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International Dialogues about Visual Culture, Education and Art
International Dialogues about Visual Culture, Education and Art
Edited by Rachel Mason and Teresa Torres Pereira de Eça
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First Published in the UK in 2008 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2008 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2008 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover Photographs: Nelson Hoedekie Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons Copy Editor: Holly Spradling Typesetting: Mac Style, Nafferton, E. Yorkshire ISBN 978-1-84150-167-3/EISBN 978-1-84150-227-4 Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
CONTENTS
Preface: The Politics of International Art Education Ana Mae Barbosa
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Introduction Rachel Mason & Teresa Eça
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PART 1: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
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Creativity and Culture: Redefining Knowledge Through the Arts in Education for the Local in a Globalized World Elizabeth Grierson
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Folk Arts and Traditional Media in Environmental Education Durgadas Mukhopadhyay
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Leading to Creativity: Responding to Policy in Art Education Kerry Freedman
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Post-colonization and Art Education: Standards, Aesthetics and the Place of the Art Museum Nancy Barnard
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PART 2: CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
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Between Circumstances and Controversies: Proposals for a Visual Arts Critical Pedagogy Irene Tourinho & Raimundo Martins
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Cultural Literacy: An Arts-based Interdisciplinary Pedagogy for the Creation of Democratic Multicultural Societies Dan Baron Cohen & Manoela Souza
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Social Justice Through Curriculum: Investigating Issues of Diversity Patricia L. Stuhr, Christine Ballengee-Morris, Vesta A. H. Daniel
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Contemporary Artworks as Sites for Identity Research Rachel Mason
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Face (in) the Mirror Nelson Hoedekie
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PART 3: NEW TECHNOLOGIES
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Blended Learning in Art Education: New Ways of Improving Visual Literacy Dolores Alvarez-Rodriguez
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Developing a Learning Environment for Drama with Hypermedia Daniela Reimann
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Implications of Media Technology-based Workshops for Art Education Kaziju Mogi, Kinichi Fukomoto, Nagamori Motoki, Toshifumi Abe, Toshio Naoe & Yuuka Sato
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Creating, Developing and Maintaining a Digital Magazine: Revista Digital Art& Jurema Luzia De Freitas Sampaio-Ralha, Martha Prata-Linhares, Anna Rita Araújo & Gisele Torres Martini
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PART 4: COMMUNITY AND ENVIRONMENT
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Sementinha: School Under the Mango Tree Ana Angélica Albano
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Cultural Brokerage and Regional Arts: Developing an Enabler Model for Cultural and Economic Sustainability Robyn Stewart & Christine Campbell Art, Ecology and the Giant Sequoia Project Elizabeth Kenneday The Visual Arts and Development of Marine Ecological Values: The WorldFish Center Project Lindsay Broughton, Jane Quon & Peter Hay Environmental Art and Community Art Learning in Northern Places Timo Jokela & Maria Huhmarniemi
171 181
187 197
CONTENTS |
PART 5: ART EDUCATION FOR PEACE
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The Iraqi War Through Our Eyes Bitte Fossbo
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Art Educators’ Positions on Violent Conflict in Israel Nurit Cohen-Evron
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Fostering Community Cohesion Through Visual Arts: An ‘Art for Peace’ Project with Young British-Muslim Girls Mousumi De, Alan Hunter & Andree Woodcock
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Children’s Pictures in the Aftermath of War. What do they Tell Us? Victoria Pavlou
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POSTSCRIPT: CHILDREN'S DRAWINGS
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The Ethiopian Village in Jewish Children’s Drawings Rachel Kroupp
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Young Adults’ Constructions of Meaning in Child Art Lourdes K. Samson
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About the Contributors
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Index
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PREFACE: THE POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL ART EDUCATION Ana Mae Barbosa University of São Paulo, Brazil
Warm congratulations to Rachel Mason and Teresa Eça for proposing a book about art education so heavily embedded in political thinking. Since the beginning of my professional life in art education, politics has been my main concern. I remember a publisher questioned my first article in a North American publication because he said art education has nothing to do with politics. Robert Ott, who defended the text, told him that whereas this might be the situation in the USA it was probably different in my country. Indeed it was. My text showed how the dictatorship in Brazil (1964–1984) attempted to detach art education from its social context and promoted teacher training that resulted in incompetent teachers. It wasn’t translated into Portuguese because this would have caused more damage to my family and me. By that time the army had invaded the house in Recife where I Iived with my husband (a professor of literature) on two occasions and we had moved to Brasilia and been fired from very good jobs at the university there. We finally gained internal asylum in São Paulo, a big city where young people like us were invisible. A few years later when I was invited to contribute to a book about art education and democracy published in the USA, my text was refused because, for the people concerned, democracy signified the politics of gender and multiculturalism, not presidential elections or the direct vote. I was influential in the participation of art teachers in the movement in favour of elections in Brazil (Diretas Ja), the strongest movement for democracy we had, in which millions of people took to the streets with meaningful posters and beautiful images.
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This book reinforces my experience of the close relationship of art with real-life politics; and my belief that it is only possible to develop art in education in truly democratic and free societies. It explores many ways in which art education can promote equality of opportunity and work towards survival of the human race. It includes articles, for example, about: regional arts in the globalized economy, taking responsibility for the environment, learning in the community, the dialectics of multiple identities, public policy and democratization of knowledge. It even demonstrates a concern to put new technologies in the service of marginalized peoples. Among the topics discussed, creativity, multiculturalism and postcolonialism are my long-term cultural concerns. The movement back to creativity we are witnessing today is not a return to the ideas of the 1960s. In the 1960s fluency was understood as the most valuable mental process in creative thinking. Today only neo-liberal and capitalist pedagogues subscribe to this view with the aim of producing a workforce that generates numerous novel ideas for the marketplace. Art educators who are concerned about social and political problems agree with Kerry Freedman that
Creative teaching is teaching for meaning, that emphasizes concepts as well as skills of analysis, critique, and synthesis in expressive art making, writing, and speaking. It helps students to understand the importance of art in their lives and relates this knowledge to other modes of communication. (p. 43) Creativity today is linked with mental processes like flexibility and elaboration implicated in reconstruction and transformation. Moreover, the development of creativity is not confined to making art as in modernist times. Reading and understanding the meaning of art and visual culture are understood to stimulate the creative process. One task for politicized art educators is to mobilize creativity to question cultural stereotypes and build multicultural knowledge. Multiculturalism or ‘interculturalism’ centers on searching out questions rather than providing ready-made answers (Geyer 1993).. The questions have to be organized in ways that clarify national race relations and global conditions at one and the same time. I am not concerned here with the insidious process of legitimizing the global by reversing it into the local, but with capturing the new perceptions and sensations that result from connecting global and local cultures in the process of building new knowledge. Interest in such topics in neo-colonialist central countries is fairly recent. In the 1960s and 1970s concepts like cultural identity and diversity were popular only in culturally colonised Third World countries; or with the minority groups in the United States and Europe. The Cultural Revolution that took place in Europe and United States in 1968 was strongly influenced by the liberation movements in colonized countries. Central countries only became interested in multiculturalism after the 1980s. When large numbers of dominated peoples (immigrants) started to knock on European doors, and black Americans, protected by law, demanded visibility and participation, members of the dominant system experienced a kind of penitence. They were moved by social
PREFACE: THE POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL ART EDUCATION |
guilt and began to identify the need to respect the previously undervalued cultures they had repressed in the past. Researchers in the developed world who are committed to solving social problems today are focusing their attention on concepts like multiculturalism, cultural diversity and cultural history. However, their studies are not very helpful for the Third World because the answers pertain to their own societies. They do not pay much attention to social prejudice, for example, a variable that is very significant in the Third World. The educational systems in many Third World countries have promoted knowledge of European cultural codes as a means to increasing the efficiency of domination. Where the colonizers were unable to dominate a nation through education, they did so culturally by withholding erudite knowledge. This is the case with the Cayman Islands as this book explains – they still do not have visual arts or art education at university level. The strategy of denying colonized countries university level education is intended to weaken the ‘intelligensia’. It is also a way of attracting them to study in the central country and of selling education directly to the colonized. Some colonizer countries have free university education for nationals but charge very high fees for citizens of ex- colonies. Poor countries are paying for education of nationals in many rich countries, therefore. Building dominant country codes into multicultural education programmes is crucial. It is important to know them so as to access power. Today the Third World is in a position to reclaim the multiculturality of multiculturalism or meta-multiculturalism. This is why we must produce our own research, analyses and actions in order to overcome class prejudice and persistent intellectual boycotting. Finding a balance between configurations of cultural identity and diversity is the objective. It is a utopian quest that will most likely put art education in a constant state of flux, because neither identity nor cultural environments are fixed. This is clear after reading Rachel Mason’s excellent text. We know that cultural identity is constructed around ‘difference’. When cultural differences are fudged, the cultural ‘ego’ disappears. So, searching for cultural identity is not a linear operation, it relies on a complex, dialectic inter-relationship. Each imbalance threatens to reduce multicultural education to a simple co-option of minority strengths, leading to neo-colonialist forms of education. However, strengthening cultural diversity is the only way to attain truly democratic education. A search for equity that fails to take difference into account results in the homogenization that makes societies easy targets for the pervasive effects of globalization. Democracy needs art educators who concentrate on reconfiguring earlier forms of domination. This is the function of postcolonial intellectuals, especially in the Third World. It is only through reconsidering the problems of domination and hegemony that the poor of the world will effect transformation in the context of contemporary global relations. Besides social and political concerns, this book balances visual and verbal discourse wonderfully well. This is characteristic of Rachel’s work as editor of the International Journal of Education through Art. Teresa is involved in this balancing act also in her work for the Portuguese journal Imaginar.
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I am very grateful to Rachel and Teresa for the invitation to write this preface. In asking a Third World art educator to do this they have proved their commitment to international equity. International democracy is utopia. The postmodernists proclaimed the death of utopia. It never died but was transformed from HOPE into an exercise of IMAGINATION. Art Educators of the World, do not give up Utopia as an exercise of Imagination. Reference Geyer, M. (1993), Multiculturalism. In Critical Inquiry, 19 (3) Spring, p. 502.
INTRODUCTION
Rachel Mason & Teresa Eça
The Congress This book originated in an international congress for teachers, museum educators, curators and others involved in arts education held in Viseu-Portugal between the 1st and 5th of March 2006. It was intended to provide a platform for dialogue about arts education and society for questioning and evaluating ways in which arts are produced and taught.
Interdisciplinary Dialogues in Art Education was one of the most historically significant congresses hosted by the International Society for Education Through Art (InSEA). It was scheduled strategically to occur immediately prior to a UNESCO World Arts Education Conference and facilitate interdisciplinary exchange through joint participation by representatives of the International Society for Education Through Art (Inseam); The International Society for Music Education (ISME) and The International Drama/Theatre and Education Association (IDEA). The convenors hoped it would facilitate meaningful debate about policy issues of mutual international concern InSEA was founded in 1954 as a non-governmental organization in consultative relations with UNESCO. Its mission is sharing experience on a worldwide basis, improving practice and strengthening the position of visual arts education and the cultural life of communities. Today InSEA promotes cross-cultural understanding and acts as a catalyst for joint research and curriculum development among specialists from different cultures. Likewise ISME serves as the voice of music educators and aspires to advance music education throughout the world. IDEA was founded in 1992 and members are united by the guiding principle that ‘all human beings
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have the capacity and the right to learn the creative languages and skills needed to be human and to create a just and peaceful world’. InSEA, ISME and IDEA have a relationship with UNESCO as recognized Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) committed to improving education through arts internationally. Each organization boasts a remarkable history of contributing to the enrichment of intercultural understanding and improving arts education around the world. The outcomes of their meeting at Viseu were summarized in an InSEA/ISME/IDEA Joint Declaration creating a World Alliance for Arts Education. This document calls for new, more appropriate paradigms of education that transmit and transform culture through the humanizing languages of the arts.
We believe that today’s knowledge-based, post-industrial societies require citizens with confident flexible intelligences, creative verbal and non-verbal communication skills, abilities to think critically and imaginatively, intercultural understandings and an empathic commitment to cultural diversity. (Joint declaration, Viseu/Portugal, March 4, 2006)1 The UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education took place in Lisbon between 6–9 March 2006. The recommendations of the World Alliance for Arts Education provided valuable insights and viewpoints for discussion of UNESCO’s ‘Road Map for Arts Education – Building Creative Capacities for the 21st Century’2 (UNESCO 2006). The main themes of the Viseu congress were: Arts Education and Contemporary Societies; Arts Education and Peace; and Arts and New Technologies. Educators from a wide range of disciplines were invited to explore the role of the arts in fostering social inclusion, group identity and greater tolerance of cultural diversity. Congress presentations confirmed that they communicate important socio-economic issues and are a powerful means to cultural preservation and to developing critical awareness of globalization and cultural bias. Where arts pedagogies are informed by consideration of community and the goal of social justice, they have enormous potential to enrich young people’s lives. The founders of InSEA believed international co-operation and improved understanding between peoples can be furthered by education through art. They wanted the right of individuals to participate freely in the cultural life of their community, enjoy the arts and create beauty for themselves in a reciprocal relationship with the environment, to become a living reality. Their emphasis on a dialectic between culture and arts is crucial in the current political climate and global context. The Viseu congress also posed the question, ‘What contribution are arts educators making to world peace?’ Another question was ‘How are they responding to the huge possibilities for extended forms of communication that digital technology has opened up?’ Throughout history artists have always been at the forefront using and adapting current technologies and contributions that explored innovative and interdisciplinary applications of technologies in international projects were invited. Overall, the congress offered fantastic opportunities for arts educators to listen and learn from constructive responses to the so-called crisis of society. It was an effective channel for intercultural debate, cross-cultural
INTRODUCTION |
communication and exchanges of innovative educational policies and practice. Hopefully, it has fostered further critical investigation into the educational, socio-economic and cultural impacts of the arts. Although some drama, music, dance and multimedia experts attended, visual arts specialists predominated. The congress convenors wanted to attract delegates from countries not typically represented at InSEA congresses which are dominated by English language. Although this problem was not resolved (only one room in the congress had simultaneous translation for financial reasons), there was strong participation from non-Anglo-speaking countries. From a total of 479 participants, 72 were from South America, 25 from Australia and New Zealand, 16 from North America, 56 from Asia, 72 from northern Europe, 42 from eastern Europe and 196 from southern Europe. The percentage of papers by Iberian-language speakers was encouraging. Brazilian delegates submitted 61 papers and Spanish delegates submitted 42. There were fewer communications from Portugal, which is not surprising given the lack of support there for art education research. The work and ideas delegates shared demonstrated such a strong commitment to teaching and research that the organizers felt it was important to disseminate them more widely. They had no previous experience of publishing and are grateful to Rachel Mason for accepting their challenge to collaborate with Teresa Eça on preparing this book. The Book The selection of papers was informed by three broad criteria: a desire to facilitate new voices in art education, ensure representation from different parts of the globe and reflect the congress aims. After due consideration they were organized under the following themes: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
global perspectives on arts education policy; discussion of theory and practice located in critical pedagogy; exemplary projects involving new technologies; projects targeted at community and environment; and projects focusing on art education for peace. The positive experience of publishing visual essays in the InSEA journal led to a decision to try to effect a balance between images and words and include visual texts.
The four position papers that come first offer contrasting viewpoints on globalization, creativity and visual arts education policy. Authors are united in the conviction that art educators must strive to become more actively involved in arts policies directed towards strengthening cultural identity, knowledge and practice. The first one from the South Pacific reports on policies and strategies for mobilizing culture and creativity in and through the arts in education and community settings. After examining policy struggles in the arts and creative knowledge fields, it details three initiatives by artists and arts educators in the region targeted at a reconstructing community responsibilities and sensibilities that took the form of a book, two conferences and a series of gatherings. The second paper
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argues for pedagogy that develops awareness of and prevents global environmental catastrophe. It reports how folk arts have been and are being harnessed to achieve environmental education aims in India and argues the case for their use as a means of communication, especially in rural areas, in development programmes throughout the Third World. The third paper addresses the resurgence of interest in creativity among policy-makers in post-industrial societies and the problem of conflicting positions in educational policymaking. Using the US example, it examines what art teachers can do to achieve participation and make art education meaningful for learners in the context of the global condition. The last paper in the section focuses on cultural identity in colonial and postcolonial nations and implications for museum policy and practice. It reports on some research into current arts practices in the Cayman Islands and the difficulties this overseas territory is experiencing determining its own aesthetic standards and goals. Critical theory is a vital strand of arts education pedagogy. The papers in this section exemplify this with their emphasis on developing learners’ critical abilities and skills, transforming school art curricula and combating resistance to change. It includes two contributions from Brazil. The first proposes ‘nomadic consciousness’, assuming a qualitative stance on learning, teaching and research and radical educational practice in the public domain as strategies for effecting curriculum reform. The second explicates a pedagogy of cultural literacy two cultural workers developed through collaborating with the landless, indigenous and trade union movements in Brazil. Their image text details eight steps of an interdisciplinary arts project they applied in an agro-ecological school in Santa Catarina resulting in a community mosaic. A third paper in the section focuses on multiculturalism and education for democracy in the United States. Specifically it argues a case for examining the personal and communal narratives controlling visual culture in everyday life and helping young people view images in ‘thoughtful ways’. In a curriculum example, learners explore how politicians and civic leaders use imagery to present themselves and influence peoples’ actions and views on issues such as terrorism and war. The last paper critiques British multicultural education policy in the school subjects of Citizenship and Art. After deconstructing the work of five culturally diverse women artists, it calls for a reduction in the emphasis on ‘ethnicity’ in curricula and proposes that lessons targeted at fostering national identity use artworks in which contemporary artists represent and construct their multiple identities as a multicultural educational resource. It is clear from the next five papers that new technologies are enlarging the scope of tools available in art teaching and research. The first paper from Spain reports on experiments in blended learning, defined as a hybrid methodology that uses arts-based activities to incorporate computers into learning. It details a number of Web-based projects that created visual environments for teacher education courses in Spain and a visual arts network for European secondary schools. A third project from Germany is reported that integrated art with hypermedia storytelling with a view to supporting media literacy. Whereas the author advocates the use of digital media in schools, divisions between arts media design and computer science are blocking progress. The fourth project describes multimedia workshops for children implemented in a special needs school and museum in Japan. This collaborative team
INTRODUCTION |
are committed to workshop-style teaching and artful, playful learning styles using information technology. The last paper, from Brazil, is living proof of the emancipatory potential of communication technologies. It tells the story of the creation and ongoing development of a digital magazine by a group of volunteer art educators. The group are motivated by the desire to create something new and different and provide access to theory and practice in a situation where few art education publications exit. This collective project is experimenting with facilitating access to art education for professionals living in a country of vast geographical scale. The four community and ecologically arts-based initiatives included in the fifth section were targeted at community development and sustainability and/or environmental management/ conservation. Securing partnerships and funding are crucial to the success of these kinds of ventures. Two were carried out in Australia and one each in Finland and the USA. The first Australian project was set up to stimulate community development and sustainability in remote rural areas. The product of a partnership between a university and business-related enterprises, it is investigating ways in which creative arts activities can be instrumental in motivating industry and commerce. The university acts as a ‘cultural broker’ working with the partners to uncover socially relevant information from young people and address emerging community issues. In the second Australian project, the arts were used to address conservation of the marine ecosystem in developing nations. The partnership included the WorldFish Center, a research council and university. Artists/students designed non-narrative screen-based activities to assist the Centre’s sustainable development programme and their effectiveness as a communication medium was evaluated. The partners in a small-scale environmental project in the USA were a university-based art educator and the Save the Redwood League. It was interdisciplinary but used the arts to foster learning about the ecology of the giant sequoia tree. Student teachers were involved in learning about the cultural history of California, conservation, scientific illustration and ecology of the tree and developed a mural. The last project in the section set out to support local livelihoods and strengthen communities in northern Scandinavia. The partners were a university strongly committed to delivering art and community programmes, cultural organizations and the Finnish travel and tourist industry. It took the form of a travelling cross-national workshop that moved from the Bode in Norway along the Atlantic coast through northern Sweden and Finland and onto Russia and Murmansk on the Barents Sea. Travelling artists and educators worked with community artists and other interested persons along the way to create site-specific artworks and community-based public art The papers in the last section provide examples of peace initiatives carried out in Israel, Sweden and the UK. One offers an overview of how Israeli art educators position themselves and their teaching of school students experiencing continuous war. Another reports an art for peace project with British-born Muslim girls set up in the wake of the terrorist bombings of the London Underground. An image text of paintings by children in Sweden of the Iraqi war is included. A research paper reports the results of some research into drawings by children who experienced
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war in the former Yugoslavia who experienced war and the potential of the method for diagnosing post-traumatic stress. In these papers the overlap between art education and art therapy is clear. Finally, five image-texts have been inserted throughout the book because we want to promote the use of visual images as a research tool both for reflecting on and challenging current practice. The student artworks they reveal are thought-provoking and imaginative and evidence of culturally diverse art education theory and practice. The second section has images from a portrait workshop that set out to empower learners culturally and improve their self-esteem. The image text in the fourth section documents and explains an informal arts education-based project for young children and unemployed adults in Minas Gerais , Brazil. The last section has images of the Iraqi war produced by children in Sweden, drawings by Israeli children that communicate cultural information about the Ethiopian villages where they were born and in the postscript drawings by college students and young children in the Philippines. To end on a personal note we think the book contains new visions and ideas pertaining to educational roles and value of the arts. A significant number of the papers explore innovative interdisciplinary applications of new technologies, thereby, confirming that artists and arts educators are increasingly finding their place in this imaginative creative space. The papers are strong on ways in which arts can be used formally and informally to foster social inclusion; and share a concern to nurture creative skills in ways that enable learners to respect and construct intercultural identities and appreciate diverse cultural forms. In most cases the authors use artsbased pedagogies to nurture societies based not on individualism and competition but on cooperation and peace. We have learned a great deal from editing them and hope readers will too. Notes 1. Available at http: //www.insea.org/ (accessed 2006-10-24). 2. Available at http: //portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=30335&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC& URL_SECTION=201.html (accessed 07-10-2006).
