Conference Agenda

This paper explores the implementation of and findings from Imagination Agents, a mixed-methods case-study, funded by a Royal Society of Arts Catalyst grant. This took place in an inner-city, Glasgow secondary school, with young people aged 12-13. The approach taken was intended to be ‘grassroots’ in addressing local, environmental degradation and issues relating to young people’s sense of agency. The project was co-created by researchers, parents, artists, artist-researchers, teachers and to a lesser extent, by the young people themselves. The conceptual foundation for the project was grounded in a flexible hypothesis that imagination enables the necessary originality for creativity, enabling learners to construct personal understandings of their own learning which equate to metacognition, with this enabling the self-awareness and confidence for personal and in turn, social/democratic agency. We propose that, life in a posthuman (Braidotti, 2013) world where we are living with a ‘convergent crisis’ of complex issues, necessitates the creation of new understandings, which can be produced through the application of imagination and agency, towards the conceptualisation and facilitation of positive change. Such change is more likely to be sustained if it emerges from and is meaningful within its relevant communities. Supporting learners to develop imagination and understand it metacognitively can result in personal agency which better-equips them as participants within and activators of healthy environments.

While highly regarded in arts education contexts, imagination is often perceived to be some kind of magical force, implying that it is unlearnable and unteachable. Based on Burns’ (2022) models of cognitive/metacognitive imagination and on Atkinson’s (2017) notion of ‘the force of art’ as enabling possibilities for new worlds, we investigated how to support young people’s imagination and agency in relation to their local environment. Artists and researchers, some of whom were also parents of young people within the school, developed conceptual models of imagination (Burns 2022) and agency (Priestly et al. 2015) into highly visual, self-completion ‘handbooks’ which acted as ‘catalytic tools’ (Baumfield et. al., 2009) in simultaneously supporting pedagogy and data production. Pedagogically, they provided an artistic space which complemented artist-led activities to encourage metacognition of imagination and agency. In terms of research, the handbooks enabled the visualisation of participant’s often tacit, reflective understandings of imagination and agency in relation to artist-led activities, allowing researchers to gain process-insights into participant’s developing imaginative, cognitive and metacognitive capacities. The application of the models within axial, visual, evaluation tools, enabled a quantitative reporting of impact which is less-usual in art-based projects and could be considered as a means of measuring imagination. We discuss the potential relevance and ethical implications of this within neoliberal contexts for art education. By combining young people’s self-reports with teacher, artist and researcher journal entries, this paper also reflects on how and to what extent the project was successful in supporting imagination and agency. The authors conclude that there was a positive impact but that this was hindered by multiple challenges inherent within the school environment. We go on to ask whether this school and by extension, others, are currently equipped, philosophically and practically, to support imagination and agency, discussing the implications of this for positive, social and environmental transformation.

First, we would like to consider this action-research in the post-Covid pandemic time, during which relations within or out of schools have suffered (Franck & Haesebaert, 2023) and the climate change time which both stimulate us to think of where we want to land ! (Latour 2017). The specific aim of this proposal is to consider the documentary theatre practice experienced through a workshop on the aim of Agro-Ecological Transition (AET). It took place a week in December 2023 in the National Support Disposal in charge of experiencing and educators’ formation. Benefitting from last year experience mixing 2 teachers and 5 students, this experiment has been realized with 8 teachers of the French Agricultural Training System and organised in the Institut Agro (Montpellier, Florac campus). This theatre practice was chosen in order to teach AET differenty (out of traditional sessions) and understand the skills development. Its capacity of embodying the AET through artistic sensitive practices (Covez, 2023, 2018) has been shown. But, the French Agricultural Education encounters some difficulties to transform the written AET priority into reality, as this means not only technical but also professional posture changes. This can be observed when the Otherwise Producing Teaching program n°2 is being reconsidered and evolving into what should be a more efficient plan on transitions. Besides, the Institut Agro has recognized the quality of the documentary theatre practice (ecoanxiety and bifurcation decline, empowerment in transformative actions) and expressed the wish to realize it at a national level towards engineers students. We also notice that the higher education school uses the Socio-Ecological Transition as a major concern which enlarges the approach. Therefore, the evolutions showed on both sides encourage us to take into consideration the transition notion as at the centre of concerns, practices and praxis. The European Green Transition skills and knowledge concepts and Sharon Todd thoughts (2016) helps us move on our action-research. It seems important now to question transition itself in relation to education, formation and transformation. Therefore, we refer to her work on the fragility of transition (if related only to a link between past and future) and rather consider it as a process that relies on the present. Finally, when transition, education and transformation seem so much layered, the documentary theatre practice by teachers represents an educational and pedagogical opportunity to experiment in order to question their relationships. A nationwide project has then been proposed and is waiting for subsidiary to study the documentary theatre practices carried out by teachers on a voluntary basis with their students. As Michèle (one of last year’s workshop teachers) has received a regional creativity prize for her students’ performance on textile transition, this encourages us to consider it on a long term in the reality of the agricultural highschools, where the project is spreading.

So: does a documentary theatre practice contribute to teachers’transition? This workshop based on the previous experience is to consider learning it as an emotionally, bodily, individual and collective creating activity put to the service of the understanding and communication of transition. The hypothesis is that it represents a tool for educational change in respect to transition, regarding the educators’ status and professional identity. As, we learnt that the coherent mix way of cognitive and bodily activities brought an improvement in well-being and empowerment, we wish to understand what the impacts of this active pedagogy are, relaunching the arts education value first in aim of teachers. The coherent form that the documentary theatre practice represents, would help teachers

move their personal and professional posture spreading the transition education capabilities within the highschools towards other educators and students.