, A.L. & Caetano, A.P. (2020). Arts education and writing as research and pedagogic practice: Critical perspectives in higher education or how we became the teachers yet to come. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 19(2), 185-201.
Paz, A.L. & Caetano, A.P. (2019). Uma pedagogia do evento no doutoramento em educação artística. In A.P. Caetano, A.L. Paz, C. Carvalho & I. Freire (Eds.). Processos participativos e artísticos em contextos de diversidade (pp. 19-36). Colibri.
Pardal, A. (2022). No acontecer das práticas artísticas contemporâneas : Processos e significações de aprendizagens colaborativas [Doctoral thesis, Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa]. Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa. https://repositorio.ul.pt/handle/10451/54665
Samaras, A. (2019). Explorations in using arts‐based self‐study methods. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(6), 719-736.
29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
Experiments in Digital Studio Spaces – Collaborative Arts Educational Research of Bachelor Art Education Students and Senior Researchers
Tobias Frenssen, Laura Tamassia, Johan Ardui
University Colleges Leuven-Limburg (UCLL, Belgium)
Presenting Author: Frenssen, Tobias;
Tamassia, Laura
In this project, bachelor arts education students and senior researchers conducted collaborative research on digital learning environments in the context of arts education. The aim of the study is to look for new relationships to working in digital environments. The students involved in the research project have completed a part of their education with the use of digital learning environments because of corona. Being now in their final year, they currently undertake their training in the physical studios of our university of applied sciences.
Research question:
What new relationships to educational digitalisation, which transcend a purely functional approach, can we discover together with students in arts education during artistic collective digital workshops and thereby
inspire and challenge students to think and act differently about the digital dimension in arts educational practice?
Conceptual or theoretical framework:
Rationale and project objective
Following the corona crisis, education has been engulfed by a wave of digitalisation since March 2020. Under pressure by the circumstances, efficiency and functionality had to be achieved and teachers were forced en masse to add a digital alternative to their lessons. Digital resources were tools to achieve set goals. Due to the external pressure, there was neither time nor space for fundamental reflection on the meaningful use of digital resources in education. This project aims to make time and space for this in-depth reflection. Together with students in arts education, we look for new relationships between education and digitality that (a) transcend pure functionality and that (b) can do justice to the subject-didactic uniqueness at stake in being a teacher. The underlying hypothesis is that other relationships are possible than the standard relationships to which one was obliged by the situation and which could be considered by automatism as the only possible relationship.
Through the diversions of art
Art plays a central role in this research. Art eminently searches for new relationships to reality and, in the meantime, has previously and more thoroughly searched for forms of digitality that go beyond a mere application of usual classical forms of digital tools. The innovative approach of this project is that, for this research, we draw inspiration from the way in which art has studied the question of functionality in education on the one hand and functionality of the digital on the other.
Project design
The project design foresees for the organisation of different artistic collective digital workshops. Each workshop has a focus of arts as a studio practice. At stake is the search for new relationships between education and digitalisation. During the digital workshops, we collected rich qualitative data through (digital) participatory observation. We will process this ethnographic data through mappings and the creation of narratives (ethnofiction).
Currently, we are in the second project year. Last year, we set up several digital practices in the context of arts education. We combined this with literature reviews. Artworks were also often used as sources. At the end of the first project year, we designed a didactic framework, from which digital art education workshops could be developed. This framework gave rise to the digital art education practices we set up this year.
European dimension:
The use of digital learning environments is not only an issue in Belgium, but in many (European) countries. We want to question the efficient approaches in this project. In European (arts) education, a frequently asked question is how education in a digital environment can have a more explorative, searching and collective character.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study combined several research methods. Ethnography plays the most important role. In addition, the senior researchers also conducted literature reviews.
1. literature review (2021-2022)
In this first phase, a framework was developed for (open) guidance of the workshops. Based on a literature study and brainstorming sessions within the research team, we examined how, through concrete actions, collective 'digital spaces' with the desired properties could be created.
2. digital ethnography (2022-2023)
Roll out different digital workshops; in which we collect qualitative data through participatory observation.
In this phase, the studio spaces prepared by research method 1 took place. During the workshops, ethnographic data were collected by the students and researchers.