PART 1: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
CREATIVITY AND CULTURE: REDEFINING KNOWLEDGE THROUGH THE ARTS IN EDUCATION FOR THE LOCAL IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD Elizabeth Grierson RMIT Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia
Abstract This paper focuses on strategies for mobilizing culture and creativity through the arts in education and community settings. It reflects on a UNESCO regional meeting on the arts in education and presents three projects in the Pacific region that go some way towards meeting the challenges of globalization: the first is a research publication on art education; the second, involves scholarly exchanges that enhance cultural capacity-building and knowledge transfer; the third is a networked project lasting several years aimed at establishing a mode of regional thinking. Each project involves a range of practices that contribute to strengthening local and regional cultural knowledge in light of the very real challenges of a global knowledge economy. They play a part in mobilizing creativity and culture as a way of redefining knowledge and its transfer through the arts in education for the local in a globalized world. Keywords Arts education, Knowledge, UNESCO, South region, Identity, Culture Cultural Identity and the Arts
While recognizing that globalization and internationalization are irreversible trends, support for these concepts should not lead to dominance or new forms of imperialism by major
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cultures and value systems from outside the region; rather, it is of vital importance that every effort should be taken to protect and promote the strengths of local cultures and intellectual and scholarly traditions. (UNESCO 1998b, p. 57). Reflecting on the role of arts practitioners and educators, Emmanuel Kasarhérou said, ‘the nation needs its artists, more than ever, to cast light on the path it has chosen’ (1999, p. 91). This statement refers to New Caledonia but it extends our attention beyond those particular shores. Artists and arts educators have a vital role to play in revealing conditions of the past, illuminating present politics and forecasting possible futures. Through the creative arts, stories are told as histories are interwoven and futures imagined. This paper argues that the arts work as creative knowledge practices to reflect and enhance diverse social systems, beliefs, epistemologies and economies. If the UNESCO priority of ‘mobilising the power of culture’ (1998a) is to be realized through the arts in education then artists and educators must take account of diverse and often competing political, economic and cultural histories, practices and epistemologies in the exchanges of a globalized world. The need for cultural recognition and sustainability for the local has never been greater than in today’s global economy where knowledge is folded into the marketplace of mobility and transfer. If the arts represent a site of knowledge then they are already implicated in the political economy of knowledge transfer and social development, yet too often art and culture escape the attention of policy-makers at national and state levels and are positioned as frills on the side of the ‘real’ business of the economy. One way of challenging this situation is for leaders in the arts and cultural sectors to mobilize strategic research and action through education. The aim must be to bring the arts, culture and sustainable development together in policy frameworks. Culture per se can no longer be thought of as separate from the economy as was the case in industrial or colonial societies when principles and organizational structures were based in the hierarchical discourses of modernity. In a global age, where movements of people, finance, information and communications occur at an unprecedented rate, we face new architectonics of space, new logics of information and capital through which culture and the human subject are being organized. Reframed ideologies of centrality advance globally to blur the boundaries, both actual and assumed, of the local and specific. This global tendency serves to deterritorialize traditional spheres of place and identity, while at the same time territorializing in the name of global progress. UNESCO Context In the global context there is a need for strategic awareness and action to establish and strengthen local knowledge. To this end a UNESCO Regional Meeting for Experts in Art Education in the Pacific Region held in Fiji, in 2002, focused on regional perspectives in the Pacific through the arts in education. The Action Plan made specific recommendations to be taken up by delegates. In a poetic vein it urged the arts in education to resonate across the Pacific Ocean, like the frigate bird ‘Kasaqa’, as a symbol of commonality in the Pacific, a navigational spirit of creativity and culture. Symbols of commonality tend to carry with them an aspirational principle or call. This was no exception. Delegates were called to stay aloft as birds
CREATIVITY AND CULTURE: REDEFINING KNOWLEDGE THROUGH THE ARTS |
of navigation, to lead the consolidation and communication of creative arts in education as a way of strengthening cultural knowledge not only of the Pacific region, but also throughout the global world (Voi, 2003, pp. 6–7). This call was both poetic and pragmatic. The frigate bird identifies not only the winds and currents between the scattered islands and lands of the Pacific region, but also like the arts, illuminates the spaces between different histories, patterns of habitation and knowledge systems. If ‘kasaqa’ provides us with a guide or beacon on our voyages across the oceans of knowledge, then as educational navigators we must keep our eyes on the political weather of globalization and currents of power. Recognition of the movements of power in globalization is an implicit necessity in UNESCO’s observation about the ‘dominance of new forms of imperialism by major cultures and value systems from outside the region’ (1998b). The UNESCO Medium-Term strategy of 2002–2007 reflects the organization’s global role in forecasting the future and establishing strategies of capacity building for social, cultural and economic sustainability. The unifying theme of the UNESCO report (2002a, 31/C4), ‘Contributing to peace and human development in an era of globalization through education, the sciences, culture and communication’, acknowledges the emerging ethical challenges of globalization and the need to build new norms and principles to respond to them (2002a, p. 25). As a way of mobilizing regional action in a global framework UNESCO brought together designated representatives of the creative arts in education in regional locations around the globe from 2001 to 2004 with the fundamental belief that artistic creativity and culture are the cornerstones of a safe and sustainable society. Five regional meetings were held in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Arab States, Pacific, Asia and Europe, concluding with the World Summit in Portugal in March 2006. The overall aim was to examine the contents and conditions of creativity and the arts in education throughout school and tertiary systems at each location, share best practice and consider pedagogical approaches to artistic education in the interests of integrating artistic programmes into national education systems (see UNESCO 2002b). The Pacific meeting drew 40 specialists in arts education from the fields of drama, music, visual arts, dance, creative writing and storytelling, from twelve countries including Fiji, Tonga, Cook Islands, Western Samoa, Republic of Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Niue, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Delegates shared their perspectives, field experience and academic research on the arts in education and offered viewpoints that would provide the means for building on existing knowledge about the arts in education in the Pacific region. Issues under discussion were the paucity of public attention to the arts, their marginalization in education, problems of under-resourcing of teacher education in the arts, inequalities of participation, impact of tourism and erosion of cultural knowledge, the need for heritage protection and preservation, and a general lack of political attention to arts’ social role. The Pacific Regional Meeting made recommendations for delegates to implement on their return to their various locations. These included:
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■ Mobilisation of strategic research projects (quantitative and qualitative) to determine specific practices and particular needs of arts education at all levels of schooling and tertiary, as well as community locations and modes of practice; ■ Encouragement and support of documentation, publication and dissemination of research findings; ■ Networking and linking institutions, universities, social and cultural organizations and agencies dedicated to the development of the Pacific Region through the arts in education; ■ Establishment of a mode of regional thinking on culture and the arts in education whereby positive action and change will be implemented through drawing on expertise available in the Region. (Wagner & Roundell 2003, p. 78) The following presentation of three projects that took place between the 2002 Pacific Regional Meeting in Fiji and the 2006 UNESCO World Summit in Lisbon draws attention to a range of activities for the enhancement of cultural and scholarly capacities in southern regions. Each project plays a part in mobilizing the power of culture through the arts in education and works towards strengthening local and regional perspectives on arts and cultural knowledge. Project One: The Arts in Education In the early 2000s there was a sense of urgency about mobilizing leaders of the arts in education so as to bring together the voices of arts professionals in an educational research framework. A political focus in Aotearoa New Zealand at the time was a new national arts curriculum for primary and secondary schools, The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2000). The moment was right to proactively consider questions of curriculum and pedagogy in the arts within the context of globalizing knowledge frameworks. Building national curricula is crucial if official governmental support is to be put towards the arts in education, but equally important is the need for research and analysis of officially inscribed processes. This calls for a critical approach to arts, curriculum and pedagogy in institutional policies and practices. In the case of Aotearoa New Zealand the implementation of the arts in education occurred in 2000. The implementation of The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2000) was the last phase in a seven-year process of setting up The New Zealand curriculum framework (Ministry of Education 1993). This was a national strategy that took the form of an outcome-driven system based on seven ‘essential learning areas’. Official attention to the arts fell way behind numeracy, literacy, science and technology, and a contentious situation arose when technology was introduced into the curriculum as a latecomer, with the effect of squeezing out time and attention for the arts (see Mansfield 2000; O’Neill 2004; Clark 2004; Grierson & Mansfield 2004). Unlike ‘technology’ as a curriculum subject, the arts involve more than skills and technological thinking. The arts respond to political, cultural and technological changes in local and global communities and in the process they tend to escape easy categorization. The organizers of this research project on the arts in education opened questions of categorization, pedagogy and curriculum in the arts to critical scrutiny.1 The outcome was the
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first book of its kind in New Zealand about the arts curriculum (Grierson & Mansfield 2003). Contributions were solicited from leading academics in visual arts, music, dance, drama, design and curriculum theory. They were asked to consider what it means to be critical in arts education today (see Peters 2003).2 Knowledge in and of the arts can be confined to a safe realm of aesthetic and formalist concerns apparently devoid of political contexts, or it might take the form of critically engaged practice whereby contextual enquiry exposes the social, cultural and political terrain within which it is situated. The writers placed the arts and curriculum policy in the context of political and social conditions and coordinates of new technologies, economic and cultural globalization, and intersections of knowledge with the economy. This political framing was foregrounded by the educational theorist Michael Peters (2003):
[Q]uestions of national and cultural identity loom large under the impact of an economic and cultural globalisation that threaten to displace many historical coordinates we previously took for granted; and a new kind of imperialism – one ostensibly compatible with human rights and cosmopolitan values – is being advocated by advisors to Western leaders as a foreign policy basis aimed at ‘regime change’ of so-called rogue states. Aotearoa New Zealand is also at a critical point in coming to terms with its own colonial past in addressing historic Maori grievances, its constitutional ties with Britain and its relationship with the United States. (pp. 9–10) The implication of this line of analysis is that where the official rhetoric of government policy becomes the normalized language of educational practice in the arts, it follows that educators need to advance a political understanding of arts discourses in relation to policy and globalization. The de-regulation of the New Zealand economy has had the effect of opening the country to the vagaries of the market economy with foreign investment and ownership of public assets, bi-lateral agreements, global trade pacts and international competition for goods and services, which, as Peters (2003, p. 10) points out, include health and education that were once part of a protected public domain. The arts are not immune from such political moves and influences. Their material forms and social functions inevitably respond to changing social conditions. Thus, arts educators must be fully aware of the social and political contexts of arts and culture. Then they can position the arts as significant sites of knowledge that operate in partnership with economic development and sustainability in a globalized world marked by an escalating pace of knowledge transfer. Artists reflect, intervene and relate to the world in ways that bring it into the line of sight. If as Emmanuel Kasarhérou (1999, p. 91) stated, artists are needed more than ever now to cast a light on the path a nation has chosen, then the role of educators in the creative field must be to ensure learners are equipped with knowledge of the nation and its political directions as well as of art-making, aesthetics, technological skills and art knowledge. This can be done only with wider knowledge of the local, regional and global spheres so that ‘the nation’s path’ becomes visible in its whole context.
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Project Two: Nga waka and Te whakatere The second project exemplifies how national educational conferences can make local and regional paths visible. Nga waka (2003) and Te whakatere: Navigating with the arts in the Pacific (2005) were two biennial conferences convened by the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators (ANZAAE). They positioned the cultural aspects of art at the forefront of educational concerns. If we are to think and act regionally, epistemological and social differences inherent in the region must be understood via cultural, artistic, linguistic, material and textual practices. The voices and languages of diverse cultural histories and indigenous narratives must be heard, just as the persistence of historically dominant constructions of the Pacific through western epistemologies must be acknowledged. Thematically both conferences conceptualized ‘navigations’ as an historically appropriate symbol for the processes of recognition and repositioning of cultural identity.
Nga waka unpacked the WAKA, canoe, letter by letter, in four dimensions of art education with reference to twenty-first-century conditions. W-A-K-A: W–Witnessing Biculturalism; A–Activating Technologies; K–Knowing Art Educations; A–Acclaiming Asia Pacific. Through rigorous scholarship, concepts of voyaging found form across epistemological space and time in the worlds of art education. Diverse modes of scholarship surfaced in re-thinking the arts in the context of biculturalism, technology, knowledge and cultural politics. At the Powhiri (opening ceremony), New Zealand Maori artist and educator Robert Jahnke spoke of a ‘Maori-centric momentum’ (2003, p. 1), in referring to a policy driven by the Tertiary Education Commission, Te Amorangi Matauranga Matua established in 2003. Jahnke explained that the policy acknowledges ‘matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge)…as a valid knowledge paradigm and pathway alongside Western knowledge.’ This process was achieved through bringing culture into alignment with development strategies at government level. Jahnke (2003) further explained:
Te Rautaki Matauranga Maori is one of six Tertiary Education Commission strategies specifically aimed at contributing to the advancement of Maori development aspirations by providing strategic direction for tertiary sector institutions to enable them to address: Maori management and delivery; Maori knowledge and ways of learning; and Maori advancement and aspirations. (pp. 1–2) When state or national governance strategize policy support for cultural aspirations, then issues of development may be mobilized at local or community levels. The crucial observation here is that policy frames practice, so it matters what sort of policy is strategized for the arts. For Aotearoa New Zealand to become a significant player in the Pacific region redressing the deficits of colonial inheritance has become a political imperative. Thus, bicultural social and educational politics in New Zealand call for a workable understanding of what it means to be a colonized nation in the Pacific, for both indigenous and imperialist genealogies as well as for present practices of people, places and systems of knowledge.
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The implications of cultural politics must not be missed. It is now a given that the arts as defined by western epistemologies are grounded in the economic and social discourses of the Renaissance and Enlightenment and the discipline of art history is tied to western systems of evaluation and recognition. Jahnke (2003) cites Jan Jagodzinski on this point, who said, ‘Any radical change for a culturally diverse art education would need to re-write discursively all three terms: art, art history and the nation, which would virtually be an anathema to current art education curricula’ (p. 9). Many educational programmes, curricula and research projects in the creative arts are grappling with the need to employ discursive strategies to rethink knowledge in arts’ learning. There is continuing tension between the demands of classical knowledge and local specificity, and between the local and global imperatives of institutional frameworks. These sorts of conflicts and tensions were discussed by Michael Mel (2003) from the University of Goroka, Papua New Guinea, who highlighted ‘an undercurrent of tensions that pull and push many of us between our own communities we live with, the institutions we work in, and the nation-state at large’ (p. 1). Situating the social and economic problems of the local community in the wider frameworks of the global, he showed how people are ‘placed in such situations or demands of choice between the self and the community, between the local and national and between the national and global’. Proposing a positive strategy for this dilemma ‘in the face of challenges offered by globalisation to make the world look, sound and taste the same’, Mei revealed how the arts can be employed effectively in the ‘hatching of a teacher education programme based on local knowledge’ (p. 2). Local and regional knowledge informed the continuation of the navigations theme at Te whakatere: Navigating with the arts in the Pacific, the 2005 ANZAAE conference. Pi’ikea Clark portrayed the ‘Navigator Concept’ in historical and material perspective:
Our world of the Pacific, a network of islands dispersed across the largest expanse of Earth, has been defined by the exploration of navigators over the course of thousands of years. The names Kupe, Toi, Tafa’i, Magellan, Tasman, and Cook are remembered to this day among the great navigators of our collective past… (Clark, 2005, n. p. ) The navigator narrative materialized with the presence of a hoe or steering paddle passed from hand to hand in a communal ritual at the conference opening. This performative act reminded participants that ‘navigators engaged with their ocean environment, transmitting their knowledge and intention upon the ocean medium to direct the course of their canoe and voyage’ (Clark, ibid.). There was also a reminder that the ocean is not always smooth and that as educators we must discern ‘the political currents of our practices’ remembering that ‘whatever might be addressed and unconcealed through such investigations there is just as much that remains concealed’ (Grierson 2005, 10–11). Through recognition of cultural and political narratives, the tide was set in an historically Pacific way to address the arts in the context of the social, cultural and economic currents of the Pacific region. The voices of indigenous people were centrally positioned in presentations on the arts for the future of the region.
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Nga waka and Te whakatere were significant for their timing in relation to policy changes in New Zealand education instigated by the Tertiary Education Commission in The arts in the New Zealand curriculum (Ministry of Education 2000). Each gathering focused on the responsibilities arts educators have to lead the next generation of artists and teachers in the region and on farther shores. The gatherings were significant also for the way they brought focus to the political effects of governance of the arts in education. Globally and nationally, there are inscribed systems of economic rationalism wherein ‘knowledge is reduced to a measurable product – something that can be audited, that can be exchanged in the marketplace, treated as property and priced accordingly’ (Codd 2005, p. 15). These systems have the effect of strangling the arts as creative knowledge fields. The challenge remains for educators to understand this terrain and see the potential of the arts for engaging in emancipatory and oppositional practice, and for art educators to seize a more political position and influence the way knowledge of the arts is coded and transferred. Project Three: The South Project The potential of the arts for establishing a mode of regional thinking is evident in the third case study. The South Project conceptualizes the region in the wider frame of ‘South’ and asks what this might mean in the twenty-first century. Working towards the realization of sustainable futures, the South Project acts as a capacity-building initiative with cultural identity at its heart. It works as a vehicle for artists to explore ways of linking different countries of the south, and furthers dialogue on progressive art production away from the epicenters of the art world (Craft Victoria 2005). This position arises out of centuries of colonizing endeavour – economic, intellectual, social and cultural. Thus, the project aims to position the local within the impact and forces of the global in a potently creative way, asking where is ‘here’ when it is far from ‘there’ and you are south, which has always been the farthest point from anywhere. The South Project began in 2004 with South 1, The Gathering, hosted by Craft Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Arts practitioners and educators from fourteen different countries gathered to explore a way forward to reconceptualizing ‘The South’ through the mobilization of creative knowledge in and of southern regions. ‘Despite great differences of language, colour, culture, economics and history, one element brought everyone together – the condition of living in the south. What is normally a condition of isolation has now become an opportunity for collaboration’ (http: //www.southproject.org/). Something new is being created here; something vitally important that links, networks and collaborates knowledge of culture and identity in new ways. Operating over time (2004–2008) and spread across space (Melbourne, Wellington, Santiago, Johannesburg), the South Project brings artists, writers and arts educators together in a series of cultural gatherings, exhibitions, symposia and residencies, to engage in south-south dialogue in the Southern Hemisphere: South 1, The gathering (July 2004); South 2, The journey (2005–2007); South 3, The arrival, festival of the South (2008). The project aims to build the capacity of artists, writers and educators in the creative fields to identify what ‘being South’ might mean in the twenty-first century. Each event feeds off creative energies generated in the previous gathering, with added input of sponsors, communities, cultural and educational organizations.
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The School of Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT) shows its commitment to the initiative by sponsoring artist residencies in association with the South Project. Intersections of ideas, histories, narratives, languages and ways of working become apparent as visiting artists work in art studios and exhibition spaces. These activities enhance the creative and scholarly climate of the academy and act as a bridge to a wider world.3 The themes of mapping, navigating, bridging, reclaiming, locating and journeying that have become apparent in these intersections of artists and art students; themes were rehearsed in South 2: The Journey, held at Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand, Wellington in October 2005. My spoken intervention mapped the spaces Between sky and earth. Ways of making a place in a placeless world by using creative archaeology to disclose thresholds of loss – cultural, historical, linguistic and personal – loss of language, loss of children and loss of historical identities. In an increasingly global society, the local human subject is renewing the search for identity through creative responses to histories of colonization, economic globalization, migration, tourism, new technologies and information transfer; while keeping an eye on the stars as ‘markers in the sky that are shared with others across great distances of space and time’ (Craft Victoria 2005). Focusing on constellations such as the Southern Cross and Matariki (the Seven Sisters or Pleiades), questions were raised at Te Papa, such as how do artists uncover alternative meanings and what are the stories of the stars that have emerged from the South? This event was not searching for ‘original’ southern meaning; nor was it seeking a fixed construction of ‘being South’. Rather it was negotiating a way to talk about ‘being South’ from a range of arrival and departure points, some personal, others political, as it directed attention to the creative fields of art and language as identifying forces. One of the United Nation’s targets is to find new ways of addressing issues of tolerance, diversity, human rights, participatory democracy, interculturalism, equality of opportunity and ethical practices of justice that will promote local forms of social cohesion. In the global context of changing economic balances of power, the South Project highlights the creative power of the arts as cultural, material and epistemological practices that can work towards enhanced social cohesion, knowledge of self and other, tolerance of difference and global awareness. The southern region, with its large continental masses and vast oceanic spaces that have been seen as historical voids awaiting civilizing interventions, is particularly susceptible to new forms of imperialism and globalizing pressures. The United Nations’ strategies for peace and sustainability of local cultures are significant measures, even if they seem impossible to implement in today’s world with its profound instabilities, fears of terrorism and increasing global poverty and intolerance. Through the creative arts and cultural enquiry we can be deeply empowered to identify, protect and promote the strengths of local cultures, to engage critically with the forces of globalization, and open up spaces of knowledge for recognition, recapitulation and reinvention. Conclusion This discussion has placed attention upon the arts and culture in the Pacific region and on ‘being South’ where the local subject vies for authentic recognition in a world of increasing social and
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economic pressures and global positioning of power. When this central knowledge role of the creative arts is appreciated, then they may be valued in policy and practice as a forge and force for the heating and moulding of cultural values in ways that go beyond safe landings, comfortable aesthetics, reductive practices and the seeming clarity of the already-thought. In meeting the challenge to mobilize the ever-present power of culture, educators in all disciplinary fields would do well to reflect on the spirit of the arts as a site of navigation and a potent location for reconstructing and reinvigorating community sensibilities. At a time when knowledge economies are the driving force for sustainable societies, the ‘knowledge role’ of the arts, their epistemological capacity to provoke and actualize the political dimensions of local and global knowledge, cannot be overlooked. Three projects provided examples of how artists and arts educators activated research and knowledge exchange as a mode of regional thinking: these took the form of a book, two conferences and a series of gatherings across the South. Each project placed culture and creativity at the heart, drawing from the expertise of arts practitioners, arts educators, researchers, academics and policy-makers; and each is just a beginning. We have far to go; and go we must on calm and rough seas. Of knowledge and the courage to explore, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda said, ‘Where the sea is concerned I am an amateur. For years I have gathered a sea-wisdom which does me little good since I set sail only on land’ (In Poirot, 1990, p. 39). The ocean of knowledge is vast and the process of political engagement may be hard, but if we do not venture forth to advocate for the arts as crucial aspects of policy and strategic development, we may never feel the surge of ocean currents and we may miss the chance to turn political navigations towards sustainable futures for the knowledge yet to come. Notes 1. The collection was drawn together by Elizabeth Grierson and Janet Mansfield following the Inaugural arts forum in Auckland in 2000 and the Vision arts forum in Auckland in 2002. The former forum focused on the draft arts curriculum and teacher education in the postmodern context; and the latter on pedagogical issues arising from the new arts curriculum. Each event stimulated further interventions and research on curriculum policy and practice in the creative arts. 2. Contributing authors to The arts in education: Critical perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand (2003) were Michael Peters, John Drummond, Janet E. Mansfield, Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Elizabeth M. Grierson, Janinka Greenwood, Christina M. Hong, David Lines, Ted Bracey, A.-Chr. EnglesSchwarzpaul. The New Zealand Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Helen Clark, launched the collection at a large gathering of arts supporters, professionals, educators and academics at the University of Auckland in October 2003. 3. Artists in residence in 2005 and 2006 were Laura Vinci from São Paulo and Elida Tessler from Porto Alegre, Brazil (2006) and Jeremy Wafer from South Africa (2005). For information on RMIT University School of Art International Artist in Residency Programme (AIRP) and South Project residencies see http: //www.rmit.edu.au/art/international.
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References ANZAAE Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators (2003), Nga Waka Conference 2003 Brochure, Auckland College of Education. ANZAAE: New Zealand. ANZAAE Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators. (2005), Te Whakatere: Navigating with the arts in the Pacific, Conference. Brochure, Massey University College of Education. ANZAAE: New Zealand. Clark, J. (2004), It’s about time that teacher education began to critically examine the school curriculum: Against philosophical naiveté and political conservatism. ACCESS: Critical Perspectives on Communication, Cultural & Policy Studies, 23 (1), 35–42. Clark, p. (2005), Navigator concept. Te Whakatere: Navigating with the arts in the Pacific, 2005 Conference Brochure, n. p. ANZAAE: New Zealand. Codd J. (2005), Steering against the current in art education? A response to Elizabeth Grierson. In: Te Whakatere: Navigating with the arts in the Pacific, ANZAAE Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators Refereed Conference Proceedings of the 8th National Conference of ANZAAE, 18–21 April 2005, Massey University College of Education, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 15. Craft Victoria (2005), The South Project [online], Melbourne, Victoria. Available from: http: //www.southproject.org/ [10 January 2006]. Grierson, E. M. (2005), Steering the current in art education in Aotearoa New Zealand. In: Te Whakatere: Navigating Through the Arts in the Pacific, ANZAAE Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators Refereed Conference Proceedings of the 8th National Conference of ANZAAE, 18–21 April 2005, Massey University College of Education, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 10–15. Grierson, E. M. & Mansfield, J. E. (eds.) (2003), The arts in education: Critical perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. —— 2004, Politics of censure and ‘will to certainty’. In Teacher Education. ACCESS: Critical Perspectives on Communication, Cultural & Policy Studies, 23 (1), 1–9. Jahnke, R. (2003), Maori visual culture on the run. In: E.M. Grierson & J. Smith (eds.) Nga Waka ANZAAE Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators Refereed Conference Proceedings of the 7th National Conference of ANZAAE, April 2003, Auckland College of Education, New Zealand, pdf. 1–20. Kasarherou, E. (1999), New Caledonia: The path of the future is lit by the values of the past. In: Beyond the future, the third Asia-Pacific triennial of contemporary art. Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 91. Mansfield, J. (2000), The arts in the New Zealand curriculum: From policy to practice. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland. Mel, M., (2003), Mapping out a Ples Bilong Mi at home and abroad to acclaim a Pacific: A story from the highlands of Papua New Guinea. In: E. M. Grierson & J. Smith (eds), op. cit., pdf, pp. 1–33. Ministry of Education, Te Tahuhu O Te Matauranga (1993), The curriculum framework. Wellington: Learning Media. Ministry of Education, Te Tahuhu O Te Matauranga (2000), The arts in the new Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media. O’Neill, A. M. (2004), The politics of neoliberal curriculum change: Teacher education and forbidden knowledge. ACCESS: Critical Perspectives on Communication, Cultural & Policy Studies, 23 (1), 19–34.
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Peters, M. (2003), What does it mean to be critical In arts education today? In E. M. Grierson & J. E. Mansfield (eds). The arts in education: Critical perspectives from Aotearoa New Zealand. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, pp. 9–26. Poirot, Luis (1990), Pablo Neruda: Absence and Presence. Translated by Alastair Reid. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Co. UNESCO, (1998a), World conference on higher education: Higher education in the twenty-first century, vision and action, volume IV. Thematic debate: Mobilising the power of culture. Paris: UNESCO, 5–9 October. —— (1998b), Higher education in the twenty-first century: Visions and action. Final report, Paris: UNESCO, 5–9 October. —— (2002a), UNESCO Medium-term strategy, 2002–2007 [online], Paris, Available from: http: //unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001254/125434e.pdf [10 January 2006]. —— (2002b), UNESCO LEA International, Available from: http: //portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.phpURL_ID=25107&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html [10 January 2006]. Voi, M. (2003), Foreword. In T. Wagner & T. Roundell, (eds). Arts education in the Pacific Télévision numérique terrestre Region: Heritage and creativity. For education in the arts and creativity in primary and secondary schools. Document based on the conclusions of the Regional Conference on Arts Education, Nadi, Fiji, 25–29 November, 2002. Paris: UNESCO, pp. 6–7. Wagner, T. & Roundell T. (2003), Arts education in the Pacific Region: Heritage and creativity. For education in the arts and creativity in primary and secondary schools. Document based on the conclusions of the Regional Conference on Arts Education, Nadi, Fiji, 25–29 November, 2002. Paris: UNESCO.
FOLK ARTS AND TRADITIONAL MEDIA IN ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION Durgadas Mukhopadhyay Sparta Institute of Social Studies, India
Abstract The goal of environmental education is to develop a world population that is aware of and concerned about the environment and has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivation and commitment to work towards the solution of current problems and prevention of new ones. Using the example of India, this paper argues a case for harnessing the potential of folk media to communicate the United Nations’ Environmental Programme in the developing world. Keywords Folk arts, Environment, Education through arts Environmental education is the process of recognizing values and clarifying concepts in order to develop the skills and attitudes necessary to understand and appreciate inter-relatedness among human beings, their culture and biophysical surroundings. The goal of environmental education is: To develop a world population that is aware of and concerned about the environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills, attitude, motivation and commitment to work individually and collectively towards the solution of current problems and prevention of new ones. The communication potential of Indian traditional performing arts has been proved time and again by many instances of national importance. Alha, the popular ballad of Uttar Pradesh, and its counterparts like Laavani of Maharashtra, Gee-gee of Karnataka, Villupaattu of Tamil Nadu and Kabigan of Bengal, which changed their content and focus in response to contemporary needs, were effective in arousing the conscience of the people. Puppetry is an indigenous Indian theatre form which from time immemorial has
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been a popular and much appreciated type of entertainment in rural areas. The stylized vocabulary of puppet theatre in India carries relevant messages of social awareness, historical and traditional identity and has a moral value system. Recently discussion at UNESCO has focused especially on the potential of various forms of traditional media and their techniques of production as well as their integration with mass media for motivational purposes. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) must be cited for taking an interest in and actively supporting efforts to harness the potential of folk media to carry across the UNEP message of the need for a better environment for mankind to various audiences. Possibly the earliest and certainly the most often quoted attempt at a working definition of environment education (EE) was made in 1970 at a conference of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). The IUCN gave the following working definition:
Environmental education is the process of recognizing values and clarifying concepts in order to develop the kills and attitudes necessary to understand and appreciate the interrelatedness among man, his culture, and his biophysical surroundings. environmental education also entails practice in decision making and self-formulating of a code of behaviour about issues concerning environmental quality. (Palmer 1998; p. 7) The goal of environmental education is: To develop a world population that is aware of and concerned about the environment and its associated problems, and has the knowledge, skills, attitude, motivation and commitment to work individually and collectively towards the solution of current problems and prevention of new ones. The objectives of environmental education are: 1. Awareness: to help individuals and social groups acquire an awareness of and sensitivity to the total environment and its allied problems. 2. Knowledge: to help individuals and social groups acquire a basic understanding of the total environment, its associated problems and humanity’s critically responsible presence and role in it. 3. Attitudes: to help individuals and social groups acquire social values, strong feelings of concern for the environment and the motivation to actively participate in its protection and improvement. 4. Skills: to help individuals and social groups acquire the skills for solving environmental problems. 5. Evaluation abilities: to help individuals and social groups evaluate environmental measures and education programmes in terms of ecological, political, economic, social, esthetic and education factors. 6. Participation: to help individuals and social groups develop a sense of responsibility and urgency regarding environmental problems to ensure appropriate action to solve those problems.
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The guiding principle of environmental education is that it should consider the environment as a totality – natural and man-made, ecological, political, economic, technological, social, legislative, cultural and aesthetic. Environmental education should be a continuous, lifelong process, both in and out of school, both formal and non-formal. Environmental education should be inter-disciplinary. It should emphasize active participation in preventing and solving environmental problems. It should examine major environmental issues from a holistic point of view. For the successful and effective implementation of EE, it is necessary to identify clear objectives. Guidelines for identifying them are contained in the UNESCO, Paris and Tbilisi Resolutions of 1970 and 1977. Accordingly, they have been identified for EE at different stages. The objectives at primary and upper primary levels of schooling are to: 1. Develop children/s awareness of their environment and place in it. 2. Arouse their interest in the people and events around them and develop an understanding of environment. 3. Develop skills for learning about the environment such as observation, collection and classification. 4. Develop willingness to work individually and in groups to maintain and preserve the environment. 5. Foster positive attitudes in children towards the environment. One of the major problems in the Indian education system is the education of out-of-school children, including dropouts, and those who have never been enrolled in schools. This has resulted in a series of attempts to develop alternative educational approaches since people’s interest in and concern for environmental issues cannot grow unless they are informed and educated about them in developmental and other kinds of programmes. Indian society is a complex social system made up of different castes, classes, creeds and tribes. There is a high rate of illiteracy and the mass media fails to reach almost 80 per cent of the population who reside in villages. Compartmentalization is a peculiar feature of modern industrial mass society. Where applied art is differentiated from fine art, and art becomes the special intellectual occupation of a sophisticated elite, tradition becomes problematic. When art is treated as a specialized vocation, the urge to deny tradition and view art as a totality takes over and often leads to myopic representations of life in creative media. For social change and development to happen, changes in the beliefs and value systems of individuals are needed that make them more adaptive and responsive to organic development and growth. This is the role of the communicator in society. The communication potential of Indian traditional performing art has been proved time and again in many instances of national importance. When Alha, the popular ballad of Uttar Pradesh and its counterparts like Laavani of Maharashtra, Gee-gee of Karnataka, Villupaattu of Tamil Nadu and Kabigan of Bengal, changed their content and focus they were effective in arousing the conscience of the people against British colonial rule. The traditional media became effective in the many political and
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social campaigns launched by Mahatma Gandhi. After independence, the Union government continued to utilize these traditional performing arts to convey their message and generate awareness of their development programmes in rural areas. Unlike western theatre, Indian folk performance is a composite art. It is a total art that fuses elements from music, dance, pantomimes, versification, spic and ballad recitation, graphic and plastic arts, religious and festival peasantry. It imbibes ceremonial rituals, beliefs and a social value system. It has deep religious and ritualistic overtones and can surely project social life, secular themes and universal values. Puppetry is an indigenous theatre form of India, which from time immemorial has been a popular and appreciated mode of entertainment in rural areas. The stylized vocabulary of Indian puppet theatre conveys relevant social messages and historical and traditional identifications and a moral value system. Puppet theatre is fully integrated into the ritual observances and social milieu of the rural people and has shown remarkable staying power against vicissitudes. Many development planners in the Third World now appreciate the use of folk media as a mode of communication to explain their programmes. This may be because they realize how ineffective mass media are at reaching their target group. Decision makers have started to take a second look at the use of folk media, therefore, to generate local participation in development projects. In the 1974 meeting in New Delhi, UNESCO seminar-workshop discussions focused especially on the motivational potential of various forms of traditional media and the techniques of their production as well as their integration with mass media. This particular seminar workshop was notable for generating a number of guiding principles on how to use traditional or folk media for promoting development programmes. Folk media should be an integral part of any communication programme targeted at rural development. Wherever possible, these should be integrated with mass media but in all cases, integration with ongoing extension work is vital. The prerequisites for this use of the folk media are: 1. understanding the rural audience; and 2. use of these media to provide rural people with recreation, attract their attention, and ensure their participation in developmental activities. The utilization of folk media in communication programmes should be viewed not only from the perspective of socio-economic development but also of cultural development. Folklore will thus retain social authenticity. Folk forms have evolved gradually over time and, wherever they are flexible, retain their appeal to rural people. Not all folk forms can be used for developmental or environment communication purposes, however; thus, they should be carefully studied from the point of view of content and characterization for their possible adaptation for carrying developmental or environmental messages. Folk media productions should be consistent with the needs of the social environment and related to the customs and beliefs of local communities.
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Since folk media have sociological roots, their utilization should be related to local events and their function in the local communication strategy properly assigned. Efforts should be made to preserve the originality of each folk form and make sure the adaptations do not alter nor destroy them. Effective community-level communication strategies require an integrated, planned use of both folk and mass media so as to achieve optimum impact and gain the desired feedback. Collaboration between folk artistes and media producers is absolutely essential for the successful integration of folk media and mass media communication strategies for developmental purposes. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) should also be cited for taking an interest in and actively supporting efforts to harness the potential of folk media to get the UNEP message about the need for a better environment for mankind across to various audiences. Folk art can be effectively integrated with modern electronic media so long as certain basic precautions are taken. The producer should be sympathetic and talented and have some knowledge and experience of working with rural people. Curiously the basic structure of popular Hindi cinema in India is similar to the organic structure of the various folk art forms. Women are important carriers of oral tradition. The existing oral tradition in India shows signs of continuity and growth. No marriage or childbirth is celebrated without folk singing and the ritual folk performances that are appropriate for these ceremonies. Madhubani of Bihar and pad of Rajasthan are complete audio-visual communication profiles, perpetuated by women in rural areas of India. Secular themes and environmental messages are interpolated easily into these ritual performances. In India, peasants, agricultural labourers, women, tribal people, bonded labourers and other opposed groups are rediscovering the potential of traditional performing arts and media as weapons in their struggles for land, water, forest, better working and living conditions and human rights. Increasing numbers of people are turning to theatre by, for and of the people as a means of mobilizing each other for action. References Archer, W. G. (1940), The blue grove. London: George Allen & Unwin. Asian Cultural Documentation Centre for UNESCO Teheran (1982), Traditional performing arts though the mass media in India, UNESCO, Tehran. Chatterjee, A. K. (1953), The Indian synthesis and racial and cultural intermixture in India. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Elwin, V. (1949), Myths of middle India. Bombay: Oxford University Press. Mukhopadhyay, D. (1978), Lesser known forms of performing Arts in India. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers. —— (1989), Culture, performance, communication. D.K. Publishers: Delhi. —— (1990), In praise of Krishna: Translation of Gitagovinda of Jayadeva, D.K. Publishers: Delhi. —— (1990), Religion, philosophy and literature of Bengal, Vaishnavism, B.R. Publishing Corporation: Delhi.
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—— (1986), Folk theatre in urban television. Paper presented at a conference of the International Federation of Theatre Research, Amsterdam, September 02. Palmer, J. A. (1998), Environmental education in the 21st century: Theory, practice, progress and promise. New York: Routledge.
LEADING CREATIVITY: RESPONDING TO POLICY IN ART EDUCATION Kerry Freedman Northern Illinois University, USA
Abstract International policy is having a heavy impact on creativity in art education. This impact has both positive and negative implications for the future of the professional field. In this paper I discuss some important dimensions of recent policy that are influencing art teaching and learning and some of the exciting ways in which art educators are responding to negative impacts of policy in order to benefit their students’ learning about the creative, the imaginative and the inspired. In order for creative or imaginative thinking to emerge in art classrooms, we must challenge students through interests or concerns that are relevant to them. Otherwise, we are just requiring them to make things. As the paper argues, professional practice requires leadership from teachers and higher educators who can promote creativity and incite inventive action on the part of students. Keywords Policy, Creativity, Curriculum, Educational reform Creativity and the Educational Effects of Policy Social scientists and policy-makers in many post-industrial countries are placing a new emphasis on creativity. What is variously called the creative sector, creative industries and the creative class, includes producers of a wide range of visual culture, from fine art to popular art (such as film, television, crafts, architecture, comics, toys, folk art, computer games, advertising and fashion). The recent popular and renewed interest in the creative arts and design is changing conceptions of social, political and economic development. The growth of visual technologies
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alone, from computer graphics to digital video, has had a tremendous impact on economic and social development, which illustrates some of the advantages of global conditions. The economic growth of this sector of the post-industrial global economy is becoming influential enough for even business people and politicians to notice. Richard Florida’s (2002) oft-cited book, The rise of the creative class, has made such a compelling argument that government officials across the US are changing local policy and investing millions to attract creative workers and companies to their regions. Professor Florida argues that one-third of the US economy is made up of creative class jobs and he uses the term perhaps more liberally than most people would in the arts. But, even limiting the definition to the realm of visual culture that art educators now embrace, about 10 per cent of the US economy is made up of the creative sector, which is substantial. The same growth of visual culture has occurred in other post-industrial countries. For example, the creative sector was recently given credit for twice the growth rate in the UK as compared to the economy as a whole (British Consulate press release, 21 November 2005). And from 2003, in its annual Policy Address, the Hong Kong SAR Government has emphasized invigorating the economy through actively promoting the creative industries. It is becoming generally understood that cultural strength can no longer be assumed to rest with traditional consumer products, rather it is about information, creative ideas and networks. Economic and public policy experts are becoming increasingly aware that a strong, creative labour force is essential for developing the knowledge necessary to succeed in the creative economy and that well-built social structures are required to ensure the development and distribution of that knowledge (e.g., Florida 2002; Venturelli 1998). But, why is it important to have strong art education? Creative social, political and economic growth cannot be sustained or valued without the solid foundation of a professional art education for producers as well as art education for citizens who will be influenced by the creative arts and the cultural experiences they enable. I raise this issue because international public policy is beginning to arrest the healthy growth of creative culture as educational policy and defeat teachers by establishing boundaries that limit the possibilities of student imagination. Current political and socioeconomic conditions are moving policy toward an increasing focus on the development of an educational system that emphasizes information gathering and distribution skills without paying sufficient attention to the meaningful qualities of communication. At the same time, concerns about youth violence and terrorism have increased, resulting in new policies intended to improve increase security, but which may mainly function to reduce individual freedoms. Although the common definition of public policy is based on the idea of public service, policy can hurt as much as it can help. Without intelligent and thoughtful criticism of the public policy that influences educational practice, students’ experiences in the arts may not reflect educators’
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best, creative vision. Let me provide you with some examples that are currently influencing art education. The following three global conditions are being used to shape policy and limit the possibilities of creative education: 1. Global tensions are causing fear-driven security policies. 2. Politicians are generating conservative fiscal policies for social services, such as education, and promoting the ‘businessization’ of education through, for example, privatization and corporate sponsorship, resulting in essentialist curriculum and assessment policies. 3. Economic interests are promoting quick-fix creativity development policies. The educational results of these conditions are: 1. Increased fear of addressing challenging topics in curriculum and instruction. 2. Limited spending on learning resources, but increased spending on testing and narrowed curriculum of ‘inputs’ (reading and math), not ‘outputs’ (critical thinking and expression). 3. Regional development standardizing ‘creative’ environment. In what follows, I will discuss each of these policy effects and some constructive responses by dedicated and socially responsible teachers. Policy and Self-expression Let me use a US example to illustrate the first of these effects: increased fear of addressing challenging topics. Last April, a 15-year-old Washington State boy was approached by the US Secret Service following the confiscation by school officials of some violent drawings he had done of President Bush in a sketchbook for art class. The school officials and the local police considered these drawings threatening so they contacted the Secret Service who deal with both threats to the President and school violence. In the US, controversial drawings are protected speech, and although the boy was reprimanded in school, no legal action was taken against him because it was resolved that these drawings were political statements, not threats against an individual or institution. However, this situation raises problematic issues for art educators. Students see graphic representations of violence on a regular basis, so it should hardly be surprising that the same types of images appear in their art. In a political environment where policy becomes law with virtually no public debate and much of the media promotes fear (while doing little actual analysis to inform us), it is understandable that even well-intentioned teachers and school officials could become fearful and avoid challenging topics. In response to policy, strong teachers are teaching about the complexity of art, including challenging art. Higher educators are working to help teachers understand their rights and the rights of their students in order support creativity and freedom of constructive expression. Helping teachers develop leadership skills and skills to build trust in the classroom can promote
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constructive self-expression and a critical social consciousness. In the US, in order to move beyond the limits of policy, professionals in schools and in higher education are developing collaborative skills and strategies, such as school-university partnerships, to benefit students and promote creative learning. Curriculum, Assessment and Fiscal Policy A second effect of federal policy is limited spending on learning resources, but increased spending on testing, and a narrowed curriculum of ‘inputs’ (reading and math), not ‘outputs’ (critical thinking and expression). A generally conservative political attitude toward schooling is reflected in current educational policy, that results in an emphasis on testing and narrowly defined objectives with little consideration of the larger, humanistic aims of a democratic curriculum. In the US, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act reified this view when it was passed, supported by the Bush administration. As a result of strong lobbying by arts education professional groups, art was included as a core subject in this act. However, that was the only good news for art education. The act currently emphasizes reading and math testing. Annual tests are given to students and public records are made of the test scores. Schools that do not show an increase in test scores on an annual basis are punished through budget reductions. With such strong motivation, schools are reducing the time and resources spent on the arts and increasing the time and money spent on testing. Rather than promoting arts learning in curricula (which interestingly has been suggested in some research as a means to improve learning in other school subjects), time is being used to teach students how to take tests. Even art teachers are being contracted by their administrators to help students improve their ‘academic’ subject test scores. At first, socio-economic groups whose children have had consistently lower test scores applauded this act as a way of ‘leveling the playing field.’ However, 90 per cent of the people who completed a Web survey about NCLB last year stated that they did not believe the Act will be successful and a strong majority (over 70 per cent) stated that it required too much testing (http: //www.publiceducation.org/nclbhearings.asp). The emphasis on inappropriate assessments and the so-called academic subjects is not only prevalent in the United States. Based on a series of UNESCO reports on art education, from Jordan to Brazil, from Great Britain to Samoa, art is short-changed in favor of other school subjects even when it is considered a core subject. Where testing is not the major problem, a lack of resources and materials hinders art education, often because policy is not in place to ensure that these resources are provided. And when testing is the emphasis, policy ensures that short-term learning is the major goal rather than the long-term growth that a good art education can support. The greatest emphasis in some countries is on increased control over public schooling through financial incentives (and punishments), the privatization and commercialization of schooling, and a curriculum focused on raising test scores through an emphasis on formal and technical aspects of learning to the exclusion of meaningful content. This problem was illustrated in relation to US art education in 1997 by the results of the last national assessment for art (carried
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out in eighth grades across the country), concluding that although students had a reasonable level of formal and technical knowledge about art, they were remarkably weak on visual meaning (NAEP 1997). In response to essentialist curricula and conservative fiscal policy, teaching is newly being approached as a creative activity. Creative teaching is teaching for meaning, that emphasizes concepts as well as skills of analysis, critique and synthesis in expressive art-making, writing and speaking. It helps students to understand the importance of art in their lives and relates this knowledge to other modes of communication. Environmental Development and the New Creativity The third effect of policy influences students through the visual environment. Regional development, even development that seeks to attract and grow creative industries, often standardizes the environment. Many urban governments in the United States are working to develop their regions in this manner. The same shops can be seen, the same restaurants, even the same landscape design (such as bike paths). Global companies and products make everything look the same and heritage differences in visual culture often become hidden. Without a curriculum that enhances students’ critical capabilities, they tend to see this commonality with uncritical eyes, undervaluing what is creative and unique. And without experiences that actually engage them with visual culture and cultural institutions, from museums to television, students will not come to understand the importance of the creative arts in their lives. In response to standardized environmental development educators are teaching students how to effectively engage in critique and this helps them to think critically about the range of visual culture they encounter. Educators are taking greater leadership in partnering with cultural institutions that have traditionally valued creativity, such as museums and universities, and with popular creative industries, that can aid students understand aesthetic relationships between the popular and fine arts in a variety of environments. Through such cultural work, students can develop a better understanding of the value of creative work. These policies and influences contain remarkable incongruities. While on the one hand, public policy seems to be moving in the direction of creativity as a test of cultural vitality; on the other hand, educational policy is focused on limiting the learning of creative thinking and production. Public policy should be based on the promotion of cultural originality and a diversity of expression. Art education can help students understand this important aspect public life. What is Basic to Art Education? Responding to Policy In contrast to most countries in the world, the United States does not have a national curriculum. This is both our weakness and strength. It is our weakness because we have no consistent content, objectives or assessment goals for art education throughout the country. Consequently, the quality of art education is largely determined by individual states, districts and teachers, and as
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a result, will only be as good as each of their consciences. It is our strength because it allows for the diversity of the country to lead curriculum through different means to different ends, allowing teachers and students to find their own intellectual pathways to knowledge. Although we do not have a national curriculum, global conditions and national educational policies influence the professional field, both directly and indirectly through national conceptual frameworks and local mandates that lead to practice. For example, in my state of Illinois, discussion of the cultural conditions of art is represented by a single state art goal and creativity was excluded from the state art standards because it is assumed impossible to measure with accuracy. Because the US is unlike most countries in this way, it might be considered a curriculum leadership laboratory. The absence of a national curriculum, and formal assessment of art standards beyond certification, means that teaching professionals are entirely responsible for ensuring quality in art education. As a result, this is a central concern in the major art teacher education programs in the United States. Higher educators are increasingly emphasizing a professional responsibility in teacher-education students and their colleagues to become creative leaders (rather than mere advocates) and to form creative partnerships (in contrast to sponsorships) with other educators and cultural institutions. Leadership toward innovative teaching is needed to promote creativity. For art education to be relevant in the current global environment, teaching must include modeling self-expression as the development of identity and understanding creativity as a form of cultural production. To move beyond policy, professionals in schools and in higher education are developing leadership skills and strategies, such as school-university partnerships, to benefit students and promote creative learning. Self-expression as Identity: Creativity as Cultural Production Part of the job of promoting creativity now must be to revisit the concept in relation to postmodern ideas about originality and reproduction. Contemporary creative production must be thought of less as therapeutic self-expression and more as the development of cultural identity. This is why recent educational policy misses the point. So-called basic skills do not develop adequately without meaningful, creative applications in relation to cultural conditions. It is well documented that learning takes place more effectively when students are interactively engaged. An emphasis on individual ‘input’ learning is not as effective as culturally based, creative application. Likewise, the idea of what is basic in art education needs serious reconsideration. We have moved far beyond thinking that art is only about line, shape and colour. Of course, these are important as they allow people to represent their ideas in visual form, but what is truly basic to art education is not just to do with questions of how people make art. It also has to do with questions about why people make art, how they use art, and how they value art. Creative and critical skills and concepts are basic to art education too. This is an important part of the current art education reform movement to involve visual culture that emphasizes interactive experiences among student interests, sociocultural knowledge and fine art and popular culture images, objects and ideas (Freedman 2003).
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This conception of art education as helping students to learn about challenging aspects of visual culture is illustrated by a mural project carried out by Lisa Kastello’s students that enabled them to understand art as the visual expression of powerful ideas. After granting the students permission to create a mural in the school cafeteria, school officials rejected their design because it included an image of a gun, although the message of the mural was peaceful. Lisa used this situation as a way of helping them understand the complexities of art and turned it into an even more effective learning experience by enabling them to paint the mural on panels which were exhibited in other locations in town. This type of experience is consistent with the new forms of consciousness used by students today in the construction of their identities. Art educators have long known that art helps students understand the human condition through their investigations of themselves, particularly when they find their own strengths and are allowed to develop them in depth. As I found during some research I conducted with teens who play computer games (Freedman 2003) and as Danish visual culture researcher Helene Illeris (2005, p. 235) states that young people:
…engage in encounters with art as active participants rather than passive viewers. Performances, installation art, video and computer art are preferred to traditional art forms. Being hooked, experiencing otherness, participating in social exchanges and engaging in meta-reflective processes of learning seem to underline all the positive learning experiences that young people have in their encounters with contemporary art (p. 239). Changes in student populations and the visual culture that is forming them are another important influence on this art education reform movement. Teaching visual culture is more multicultural, interdisciplinary and technological than art education in the past. It addresses the wide range of challenging issues that lead professional artists and students to make powerful visual statements. Fundamentally, it is about art as a form of cultural production and seeks to reveal the creativity (by both makers and viewers) that gives images and artefacts their meanings. Making art/making change I collaborate extensively with school districts and other cultural institutions to aid individual teachers and education officers who work to improve students’ lives through art outside the limitations of policy. To illustrate the power of teachers to effect change, I quote a statement published in the Illinois Art Education Association newsletter by one of my students, Robert Hewett (2005), who is Chair of his secondary school art department. Bob states:
After accepting a high school teaching position, I began to reflect on my own teaching practices with one significant question in mind. What is the role of the visual arts within a high school curriculum? I wanted to give my students a meaningful experience that would motivate them to master media and techniques. [But] it occurred to me that a relevant contemporary high school program is structured around student interests and significant social issues and concerns. Contemporary
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postmodern art, design, technology, and popular visual culture would provide an invaluable resource for addressing these interests and larger issues. With these as motivators, considerations such as media and technique would be subject to the needs of student learning. [Teaching] visual culture addresses many of the questions and concerns that I had raised regarding my own teaching practices. Change was intimidating and challenging at first, it still is. But the benefits for my students, my profession, and me are vast. What is the role of the visual arts within a high school curriculum? Now, I feel I am truly beginning to answer that question (p. 8). Later, after making changes in his programme, Bob (personal correspondence, 2005) wrote:
The effect on our art program has been has been really noticeable. Students are truly motivated and interested in what they are learning and creating. I think that this is due to the students seeing art as really relevant and connected to their lives and experiences no matter their ability to manipulate media. We try to present the visual arts as a way of knowing, making meaning, and constructing knowledge. We stress visual and popular culture, current events, and contemporary visual forms and technology. Also important, this approach has made a difference in the way our school administration views our purpose and relevance, especially where visual technology is concerned. We receive funds much more easily when we frame our requests in terms of providing the student with relevant life skills such as those for contemporary visual technology and constructing and deconstructing visual knowledge and communication. Conclusion So, what can art teachers do to make art education meaningful in the context of global conditions and conflicting policy? I recommend the following: 1. Work with other educators and cultural institution partners to make regional and local curricula stay up to date with the contemporary visual arts and with changes in the professional field. 2. Support art education policy and practice that is both individually creative and socially responsible to help students and adults realize the importance of the visual arts in their daily life. 3. Help students to learn why people create at the same time as they learn about how people create. 4. Promote creativity in students through work based on their concerns and strengths, using authentic assessment, so that they have an opportunity to learn deep, cultural knowledge about the power of art and their power to communicate through it. 5. Emphasize leadership in higher education and in teaching practice with the goal of developing local, national, and international coalitions to influence policy.
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We should feel pride in the history of our field and in past art educators who have emphasized important foundations of artistic creativity, such as children’s drawing development and the growth of individual talents. But, in the context of current global conditions, postmodern identities and political economies, new policies demand our attention. Helping students to think and act with insight and imagination now requires a redefinition of professionalism in the field and new strategies for leadership at all levels, but particularly in teacher education. Note A draft of this paper was presented at the Hong Kong Museum of Art in December 2005. I wish to thank the Hong Kong Institute of Education for their support. It was first published in Studies in Art Education, Winter 2007 (vol. 48, no. 2), under the title: Artmaking/Troublemaking: creativity, policy and leadership in art education. Reston: Virginia: NAEA.