In terms of conducting ethnographic research in an arts education context, interesting things have happened throughout this project. The three senior researchers involved have extensive experience in ethnographic research. This experience took place in physical, educational contexts. The students were introduced in ethnography. The handbook 'Becoming an educational ethnographer', edited by Sancho-Gill and Hernandez-Hernandez (2021), was used as a guide. Soon, students started looking for interesting ways to engage ethnographically in digital environments. The identity of the students involved showed great skill in dealing with digital media.
With different communities, we engaged digitally in this project. In each case, students engaged with fellow students from the arts education program. The senior researchers worked with students and with teacher groups from the field. In each case, the researchers had been part of the chosen communities for some time; they became at home in them.
This approach allowed us to come home to a community as an ethnographic researcher. Each time, the researchers opted for participatory observation.
The journey we have taken with each community is rather short. Because of that, the research method could be described as short term theoretically informed ethnography, as described by Pink and Morgan (2013).
“…it both maintains the first hand involvement of the ethnographer as a core element in the way that she or he comes to know about other people’s lives and experiences, takes a more deliberate and interventional approach to that of long-term participant observation and is also theoretically engaged. … However, our point is that if this is what we are seeking to understand, it is useful to go beyond observation to create short-term research engagements that benefit from the production of forms of intensity, empathy and an ongoing ethnographic-analytical-theoretical dialog.” (p. 353)
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe technical aspects of the online platforms proved to be very recalcitrant during the collective workshops. Getting beyond this was not easy. With the various workshop, we succeeded, but it was no easy task.
The urgency behind the project depends on contextual factors over time. The project was born in the corona period. At that time, there was a great hunger to work with arts education from an online didactic uniqueness. Meanwhile, the physical art studios in our school are open again. When students then work digitally, The digital environments are only used as quick communications outside school moments (e.g. what props should we bring for a rehearsal tomorrow). The efficient approach of the existing tools then seems to be sufficient.
The shared collaboration between senior researchers and arts students made for an interesting trajectory. Thus, the methodology of ethnography was challenged, because students collected the diary fragments in other ways (vlogs, audiovisual processing...). This provided a new approach to methodology.
There were also challenges. The students were involved for 1 academic year. The senior researchers work on the project for 3 years. This also calls for alignment.
ReferencesBiesta, G. (2020). Educational research: An unorthodox introduction. London: Bloomsbury
Publishers.
Meirieu, P. (2020, May 2). Philippe Meirieu: “Laten we stoppen met het totemiseren van
digitale technologie”. Retrieved from Oproep voor een democratische school:
https://www.skolo.org/nl/2020/05/02/philippe-meirieu-laten-we-stoppen-met-het
totemiseren-van-digitale-technologie/
Pink, S., & Morgan, J. (2013). Short-Term Ethnography: Intense Routesto Knowing. Symbolic
Interaction, 351-361.
Sancho-Gil, J. M., & Hernandez-Hernandez, F. (2021). Becoming an educational
ethnographer - The challanges and Opportunities of Undertaking Research. Abingdon/New
York: Routledge.
29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
AI and Education: the Contribution of Visual Aesthetic Experience to Educate Thinking About Differences and Participatory Democracy in Primary School
Francesca Pileggi
Università di Torino, Italy
Presenting Author: Pileggi, Francesca
Topic. The humanization potential of AITs is currently threatened by various problems, including the risk of homologation of thought and behaviour, that is linked to the current relationship of man with images. Because of the production and diffusion of an unlimited and accelerated visual content generated by the AITs, man is not granted the "necessary distance to face the uncertainty of reflection and imagination" (Morelli, 2010, p. 43), which are absolutely necessary to demonstrate a critical, responsible, participatory and democratic citizenship.
The art created with the AI would allow the new generations to approach early and critically visual culture and contemporary issues related to it, in order to encourage a continuous critical interpretation of the reality and risks attached to the AITs.
Research question. What is the contribution that the visual art experience generated with the AITs can offer in primary school to obtain a critical thinking on the potentialities and problems related to the AITs?
Objective. The paper aims to clarify the potential and the recommendations offered by the current learning experiences through visual art generated with AITs carried out mainly in primary school to promote a critical thinking on the potentialities and problems related to the AITs.
Theoretical Framework. The current human-AITs relationship, due to its complexity, presents great problems because of the pervasive characteristics of the technologies themselves. At the same time, however, this relationship has a huge potential for humanisation that is still to be explored (Ferraris, 2021).
The problematic aspects concern at least two areas: the field of thought and the field of aesthetic experience. As for the first area, we can see how some mechanisms of digital capitalism, directing the modes of thought and behaviour of man, can cause the homologation to the unique thinking (Stiegler, 2015).
As for the second field, that of aesthetic experience, the AITs, because of their diffusion in everyday life, influence and orient our own social categories of aesthetic judgment, becoming the new parameter that dominates the market (Manovich, 2020).
In order to understand the inherent potential of humanization that characterizes the human-AITs relationship, it is necessary to take a step back that can highlight the original root of this relationship. In fact, it was thanks to technology that, since ancient times, man has been able to survive and develop some of his main features.
The main experience that recalls the origin of the human-technical relationship is that linked to art, which is a fundamental and indispensable stage of the evolution of the human species. Many studies based on the possible origin and on the subsequent development of human intelligence, have highlighted the original interdependence between the hand (which allows the technical ability to manipulate objects and to produce artistic works) and the brain (Leroi-Gourhan, 1977; McGinn, 2015).
The birth of art, connected to the moment when man began to produce technical instruments, imply a particular skill in their use. In this way, he was able to overcome the idea of existence in terms of life and death and, at the same time, he was able to transcend material reality to find more hidden meanings (Chiurazzi, 2021).
Consequently, new generations need an early and universal formation that aims to recover and increase the humanization potential that exists in the human-technical relationship and to train the critical and creative skills necessary to manage the current critical issues. A possible way of learning for primary school children could involve art itself. Among the different aesthetic experiences, a very promising one is that of visual art made through the AITs (Biasini, Selvaggi & Catricalà, 2020).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedFrom November 2022 to January 2023, a systematic review of literature has been conducted on scientific databases (Jstor, Ebsco, Scopus) in order to clarify the contribution that visual art experience, generated with the AITs, can offer in primary school to promote a critical thinking on the potentialities and problems related to the AITs.
It has been conducted with inclusion of criteria of time range (2014-2023), types of publications (su peer-reviewed articles and book chapters) and contents (“AI and Primary Education and AI arts”). The selection of the literature, carried out according to the typical phases of the systematic survey (Peterson et al., 2017), led to the identification of 30 studies, 5 of which are perfectly relevant to the research objective. After analysing, coding, classifying and categorizing them, 5 central themes emerged that were useful to answer the research question. These themes are related to the technological tools used to carry out the training, to the educational approach, the disciplinary areas of realization of the experiences, and to the learning objectives and its limits. On a methodological level, therefore, as regards technological tools, it emerged that AR, smart glasses, smartphones, tablet computers and the micro-bit device were used (Chen, Lin & Chien, 2022; Lu, Lo & Syu, 2021).
As for the educational approach, the most recurrent one was based on collaborative learning (Chen, Lin & Chien, 2022; Li, Luo, Zhao, Zhu, Ma & Liao, 2022). It allows the active participation of children to the artistic process, offering a space that stimulates their imagination and that allows them to express their opinions and their willingness to participate and to act concretely (Blanco & Cidrás, 2022). Aesthetic experiences contribute to the construction of the subjectivity of individuals through the reworking of non-homologating scenarios that stimulate children to be not only simple consumers, but also producers of visual art (Gutiérrez-Cabello Barragán, Guerra Guezuraga & Peña-Zabala, 2021).
As regards the disciplinary areas of implementation, such experiences support the areas of STEM and arts education, influencing positively both learning and motivation towards science, and the development of imagination and quality of artistic performance (Chen, Lin & Chien, 2022; Li, Luo, Zhao, Zhu, Ma & Liao, 2022; Perignat & Katz-Buonincontro, 2019).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsAfter having analysed, codified, classified and categorized these studies and the themes emerged, it is possible to say that the visual art experience generated with the AITs can allow to obtain these results related a critical approach with visual culture and a critical interpretation of the reality and risks attached to the AITs.