References British Consulate-General Press Release (21 November 2005), UK Design Savvy Boosts UK Economy and Links with Hong Kong. http: //www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/ Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1065717807901&a=KArticle&aid=1132595264925 Florida, R. (2002), The rise of the creative class: And how it’s transforming work, leisure, community, and everyday life. New York: Basic Books. Freedman, K. (2003), Teaching visual culture: Curriculum, aesthetics and the social life of art. New York: Teachers College Press. Hewett, R. (2005), Mosiac: The newsletter of the Illinois Art Education Association. Illinois Art Education Association. Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce (March 2003). Developing Hong Kong’s creative industries – An action-oriented strategy. Illeris, H. (2005), Young people and contemporary art. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 24(3), 321–242. The NAEP 1997 Arts Report Card: Eighth grade findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Washington, D.C.: NAEp. Venturelli, S. (1998), Liberalizing the European media: Politics, regulation and the public sphere. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
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POST-COLONIZATION AND ART EDUCATION: STANDARDS, AESTHETICS AND THE PLACE OF THE ART MUSEUM Nancy Barnard National Gallery, Cayman Islands
Abstract This paper analyses the extent to which the socio-political status of formerly colonized countries and in particular the Cayman Islands (as an overseas territory of the United Kingdom), have an effect on the production, display and exchange of the visual arts. It highlights the related implications for art education and art museum provision. One of the main conclusions is that many accepted artistic standards in colonized and post-colonized nations need further research, as they often reflect the dialogue of the mother country and negate certain cultural traits of the colonized. Keywords Colonization, Art education, Standards, Museums Introduction This research on which this paper is based took place over a period of three years (2003–2005) in both the Cayman Islands and the United Kingdom. It began with observational studies during my duties as director of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands, and moved to artists’ forums, a focus group and a detailed questionnaire survey. It was informed by a study of museum management in the Caribbean by Cummins (2000) and studies of culture in various contexts by various authors, especially Bennet (1988), Beardsley &
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Livingston (1991) and Rogoff (2002); and also by literature about art, culture and colonialism by Keane (2001), Shohat & Stam (2002) and others. The Cayman Islands comprise three islands situated south of Cuba and west of Jamaica with a population that can fit into a sports stadium in England (approximately 60,000). The United Kingdom has thirteen other overseas territories worldwide. This is a tiny remnant of Britain’s colonialist past, given that just one hundred years ago the British Empire encompassed over half the globe, together with the other colonial powers of Spain, France, Portugal, and extended figuratively, physically and philosophically into every colonized land and through the veins of each colonized individual. Upon visiting the Cayman Islands in 2005, British attorney-at-law Jeffrey Jowell advocated that ‘Constitutions must emerge from the local soil…to be successful they must reflect the local traditions and shared experiences’ (Jowell 2005, p. 2). He noted that dependence on the colonial mother country may cause loss of confidence in overseas territories; and warned that the gap between UK overseas territories interests might widen as UK governance is altered by that of a unified Europe. Prior to 1962, the Cayman Islands were annexed to Jamaica as a ‘Crown Colony’; it subsequently became the less offensively termed ‘Dependent Territory’ and is now the rather politically correct ‘Overseas Territory’. Labelling tends to create certain expectations or non-expectations and despite this new codification, the people of the Cayman Islands are still susceptible. After all, many colonized people operate with a fundamental awareness that they are possessed by a more powerful nation with different cultural mores. Data was garnered in 2005 through focus group discussion involving the author and six artists and art educators and the questionnaire survey. The latter was implemented by Leonard Dilbert (Social Policy and Planning and Deputy Director of the Cayman Islands National Museum), Beverly Pereira (member of the Governing Board of the University of the West Indies Institute of International Relations and Lead Negotiator for CARICOM States for Intellectual Property) and Henry Muttoo (Artistic Director of the Cayman National Cultural Foundation). The responses of respondents revealed that some of them adhered to the mother/child analogy of arts among colonized peoples; the view that art production is thwarted by the effects of the glass ceiling – the small ‘child’ cannot be expected to produce as well, or to such a high standard, as the larger, more experienced ‘mother’. The repercussions are threefold. First, the ‘child’ can recognize she has things to teach the ‘mother’ by virtue of her uninhibited creativity unfettered by aesthetic and critical doctrines accumulated over time. Second, she can wait idly and learn according to the ‘mother’s’ expectations but without expecting very much from her; or third, she can change the labelling and elect for greater self-determination or complete independence thereby effectively removing, or at least altering, the challenge. The central problem in many colonized or formerly colonized nations is that their cultural policy frameworks continue to be grounded in a single western definition of beauty and standards. Cornel West summarized the way many people in overseas territories and minorities in the mother countries feel very well when he wrote about the conflicts artists of mixed race have to face. West noted: ‘It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always
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looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity…one ever feels his two-ness’ (West, in Pinder, 2002, p. 324). Most of the world is facing similar cultural upheavals today with emigration of nationals and influxes of foreigners. However the difference in the Cayman Islands is the extraordinarily high influx of expatriates. The most recent census undertaken in 2004 established that approximately 45 per cent of the population comprises over 107 nationalities. While the Cayman Islands are not unique in being a multicultural society, the sheer extent of multiculturalism places it in a special category. In the Cayman Islands and similar colonized nations, it is not enough to contrast margin and centre, or colonizer and colonized. Things are not so simple. This paper seeks to deconstruct the special circumstances of the remaining Overseas Territories, especially the Cayman Islands which may turn out to be one of the first and last elective dependencies. Colonized or formerly colonized countries that are elective dependencies will have to evaluate the way they teach, conceptualize and disseminate culture and art. Without wishing to ‘fully recover’ a past reality, they can and should pause to review their artists, artistic productions and exchanges, together with the status of their national galleries and how they operate and are affected by local and international socio-political frameworks. Brief History of Caymanian Visual Arts and Overview of Current Production In 2003, the Cayman Islands celebrated 500 years of history. To put this into perspective, by the time it is thought to have been first inhabited in the early 1700s, the Renaissance had ended in Europe three hundred years previously. Historically the islanders were exporters of labour and the men went to sea. They were producers, toiling land and seas to support mainly maritime activities. The recorded history of fine art only dates back to the 1960s, and craft to the early 1800s. The phenomenal growth of the financial service industry in the 1970s, that coincided with a decline in seafaring, has been another key influence on visual arts in the Cayman Islands. The growth of tourism and new accessibility of goods and services also engendered a decline in traditional craft forms like thatch and textiles. However, this rapid development necessitated importation of labour. The merging of Caymanian and expatriate cultures has influenced the way people express and represent themselves both socially and artistically. This is a good juncture to identify and dispel the following misconceptions. First, that once the people of a dependent territory are colonized they immediately wish or need to agitate for independence. This is not always the case. The independence objective in the Cayman Islands came after the First World War and then, with greater impetus, after the Second World War. Given the reality of a shrinking world and growth of economic and political unions, now is an inopportune moment for many colonial outposts, to continue, or begin, a process of independence. The remaining Overseas Territories have missed that ‘aha!’ moment in time when the scales started shifting to greater parity between colonial masters and subjects such as with
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the Caribbean Dependent Territories Jamaica and Bahamas, in the 1960s. In the Cayman Islands, some people consider a conceptual secession more important than an actual one. Allissandra Cummins noted, ‘If we could but succeed in planting not only the idea, in their consciousness. but also the fact, that they are the makers of history, then you alter the relationship between them and those who hold them in their hands’ (Cummins 2000, p. 4). People recognize they do not need a full-scale secession or to marginalize themselves globally now that overt and destructive physical action toward colonies has ceased. However, colonized or formerly colonized countries must carefully consider the more covert repercussions of being Overseas Territories and formulate ways of stopping indirect consequences of imperialism. Because the repercussions are so deeply ingrained, many people in the Cayman Islands have not grasped this problem. The second misconception is that achieving independence has been the catalyst for the economic demise of the majority of these nation states. The fear is that the Cayman Islands will ultimately face the same downfall. However, it is simplistic to look at secession so starkly. Some take the view that in the long term, spiritual and social benefits of the people in a newly independent nation state may be important enough to outweigh the short-term negative economic repercussions. After all, these nations have only had a few decades of independence to undo inequalities that took centuries to cultivate. In fact, the activities in now independent states such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana succinctly demonstrate that important artistic institutions like the National Gallery of Jamaica and others, originated in these assertive periods of independence and awakening social consciousness. The Cayman Islands could locate a unique identity and continue to have a healthy psyche without having full independence from the UK. As noted earlier, being an Overseas Territory has far-reaching indirect effects. Education is one such arena. Schooling in the Cayman Islands is dominated by a variation of the General and Advanced Level Certificate of Education examinations system in the UK, International Baccalaureate examinations, American Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) and combinations of these. Because the UK educational system has dominated until recently, the overall mindset of people who passed or will pass through the system is British. Whereas dialogue about artistic standards in the islands’ cultural institutions and museums has only surfaced in the past couple of years, it mirrors current debates about educational standards. It is important which system of education is implemented (in this case the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) or the Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CXE), as these pupils will become the Cayman Islands’ curators and museum directors and their voices, educational backgrounds, prejudices and commonalities will be deeply embedded. Many pupils leave the Cayman Islands to study overseas at various ages: for example, in the middle or high school years, or as young as six or seven. So their experience and that of the expatriates educated overseas (the majority in the United Kingdom and some in Canada and the United States) is significant since these sensibilities are injected into the local culture upon their return.
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At present, Cayman Islands’ society does not place enough importance on arts education. The ‘arts’ are too often viewed as an extra-curricular activity. The majority of primary schools only offer one and a half hours of visual art per week and dance and theatre arts are non-existent. A National Gallery staff member reporting on some sessions with ten-year-old pupils complained they did not even understand the concept of primary colours. The National Gallery must start working at primary school level and collaborate closely with the Education Department in order to rectify the failure to strengthen the presence of the arts in the national curriculum. The Cayman Islands would do well to follow the example of the US in raising pubic awareness of their contribution to all aspects of learning and indeed, this is the rationale behind arts-based schools. Leonard Dilbert, Deputy Director of the Cayman Islands National Museum, has described art education in Cayman as ‘sterile’ and queried why so little use is made of local art and artists. Currently, roughly a half of these artists are either self-taught or have only attended a few workshops or short courses. The highest level of formal art education is the continuing education programme the National Gallery runs. As there is no tertiary level art education, Caymanians must go abroad to gain practical or research degrees. The advent of distance learning has changed this situation somewhat although, with studio arts, practical considerations limit this possibility. Although the Caymanian Government does an excellent job of supporting artists and offers full scholarships to nationals desiring tertiary-level education abroad, artists for whom the costs are prohibitive resort to training themselves. In 1998 Tony Bennet, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Economic and Social Research Council Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the Open University and the University of Manchester, pointed out that all the critical theory and ideas come from advanced capitalist countries, and emphasize relationships between power and culture. This is a valid point. The Cayman Islands simply do not have the scholarly framework that comes with the territory of tertiary-level education. Bendel Hydes, one of the Cayman Islands’ earliest professional painters, recalls that his artistic development in the 1970s was hampered by lack of openness towards the arts and anything unconventional. This happened at a time when his peers in the UK were experimenting wildly with forms and ideas fifty years after Duchamp’s Urinal shocked the art world. Whereas realism is still the most popular art genre, there is growing awareness that art goes beyond the everyday. Art styles and media are evolving. Realism remains the most popular painting style in watercolour, but artists are beginning to experiment with other media and art styles like expressionism and abstraction. Sculpture continues to be popular, building on local traditions of boat building, model making and carving. Sculptors are experimenting with both imported and indigenous materials. Photography is currently the fastest growing visual art form. The Cayman Islands’ artists are rapidly moving into developing all the visual art forms, therefore. However, there is a noticeable void in conceptual art, installation, assemblage, video, film and digital art in comparison with the use of these genres and media in the West. It is important to attend to learning styles in formerly colonized societies. It is inappropriate to impose British or Caribbean styles in the Cayman Islands; rather, a merger of some sorts needs to take place (and has to some extent). Up until the 1960s, much learning took the form of
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practical apprenticeships and social exchanges. Respecting and re-claiming these learning styles is important for the future of Caymanian culture and museology. The Ministry of Education and Culture is currently discussing the inception of a vocational school to fill this gap in educational provision. Open and critical debate among artists and members of the local art scene is what is needed most in the visual arts in the Cayman Islands and other colonized or formerly colonized countries today. Artistic Standards and the Caymanian Aesthetic In examining the colonial presence in the Caribbean, Jamaica Kincaid wrote ‘Just like other nations, colonised or formerly colonised countries need standards and goals against which to measure their arts. Although all the laws you know mysteriously favour you, many of them are still trying to reach for other peoples standards’ (Riegel 1996, p. 85). Although this issue merits deeper examination than is feasible in this paper, it is at the core of the present debate about the future of the visual arts. In an Overseas Territory, unfavourable comparisons are continuously being made between present arts and museum provision and that of the mother country. The art of the ‘other’ (which is how the Cayman Islands and other colonized or formerly colonized countries are situated) is widely perceived to be at a developmental stage, in contrast to the art of the western/northern ‘centre’ that has ‘arrived’. What is left unsaid has a greater impact on the art world than what is said, so it is essential to admit this is an issue. As Abdul Jan Mohamed, a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out: ‘genuine and thorough comprehension of otherness is possible only if the self can somehow negate or at least severely bracket the values, assumptions, and ideology of his culture’ (Jan Mohamed 1985, p. 1). While accepting there is an argument for adhering to formalist aesthetic principles, the National Gallery must be vigilant. It is important to remember these are appropriated from a dominant western canon that the Cayman Islands have inherited by default. What they and other colonized or formerly colonized countries need to do now is reflect on what sets them apart. Our artists are beginning to be aware of the obstacles they face: now they need to uncover their own artistic strengths and begin to strive to develop a unique aesthetic. A part of this aesthetic was forged in a past when the creative urge was funnelled into living consciously with nature and understanding craft. The focus of museums in the Cayman Islands now is on retaining this heritage as the rate of decay increases due to a combination of rapid development, natural disasters and an influx of expatriates. Colonized and formerly colonized countries like the Cayman Islands continue to be affected by the condescending, patronizing attitudes that are a residue of imperialism. Dichotomies like ‘the civilized versus the primitive and high versus low art’ are a heavy burden to bear. Power and control are firmly embedded in unspoken undercurrents of thought. The twist is that the
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Cayman Islands are unique among Overseas Territories in several ways. First Caymanians have always been proud of their British heritage. The majority can easily trace this back three or four generations and some are first- and second-generation descendents. They do not automatically identify with art at the ‘margins’ therefore. Part of the talk about reclaiming heritage is about returning to the ‘centre’ of Europe and specifically the United Kingdom; or a British/African mixed heritage. There is less talk about going back to African or Indian roots than in other overseas territories. According to Webb Keane, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan (in Myers 2001, p. 31), ‘metropoles are often closer in socio-political terms to other metropoles than their own hinterlands, each metropole brings tokens of its hinterland to market in order to circulate them among other metropoles.’ It is the responsibility of the National Gallery to reverse this. The absence of artists specializing in Caymanian crafts and travelling to cities to disseminate them communicates the message that there is nothing worthy of sharing internationally; only what comes from the western metropole is important and the Cayman Islands will never quite sever the need for direction and control from elsewhere. This does not inspire confidence within the artistic community. The Cayman Islands do have crafts to share with the world and will have fine arts in the future that are a unique response to Caymanian lifestyle and culture. In Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, the acclaimed French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote about cultural competence and cultural codes, indicating that the beholder who lacks the cultural code feels lost in a chaos of sounds and rhythms, colours and lines, without rhyme or reason (Bourdieu & Nice 1987). Expatriate artists often do not understand the Caymanian code and Caymanian artists do not understand the western paradigm. Unfortunately, the power structure is so ingrained that the dominance of western codes is seldom called into question. Against whose standards are artworks produced in colonized or formerly colonized countries judged locally? In the Cayman Islands approximately 30 per cent of people who are legally Caymanian are foreign-born or first generation. The ‘local’ is further made foreign by the 45 per cent of foreign residents holding work permits, who are such an important (although at times shamefully maligned) part of Cayman Islands society. This means that approximately 75 per cent of the ‘local’ is not very ‘local’, which is a very large percentage in comparison with most countries. In the UK, for example, the 2001 statistic was that 8.3 per cent of the total population were born overseas. (http: //www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=767) Too often art organizations and schools in colonial and postcolonial nations set up local standards that are too purist. Indeed, James Clifford (in Pinder 2002, p. 222) observed that ‘ignorance of cultural context seems almost a precondition for artistic appreciation and argued that ‘in this object system a tribal piece is detached from one milieu in order to circulate freely in another, a world of art – of museums, markets, and connoisseurship’. The relativist anthropological approach of Irit Rogoff, Professor of Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College, is more helpful; wherein she notes, ‘the ability to establish a set of inherent criteria of excellence for images or cultural objects which transcend the conditions of their making and constitute a
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metacultural relationality (is) negated or sacrificed through this more current relational model’ (Rogoff, in Mirzoeff, 2002, p. 29). Although it is depressing to witness Caymanian art being judged below the bar so often, it is difficult for the National Gallery to grapple with the underlying power structure. Ella Shohat, Associate Professor of Art and Public Policy at New York University, and Robert Stam, Professor of Film Studies at Tisch, have explored the effects of colonizers of exploiting colonized territories for raw material as centres of intellectual activity or manufacture (2002, p. 41). They refer to ‘a perpetual game of catch-up’ and note that the aesthetics of the margins tends to favour the ‘carnivalesque’, ‘anthropophagic’, ‘magical realism’, ‘reflexive modernism’ and resist postmodernism in ways the ‘centre’ finds repulsive or threatening. This is evident in regional and local choices of dress, colours used in design and other preferred nuances. John Beardsley, senior lecturer with the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard, and Jane Livingston, author and independent curator, directly challenge the idea that as artists ‘approach high art the elements of ethnicity in their work inevitably disappear’ (in Karp, I. & Levine 1991, p. 113). Author Simon Winchester (2004) admitted he did not enjoy his visit to the Cayman Islands because it negated his expectation of seeing familiar relics from the past and the remnants of empire. Culture in the Cayman Islands has slipped out of control and contradicts such stereotypes. Our research found that roughly half Caymanian artists feel that the United States is the single most significant influence on their aesthetics and productivity. They report that the blandness of US television programming that prevails in most Caymanian homes causes far more heritage deterioration than colonial control. The Caribbean has a rich tradition of artists inspired by spiritual and intuitive sources and the Cayman Islands are no exception – Miss Lassie being the best known. It is refreshing to admit that it is the Cayman Islands’ crafts rather than fine arts that are outstanding and worthy of praise. Unfortunately, the craft movement was subsumed within fine arts by Eurocentric ideals and the separation between the two in the western art tradition has been detrimental. It has meant that up until recently craft has simply not been valued as having much artistic merit. Thankfully, that attitude is now changing. Many tools and techniques have been lost in the Cayman Islands mainly due to the rapid development of the financial and tourist industries, and materials, machinery and supplies are needed to facilitate the renewal of the craft movement. Aesthetic value in the Cayman Islands is closely aligned with a mingling of past cultures and crafts. This aesthetic is in part practical, cosy, comfortable, sturdy and demonstrative of the spirit of humanity. Once it has been reclaimed, the Cayman Islands needs to look at the impact other aesthetic traditions have had. Art cannot simply be judged against local standards. In a situation where such standards had already been developed, the Cayman Islands will have to find ways of accommodating new trans-cultural ties because of high immigration rates. The cultural context is continually locally exchanged. Yet a balance is called for with this quest for identity whilst embracing cosmopolitanism.
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It may be an advantage on the other hand, that Cayman Islands was not fully indoctrinated into one ‘way’ of looking. Nobody was actually in the Islands when the colonial and postcolonial slavery struggles and laws were occurring elsewhere, so it was afforded a certain freedom by isolation. Once artists in the margin recognize there is a dominant set of rules, this may be enough to move them forward. The Cayman Islands must also take into account the pull of corporate culture on the visual arts, particularly on their production and exchange. Now, more than ever before, the age of ‘multiisms’ is present. Like a watch that records several time zones, the best-equipped citizens in the Cayman Islands appreciate not only their own culture and heritage, but also that of others with whom they associate physically and via technology. They are aware there are ‘other’ valid cultures throughout the rest of the world. Why does such a small territory as the Cayman Islands need a cultural review? In this age of information and virtual existence, size is not the handicap it once was when population density and geographical location were important for industry and agriculture. The Cayman Islands, together with other island nations and small countries deserve a voice. Although having a national gallery in such a small physical space may distort people’s sense of reality, Cayman Islands’ issues should not be dismissed for reasons of scale. The success of the financial sector and its position as the fifth largest financial centre in the world is testament to this. Art, Finance and the Tourism Industry in the Cayman Islands A third misconception is that a non-western nation cannot be both culturally and fiscally rich. The romantic view persists in industrialized First World nations that Third World nations are/or ought to be ‘exotic’, ‘wild‘ and ‘rough’, and they assume that signs of economic health are detrimental to their heritage. The finance industry and the seasonal society associated with it and equally strong tourist industry, influence production, display and exchange of visual arts in three main ways. First, the demand for them in the Cayman Islands is greater than the supply. Second, while the demand is large, there are very few commercial art galleries. There are only three, one of which serves as an art and craft gallery, the remaining two are picture-framing businesses. Third, the volume of the tourist population influences visual arts practice. Artists too often respond to tourist demands by creating ‘pretty pictures’ that sell. Creating Solutions for the National Gallery through New Museology The Cayman Islands’ past isolation, short history, political position as an Overseas Territory and the strength of its two main industries combine to have an effect on museum provision. Shifting demographics and political leadership influence museology a lot today and the National Gallery tries to pay close attention to the content of exhibitions and audience input and responses and create a fair, professional cultural climate. The inclusive policy of the Gallery is based upon the complexity of the Cayman Islands’ socio-political situation. Hiring ethnically representative staff has been important to avoid it becoming yet another neo-colonialist space.
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There is an annual internship for young Caymanian high school graduates to train them as a future workforce. It is important that museum professionals recognize the traditional mode of viewing, reflecting upon and sharing art and culture in the Caymans differs from museums. The research mentioned previously revealed that Caymanians use visual arts for entertainment, worship, boat launching, to celebrate romance or scandals and, in the U.K and North America, shopping centres, churches and temples often function as more vibrant, effective ‘cultural centres’ than the galleries and museums officially blessed with this name. The museum community in the Cayman Islands needs to make greater efforts with programming and it is important to highlight a further misconception at this point: namely that all the Caribbean nations have the same origins and culture. Each Overseas Territory has a different reality just like the countries, cities, towns and even villages of larger nations. The challenge for the National Gallery is to encourage greater involvement and attendance at gallery events from the Caymanian community while simultaneously exploring what kind of events they relish. Two decades ago, arts and culture in the Cayman Islands were never far removed from daily life and work but in less than twenty years, the detached, analytic gaze has become the mode of looking art museums require of viewers. When the National Gallery excludes portions of society, it denies them power. According to David Fleming, ‘elites always manipulate culture and museums are convenient vehicles for the promotion and glorification of minority tastes, which are perceived by their adherents to be superior and inviolable’ (Fleming, in Sandell, 2002, p. 218). This is why it is imperative that all elements of the cultural community are included in the search for a current aesthetic. However, this cannot be reduced simply to a ‘foreign versus local’ issue. First, Caymanians are familiar with movements of culture and cultural objects through a seafaring heritage when seamen experienced other nations most of the year. Second, the domestic structure is largely comprised of a mixed cultural heritage and there is an interesting but subtly felt class divide organized more around socio-economic than racial and ethnic factors. Third, the reality is that the Cayman Islands and many other Overseas Territories operate on a small scale and will never have the resources available to museums in the metropolis. One of the most significant research findings was that forms of creative expression exist that have served the nation well but are not easily reconciled with traditional western museum provision. The National Gallery needs to accommodate a tradition of oral discourse into its narrative and forms of creative expression that are unique to the Cayman Islands. These forms are diverse and include living traditions of crafts such as carving, playing games like gigs (wooden spinning tops) and making and using rosemary brooms, coconut boats, plantain pillows and kites. One part of the Cayman Islands polemic craves a return to a tactile cultural heritage in this computer-driven and soon-to-be virtual world. The senses of touch and taste were utilized much more in the Cayman Islands in the past than the sense of sight on which traditional museology
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relies. The yearning for stylistic realism in painting and the familiar subject matter of catboats and model wooden boats, as one respondent noted, with a desire to connect with the past. Perhaps this urge is especially strong in places in the world like the Cayman Islands that have experienced such contrasting and abrupt periods and levels of isolation and growth. Conclusion Reform is needed once the polemic produced by artists and the Caymanian community has received proper acknowledgment. One respondent to the survey said he was ‘…frustrated by inadequate links with cultural bodies’, the public’s failure to comprehend artists’ intentions and offerings, and ‘widespread shortage of spiritually inspiring leadership’. Another noted that ‘generally art in the Cayman Islands is produced out of a conscious and calculated effort – art for art’s sake’. The diverse cultural backgrounds of cultural leaders, all of whom are Caymanian, now affect their views about future directions. One respondent asked, ‘who is this Caymanian we talk about?’ Another accused Caymanians of self-delusion, arguing that ‘allowing history to be fictionalised (means we) enjoy less self-determination now that we did 150 years ago’. As for development, ‘this word is stretched to mean so many things that it now means virtually nothing’. Individuals charged with art education and museum provision in colonized or formerly colonized countries must accept that the standards of the western art world have developed out of hundreds of years of practice in traditional art forms and are available for artists (anywhere?) to utilize. Artists have to understand that these standards are culturally dictated and not universal. This means they can be queried, negated, merged and explored so as to get the most out of other national and cultural heritages. References Beardsley, J. & Livingston, J. (1991), The poetics and politics of Hispanic art: A new perspective. In I. Karp, & S. D. Levine (eds.) Exhibiting cultures: The poetics and politics of museum display, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Bennet, T. (1988), Culture: A reformer’s science. London: Sage Publications Inc. Bourdieu, p. & Nice, R. (tr.) (1987). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press. Clifford, J. (2002), Histories of the tribal and the modern. In K. N. Pinder (ed.) Race-ing art history: Critical readings in race and art history. New York: Routledge (pp. 217–231). Cummins, A. (2000), Response paper to Beyond Management by Stephen Weil at the 1st International Conference on Museum Management and Leadership: Achieving Excellence: Museum Leadership in the 21st Century Ottawa, Canada, 7 September. Fleming, D. (2002), Positioning the museum for social inclusion. In R. Sandell, (ed.), Museums, Society, Inequality. London: Routledge (pp. 213–224). http: //www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=767. Jan Mohamed, Abdul R. (1985), The economy of Manichean allegory: The function of racial difference in colonialist literature. Critical Inquiry 12 (1) (pp. 59–87). Jowell, J. (2005), Cayman Net News http: //www.caymannetnews.com (27 April p. 2). Keane, W. (2001), Quoted in the Introduction to In F. R. Myers, (ed.) The empire of things: Regimes of value and material culture. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press (pp. 39–61).