Firstly it allows to develop the key skills of both digital competence and critical thinking, problem solving skills, creativity, ability to communicate and to establish interpersonal and intercultural relationships (Blanco & Cidrás, 2022; Li, Luo, Zhao, Zhu, Ma & Liao, 2022; Shih-Yun, Chih-Cheng, Jia-Yu, 2021).
These experiences highlighted the importance for children to take an active and participatory role in the artistic production, emphasizing the value of group experiences (creative workshops, cooperative learning or brainstorming).
Despite these potential related to learning objectives, the study also revealed some limits in three respects. The first one is the difficulty of properly integrating art and technology into the school curriculum so that they both have the same value (Blanco & Cidrás, 2022; Lu, Lo & Syu, 2021). The second aspect concerns the need to adequately train teachers for this purpose, to ensure the effectiveness of educational experiences and to maintain a high level of motivation of children (Chen, Lin & Chien, 2022; Li, Luo, Zhao, Zhu, Ma & Liao, 2022).
The third aspect concerns the need to extend these experiences to the humanities and social disciplines in order to promote a complete formation of the subjects, that educates to think about how to contribute to the development of a creative society, and at the same time explores the potential offered by an interdisciplinary approach (Epstein, 2012; Huerta & Cristóbal, 2020; Li, Luo, Zhao, Zhu, Ma & Liao, 2022; Lu, Lo & Syu, 2021).
ReferencesBalzola, A. & Rosa, P. (2011). L’arte fuori di sé. Un manifesto per l’età post-tecnologica, Milano: Feltrinelli
Biasini Selvaggi, C. & Catricalà, V. (2020). Arte e tecnologia del terzo millennio. Scenari e protagonisti. Firenze: Electa
Blanco, V. & Cidrá, S. (2022). Exploring, creating, and transforming: Parameters for the observation of creative processes in visual arts education. International Journal of Education & the Arts. 23,14, 1-21
Chen, S-Y., Lin, P-H. & Chien, W-C. (2022). Children’s Digital Art Ability Training System Based on AI-Assisted Learning: A Case Study of Drawing Color Perception. Front. Psychol. 13, 1-8
Chiurazzi, G. (2021). Seconda natura. Da Lascaux al digitale. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier
Epstein, M. (2012). The transformative humanities. A manifesto, New York, Bloomsbury Academic. Londra: Bloomsbury Academic
Ferraris, M. (2021). Documanità. Filosofia del mondo nuovo. Bari-Roma: Laterza
Floridi, L. (2017). La quarta rivoluzione. Come l’infosfera sta trasformando il mondo. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore
Gutiérrez-Cabello Barragán, A., Guerra Guezuraga, R. & Peña-Zabala, M. (2021). Desgarrar la imagen. Prácticas de indisciplina visual en la formación de educadoras. Revista Internacional de Educación para la Justicia Social, 10, 2, 13-26
Huerta, R. & Cristóbal, S. (2020). Humanitats Digitals I Pedagogies Culturals: Mirades Creuades Als Entorns Educatius híbrids. Temps d’Educació. 58, 7-17
Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1977). Il gesto e la parola. Tecnica e linguaggio. Torino: Einaudi
Li, J., Luo, H., Zhao, L., Zhu, M., Ma, L. & Liao, X. (2022). Promoting STEAM Education in Primary School through Cooperative Teaching: A Design-Based Research Study. Sustainability. Sustainability. 14, 1-16
Manovich, L. (2020). L’estetica dell’intelligenza artificiale, Roma: Luca Sossella
McGinn, C. (2017). Prehension The Hand and the Emergence of Humanity. Cambridge: The MIT Press
Montheith, B., Noyce, P., Zhang, P. (2022). Teaching Artificial Intelligence through the Arts in Beijing. Science Teacher, 89, 5, 42-49
Morelli, U. (2010). Mente e bellezza. Arte, creatività e innovazione. Torino: Allemandi
Panciroli, C., Rivoltella, P.C., Gabbrielli, M. & Zawacki Richter, O. (2020). Artificial Intelligence and education: new research perspectives. Form@re - Open Journal per la formazione in rete. 20, 3, 1-12
Peterson, J., Pearce, P.F., Ferguson L.A. & Langford, C.A. (2017). Understanding Scoping Reviews: Definition, Purpose, and Process. Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. 29, 1, 12–16
Shih-Yun, L., Chih-Cheng, L. & Jia-Yu, S. (2021). Project‐based learning oriented STEAM: the case of micro–bit paper‐cutting lamp. International Journal of Technology and Design Education. 32, 2533-2575
Stiegler, B. (2015). La società automatica 1. L’avvenire del lavoro. Milano: Meltemi
29. Research on Arts Education
Paper
The Cloud that Carries my Thoughts - Using Art to Support Resilience and Participation
Ruhi Tyson1, Anusha Andersson2
1Stockholm university, Sweden; 2Historieberättarna, Sweden
Presenting Author: Tyson, Ruhi;
Andersson, Anusha
“Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” can be read in article 27 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This combined arts- and research-project aims to increase the possibility and opportunity for the participants, who are youth in 6th, 7th and 8th grade at an inner-city school in Oakland, California, to express themselves through art. It is also a democracy project as it gives them a way of using their freedom of expression and increases their understanding and, hopefully, feeling that what they think matters and is listened to.