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Linsley, R. (2002), Wilfredo Lam: Painter of negritude. In K.N. Pinder, op. cit., pp. 289–306. Livingston, J. & Beardsley, J. (1991), The poetics and politics of Hispanic art: a new perspective. In I. Karp & S. D. Levine, op. cit., pp. 104–120. Riegel, H. (1986), Into the heart of irony: Ethnographic exhibitions and the politics of difference. In S. Macdonald, S. & G. Fyfe (eds.), Theorizing museums. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers (pp. 83–104). Rogoff, I. (2002), Studying visual culture. In N. Mirzoeff (ed.) The visual culture reader. (2nd edition) London: Routledge (pp. 24–36). Shohat, E. & Stam, R. (2002), Narrativizing culture: Towards a polycentric aesthetics. In N. Mirzoeff, op. cit., pp. 37–59. West, C. (2002), Horace Pippin’s challenge to art criticism. In Pinder, K. N. (ed.), op. cit., pp. 321–329. Winchester, S. (2004), Outposts: Journeys to the surviving relics of the British Empire. London: Perennial.
PART 2: CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
BETWEEN CIRCUMSTANCES AND CONTROVERSIES: PROPOSALS FOR A VISUAL ARTS CRITICAL PEDAGOGY Irene Tourinho & Raimundo Martins Federal University of Goiás, Brazil
Abstract This paper contains three proposals for introducing critical pedagogy and improving curriculum construction in visual arts education: namely incorporating nomadic consciousness, assuming a qualitative commitment to teaching, learning and research, and adopting a radical attitude towards empowering educational practice in the public domain. It argues that critical pedagogy has to be theorized in ways that ensure art educational curricula and practices engage with the social, political and cultural issues that form and can transform them. It concludes that issues of ‘power’, ‘knowledge’, ‘identity’, ‘daily life’ and ‘affect’ are crucial aspects of a critical art pedagogy that connects with lived experience. Keywords Visual arts, Culture, Teaching, Critical pedagogy Critical thinking has received attention recently from teachers and researchers in the field of education but, less so, from visual arts teachers, especially in Brazil. Today’s paradoxes – global/local, private/public, identity/difference, knowledge/feelings, etc. – require critical theorization in order to help us articulate teaching practices together with the social, political and cultural issues that constitute, design and could transform them. This paper presents and discusses three fundamental proposals for critical pedagogy and curriculum construction: namely: incorporating ‘nomadic consciousness’ into visual art education, assuming a qualitative
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commitment to teaching, learning and research and, finally, adopting a radical attitude towards empowering educational practice as a public domain. Critical theory is informed by Paulo Freire’s ideas (1991, 1996, 2004) as well as by neoMarxist ones, especially those of the Frankfurt School (Apple 1990; Freedman 2003). It has evolved and developed also under the influence of the cultural, narrative turn (Hall 1997; Denzin & Lincoln 2003) that emphasizes difference, diversity and language. These theoretical perspectives have generated discourse and practice embedded within notions of power, daily life, and ‘mundane’ sensibilities – the worldly, everyday, ordinary sensibilities through which people individualize and differentiate themselves. Critical thinking is sustained by various movements with ‘post’ in their name such as – ‘postmodernism’, ‘poststructuralism’, ‘postcolonialism’, together with de-constructionism, cultural studies and feminist studies. The following authors and ideas have contributed significantly to our own thinking. First Kincheloe & McLaren’s ‘dialectical concern with the social construction of experience’ (2003: 435) and ‘the need to understand the various, complex ways power operates to dominate and shape consciousness’ (ibid 439) has been very important. Second, we have been influenced by the ‘proliferation of interpretive epistemologies grounded in the lived experiences of previously excluded groups in the global, post-modern world’ to which Denzin refers (1997: 53). Third, we support Giroux’s (1995: 87) proposition that schooling is a mechanism of politics immersed in relations of power, negotiation and contestation’; and their rejection of ‘notion of pedagogy as a technique or set of neutral abilities. We agree with them that ‘pedagogy is a cultural practice that can only be understood through questioning history, politics, power and culture’ Broadly speaking, critical theorists analyze the possibilities, origins, values, laws and limits of so-called ‘rational thinking’ as a departure point for philosophical and pedagogical reflection. Knowledge, power and identity are interrelated during reflection in a way that raises questions about what kind of knowledge is being selected for curricula, how and by and for whom. We have three proposals for linking critical pedagogy, art teaching and curriculum based on such ideas. Our first proposal is to incorporate nomadic consciousness into visual arts education as the primary source for a critical pedagogy. We are reminded, in a literal sense, of the ‘traveling spirit’ approach to curriculum adopted by Domínguez Berrueta, Garcia Lorca’s Professor of Theory of Literature and Arts at the University of Granada, Spain. As part of his course plan, he required students to travel through different Spanish cities. The narrative in Lorca’s first publication in prose, Impressions and landscape (Álvarez 1998) resulted from this kind of practice. When it is invested with nomadic consciousness, critical pedagogy invokes displacements in time and space and links desire, perception and the senses to local and contextualized temporalities. It is committed not just to provoking displacements but to extending and
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pondering on them. According to Braidotti (2000: 74) the most radical aspect of nomadic consciousness, is the rejection of any kind of permanent identity. Nomads are always on the road: they create the kinds of situated connections that help them survive but never accept the limitations of a national, fixed identity. The nomad does not have a passport; or, has many. The first proposal combines multiple modes of subjective positioning without restricting them within predefined conceptual, epistemological or political territories. It embraces products of high and popular culture and many others – even those yet to be labeled. Visual sources for this nomadic approach exist in many places – museums, galleries, shopping centers, Internet, crafts workshops, mass media images, publicity and fiction. They can be found in homes, streets, schools, books, movies and in our heads. The second proposal is to incorporate a radical qualitative perspective throughout education. The significance of this move resides in the capacity of qualitative thought to engage not only with our hybrid, liable condition but also, with contextualized, singularized and interpretive perspectives on everyday practice in schools. The ‘qualitative’ mode of thinking and behaving tracks and expands the expressive possibilities of language in that it recognizes multiple voices and seeks for more contingent, circumstantial and poetic ways to narrate and reflect on what is and is not done, thought and felt in schools. According to Kincheloe & McLaren (2003: 436), adopting a qualitative perspective ‘does not determine how we see the world; but helps us project questions and strategies to explore it’. This perspective should not be limited to research but should encompass learning and teaching in general and be used to question the ‘dictatorship of the subject,’ a process that controls how we see, measure, ‘dress’ and ‘undress’ our subjectivities. Learning and teaching from a radical qualitative perspective means stopping to think about, debate and interrogate our affective investment in students and ways we ‘live’ among them. Stemming from a hermeneutical tradition, it emphasizes interpretation and lived experience. It is not satisfied with ‘speaking about’ images but tries to explore ways to speak ‘with’ them and make them (images) speak about us. The third and last proposal expands on the meaning of nomadic consciousness and a qualitative perspective, by situating them in public space. It is important to emphasize the public nature of education and visualization because of the ethical, social and political issues at the heart of public action, that are characterized by the way meaning is constructed and operationalized within the contexts of institutional and social struggles (Giroux 2002). To dissociate learning and teaching from the ‘public’ arena is to negate the collaborative character of knowledge, the constructive dimension of understanding and the participatory condition of human development and transformation. According to Arendt (1995: 59) ‘no activity can become excellent if the world does not offer space for its exercise. Neither education, nor ingeniousness, nor talent can substitute for the constitutive elements of the public sphere that make it the adequate place for human excellence’.
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Favouring the public sphere implies demonstrating commitment to egalitarian relationships between individuals and responding to calls for citizenship and collaborative action aimed at constructing a fairer world and a better quality of life. Critical pedagogy acknowledges that struggles have to be faced up to in order to attain the major goal of social/cultural equality. As critical art educators our commitment is to transformative processes that depend on continuous self-reflection. As Paulo Freire (1991) taught us, this also depends on ‘hope’ and a belief in the value of living and learning together as humans (the nomadic, qualitative and public characteristics of ‘togetherness’). As teachers and researchers, we must plunge ourselves into life histories and narratives of experience and struggle with concepts and beliefs if we are to put these proposals into practice. It is important to consider our own stories as teachers – the continuous formation of our professional identities – as well as the stories of our students and their dynamic interactions within institutional settings; and to take them into account in developing a critical pedagogy. This will help us understand the contradictions that form us in educational contexts and within our subjectivities. It means looking for ways to understand how we amass, at one and the same time, fragments of tradition and innovation, work and adventure, method and idiosyncrasy, reason and affect. These three proposals for a critical pedagogy in visual arts education – nomadic consciousness, a radical qualitative perspective and privileging the public sphere – obviously do not exhaust what is required of us as art teachers, researchers and learners. These commitments are not exhaustive because they are characterized by a process of continuous reconstruction that is never-ending and necessitate reviewing our epistemological positions and the premises that guide them. They cannot exhaust our commitment to transformative action in education because the schools in which we teach and learn visual arts are only some among many institutions that ‘create’ and ‘destroy’ the possibilities for change in individuals and the societies they (we) construct. References Álvarez, D. (1998), Frederico García Lorca y la educación artística: Reflexiones a propósito de un centenário. In F. Hernández y & M. Ricart (eds.). Jornades d’història de l’educació artística. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, pp. 127–137. Apple, M. (1990), Ideology and curriculum. New York: Routledge. Braidotti, R. (2000), Sujetos nómades. Barcelona: Paidós. Denzin, N. (1997), Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st Century. London: Sage. Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y. (eds.) (2003), The landscape of qualitative research: Theories and issues, London: Sage. Freedman, K. (2003), Teaching visual culture, New York: Teachers College. Freire, p. (2004), Pedagogia do oprimido (39th ed.). São Paulo: Paz e Terra. — (1996), Pedagogia da autonomia: Saberes necessários à prática educativa, São Paulo: Paz e Terra. — (1991), Educação como prática da liberdade (20th ed.). São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Giroux, H. (2002), Memória e pedagogia no maravilhoso mundo da Disney. In: Silva, Tomás Tadeu da (ed.). Alienígenas de aula: uma introdução aos estudos culturais em educação. Petropolis: Vozes. pp. 132–158.
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Giroux, H. (1995), Praticando estudos culturais nas Faculdades de Educação, Tomás Tadeu da Silva (Org), Alienígenas na sala de aula – uma introdução aos estudos culturais em educação, Petrópolis: Vozes, pp. 85–103. Hall, S. (1997), The centrality of culture: notes on the cultural revolutions of our time, In K. Thompson (ed.) Media and cultural regulation, London: The Open University, Sage, pp. 207–238. Kincheloe, J. & McLaren, p. (2003), Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (eds.). The landscape of qualitative research: Theory and issues. London: Sage, pp. 433–488.
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CULTURAL LITERACY: AN ARTS-BASED INTERDISCIPLINARY PEDAGOGY FOR THE CREATION OF DEMOCRATIC MULTICULTURAL SOCIETIES Dan Baron Cohen & Manoela Souza Institute of Transformance, Culture & Education, Brazil
The mosaic of self-determination, Land is Life, presented here was carried out in an agroecological school in a small farming community in the state of Santa Catarina, southern Brazil, and is an example of what we call ‘cultural literacy’. With the involvement of 90 pupils aged 10–16 years of age, together with the participation of their teachers and families, a huge collective book, made up of recycled discarded ceramics fragments, was collectively conceived and ‘written’ onto one of the school walls. It records the pedagogical drama of transformance. The time frame was as follows: Workshop phase: September – December 2001, 4 months (24 workshops per class, 90 minutes per workshop). Design phase: March 2002, 12 hours (two 90-minute workshops per week/per class and one 3-hour integrated workshop for representatives of each class to generate the collective proposal). Production phase: March – July 2002, October – December 2002, 9 months (6 pupils every 90 minutes, 6 hours per day). Evaluation phase: December 2002, 2 days (two 90-minute workshops per class). This is how the dialogic pedagogy was applied through all the languages of the arts. Step 1: Consultation Manoela and I explain our pedagogic proposal to the school community of 90 young people and their families. We have been invited to develop a residential project inside their agroecological school, not just because the school is committed to developing new pedagogical
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proposals, but because the community is fragmented by conflict and the pressures of survival and we have worked with them for more than three years. The project is designed with the parent-teacher association to last at least a year, and to begin in consultation with the entire community and with a training workshop for all the teachers, to ensure it is both embedded within the cultural life of the community and as a pedagogical interdisciplinary contribution to the existing curriculum. Here, inside a family home, we show slides to stimulate parents’ questions and to listen to their anxieties, to anticipate any possible resistances and involve the families in the design of the project’s aims. After passing through the community, we propose the production of a community mosaic. It will survive decades of rain and sun and affirm the ceramic history of the region. A nearby factory agrees to donate rejected imperfect tiles. Step 2: Creating a pedagogic stage We begin by turning the classroom into a dialogic stage where there is no audience. In the very first workshop, the young participants (aged 10–11 years old) interview one another: Who are you? Where do you come from? Immediately, some assertively reply: I’m Brazilian! A reflex we find in every part of Brazil which avoids some uncomfortable facts within the country’s historical identity: the genocide of some five million indigenous people over the past 500 years; or the probability of direct descent from raped indigenous women or those who were responsible for centuries of violence against millions of black slaves. We mark the stage with white tape to define an area of agreed principles of respect for time, the right to question and remain silent, respect for each voice, and how we will document the process. Step 3: Developing authority of each participant Storytelling through ‘intimate objects’ enables the knowledge and more intimate voices of each participant to emerge. The girl in the middle of this storytelling circle is narrating her history through an object of importance she has selected from her home. Everybody around her is transforming this circle into an intimate stage, affirming her voice by listening with their eyes, drawing her out as an ‘author’ through their collective focus and a sequence of non-judgemental individual questions. In this way her authority grows.
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Each person narrates aspects of their story, responding to questions inspired by their ‘intimate object’ until the world it contains has been collectively revealed. Gradually as the six participants tell their stories, a complex empathetic picture of the world emerges. Each circle of six then selects one of the intimate objects as the group’s collective symbol, a process which decodes their world, to better understand it. This not only enables the 90 young people to create their own vocabulary for a collective mosaic; it also allows them unselfconsciously to acquire and practice new intercultural skills in participatory democracy and cooperative learning, by learning to be both actor and spectator in a non-judgemental space. They are becoming aware of the powerful theatrical properties of time and space, and the principles of dialogue, and how to use them democratically. They are also learning history, geography, language and culture! Step 4: Preparing the body Through the lightest introductory massage, we begin to ‘open the body’ so that its inter-textual memory can ‘speak’. Some male participants resist. We dramatize this resistance to reveal its causes and, as they remember that Christ and Che Guevara (iconic men within their culture) used touch to heal, they relax and choose to enter. We first began with speech, the most established ‘language’, where participants are most ‘at home’. Now, more relaxed and building on the empathetic, reflexive solidarity they have established through their stories, the participants begin to listen to the repressed or internalized histories within the body which they have inherited, and which they may be using unconsciously as barricades to protect themselves in a dangerous world. They begin to listen and codify the cultural archaeology present in the respiration which transports their voice. They are now learning to listen
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more consciously to themselves, ‘reading’ their own and each other’s ‘performance’ and discovering how to use their own body as an amplifier. Step 5: Codification They are ready to read the internalized world through dialogic mask-work, by touch. Each young person is learning to work dialogically to support and be supported by the other, becoming emotionally literate about the intimate self in order to build a new self-aware community. Documenting what has been found within the self. There is so much to write! Following this process of expression and reflection, the collective documentation of what has been ‘read’ is summarized into key adjectives within four agreed ‘worlds’ of performance: the home, the school, the countryside and the city. This process itself democratizes the typical monological, authoritarian ‘voice’ of the blackboard. Step 6: Decodification Through image and forum theatre, participants study their own and each other’s psycho-emotional worlds to identify common themes and concerns. Here, you can see an image representing the history and diverse (accepted and unacceptable) desires of women: to be mother, teacher, ballerina and vet. Here you can see an image of some of the many conflicts that occur within the community. Despite their desire for democracy and cooperation, the families are deeply divided by unresolved histories, mistrust, power inequalities and reflexes of silent self-protection. Cooperative functions and community events draw few families. Naming and rehearsing solutions to these conflicts will enable participants to understand and meet the intercultural challenges of building a new multicultural community of unified purpose. In this image, young participants represent the fear of assassination in their lives, inspired by the ‘massacre of Eldorado dos Carajás’ which their Landless Workers Movement suffered in
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April 1996. Such anxieties might inhibit them from choosing or even being able to participate as equal and confident members of their cooperatives, and later, as citizens in their own country. Step 7: Aesthetic preparation Even after 3 months of workshops, the participants are shy about asking questions. We decelerate the process and begin the design phase by proposing they design an individual logo to represent their own identity and further develop individual self-confidence before entering the collective process. We notice that even a new sheet of paper seems like a huge community stage. We ask them to ‘scrunch up’ the new paper, to free themselves of the fear of making mistakes in public, passed down through generations of migration, violation, exclusion and submission. They draw on the symbolism uncovered in their storytelling and dialogic maskwork. Sketching with the hand they do not usually use to write with further frees them from the internalized fear of being graded (judged), a fear that will inhibit their process of experimentation. Transferring a montage of intimate symbols from within their own emotional and geographical landscape, they create their own logo of self-determination. Gradually, they are learning to ‘speak’ the artistic language they will use for writing a collective mosaic, by building a personal one. They work for three hours a week in two 90minute workshops. It is impossible to get them to stop, to go into other classes. There is no
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need for discipline. It has been replaced by the extraordinary motivation every human being seems to possess to protect, define and create his or her own identity. Even when inhibited by violated selfconfidence, this force seems to revive quickly in the appropriate conditions. This is the only teacher from the agro-ecological school to participate in the cultural literacy preparatory stage. Sadly, Rejiane was unable to prevent the project from being remarginalized into the time allocated for religious education and art. It has been designed with the teachers to begin with a training course to enable them to participate as co-facilitators in an interdisciplinary way. But as the teacher-training workshop drew near, one powerful (and fearful) male teacher argued the need to prioritize traditional disciplines, and then managed to repeatedly defer the workshop until it was too late. The young participants observed this knowingly. How can art-educators deal with this kind of fearful authoritarian resistance in both teachers and fathers? Could we have prepared differently? Here are examples from the 80 individual mosaics created in preparation for the collective process by some 10-year-old participants. Though each mosaic celebrates a personal landscape, by implication it also celebrates their parents’ struggle for survival and democracy. These mosaics were turned into gifts for each home, building or deepening the relationship between the school and the community. Step 8: Collective production The evaluation of the storytelling processes that generated the individual mosaics was conducted in ‘dialogic trios’. These same trios are now used to discuss three questions which will define the criteria for the collective mosaic: Why make a collective mosaic? Where? And for whom? While one person speaks, another documents and questions, and the third sits silently but actively listening as a focussing and amplifying audience. Each then rotates roles, acquiring the different skills of dialogue and mediation. Having gone through the dialogic trios and understood the process of how to identify guidelines, Roderigo enters as internal coordinator to work with 10- and 11–year-old pupils. At 12 years old, he possesses more empathy and intimacy than us, and discovers how to use
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this to stimulate participation of his companions. He demonstrates the potential to transform all pupils into co-educators within a dialogic pedagogy. The trios form into new circles of six to develop collective proposals. These are presented and explained on an ever larger stage. One Sunday morning, three representatives from each class join a workshop which will integrate all the collective designs that have been generated into a community proposal for the school and its wider community. The young people have selected the open book as the symbolic structure to integrate all their ideas. They include (on the left-hand side) an image of the neighbouring polluted city as representation of past present, beside an image of a camp in the shape of a heart – the heart of their Landless Movement – weeping over the destruction of nature, as a page turning from the present into the future. They have represented the ‘future in construction’ on the righthand page, with an eco-pedagogical agricultural proposal for renewing the city. They inevitably fore-ground their own rural experience and context, but by so doing, offer an interesting perspective on the future of the postmodern city. For us, from a pedagogical perspective, the most interesting element is the participants’ decision to locate themselves as authors and subjects of their own futures and artistic representation! In pairs, the young people help to bring out each other’s opinions of the collective proposal before it is presented to each family and turned into a mosaic. It is approved both by the school and the families.
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The participants break up the surface of the wall to guarantee the mosaic will remain for at least a generation. The possibility of future relatives being able to see and touch their creativity and knowledge within the mosaic they were creating was highly motivating for these young people and their families. It reveals how the cultivation of self-esteem cannot be separated from the experience of being admired by others, from the past and/or from the future, as well as in the present. We are beginning to understand the social value of beauty and the performative nature of self-determination. At night, we coordinators project and transfer the design onto the wall. Unfortunately, the participants live too far from the school to be able to participate in this step of the process. But during the next day, they firm up the design and then modify it throughout the process. The entire school participates in the production phase. Working slowly and intimately in a trio for 90 minutes each month, each participant is able to continue to participate fully in the official curriculum. Although history, geography, culture, language, mathematics, agricultural production and policy have all found their way into the design and making of the mosaic, this interdisciplinary project remains rigidly marginalized as ‘art’.
However the pedagogy continues to impact socially and culturally throughout the process of production. Here, Aline can be seen teaching her mother, Maria, the two working together in the construction of a cultural monument which, in practice, is changing how they see and understand one another. These family relationships are among the hardest to transform. Had we had more time, we would have organized cultural literacy workshops for the parents in every corner of the community, before integrating them into the process of collective production. The head teacher learns from one of the youngest participants how to create a mosaic. This inversion of the traditional pedagogic relationship builds a new self-confidence and intergenerational, intercultural respect in them both.
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The self-declared illiterate school-cook arrives at the school wall: I cannot read or write. I will only disrupt the work. But this woman, who reads the wind, land, sky, rain and the very health of her cows from the taste of their milk, discovers that, like her children at the school, she too is creative, artistic and a producer of culture. She stays for three hours working beside them. Now in the final stage of the production, the young people grout the mosaic to guarantee its resilience, now working, chatting and making decisions together, confident of their abilities. The first page of the collective book has developed considerably from the original design. Monsters of pollution rise out of the factories beside the favelas (poor urban communities) to prey upon the cities and gaze threateningly at the social movements, clutching new technology in their claws and their mouths. The young people use these vultures to represent the threat to speaking openly and critically in the twenty-first century. They include a celebratory self-portrait of themselves as artistic producers. The second page dramatizes the futures the young people have chosen, and celebrates their multicultural world. The boy at the top of this portrait holds a tent: he will go on to ‘occupy’ other non-productive lands in the process of democratizing Brazil. The boy in the middle holds a falling tear which represents one of the nineteen landless peasants massacred at Eldorado dos Carajás: he will cry, affirming a new masculine sensitivity. And the sitting girl at the bottom of the page holds a genetically unmodified (agro-ecological) seed, a seed with which she will use to replant the future. Now that the land is productive and each family has a home, the more intimate social change can be prioritized. In this third page, two young people can be seen in the foreground discussing a heart. It is not clear who is holding or releasing the cutters, nor what is being said. This is deliberate. In this way, the young artists have created an open image, a pedagogical invitation to other pupils, teachers and their community to write their own dialogue into the mosaic and by so doing, to participate in the writing of this collective book. Beside them, a young black kid on tiptoes releases a golden bird. Why? This is another pedagogical provocation which future history teachers can use as a text for students of all generations. This fragment reveals not just the mosaic’s quality, but also the socio-pedagogical relations between transformation of personal experience and ideas through artistic languages into an
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object of socially valued quality, and the production of self-esteem. The teachers who have actively contributed to the process sit with representatives from each class to discuss and modify a proposal of how to evaluate the entire project that has spanned two years. The proposal has been designed through consultation with every participant, using slides and storytelling to recover their memory of each phase. We
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discover that by revisiting each phase of the collective process, participants have more vivid experience to bring to their analytical evaluation. Many have grown beyond recognition since the outset of the project but retain strong visual and emotional impressions. By performing what they remember of the entire process, the young participants recover other body memories they did not realize they had ‘remembered’. In this way, exchanging what they recall, they renew and rediscover the full range of experiences they have lived. This is then presented to the community in the form of a celebratory performance on the day of the ‘publication’ of their collective book. When the ‘pedagogic mosaic’ is unveiled, their parents move slowly towards it to touch it. Some cry. Others just smile. Then they begin to interpret it together. Once again in pairs, the young people identify and analyse the key moments of learning for each of them throughout the project. These are then creatively transposed into poems, testimonies, images and dances as ways of both sharing them publicly and sustaining the process of transformance. It is for this reason that the young artists included a bird of hope being released from the hand of a black youth. The final mosaic is a collective book written by young authors for their community, celebrating cooperation, cultural democracy, the cultivation of a new humanity and the development of a pedagogy of transformation. On the large stage of their classroom, in the full circle of their contemporaries, each participant speaks of their greatest moment of pleasure and challenge. We had expected to hear about the development of solidarity, self-esteem and friendship during the evaluation. But we had not expected to hear how – in being able to glue and unglue the broken fragments of tile onto the wall, remove, re-cut and re-glue them yet again – participants had learned to overcome the fear of making mistakes in public. In this way, they could bring together what they had seen in their ‘mind’s eye’ with what they produced practically, without the fear of being judged. They were experimenting publicly without fear of humiliation, without the fear of ‘social exile’ or ‘annihilation’. In this sense, they were learning not only how to actively build democracy, but how to intervene, to perform transformation. And they had discovered the transformative power of their own performance: ‘just as we took abandoned ceramic fragments and recycled them into a new mosaic, so we took fragments of our excluded histories and recycled them into a new sense of community…’ We conclude with the following proposals. Arts-based pedagogical training is essential for all teachers. This may seem utopian, but is fundamental to moving beyond the curriculum to the construction of a new, selfreflexive, expressive, dialogic and empathetic humanity. Cultural literacy and intercultural studies should be in every single school. We need to know how to read ourselves in order to be able to read others, in order to be able to read and build a multicultural world which guarantees cultural rights, together.