This art-work-process is deeply connected to our experience that the strengthening of a person’s voice is an important way of increasing their resilience. The cloud that will be created represents not just protection from harm but is, hopefully, a source of healing. Violence breaks so much more than our bodies. It is a fundamental rupture in our sense of meaning and to restore this sense of meaning the experience of beauty, of agency and of community/love is paramount. These are the clouds that carry us.
As a research project it aims to explore how a community-made work of art contributes to the subjectification and resilience of the participants. After the project has been completed the youth will be interviewed in focus groups and asked about their experiences, and what, in hindsight, appears to them most meaningful. This will then be analyzed using Biesta's (2020) concept of subjectification, Tyson's (2019) work on Bildung and meaningfulness as well as Antonovsky's (1998, 1993) concept of Sense of coherence which is linked to health and well-being.
Arts-project outline:
We will create a magic and beautiful sculpture that looks like a cloud made on-site together with participants and able to hang from the ceiling or the wall. The cloud is made for a large number of crumpled pieces of paper upon which the participants have inscribed their thoughts. The cloud carries and protects the thoughts of the participants. It is an image of how their thoughts provide shade from the scorching sun, rain to the dry land and act as a source of imagination as we look into the cloud and find all kinds of shapes and forms in it. This connects our thoughts about ourselves and the world to issues of social and environmental sustainable development, equity and freedom where the cloud becomes the source of both inner and outer (spiritual and material) sustenance, protection and community. It is also symbolic that the cloud literally hovers between the earth and the heavens.
Research question:
In what ways can a community-made work of art contribute to the biographical well-being (ie. the sense that life has meaning and coherence) of the participants?
Since the project is exploratory it is difficult to fully outline its outcomes beforehand. The actual arts-project is scheduled for the last week of February and the analysis will follow in the spring.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe method consists mainly of the planned focus group interviews but participant observation will also be included as well as documentation and analysis of the writing of the participants.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsAs stated previously the expected outcomes remain vague since the study is exploratory but it is expected to contribute to our understanding of how artistic processes engage with the biographical development of youth.
ReferencesAntonovsky, A. (1998). The sense of coherence: An historical and future perspective. In H. I. McCubbin, E. A. Thompson, A. I. Thompson, & J. E. Fromer (Eds.), Stress, coping, and health in families: Sense of coherence and resiliency (pp. 3–20). Sage Publications, Inc.
Antonovsky, A. (1993). The structure and properties of the sense of coherence scale. Social Science & Medicine, 36(6).
Biesta, G. (2020). Risking Ourselves in Education: Qualification, Socialization, and Subjectification Revisited. Educational Theory 70(1).
Sjöström, J. & Tyson, R. (2022). Didaktik för lärande och bildning [Didactics for learning and Bildung]. Stockholm: Liber.
Tyson, R. (2019). Bildning och praktisk klokhet i skola och undervisning [Bildung and practical wisdom in teaching]. Stockholm: Natur & Kultur.
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