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Sustained community cultural projects are needed. To enable children, parents and grandparents who believe they have no cultural connection to change their physical, emotional and cultural relationships by building something new, thereby nurturing community, solidarity and cooperation. Creativity has to be nurtured (not tested or graded). How else will we learn to live in and adjust to permanent change, without fear?
SOCIAL JUSTICE THROUGH CURRICULUM: INVESTIGATING ISSUES OF DIVERSITY Patricia L. Stuhr, Christine Ballengee-Morris, Vesta A. H. Daniel The Ohio State University, USA
Abstract Visual culture education has evolved to include the interaction of issues of difference and behaviour attached to cultural perspectives that shift and conflict. Visual culture is the term given to changed and expanded understandings of art that are reflected in art education through the recent proliferation and pervasiveness of visual images and artifacts and their importance to social life. These shifts and conflicts are apparent in issues characterizing social justice at personal, national, and global cultural levels. Personal and communal narratives define and construct the meaning of visual culture in our everyday lives. Curricula that promote examination of these narratives and of visual culture need to be developed. For them to succeed, educators also need to empathize with the views of the communities in which they teach. We advocate conceptualizing curriculum as a process guided by consideration of community, pedagogy and the goal of social justice. This collaborative paper explores why we engage in this process ourselves and how to develop this type of curriculum. Keywords Visual culture, Curriculum, Diversity, Social justice Multiculturalism in the United States of America A part of the discussion of diversity issues must be grounded in the concept of multiculturalism. Since the turn of the nineteenth century, people have been interpreting multiculturalism through
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various lenses (e.g. socio-cultural, political, academic, and pedagogical), all of which are biased. The evolution of terms, specifically the word multicultural, is being questioned as reality continually shifts. History provides our foundation and defines our vocabulary for considering the term. It also provides a focused vision and critical reflection and analysis has revealed some conflicts surrounding it. As a result, the evolving term multicultural now includes intercultural, intracultural and cross-cultural, and their intersections and complexities. The conceptual changes surrounding the term are profoundly affected by and, in turn affect visual culture and education as represented through the arts, contemporary media and artifact and associated narratives. Although we are discussing multiculturalism primarily in terms of educational reform, the broader concept of multiculturalism just mentioned is not new. Multiculturalism is a reality because of our ancestor’s nomadic life styles. The [American] Public Broadcasting Services (PBS) programme ‘The first eve’ (1998) and an article called ‘Global Culture’ in National Geographic, published in 1998, visualized described the nomadic nature of our predecessors. Nomadic life demanded that humans develop adaptations to the new environments they encountered. These diverse environmental adaptations helped groups of humans create varied cultural systems. While traveling, groups of humans encountered other groups and their different lifestyles. Their reactions to these encounters were many and complex: curiosity, trading, sharing, feasting, joy, uniting, enculturation, and creation of community, assimilation, avoidance, violence, and negotiation. Today, humans are still mobile (nomadic) beings; however, much of our travelling is via virtual networks: television, radio, film and computer technology. For these reasons, the challenges of multiculturalism are larger for all peoples, especially educators who teach the issues and implications of this topic to students through these virtual depictions and narratives. Multiculturalism and School Reform Cultural diversity is often studied as a part of the school reform movement known as Multicultural Education. Multicultural Education is a concept, philosophy and process that originated n the 1960s, in the USA, as part of the Civil Rights Movement to combat racism. It was then, and still is, an educational process dedicated to providing more equitable opportunities for disenfranchised individuals and groups in social, political and especially, educational arenas. Although this ideal, like that of democracy, may never be met completely; many people still understood it as a worthy and necessary educational goal for a more just and equitable society (Sleeter & Grant 1998). It is important to remember that all forms of education act as social interventions and reconstruct society in various ways. Notably the practice of multicultural art education has been characterized by a broad-brush approach to social and cultural groups, which produce generalizations and stereotypes. However, through narratives individual, local, national, and global differences and similarities are emphasized thus generalized categories are harder to preserve. The detail of cultural narratives enables us to focus attention on particular points of divergence. Concepts of multiculturalism in art education are, and should be, continually in process in order to encourage social justice and thriving, constructive communities. Process rather than product
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should be the consequence of curricula guided by democratic social goals and values that seek to confront the ‘racial class, gender, and homophobic biases woven into the fabric of society’ (Bigelow, Harvey, Krap & Miller 2001, p. 1). This process helps us to explain and confront colonialist practices that stem from one group of people having power over another group’s ‘…education, language(s), culture(s), lands and economy’ (Ballengee-Morris 2000, p. 102). Moreover, these goals and values provide for classroom practices built on empathy, democracy and social justice. Strategies for reaching them can be found in the processes of constructing positive and supportive communities. Our deliberations on the development of multicultural curricula, suggest they should be guided by democratic social goals and values: and more specifically be (i) grounded in the lives of students; (ii) provide a critical lens to view all social and cultural systems; (iii) establish a safe environment in which to do critical inquiry; (iv) incite an investigation of bias; (v) present justice for all as a goal; (vi) provide for participatory and experiential involvement; and (vii) be hopeful, joyful, kind, visionary, affirming, activist, academically rigorous, integrated, culturally sensitive, and utilize community resources (Daniel & Collins 2002; Ballengee-Morris & Stuhr 2001, Bigelow, Harvey, Karp & Miller 2001). We believe that good curricula and teaching, particularly in the area of multiculturalism, should connect with students’ narratives, needs, experiences and communities. Students need to understand that their identities are constructed by the stories they tell about themselves and that are told about them (Cohen-Evron 2005). It is important they investigate how their lives connect to and are limited by the broader society. Students need critical skills to address social issues and to think through how some groups benefit or suffer by the colonial practices and decisions of others. When it is possible to do so, it is important to move students conceptually and physically outside the classroom and link with real-world communities, issues and problems in order to practice these critical skills. This type of critical investigation is not without threat or danger; thus, teachers must be empathetic, practical and cautious in creating mentally and physically safe environments for this learning to occur. For example, it is necessary to examine the biases that lead to prejudice, discrimination, and colonialism through exploration of history, current social issues and visual culture. Students need to recognize their own biases and those of others in order to understand the connections between power and wealth and injustice. The concept of justice and equitable opportunities for all are important goals. To help students understand them, it is necessary to create opportunities for them to actively participate in and experience these concepts firsthand. Examining and producing visual culture imagery and objects that lead to and end in understanding of justice and the complexities of social, political, and economic relations are valuable educational goals. The classroom can serve as a microcosm of a democratic society in which students are cared for and enabled to care for each other. Caring about students and enabling them to care about others helps to create environments in which they feel safe and secure and encourages them to be hopeful, joyful, kind, visionary and affirming. We would like to see these qualities employed in the larger democratic society. Our goals are to have students envision their lives as valuable, to embrace integrity and to be advocates and activists for justice. This is possible only through an integrated curriculum that is academically demanding and conceptually connected to students’ lives. Visual culture can provide a stimulating curriculum component by
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posing images and objects that characterize complexity, ambiguity, contradiction, paradox and multiple perspectives. Through engaging with it, students learn that real life is messy and issues are not solved by having ‘the’ right answer. Arriving at solutions involves discussion, compromise, negotiation, arbitration, mediation, cultural sensitivity and openness to community resources, multiple representations and re-representations (Bigelow, Harvey, Karp & Miller 2001; Daniel 2002). Curricula need to go beyond prepackaged formulas and the narrow agendas often imposed by state and national guidelines or testing. They should be built on empathy, democracy, and critical practice. The goals and values we proffer provide for a curriculum that is credible, authentic, and practical. It engages students and teachers with a sense of educational purpose and connects them with the visual culture and narratives of the communities that surround them (Bigelow, Harvey, Karp & Miller 2001). We are not of the mind that multicultural school reform goals and values represent an answer or model that can be learned once and for all or prescribed within a static curriculum. Rather, teachers and students should learn to look at their own cultural constructions as well as those of others through and in visual culture. Using a critical perspective, a community of learners may come to understand that what has been learned socially can also be unlearned or changed by individuals within groups or communities if this is deemed necessary. Change in a community can be energized or prevented by its cultural identity and connections. Cultures are not discrete entities but are connected to peoples’ lives and driven by their choices. People within groups, who are part of a state or nation and influenced by global events and media, carry the responsibility of their rights and are to blame for inaction. We live in a global world, our daily lives are impacted by this reality and it is important to understand that they are connected to and impact on the lives of others. How we make meaning of the narratives that are constructed locally, nationally and globally through visual culture needs to be a part of the art education curricula. Desai (2005) has suggested the importance of ‘charting the global networks that connect economic, social, political process to aesthetic production, thereby opening spaces for students to examine the relationship between local and global’ (p. 305). Getting people to think critically about their own actions and narratives and those of their group and who they are empowering or disenfranchising through their personal narratives, lives, actions, and work (which includes making and interpreting the meaning of visual culture), is important (Ballengee-Morris & Stuhr 2001) because each person’s action or inaction ultimately affects everyone else. History, Heritage and Tradition The dynamic and interactive concepts of history, heritage, tradition and culture need to be defined from a social anthropological perspective to facilitate understanding of multicultural art and visual culture education. History can be understood as an oral or written story of a particular people’s past. Histories of past collective experiences and personal and dialogic narratives of socio-cultural groups tend to be recorded by privileged group representatives. Heritage can be explained in terms of what we inherit from the history of our specific
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socio-cultural group and utilize in our life. Traditions constitutes those practices based in heritage that tie the culture of lived experiences of a person within a group to certain narratives (real or fictional), songs, art and visual culture, food, clothing, etcetera. History, heritage, and traditions do not exist only in the past. These concepts are continually being constructed and reconstructed in the present to make them meaningful and relevant for people’s lives. Individuals’ varied experiences within the history, heritage, tradition and culture of groups to which they belong is what produces diversity (Ballengee-Morris & Stuhr 2001; Chanda & Daniel 2000). Culture Perhaps the most misunderstood concept is culture. It is often thought to be a static, esoteric entity outside of an individual’s lived experience. According to Daniel (2002), culture is made up of what we do and value. David Morris says, ‘[C]ulture is the heritage of the future’ (Morris, in personal communication, 2000). Culture provides a dynamic blueprint for how to live our lives and confines our possibilities for understanding and action. This is one reason why it is so important to learn about the culture and values of others. Multicultural education can help us see broader possibilities for ways of thinking about life and death and the available choices for action. We all have cultural connections because we all live and exist within social groups. How we live our lives is influenced by aspects of our personal socio-cultural identity as lived within a particular nation or nations and by global issues. The conditions possible for social and cultural change in individuals are, in part, determined by the governing system of the nation or nations they live in or are citizens of. This larger political system is often referred to as the national culture or macro culture. National governmental systems are continually subject to change, depending upon current political, social, and economic conditions. We are all influenced by global issues and the economic and political state of the world, represented through visual culture, most often at a virtual level (Ballengee-Morris & Stuhr 2001). Personal Cultural Identity Aspects of personal cultural identity include: age; gender and sexuality; social and economic class (education, job, family position); exceptionality (giftedness, differently abled, health); geographic location (rural, suburban, urban, as well as north, south, east, west or central); religion; political status; language; ethnicity (the aspect most people concentrate on when they think about culture); and racial designation (Ballengee-Morris & Striedieck 1997; Banks & Banks 1993; Gollnick & Chinn 1993; Sleeter & Grant 1988; Stuhr 1995). These aspects of our personal cultural identity are shared, often through stories, with different social groups and are greatly influenced by the national culture(s) in which the group exists. A person’s existence and participation within these groups are often the bases for positions of power and acts of discrimination. The various aspects of personal, cultural identity are in transition and dynamic. Recognizing our own socio-cultural identity and biases makes it easier to understand the multifaceted cultural identities of others. It may also help us to understand why and how they respond as they do (Ballengee-Morris 2000). Ultimately, all we can ever understand is a part of a cultural group’s temporal experience as they report or express it (Scott, Krug & Stuhr 1995). Because partial, temporal understandings of a group are all that exist, it is not possible to come to a complete understanding of a homogeneous culture. For example, there is no such
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thing as ‘an’ African American, Native American or Jewish culture. There is no one representation of a cultural group one can understand by memorizing its characteristics. The more one learns about the narratives of various members of a particular group and its history, heritage, traditions and cultural interactions, the more one comes to understand its richness and complexity (Stuhr 1999). National and Global Culture National cultural identity is often fragmented into regional, state or province, county and local community levels in which institutions, laws, and policies exist and change. National culture which is primarily political is the site where cultural beliefs and values are formed, sanctioned, and/or penalized. As Ballengee-Morris (2000) explains, ‘[T]his process occurs within a hegemonic power structure to create order and conformity that mediates the uncertainty and conflict of everyday life and social and environmental changes’ (p. 3). National cultural identities have associated histories, heritages, and traditions that are continually being constructed and reconstructed in accordance with current political opinion. It is also important to note that individuals often, voluntarily or involuntarily, pay a great deal of attention to images and artifacts of visual culture. An example is this collective image of three prominent figures in the United States national government: Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Brigadier General Vincent Brookes. All these individuals are African American and have portrayed the war in Iraq as a fact to be consumed in a way that makes US citizens feel the United States is in control and we are all safe. These spokespersons have presence, power, authority and information. This collective image is very complex. What questions does it raise? These people are all great role models so it would be nice if we could leave it at that; however, in the United States imagery that represents race is still a formidable component in society, so the following questions could be used to explore the nature and impact of visual culture. First, ‘What is the national agenda
Figures 1, 2 & 3 Major figures in USA national government. (photographs by Associated Press: Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Brigadier General Vincent Brooks)
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Figure 4 Media representations of race. (photographs from: www.salon.com/news)
behind the placement and visibility of these individuals?’; and second, ‘If these individuals are viewed as icons connected with the war, do they serve as an effective military recruiting tool for other African Americans and people of color and should they be used in this way?’1 Media representations of hurricane Katrina in August 2005 are another example of visual culture exposing issues of race and social class in the United States. As government officials and news media personnel discussed the issues raised by the ineffective processes of evacuating and sheltering the poor, they often presented the plight of the survivors through a racist lens. In one report from the Associated Press, accompanied by photographs white people found food and black people looted. This report raised issues concerning the major television networks’ collusion in representing race and poverty from a racist point of view (AP, Tuesday, 30 August 2005, 11:31 a.m. Spike Lee addressed these same issues in the 2006 HBO documentary film When the levies broke: A requiem in four acts. In the first case presented (i.e., images of Rice, Powell and Brooks) media representation of race serves as role modeling to encourage Black Americans to serve their country through the military and to align themselves with these examples of power and equality. In the second example of Hurricane Katrina victims the stereotype that white is good and black is bad is affirmed through the descriptions accompanying them. Representations and the dialogic
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narratives within local, national, and global communities therefore, not only impact on students today, but also influence how they make meaning concerning people and events during the rest of their lives. Investigating and critiquing our understanding(s) of our national culture(s) is an ongoing process that may help us and/or students to identify and recognize ethnocentric perspectives at national, regional, state, and local levels. Individuals may also travel to other countries to visit and live, willingly or unwillingly. When they do this, perceptions from their previous national culture(s) journey with them. These nomadic notions colour and affect their understandings of the new national culture(s) they encounter. The inquiry process we propose is important because it creates the potential for critique of national culture at all levels and opens up possibilities of becoming familiar with other national cultures, especially where these afford space for expression of nomadic understanding and experience. The process is significant also because it facilitates understanding of the foundations of democracy, its potential and risks in achieving our goals of educating responsible, accountable, active members of society through the arts and visual culture education. Global culture, which is largely fueled by economics, affects all national cultures. It functions through mass media (television, radio, newspapers, telephones, faxes, etc.) and computer technology (E-mail, World Wide Web, etc.) to produce hegemonically constructed, shared, virtual, cultural experiences. Global culture directly or indirectly affects most individuals on the planet, especially youth. It involves the commodification and control of personal and national culture at an international level. One of its mainstays is visual culture, along with the history, heritage and traditions created by the desire of capitalist manufacturers for global sales. The merchandise of global culture could be products, ideology or politics, war, religion and spirituality. Mass media merchandising can be a positive useful tool when co-opted for educational purposes (e.g., Sesame Street, saving endangered species) (Ballengee-Morris & Stuhr 2001). The personal, national, and global aspects of culture make up a fluid, dynamic mesh of an individual’s cultural identity and are wholly integrated into an individual’s personality and lived experience. In our discussion of the personal, national, and global aspects of cultural life, these aspects have been separated and discussed individually. In an individual’s identity, personal, national and global cultures are integrated and continually affect each other in everyday life. We believe the purpose of multicultural school reform is to help students identify and deal with cultural complexity and issues of power as associated with social affiliations and aspects of personal, national and global cultural identity(ies). Curricular Considerations When a particular concept is addressed in the classroom, it is more meaningful to pose it as an issue or question for students, that becomes the driving force of the curriculum. The concept of terrorism is worthy of study in art education because it is relevant to students’ lives (CohenEvron 2005). There are many organizations and agencies producing supportive information designed to help children and families cope with the stresses of war, terrorism and other crises,
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such as the: American Psychological Association, www.apa.org, and National Association of School Psychologists, www.nasponline.org, National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, www.ncptsd.org/facts/specific/fs_children.html. These websites also offer rationales for teaching about complex concepts like terrorism inherent in the current social condition of the world. Terrorist threats and attacks and the realities of war as seen in the media each day are frightening experiences for all Americans especially for children who worry that threatened or actual military actions in the Middle East will result in more 9–11 situations in the United States. Terrorism affects students and teachers at personal, communal, national and global cultural levels. This reality probably has intense psychological and physical affects on them. Investigating the concept in a way that informs students of the causes and deterrents could help to alleviate their misconceptions, fears, and possibly even their physical distress. Teachers and other adults have a duty to help students feel safe at a time when the world is perceived and viewed through the mass media as a dangerous place. It is important to help them understand current events factually and realistically. In exploring concepts such as terrorism through visual culture, teachers could help students to investigate how events do or do not impact their lives and deal responsibly with the emotions they engender. Not all students will be affected by the study of terrorism in the same way. The emotions evoked through visual culture imagery may be intense: fear, loss of control, anger, isolation, loss of stability and confusion. Students who have suffered personal loss or been exposed to terrorist acts or military actions are likely to feel intensified emotions and be most vulnerable. Students whose parents or acquaintances are in the military or are first responders (e.g. firefighters, police, and medical responders) may also be affected more strongly. Consideration of community, postcolonialism and social justice provides United States educators with a lens through which to address the issues/questions concerning terrorism within a nation that espouses democracy as the backbone of its national beliefs. But all children everywhere are likely to be affected in some way by war or terrorism involving our country and,
(They) ….may have trouble understanding the difference between violence as entertainment and the real events taking place on the news. Today’s children live in the world of Armageddon, Independence Day, Air Force One, and cartoon Super Heroes. Some of the modern media violence is unnervingly real. Youngsters may have difficulty separating reality from fantasy, cartoon heroes and villains from the government soldiers and real terrorists. Separating the realities of war from media fantasy may require adult help. (www.nasponline.org) Examples of issues/questions for dealing with the concept of terrorism might be: ‘Who is a terrorist?’ ‘Who gets to identify who a terrorist is?’, ‘Does the fear of terrorism justify discriminatory behaviours?’, and ‘How is terrorism related to colonialism?’ These questions require both students and teachers to consider their own beliefs, values, and knowledge and life experiences. They also provide opportunities for studying influences of visual culture on each variable. Even small children can investigate them, provided they are made relevant to their life experiences. The complex concept of terrorism could be explained and explored through the related concept of conflict. For instance, it might be more engaging and sensible for students to consider terrorism or conflict by exploring visual imagery in familiar items such
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Figure 5 Who is a terrorist? (www.crf-usa.org/terror/terrorism_links.htm)
Figure 6 Does the fear of terrorism justify discriminatory behaviors? (www.crf.usa.org/terror/terrorism_links.htm)
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as: toys, cartoons, television programs, video and computer games, nightly news and mall arcades. They may also have heard adult conversations, they were not party to, dealing with terrorism or other social concerns. Websites and videos by organizations such as Teaching Tolerance, TIME for Kids and Media Awareness, among other resources,2 are available to assist teachers in developing related curricula. Figure 7 How is terrorism related to colonialism? (www.crk-usa.org/terror/terrorism_links.htm)
It is important that teachers and other adults acknowledge that they do not condone terrorism or war; and voice how important it is to keep and bring peace to situations and areas disturbed by terrorism and war activity. Letting students know we are all frightened and dislike the unsettling and disturbing images we see in the media and news is crucial. But it is equally important to help them imagine, envision and represent possibilities for a more peaceful, kind and socially responsible world. We all need to feel we are socially connected and help each other through this difficult period of our history to a brighter, more peaceful world. Although our governments and media may not clearly define the difference between terrorism and war through the images they show; it is important that, as educators who are more informed about visual representation, these distinctions are made clear. It is important to stop students from stereotyping people from specific cultures or countries.
Figure 8 An example of a toy. (photograph by Patricia Stuhr)
Figure 9 An example of political expression that is shared through blogs and e-mails (by unknown artists).
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Figure 10 D.i.n, Drawing by Jeremy Meisel, age 8, influenced by Desert Storm.
Students need help to understand that bullying and harassment are not acceptable behaviours and do not improve safety for any group of people but contribute to a social environment that condones terrorist activity. Teachers and students need to plan jointly, imagine and represent creative solutions for a terror-free world. Children may play ‘war,’ pretend to blow things up or include images of violence in artwork and writing. Whereas this may be upsetting to adults under current circumstances, it is a normal way to express their awareness of events around them. We suggest teachers gently redirect children away from violent play or efforts ‘to replay’ terrorist attacks. But, teachers should not be overly disapproving unless children’s acts are genuinely aggressive. We think it is important to talk with children about their art or written images and to: find out how they feel; share their reactions; and help them to consider the consequences of war or terrorist acts – what happens if a building blows up or a bomb explodes? For children who seek pretend play as an outlet, encourage role playing of the doctors, firemen, policemen etc. who have helped to save lives. If a child seems obsessed with violent thoughts or images for more than a few days, teachers should talk to a mental health professional (www.nasponline.org).3
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Figure 11 Bronuasuartake, drawing by Jeremy Miesel, age 8, influenced by Desert Storm.
It is important for educators to investigate facts about developments in war and protection against terrorism and they answer students’ questions with accurate information not speculation. They should be prepared to communicate with community members and provide a rationale for addressing concepts such as terrorism and let parents know if their child is exhibiting undue stress over the topic. The goal of educators is to foster thoughtful discussion at home and create a sense of safety and security. To conclude, a curriculum with the goal of social justice helps students to view images in a thoughtful manner so they develop democratic ways of thinking and become informed consumers. Learning about the ways in which the visual arts influence people, empowers children to decide how they allow themselves to be influenced. They can learn early on how civic leaders use imagery to represent themselves and influence people’s voting choices. To promote social justice, children should begin to learn about the ways in which groups of people are represented in imagery. Through art education, they can come to understand the damaging effects of visual stereotypes (Freedman & Stuhr 2005).
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Figure 12 Coptor take, priced at $.25, drawing by Jeremy Miesel, age 8, influenced by Desert Storm.
Notes 1. African Americans make up 12 per cent of the general population of the United States. Twenty-one per cent serve in the United States military. Thirty per cent are Army enlisted [www.commondreams.org]. 2. http. //www.Mediaawareness.ca/eng/ httpwww.nctvv.org/National Coalition on TV Violence http?//www.timefor kids.comTIME for Kids. 3. Adapted from Children and War – Responding to Operation Desert Storm by Debby Waddell & Alex Thomas (Helping Children Grow Up in the 90s, National Association of School Psychologists, 1992) and modified from material posted on the NASP website following the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
References Ballengee-Morris, C. & Streidieck, I. M. (1997), A postmodern feminist perspective on visual arts in elementary teacher education. In D. R. Walling (eds.). The role of the arts and humanities in postmodern schooling. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa. Ballengee-Morris, C. (2000), A sense of place: Allegheny echoes. In K. Congdon, D. Blandy, p. Bolin (eds.). Making invisible histories of art education visible. Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.
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Ballengee-Morris, C. (2000), “Heritage, traditions, and culture in a changing world”, presented to InSEA 30th World Congress, 21 September 1999, Brisbane, Australia. Ballengee-Morris, C. & Stuhr, p. L. (2001), Multicultural art and visual cultural education in a changing world, Art Education, vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 6–13. Banks, A. J. & Bank, C. A. (1993), Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives. (2nd edition). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Bigelow, B., Harvey, B., Karp, S., Miller, L. (2001), Rethinking our classrooms, volume two: Teaching for equity and justice. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools Limited. Boughton, D., Freedman, K., Hausman, J., Hicks, L., Madeja, S., Metcalf, S., Rayala, M., Smith-Shank, D., Stankiewicz, M., Stuhr, p. , Tavin, K., Vallence, E. (2002), Art education and visual culture. NAEA Advisory. Reston, VA: NAEA. Chanda, J. & Daniel, V. (2000), ReCognizing works of art: The essences of contextual understanding. Art Education, 53 (2) 6–11. Cohen Evron, N. (2005), Students living within a violent conflict: Should art educators ‘play it safe’ or face ‘difficult knowledge’? Studies in Art Education, 46 (4) 309–322. Daniel, V. (2001), Art education as a community act: Teaching and learning through the community. Conference Proceedings for the New Prospects of Art Education in Theory and Practice Symposium, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei. Daniel, V., & Collins, C. (2002), Community visions. In C. Basualdo, (Ed.) Face your world (pp. 81–94). Columbus, OH: Wexner Center for the Arts/The Ohio State University. Desai, D. (2005), Places to go: Challenges to multicultural art education in a global economy. Studies in Art Education, 45(4), 293–308. Freedman, K. & Stuhr, p. L. (2005), Curriculum and visual culture. In M. Day & E. Eisner (Eds.). Handbook of art education research. (pp. 815–828), Reston, VA: NAEA. Freedman, K. & Stuhr, p. L. (2005 in process of review), Art education Is not a frill – It’s essential! Grandparents Magazine. Golnick, D. M. & Chinn, p. C. (1998), Multicultural education in a pluralistic society (5th ed.). Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merill Publishing Company. Sleeter, C., & Grant, C. (1998), An analysis of multicultural research in the United States: A postmodern feminist perspective on visual arts in elementary education. Harvard Educational Review, 57 (4) 421–445. Scott, A. p. , Krug, D., Stuhr, p. (1995), A conversation about translating the Indigenous story. Journal of Multicultural and Cross-Cultural Research in Art Education, 13 (1) 29–45. Stuhr, p. (1995), A social reconstructionist multicultural art curriculum design: Using the powwow as an example. In Neperud, R.W. (Ed.), Context content and community in art education: Beyond postmodernism. (pp. 193–221). New York: Teachers College Press. Stuhr, p. L. (1999), Multiculturalism art education: Context and pedagogy. FATE, Journal of the College Art Association, 22 (1) 5–12. Swerdlow, J. L. (1999), Global culture. National Geographic, 196 (2) 2–5.
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CONTEMPORARY ARTWORKS AS SITES FOR IDENTITY RESEARCH Rachel Mason Roehampton University, UK
Abstract Artists in Britain, as in many other parts of the world, are exploring issues of cultural identity and diversity in their work. Similarly the British national curriculum is promoting the study of identity in schemes of work for the school subjects of citizenship and art. This paper presents the findings of research into the work of contemporary artists from diverse cultural backgrounds living and working in London in which their life stories, artwork and educational projects were analysed for what they tell us about their self-identifications and about British national identity. A critical analysis of two national curriculum schemes of work in the light of the results leads to the conclusion that the emphasis on ethnicity and culture in the school curriculum is problematic and that learners are missing out on opportunities to learn about the way multiple global identities are under construction in modern urban societies through the study of contemporary works of art. Keywords Contemporary art, Identity, Curriculum, Britain Introduction I have been interested in multicultural art education for a long time. In 1999, I wrote that cultural identity, defined as ‘the way art reflects and cultural and ethnic affiliations and encapsulates perceptions that can be said to be culturally distinctive’, is the core construct in multicultural art education reform in the majority of world regions (Boughton & Mason 1999, p. 15). This paper explores how the facts of diversity and diaspora are impacting on identity in art and education
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in Britain seven years later. It has three parts. The first part interrogates contemporary artworks by culturally diverse women artists living in London for what they can tell us about their cultural identifications. The second part asks, ’Why is identity’ such a hot topic in British education and art?’ The third part compares and critiques two schemes of work from the English national curriculum organized around the theme of identities. Identity and Contemporary Art One of my doctoral students is collecting research data about five culturally diverse women artists living and working in London. Misako is a practising artist and art educator from Japan who is studying the way ethnicity and gender shape artistic identities and practice. In June 2005 she presented some of the data at a conference called The future of multicultural Britain organized by the National Centre for Research into Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (CRONEM) at Roehampton University.1 This provided us with an opportunity to discuss what contemporary art tells us about British cultural identity with an audience of sociologists, anthropologists and cultural theorists. The remainder of this section of the paper provides background information about Misako and the women and arts she is researching. Misako was born and brought up in Tokyo and studied art in Canada and France. She came to London to study because the city functions as a centre for the global art market and is a place where community arts education is extensively theorized, funded and practiced. The Arts Council of England recently allocated £36 million pounds sterling for Creative Partnership schemes involving schools artistic and cultural agencies, for example, (http: //www.creative-partnerships.com/aboutcp/facts/ref), something for which there is no equivalent in Japan. Three of the five women she is researching were born in London, one in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and one in France. With one exception they have all lived in other countries at some time in their lives. Their answers to Misako’s question, ‘What is your ethnicity?’, are illuminating. Teri
Figure 1 The Snake, by Misako Okuyama. (photograph by artist)
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and Jennifer who were born in London define themselves as ‘African-Caribbean’; Meera describes herself as ‘Asian British’; Fatima defines herself as ‘North African’; and Thurle as ‘English’. Misako believes their cultural values and beliefs are most strongly influenced by their parents’ countries of origin. Thurle, for example, has English parents but grew up Rhodesia and has lived in Australia, Germany and France. Fatima grew up in France but has Algerian parents. But Misako points out they have a more global cultural perspective than their parents. She elected to study them because, in different ways, they all exploit visual imagery and symbolism to explore, create and represent their cultural and gender identities in and through art. The following is a summary description of works by Teri and Meera. Description of artworks These photographs of pregnant women by Teri Hylton come from a series entitled ‘Object of Desire’. Teri’s artwork is gender oriented and portrays African-Caribbean females. According to Misako, her art explores ways in which ‘women are reclaiming their sexual identity within the tradition of a patriarchal society and celebrating female sexuality and motherhood’. As well as challenging the common view of women as sexual objects, they raise issues about Black women’s health. The woman on the left has no fingers because her mother took thalidomide during her pregnancy. Another work entitled Medical medical is a self-portrait of the artist with thyroid. Teri told Misako that thyroid is common among Asian, African and African-Caribbean women and there is very little research into the disease. She is critical of British government health policies for minority ethnic women. Her series of photographs with this title question the complications arising when women use legally prescribed drugs to alleviate thyroid in place of cannabis, which is illegal but widely used by African-Caribbean’s. They question why she could not alleviate her own condition legally by taking a drug with fewer side effects. This collage is by Meera Chauda. In a catalogue for the exhibition Message to India (2000), she asserted that it raises questions of identity and place and draws on children’s stories in diverse cultures in which girls often embark upon journeys then return home.
Figure 2 Object of desire, by Teri Hylton (photograph by artist). Artist Statement: Pregnant women challenge the object of desire and the concept of women being exploited for their sexual organs (2001)
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Figure 3 Untitled, by Meera Chauda.
Central to my art is the fusion of images from Hindu religious tales and European stories I grew up as a British born Asian Girl. I create hybrid characters belonging to two different stories: part Alice in Wonderland and part Ganesh the Elephant God or part Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and part Kali the Destroyer. Where have these characters come from? What are they doing? Where are they going? These are all questions of identity and place-questions that feature both Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz, childhood stories in which innocent yet fearless and forthright girls embark on journeys and return home. My work expresses states of confusion and irony and I am intrigued by opposites, trickery and the journeys questions send us on (Message to India 2000, p. 1). As Misako has pointed out, Meera’s work is strongly influenced by a Hindu religious-aesthetic. She does not use any Christian symbols as such, only images of English everyday objects, such as a teacup, bottle of wine or William Morris textiles. But she chooses female symbols from both cultures. This collage is constructed out of photocopied and scanned images drawn from everyday sources. Kali’s head was photocopied from a postcard she purchased in an ‘Asian’ shop in London and the ‘Dorothy’ illustration was scanned from a children’s storybook. Findings The audience at the conference agreed with us that the data did not yield much evidence of a collective British national sentiment. Instead, a proliferation of identities in British society and art
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is evident in the artists’ self-identifications and visual representations. The ‘ethnic’ identifications so beloved of multiculturalists are not an overriding concern. According to Tomlinson (2003), understanding the proliferation of identities in art necessitates looking at globalization in cultural life; and, as Desai (2005) has pointed out, acceptance of multiple viewpoints is commonplace in the contemporary art world which has witnessed an increase in brokering of artworks from specific cultures by arts institutions in collaboration with transnational corporations. Following Appiah’s idea (1994) that multiple identities are commonplace in modern urban societies, there are other kinds of self-identifications it is important to explore. Since gender schemas underpin most other identities (Hyland Erikson 1993), examining gender identity is particularly significant. But, because I am an art educator, the concept of professional identity is what interests me most. I take the view that artistic identities are socially constructed and that these women’s professional identifications with and membership of an art world are probably more important to them than anything else. Because of this, I want to know more about how their selfimages as artists developed in and from childhood (how their self-identifications arose and were established through comparison with others); and how their ‘artistic self-expressions’ are being shaped by the ideologies and practices of English arts organizations, institutions and policies now. In this regard, Meera told Misako she experienced racism as a child and was ashamed of her Hindu cultural heritage until she went to art school.2
I spent a large part of my childhood and teenage years feeling confused about my identity and home base as well as my cultural beliefs. I grew up in the 1980s in what was a predominantly white working class town and racism was a huge issue. I was sent to a local Church of England school which had a very small proportion of Asian children (five in my whole class year and no other cultural mix. We were not informed about any other religions or culture except Christianity. I spent my whole time at secondary school living two lives wanting to fit in to both and never allowing the two to mix. I spent my summer holidays in Mombassa and the rest of my life in Crawley. Both places never felt like home. At school I never felt like talking about my religion or culture at home for fear of bullying and not fitting in. I had great difficulty as school. I did not excel at any the subjects except art I enjoyed English and needlework but even though I worked hard I never got good marks. I was always under the impression I was not clever and never received any support at school. It was when I went to attend my art foundation course at Croydon College that I was allowed to be open about my culture and religion. The students on my foundation course were all from different cultural and religious backgrounds – Afro Caribbean, Chinese, Malaysian – and this gave me the space to breathe and finally admit who I was. My time at Croydon were the best years of my life – liberating I began questioning my identity and where my home is. At Winchester College of Art most students came from white middle class backgrounds however and I felt like a fish out of water. My artwork was an obvious means of expressing this.
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But she expressed concern that the art establishment in Britain expects so-called ethnic minority artists to produce work linked to their cultural identity and wonders why they have to do this in order to become successful. The audience at the conference identified the geographical location of the study as especially significant for Misako’s research. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org?wiki/ global_city), London is one of four major global (or world) cities, along with Paris, New York and Tokyo, that have a direct effect on global affairs through cultural ,economic and political means. In this respect, Meera told Misako:
I love living and working in London and not feeling a minority. I love the fact that I can buy all the ingredients to make an authentic curry and Italian meal or Japanese or West Indian one at my corner shop. As Colls has pointed out (2002), London (and the London art world) is a distinct, robust and culturally sustaining geographical space in which to construct new community identities. It is important not to underestimate the extent to which these artistic identities are being constructed spatially and geographically, therefore, through living and working in this global geographical location. Identity and curriculum The next section of this paper focuses on education and identity. An exemplary unit of lessons for Citizenship in the English National Curriculum at Key Stage 3,3 which is available for teachers to download, has this to say on the topic:
In this unit students consider their identities and the different national, cultural, religious, regional and ethnic identities and communities to which they belong. The focus of this unit is on respect for diversity in our society. (http: //www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes) The scheme of work it outlines specifies activities, objectives and outcomes designed to stimulate discussion of ‘issues of mutual respect and understanding’. The aims are to help pupils to: (i) think about personal identities; (ii) reflect on their own experience; and (iii) consider how communities are interdependent. Individual sessions are entitled: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
What are my identities? What is my local community like? What images do we have of Britain? What is a global citizen? Is there a global community? Taking responsible action
It is beyond the scope of this paper to describe the scheme in detail but examples of lesson activities include: discussing the different groups to which class members belong and making a ‘belonging tree’; bringing special objects to class that are representative of member’s perceived
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identities; researching the local community (where people come from and why they are there) and comparing past and present composition of populations; exploring how events in other countries impact on communities and considering cross-cultural fusion in music and art. Concern about British identity As I wrote this paper, Gordon Brown (Chancellor of the Exchequer) was calling for a celebration of ‘Britishness’ and planning to introduce a new public holiday to this effect (http: //news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/9666629.stm). At the same time, Secretary Jack Straw had rejected requests for a rethink about what it means to be ‘British’ following the publication of an official report on The future of multi-ethnic Britain (Runnymeade Trust 2000) commissioned for the purpose of examining the nation’s ethnic mix. Why all this concern? In Britain as elsewhere, globalization has served not only to heighten awareness of cultural diversity but also to question the assumption of the nation state itself. Whereas some form of multiculturalism is unavoidable in the majority of societies today; the process of recognizing self through difference persists. As Williams (2005) points out, British national identity has been both enriched and complicated by the maturing of diverse cultural groups, but immigration has brought serious problems of maintaining internal law and order. In the wake of the London Underground bombings in July 2005 there is widespread concern that schools are becoming breeding grounds for anti-British fanatics and the phenomenon of ‘Islamaphobia’ is frequently in the news. Balint (2005), who has examined the various educational policy paths governments are taking to promote social cohesion at the present time, has identified two that relate to identity – one that stresses a common humanity and the other that stresses difference. The second, about which he feels uncomfortable, emphasizes opening up identities and understanding of others with the aim of breaking down cultural barriers and appreciation of others’ uniqueness. This is the policy approach that underpins the English national curriculum strategy summarized above.
Comparison of curricula in Citizenship and Art Now I want to compare two schemes of work from the English National Curriculum with the same theme of identity. One is for the school subject of Art and Design and the other is for Citizenship. Example 1: Art and Design The self-portrait is a familiar topic in art lessons in many parts of the world. The website of the National Curriculum in Action contains the following ‘activity description’ of an art and design scheme of work entitled ‘Self image’, together with examples of student work at Key Stage 3 (level 5, Year 7).
The pupils explored their personal identities and experiences as a starting point. They began by making observational studies of themselves using different drawing media and recording line and tone. They then abstracted and simplified shapes from these studies as a basis for making a printing block. They experimented with different ways of cutting and printing,
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overlapping colours and printing on different surfaces. The teacher encouraged them to extend their methods and approaches by showing them woodcuts by European artists working in an expressionist style, including the German Expressionists. The group discussed the way in which artists distort and exaggerate images or objects for emotional effect and the differences between objective observation and subjective feelings that reflect different states of mind. (Retrieved from http: //ncaction.org.uk/search/comment.htm?id=80 January, 2006) Figures 4 and 5 show examples of John’s work:
Figures 4 & 5 Self-portraits by John.
Discussion Art education has traditionally dealt with expression and encouraged students to define themselves through their own artworks as well as through the images they choose to look at. However, I detect serious problems with the way personal identity is being interpreted and understood above. Social psychologists explain personal identity as formed and developed continuously through interaction with others (McDonald, Hargreaves & Miell 2002). In other words, self-understanding and self-other understanding (how we understand, define and relate to others) develop in parallel. They also explain it as intimately related to cultural identity: or to an individual’s need for collective continuity and belonging to a group. This scheme of work fails to address the truism that personal, social and cultural identities are inextricably intertwined. A second potential problem is the Eurocentric perception of art and culture. For historical reasons, the majority of the world’s formal art education systems have been dominated by a western art
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canon that has been afforded more status than crafts, primitive, folk and ethnic arts (Boughton & Mason 1999). Whereas I identify strongly with this European artistic–cultural heritage myself, I recognize that it ‘imposes boundaries of inclusion and exclusion on “Other” individuals and cultural groups’. As Dash and Young have eloquently stated (in Boughton & Mason 1999), individuals who are members of minority cultural and ethnic groups in Europe must have access to the histories and ways of apprehending the world of their ancestors since, without this, they experience low selfesteem. A further problem is the failure to address the globalism and transculturalism that characterizes contemporary fine art. Although cultural variation is now the preferred educational policy in Britain and elsewhere, this scheme of work encourages the persistence of classroom activities dominated by a Eurocentric historical vision of ‘contemporary’ art practice. Finally, the learning objectives for this exemplary activity, which are exclusively discipline based, are extremely limited: ■ To develop their skills in investigating, combining and manipulating materials and images. ■ To apply and extend their experience of drawing, painting and printmaking, to experiment with visual and tactile qualities and to select their materials and methods in order to convey a range of personal ideas and feelings. Likewise the evaluative statement that: John’s pencil and chalk studies and prints show his ability to manipulate materials and processes in order to communicate different ideas and meanings. In his series of prints he shows an increasing ability to match visual and tactile qualities to his expressive intentions. Surely art education is about more than this? . Example 2: Citizenship Ethnic identity: Who I am The next example comes from a Citizenship scheme of work called ‘Is Britain a diverse society?’ designed for Year 8 pupils at Key Stage 3. The stated objectives are: ■ ■ ■ ■
To develop an understanding of identity and multiple identities. To empathise with cultures and religious groups that are British. To celebrate the positive wealth of cultures and religions in modern, multicultural Britain. To communicate their understanding of identities and belonging through art.
Broadly speaking pupils engaging in this scheme are supposed to (i) investigate what it means to be British in a modern, multicultural society; (ii) explore identity; and (iii) create masks to represent multiple identities and celebrate diversity. This scheme of work is cross-curricula and intended to take place during both religious education and art and design. The details of one activity are as follows:
In groups the pupils research the concepts of identity, belonging and community. They use a range of sources of information, including the Britkid website, which helps them to learn
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about and empathise with ethnic, cultural and social groups that were not their own. Each group feeds back to the rest of the class and discusses what they have found out. Afterwards, the pupils have a class discussion about celebrating diversity in Britain in the twenty-first century. Finally, the teacher asks the pupils to imagine identity as a mask that reflects aspects of heritage or community, and to draw a mask to reflect these identities. The pupils create masks and this is followed by a reflective writing activity. It is worth pausing to consider the website teachers are advised to consult when they implement the scheme. This Britkid website, http: www.britkid.org, purports to be about ‘race, racism and life’ as seen through the eyes of British teenagers. Teachers and pupils can visit the houses of nine culturally diverse teenagers (Balvinder, Nat, Tuzu-lee, Anand, Mumtaz, David, John, Megan and Dan) who introduce them to their families, languages, religion, food, ‘hassles’ and gang.4 They can also visit a number of sites in the fictional town of Britchester including a youth centre, classroom, burger bar, Hindu temple and football club where the teenagers meet and ‘chat’. During these chats they quiz each other about their cultural identities and tell stories about the racism/cultural prejudices they are exposed to in everyday life. The site includes lesson ideas and resource lists for teachers and a ‘serious issues’ section providing factual information about ethnic group numbers, languages and religions in Britain, immigration, racial discrimination, harassment and the law. The ‘serious issues’ section also discusses Islamaphobia and extreme right-wing movements, amongst other topics. There is a facility to send feedback and link to other relevant resource materials and sites Discussion On refection it is clear that students completing this Citizenship scheme of work engage with the concept of multiple identities and explore relationships between personal, national and global identifications. I view this as a strength. The evaluative commentary on an artwork by Hanna (Figure 6) featured on the site points out that:
When reflecting on her mask Hannah showed understanding of the different communities that people belong to and the need for mutual respect and understanding between groups and communities. During group discussions she demonstrated her awareness of how the ethnic and social make-up of communities in Britain is changing over time and she identified some reasons for this. Retrieved from http: //ncaction.org.uk/search/comment.htm?id=80 (January 72006) But there are problems with this scheme too. First, I find the emphasis on ‘ethnicity’ problematic. It was widely accepted at the Roehampton conference that the concept of ethnicity is a majority categorization of minorities that has outlived its usefulness now that hybridity and cultural mixing have become the norm. In this connection I find the demand for a category of mixed-race identity in the USA interesting because its does away with the existing ethnic categories that are, in truth, racially defined. Second, and not surprisingly given the context of a ‘national curriculum’, this scheme of work prioritizes national over global identifications. A third concern
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Figure 6 Hanna’s mask.
is that there is no research evidence that this kind of government approach to promoting social cohesion actually works. Ballint’s objections to this policy path are that (i) the choice of the most appropriate method for building social cohesion must always be context dependent; and that (ii) expecting diverse groups of citizens to take the lead on policies of mutual respect is not likely to have any effect. (They are not particularly tolerant of difference and it unfairly provides a forum only for the more respecting and respectable differences.) Finally, and most importantly for readers of this book, although the second scheme of work deals with the theme of identity and diversity much more comprehensively than the first, there is almost no evidence of any learning in art and design. Conclusions I conclude from analysis of Misako’s ethnographic data that both work schemes have missed out on a golden opportunity to engage children more comprehensively with the topic of identity through studying examples of contemporary art. As Desai points out (2005), there is intellectual commitment in the contemporary art world to multiple viewpoints and the formation of global subjects as is shown in the tendency of nomadic artists to fly from place to place to produce site-specific art. It is this tendency, coupled with adherence to the bohemian ideal of ‘authenticity‘ (a deliberate search to express self authentically), that is so strongly embedded in the ideology of the avant-garde, that makes contemporary art such a prime site for this kind of identity research.
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Figure 7 Self portrait with Union Jack, by Baljit Balrow (1998).
To exemplify this claim, here is an artist statement by Baljit Balrow for her Self portrait with Union Jack (Figure 7):
The images at either end use both strong and proud icons from each culture. Viewing the series of photographs form left to right, the Union Jack becomes less prominent as each colour is wiped away until all that is left is the Indian jewellery showing that, to whatever extent you adapt o the British culture, cultural roots will never disappear. The photograph sequence reversed discusses another angle on the transition of the first to the second generation of British Indians. It visualises the complexities of being both Indian and British. (Message to India, p. 13) It is possible to view artworks like this as research data for analysing the challenges emerging to the dominant national identity in Britain and the conflicts between identities in British society that are chosen and ascribed. In summary, I like the idea that contemporary artworks are narratives of selves that draw on and recast particular interpretative repertoires/fateful moments in certain places and times. The popular artworks by the Kaur Singh twins in which they represent their experience of growing up ‘British-Asian’ in northern England are good examples. Desai (2005) argues that there is too much emphasis in multicultural art education in the American school system on localization and locating the meaning of identity in the culture where one was born. Given that personal national and global identity are intermeshed, she argues we have to look at specific ways in which global capital is defining the local and not start the other way round. I am not sure
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whether this criticism applies as strongly in the British educational context. But Misako’s research confirms that contemporary artworks can be studied as cultural identity symbols and reveal how individuals are constructing personal identities and experiences of living in modern culturally differentiated societies. Of course, the manner in which teachers handle any related discussion about them is all-important. Whether or not these kinds of work schemes will lead to increased tolerance and understanding is another matter. Acknowledgement I wish to thank Misako Okuyama and the artists she studied for permission to use her research data and their images in this paper.
Notes 1. The papers from this conference can be retrieved at: Centre for Research in Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism
. 2. Misako studied at Joshibi University of Art and Design Tokyo and Concordia University Montreal. The artists she is studying undertook specialist courses in art and design at the following art institutions in and around London: Camberwell School of Art, Middlesex University, Croyden College, Winchester School of Art, Goldsmiths College and Kensington and Chelsea College of Art and Design. 3. The National Curriculum is organized into blocks of years called ‘key stages’. There are four key stages as well as a Foundation Stage, which covers children below the minimum compulsory schooling age of five. Foundation. Age 4–5 Key Stage 1. Age 5–7 Key Stage 2. Age 7–11 Key Stage 3. Age 11–14 Key Stage 4. Age 14–16 Programmes of study set out what pupils should be taught in each subject at each key stage. Teachers use these to plan and organize lessons. 4. The site author Chris Gaine justifies the choice of characters as follows: ‘There are 3 South Asian characters but I left out Bangladeshis. There are two African-Caribbeans, but neither has roots in Jamaica and there is no mention of Indo-Caribbeans. I chose to have a Jewish boy but of Northern European refugee descent. The Welsh character also has an African connection but there are no African characters and no Celtic Scots. Other groups that might have been included are Travellers, Irish, East African Vietnamese, Cypriots, and refugees of many different nationalities’. He points out that site is intended for young people who do not live or go to school in ethnically mixed areas of Britain and admits that it was difficult to create, and some groups were left out .
References Appiah, K. (1994), Identity against culture: Occasional Paper No 1 University of California, Berkeley Accessed Dec 27 2006.. Balint, p. (2005), Social cohesion and the space for difference: a delicate balance. Conference paper, The Future of Multicultural Britain, Roehampton University, 4–15 June.
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Boughton, D. & Mason, R. (1999), Beyond multicultural art education: International perspectives, Berlin: Waxmann. Britkid . Accessed 1 January 2007. Colls, R. (2002), Identity of England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Desai, D. (2005), Places to go: challenges to multicultural art education in a global economy, Studies in Art Education 46 (4) 293–308. Erickson (1993), Ethnicity and nationalism, London: Pluto Press. Georgiou, M. (2005), Re-imagining multicultural Britain in diasporic media practices. Conference paper, The Future of Multicultural Britain. Op. cit. Hyland Erikon, T. (1993), Ethnicity and nationalism: Anthropological perspectives (second edition). London: Pluto Press. McDonald, R., Hargreaves, D., Miell, D. (2002), Musical identities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Okuyama, M. (2005), Identities, artworks and art projects of culturally diverse women artists in London, Ph.D. thesis in process, Roehampton University. National Curriculum in Action Art and Design. (Key Stage 3. Portraiture – John) http: //www.ncaction.org.uk/search/comment.htm?id=80. National Curriculum in Action. Citizenship (Key Stage 3. Identity: Look who I am) http: //www.ncaction.org.uk/search/comment.htm?id=1928. Message to India (2002), Exhibition catalogue. CASPAD University of Derby. Runneymeade Trust (2000). Report of commission on the future of multi ethnic Britain. London: Profile Books. The Standards Site. (Citizenship at Key Stage 3 Unit 4: Britain a Diverse Society) http: //www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes2/citizenship/cit04/04q1?view= get. Tomlinson, J. (2003), Globalisation and cultural identity. Available online at: www.polity.co.uk/ globa/pdf/GTReader2eTomlinson.pdf (accessed 3 March 2003). Williams, C. (2005), Emergent multiculturalism: Challenging the national story of Wales. Conference paper, The Future of Multicultural Britain. Op. cit.
FACE (IN) THE MIRROR Nelson Hoedekie dé Kunsthumaniora Antwerpen, Belgium
Face (in) the Mirror is an experiment in combining education in and through art. This project, which is targeted at cultural empowerment, uses an experiential, participant-directed pedagogy. Art and philosophy are applied to enhance learners’ skills and improve the selfesteem, which is understood as a precondition for the development of person, community and well-being. The project also sets out to contribute to sustainable development and promote and consolidate cultural diversity, democracy and tolerance. The Face (in) the Mirror workshop literally and figuratively holds up a mirror. At its heart lies a game of self-portraiture. Participants play with creating and combining a series of self-portraits in drawings or paintings – a portrait from imagination, a shadow portrait, a mirror portrait, a glass panel portrait and a photographic portrait. In the imaginary portrait, participants draw themselves as they think they look (Figure 1). In the shadow self-portrait they draw round the contours of their shadows cast by a light source shining from behind (Figure 2). In the mirror self-portrait they draw on a transparent sheet in front of a mirror (Figure 3). In the next step, each participant portrays another one on a transparent glass panel and vice versa (Figure 4). Following this, each participant is photographed holding his/her mirror self-portrait or glass panel portrait in front of their face (Figure 5). Finally, an optional second imaginary self-portrait allows for interesting follow-up.
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Figure 1 Imaginary portrait.
The photo portrait is shot so that the lens of the camera aligns with a participant‘s eyes and his/her mirror self-portrait. In this way, the photo simulates the mirror perspective of the participant in front of the mirror. Similarly, the photo of the participant behind his/her glass panel portrait reconstructs the perspective of the other upon the self. The transparent portrait surfaces used allow for superimposition of the imaginary portrait also – on the shadow, mirror and/or glass panel portraits (Figure 6). These combinations allow for interesting comparisons between self-portraits and ways in which children and adolescents deal with the task. While most participants compare the mirror self-portrait with the mirror reflection in their drawings, some of them, especially young children, do not use the latter as an example. Instead they draw an imaginary self-portrait on the transparent sheet in front of the mirror and give the shadow self-portrait an imaginary face. Others, mainly adolescents, mask the mirror reflection with imaginary attributes (Figure 7). One person gives him-/herself a luxuriant head of hair and another leaves out his/her glasses, another accentuates his/her lips with lipstick and so on. The innovative format the workshop employs encourages participants to explore a range of perspectives on themselves. Each portrait is unique and poses different questions about selfimage: What image do I have and want to have of myself? What image do I have and want to have of the other? What image does the other have of me and what image do I want the other to have of me?
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Figure 2 Shadow self-portrait.
Figure 3 Mirror self-portrait.
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Figure 4 Glass panel portrait.
Figure 5
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Figure 6 Self-portrait superimposed.
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Figure 7 Mirror self-portrait with imaginary attributes.
The different portrait perspectives stimulate participants to consider different points of view – an essential prerequisite for developing a sense of empathy and social responsibility. Also, they form a trajectory in which creativity and empathic understanding are applied in an emancipatory de-construction and reconstruction of self-image (as a social construction). The workshop uses this process to construct identity and build positive self-esteem. As well as stimulating motor, social, artistic and reflective skills, this pedagogy empowers participants to imagine, reflect and speak about their experiences of self-phenomena. It develops self-awareness, communication and interpersonal skills therefore. At the same time, it offers interesting insights into the way art and culture are expressed locally and globally. The outcomes offer participants a special form of feedback about themselves and have research value also. In conclusion the project can be viewed as an interactive methodology or educational tool. It is also a way of producing artworks and an artwork in its own right. Background The inspiration for the project came to me one winter day in South Africa, while I was sitting with my back against an old oak tree, gazing at the shadow on a bed of green ivy (Figure 8). I was struck by the metaphorical power of this object-independent shadow to illustrate the postmodern paradigm of contextually defined meaning: ‘Are we back in Plato’s cave?’ (Hoedekie 2003a). If ‘shadows’ are a metaphor for ‘meaning’, what is the meaning of a ‘shadow’ given that is impossible for it to cast a shadow? Does a combination of different
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Figure 8 The object-independent shadow.
shadows reveal more meaning or truth about its object? Can shadows be(come) art? And, what is the role of the shadows in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave? I explored these questions in a master’s thesis (Hoedekie 2003a) and some practical experiments leading to a series of installations (Figure 9). They included attempts to separate the ‘shadow’ from its object and the progressive superimposition of photographs of an object casting different shadows (Figure 10). A finding was that in the course of adding superimpositions, an object gains definition, but only up to a point, after which saturation or a darkening effect occurs. The experiments confirmed that shadows are essential for seeing and do not so much supplant as ‘supplement’ things. They also illustrated the epistemological limitations of the combination of contextually defined meaning Merleau-Ponty calls the ‘plateau of completeness’ (In: Todes 1975: 100). These theoretical reflections also enabled a phenomenological re-interpretation of Plato’s Cave in a thought experiment. In this experiment readers are invited to engage in the opposite or (mirror) movement of the liberated prisoner who leaves and returns to the cave (Hoedekie 2003a). In the course of this transition, the ‘shadows’ function as ‘primitive abstractions’ with idea-like qualities and therefore as catalysts for the (origin of the) self-consciousness of the prisoner. If the prisoner in Plato’s artificial cave had been able to see his own shadow or reflection, he could have imagined an outside world and would not have to have been forced to turn around (Blumenberg 1989). From this interpretation it follows that it is the (perspective)
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Figure 9 Installation artwork Shadowcaster (3 pieces).
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Figure 10 Separating the shadow from its doubt.
movement of going out of the cave and confronting his own shadow that enables him to become conscious and self-aware. The movement back into the cave, which enables him to see the shadows from the perspective of the light source, also gives him the possibility of thinking comparatively and empathically and of forming an identity.
Face(in)theMirror originated in South Africa where these ideas were applied in a development project for children from disadvantaged backgrounds (2000–2002). It was motivated by my interpretation of the history of colonialism and apartheid as a systematic denial of people’s individual identity. After an experimental phase in South Africa, the project moved to Belgium from whence it interacted with other countries. The background and methodology was developed further in diverse contexts and discourses and the research was extended and appled in education and social work. The results of workshops on location in South Africa, Belgium and other parts of Europe came together in a series of exhibitions. Other Face(in)theMirror projects have included the production of a video and, more recently, a toolbox and educational manual. For more information, see www.faceinthemirror.be Note Photographs by Nelson Hoedekie.
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References Blumenberg, H. (1989), Höhlenausgänge, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hoedekie, N. (1997), In the light of shadow, histories of the present. In D. Hook, & B. Harris (eds). Proceedings of the fourth annual South African qualitative methods conference (pp. 156–161) Johannesburg: South African Qualitative Methods Press. —— (2003a), Naar analogie van schaduwen aan de wand, Een wijsgerige interpretatie van de schaduw als kunstwerk aan de hand van Plato’s grotvergelijking, master’s dissertation, University of Stellenbosch. —— (2003b), Het zelfbeeld herzien, master’s dissertation, University of Gent. —— (2005), Face(in)theMirror-video (ed. Evelien Hoedekie, music Jerome Arthur) Gent. (8/22). Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1967), The child’s conception of space. New York: W.W. Norton. Plato (1980), Verzameld werk (transl. X. De Win). Antwerpen: De Nederlandse Boekhandel. Todes, S. (1975), Shadows in knowledge: Plato’s misunderstanding of shadows and of knowledge as shadow-free. In D. Ihde & R. M Zaner (eds.) Dialogues in phenomenology (part II. pp. 94–113) Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Verhofstadt-Denève, L. (2001), Adolescentiepsychologie/ (7th edition) Leuven/Apeldoorn: Garant.
PART 3: NEW TECHNOLOGIES
BLENDED LEARNING IN ART EDUCATION: NEW WAYS OF IMPROVING VISUAL LITERACY Dolores Alvarez-Rodriguez University of Granada, Spain
Abstract In a world increasingly defined by visuality it is essential we improve our competence in this field by all possible means. Blended learning allows us to integrate visual learning e-strategies into different educational contexts and adapt them in ways that motivate learners. This paper describes some projects I am currently working on in pre-service teacher training courses at the University of Granada and postgraduate courses and research carried out as part of the Interuniversity Postgraduate Degree programme in Art Education offered by the Universities of Granada, Barcelona, Sevilla and Girona and Complutense University of Madrid and E-Draw, a European project developed with partners in France, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia. The focus is on creating virtual collaborative environments for visual art education. All these studies focus on the World Wide Web. Keywords Visual arts, Education, Blended learning, Visual literacy Introduction Visual literacy is increasingly important because of ICT but the concept must be redefined. Strategies for teaching literacy and developing critical understanding of the new modes of cultural production are needed in post-industrial societies. These competences must be developed in formal schooling to the same standard as traditional ones. The term ‘multiliteracy’ refers to the skills people need to understand current forms of multimedia communication and the way social, economic and institutional power structures network to breach the divide
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between experience inside and outside school. It implies a critical literacy that enables dynamic relationships between praxis and systematic thoughtful understanding. The World Wide Web is multimedia: it integrates visual, aural and textual contents and has enormous potential for visual arts education. Consequently, new theories of visual literacy should not be limited to visual perception (Arnheim 1954). Finding ways to look at objects/visual images is not the key issue. We need to understand the processes that position them as products in particular cultural contexts. We should not employ the Web simply to arouse learners’ interest in visual arts or because it motivates them. When we do this we simply perpetuate traditional pedagogical concepts and practices through a new medium. This is how computers were pioneered in art teaching, when graphics software was used to simulate traditional tools like brushes, pencils and aerographs on screen. These programmes are very versatile, particularly when they enable modification of images. They save time and materials and require fewer learning skills than traditional processes (Freedman 1991; Hubbard 1991, 1995; Galbraith 1997; Turner 1997). The World Wide Web is valuable for art education because of its encyclopaedic nature and ability to interconnect. The potential for accessing visual and textual information this way is huge and some high-quality educational resources already exist (Ahs 2000; Sinker 2001). This project incorporates such functions, but goes beyond them to open up possibilities to do with the intrinsic nature of the Web; (namely the use of hypertext as a form of multimedia language and a non-linear cultural product that engages with ‘connectivity’ and ‘interaction’. ‘Blended learning’ incorporates computers into schooling through a range of art activities that seek to develop children’s cultural understanding and connect to their social interests (Hernández 2000). I agree with Freedman (2003) that it is important school children interact with computers and develop personal proposals for making creative contributions to the visual universe. Some factors determining the current situation in visual art education in Spain are: 1. Increased use of visual images generally. Visual culture links visual artefacts and cultural contexts. This implies development of visual literacy strategies that enable interpretation and apprehension of the meaning of visual imagery in a wider sense than is the case now. 2 The fact that media, especially the Internet, are among the most powerful informal visual experiences we have. Paradoxically, objects with visual meanings surround us and the world is becoming more and more pictographic as technology advances since it relies on visual aspects and iconicity to convey meaning. 3 A reduction of time for art education in Spanish schools that is inversely proportionate to an increase of visual experience in everyday life. Visual art education in schools is languishing and disappearing bit by bit. Even worse, the art lessons that take place in the few periods left in primary schools are meaningless, because teachers lack art training. On other occasions the lack of resources results in time for art being allocated to other subjects. In secondary education the situation is slightly different but alarming too. This is not the place
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to go into detail. Sufficient to say the subject has disappeared completely in some schools and is optional in others. A public outcry is unlikely. Interviews with parents of primary school students in the province of Granada in Spain1 revealed that the vast majority deemed art education irrelevant and would prefer their children to devote this time to ‘useful’ subjects like maths or Spanish. The paradox is they are probably right given the kinds of activities their children are doing now. All this leads to the conclusion that a vigorous new form of art education is necessary. Something akin to ‘the fourth R in the curriculum’ proposed by Professor Ohler from the University of Alaska (Ohler 2000). Teachers increasingly use cross-curricular topics in formal art education, particularly at kindergarten and primary levels where knowledge is not divided into disciplines. Researchers have identified a need to explore ways of including visual arts (that is, visual culture), within an integrated model of curriculum. This has to be done very quickly because there are no specific qualifications or degrees in art education as such.2 A possible solution is to design teacher training programmes that use platforms or Learning Management Systems and ICT-assisted methodologies to encourage autonomous, group and guided learning, in the hope that they will inspire student teachers to continue to research them on their own. The key factor is individual and group motivation. Most people who study art education are highly motivated which helps teacher educators to design high-quality training programmes. By this I mean highquality ideas, up-to-date materials, interesting resources, good supervision and counselling from tutors who are readily available, application of theory and attention to educational practice. Why Blended Learning? What Does it Mean for Art Education? Art education and the Internet have never been on good terms in Spain. New technologies are deemed alien due to the strong practical element in traditional art practice. However, once new theories are introduced, pedagogies have to be added and integrated. Bearing this in mind, art teacher trainers should take advantage of the benefits of e-learning methodology together with face-to-face education and on-site engagement. The term ‘blended learning’ is often used to describe provision of e-learning and other kinds of educational resources. It is typically explained as a combination of instructor-led training and e-learning, or face-to-face and distance learning. Alternatively, it can be part of an arrangement whereby conventional provision happens to include some online tutoring or mentoring. The e-learning aspect of it sometimes misleads people into believing that e-learning-based blended learning is the defining constituent of a multi-resource educational approach. Blended-learning refers, therefore, to educational activities carried out partially online with a tutor available in an educational environment such as a classroom; or, to traditional teachinglearning activities in which tutorials take place online (Bersin 2004). Blended learning is really a hybrid methodology, or a melting pot of methodologies that enables teachers and learners to optimize learning experiences and make the best use of the resources at their disposal. The significance of interactive media based in cyberspace for knowledge acquisition and pedagogy in visual education is becoming greater and greater. Theory and practice of
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e-learning poses a dilemma for traditional modes of art learning that are culturally assumed and organized. Although there is some resistance to developing proposals for distance learning, the possibilities are infinite: virtual seminars, access to databases and distribution lists, evaluation and curricula development carried out by linked institutions, cooperative curricula, collaboration between trainees and teachers, and many others including production of software applications for artistic learning. Although commercial platforms for e-learning can solve some of the complex problems in distance learning, such as tutorials or group discussion, hypertext documents and Web pages have to be developed first before projects of this kind can commence. Blended Learning in Practice: An Experiment in Pre-service Teacher Training This project, which set out to develop the personal creative work and work patterns of student teachers was carried out in 2000 to 2003. The one-way direction characteristic of the art teaching-learning process in Spain was shattered and the students became deeply involved in building their own knowledge about visual art education. A work plan and curriculum were specified since art activities tend to produce diverse outcomes. A systematic approach to planning lessons was required and the student-teachers had to identity specific learning objectives and develop content around expressive and instructional activities. A parallel aim was to encourage the use of new technologies in pre-university education. They will become basic learning tools very soon both in primary schools (particularly in the later years) and research. On the one hand, new technologies offer teacher support. (Traditionally, paper performed this role but digital support has many advantages – accessibility, economy, among other things.) On the other hand, they are tools for collaborative learning. This is the conceptual innovation: the potential to collapse space-time barriers and work collaboratively on common projects without losing the advantages of face-to-face interaction. Our student teachers had to develop curricular materials for one school subject children could use independently to organize their own learning. The experiment was based on the assumption that improving teaching and learning at university level necessitates focusing on student outcomes and promoting autonomy and self-management; and that this should be supported by mediation rather than transmission of knowledge and be competency based. The project was called ‘Visual Art Education in Pre-service Primary Teacher Training using ICT’. A study programme was developed that set out to improve primary art teacher training through use of ICT. Some determining factors were an increased interest among university staff in the contribution of visual arts to general education, the lack of time devoted to studying them and large numbers of students in visual art education classes (more than 130). The student-teacher perspective was a determining factor also because the visual art education course at the university has low entry requirements and work expectations and first-year students have many misconceptions about visual arts. We anticipated reducing or overcoming these problems with an ICT-based methodology. To achieve this aim, we adopted a student-centred approach and
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involved student teachers in their own learning. In the curriculum we developed aims, content, activities and evaluation practises were clearly specified and an interactive design was used to complement face-to-face sessions. Interactive learning materials were created to cover all the course content so that the student teachers could use them independently in their own time frame. Whereas curriculum units were developed around linked themes, their sequence and continuity was open to the possibility of change. Each unit consisted of one or more four-hour sessions of theory and practical work. The hierarchical structure made it easier to navigate the content and allowed for interconnections of ideas with hypertext links. In the implementation stage the materials were used during face-to-face sessions with studentteachers together with oral explanations. Then they were used to support classroom learning and as reference materials for distance learning. They incorporated three kinds of learning activities: face-to-face learning, e-learning and learning in context. Active participation by learners was encouraged. We used an attitude questionnaire and individual student comments to evaluate the project and the student-teachers reflected on the process in writing. All these data were analysed after which final conclusions were drawn. An improvement was detected in academic results, due partly to the precision of the written instructions and the fact that all the materials were available from the start. Paradoxically, attendance at face-to-face sessions was massive. Student behaviour was active and creative and motivation improved. The interconnection of content and related activities in the materials in particular led to improved learning and understanding. The ease with which the materials could be adapted and upgraded was another strength. All in all, the system proved to be ideal for a subject that traditionally suffers from lack of definition and depends on the viewpoint of the teacher. Interactive Visual Art Education at Postgraduate Courses Postgraduate students taking part in the Inter-university Postgraduate Degree in Visual Art Education mentioned earlier can opt to follow a course in On-line Visual Art Education. In the six years this has been available they have designed websites for teaching a range of visual art education programmes. We suggest they work in a field they know well or choose a topic in which they have a special interest. Analysing the interactive designs they created has convinced us that the Web is a natural medium for this discipline. The brief we give the students is to design interactive projects for Web-based visual art education that takes into account the interests and personal baggage of their colleagues on the postgraduate course. I want to encourage emergent topics that can be studied subjectively and build on previous experiences and values students bring to the process. An initial idea is developed using the software application considered most appropriate for the task in hand taking the student’s’ computer skills into account. The use of the word processor alone enables them to link content in ways that deconstruct the linearity of discourse and include images and other multimedia files. Moreover, programmes for digital presentations are versatile, easy to use and offer many possibilities. The software available for Web design ranges from simple freeware programmes distributed with browsers to the more powerful programmes used to
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manage large complex Web pages. These tools can be used to create the multimedia visual products that develop learners’ individual ideas. The techniques or technologies are not the most important thing, even though they condition the processes and results; it is the creative possibilities they offer. Whereas there is a risk they may become distracted by these new ways of creating and making, it is the subject of visual art that is driving educational reform through the invention and use of these new techniques and procedures. The methods we advocate for teaching visual arts through the Net share common characteristics but have to fulfil specific conditions determined by the non-linear collective nature and function of the medium. For example: 1 Hypertext as language. The mode of production and consumption differs conceptually from culturally based communication systems. Interconnected language is more intuitive and at the same time more logical. It is also more primitive since it is not the result of cultural constructs. 2 Collaboration. Even the most personal projects become public on the Net when shared with a group and the same thing will happen to our interactive products. 3 Procedural content. Content is procedural because products (if they can be called that) are created and modified at the moment of consumption. Content has to be dynamic, interactive and convey meaning as action. Discourse is immediate and created in the act of surfing the Net. It is impossible to reach everything and we can only access fragments that constitute processes. Now I will suggest some possible Web-based activities. Secondary school teachers and students on our postgraduate courses have already tried some of them out in school classrooms, but others still await testing: ■ E-learning or Learning Management Systems (LMS): Some e-learning platforms are rather limited and try to emulate more traditional learning environments but can be applied to art education. ■ Weblogs: Blogging is increasingly being used in education. Blogs are easy to create and very versatile. They tend to be used as an alternative to the extremely formal e-learning platforms but are becoming more standardized themselves. ■ Collaborative Wikis: They facilitate collective creation a great deal. So far they have mostly been textual but this will probably change as they are becoming very popular. ■ Educational role play: This is highly motivating and has a wide potential. ■ Teaching materials. These are essential for e-learning or online, but should be interactive, multimedia and designed by individual teachers according to their needs. ■ Electronic portfolios: These offer a variety of teaching materials and multiple possibilities. They could take the form of lesson plans, monographs and ideas for projects, for example. ■ Webquests: These guided searches are very successful due to their motivational potential. ■ Web projects: These are carried out by learners collaborating in groups on a common online project using a variety of visual arts skills. They can be used in formal or non-formal learning contexts (Alvarez 2000).
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Personal projects: These could take the form of autobiographies, presentations and circulation of artworks created with traditional and digitalized methods, art dossiers, expressive and/or artistic uses of hypertext as medium, Net-art etc. Institutional projects: These tend to be more formal and standardized. They include presentations about visual art education centres, groups etc. Creating a Network for Visual Art in European Secondary Education The main objective of ‘eDraw’ is to create a collaborative virtual environment for teaching visual arts. The European Commission supported this initiative under the Socrates Programme (Minerva Action) between 2004 and 2006 and seven countries participated (France, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia). In all these countries, art education is one of the most poorly resourced educational subjects. Educational institutions are tight-fisted, and students have a poor grasp of art and culture. Along with shortage of resources, the absence of teacher networks and organizations further adds to the subject’s isolation. The high reputation Europe has for the arts is undisputed, but the deficiencies stifling arts-related subjects in education at present must be remedied, to ensure they become less isolated, develop further development and are accessible to the largest number of people possible. Taking all this into account, the aims of this project are to: ■ Solve deficiencies in teacher training in art in terms of human resources and access to tools in educational and university circles. ■ Design a global environment and an open, collaborative training system that will reach a wider audience and to develop online learning by transforming teaching processes, creating interest groups and generating the kinds of discovery activities that improve knowledge (such as virtual tours of museums, galleries and workshops, discussion forums involving pupils, student teachers and teachers). ■ Take into account the needs and expectations of learners in terms of lesson content, followup and assessment. ■ Revitalize art teaching by introducing ICT and, in particular, by implementing a virtual 3–D environment integrated into an e-learning system. ■ Develop a methodology for tests (transferability) and online tutoring of art and research strategies for self-tuition and evaluation ■ Stimulate a European network with members interested in understanding the practices, processes and potential of e-learning in arts subjects (management of change). ■ Improve collaborative approaches to spreading art in virtual ways (through personal Web pages professional sites, forums, virtual galleries…).
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The developments we are working on are: ■ Portal. Creation of a collaborative multilingual e-learning portal integrating a virtual environment; ■ 3-D space. 3-D virtual environments dedicated to the distance teaching of the artistic subjects; ■ Multimedia teaching platform. Developing and integrating curriculum content, evaluation processes and collaborative tools that can be exchanged among pupils, student-teachers and teachers thereby enabling them to share artistic techniques and reflect on teaching methods. The European institutions and companies involved in this project are the following: Ort France (France), Compétences Europe (France), Cesys (France), Cybercultus (Luxembourg), Universidad de Granada (Spain), Laboratorio delle idee (Italy), Camera Work (Italy), Ist. Tecnico Commerciale ‘Tosi’ (Italy), Infoart (Bugaria), Klaipeda College of Social Sciences (Latvia), Siveco S.A. (Romania). Conclusions The objects of this research are reality, phenomena and facts. I have chosen to work with some variables and exclude others. Every science has to develop and validate its own research methods. Some of them, like document searches, preliminary studies, observation techniques or report writing are common. In visual art education we have to build bridges between theory and practice so as to achieve transfer of knowledge, without forgetting that basic research provides the theoretical structure. We need to find solutions for specific practical problems and there is a lot to do. We also have to work within the legislative framework of existing science and technology organizations, which is difficult because they do not normally invest in research into culture, the humanities or arts. Keeping to our high standards and acknowledging our weaknesses is essential if we are to continue to work with them to obtain competitive results. Creating worlds hinges on representing reality using valid images. A visual artefact is part object and part representation in the same way that a research study gathers empirical data and also conveys certain meanings about the visual realities we experience daily. Everchanging technology deprives us of our future. Action is only possible today, since, who knows what will happen tomorrow? Notes 1. Students studying for a psycho-pedagogy degree at the University of Granada collected this data during interviews with parents which sought their opinion of the art education their children received. The data were collected in schools in Granada and the surroundings between 2004 and 2006 as part of a compulsory course called Difficulties of Teaching and Learning in Visual Art Education. 2. Pre-service teacher training in Visual Art for primary teachers in Spain is part of a general teacher education degree. Secondary teachers on the other hand must have a degree in the specialism – normally fine arts – although they can have a degree in a related field, plus a special one-year teacher training course.
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References Ach, A. (2000). Bit the ICT bullet: Using the World Wide Web in art education. In R. Hickman (Ed.). Art education 11–18: Meaning, purpose and direction. London: Continium. Arnheim, R. (1954). Art and visual perception. Berkeley: California. Ascott, R. (1998). The planetary collegium. Towards the radical reconstruction of art education. Leonardo. 31 (2) 87–88. Bersin, J. (2004). The blended learning book: Best practices, proven methodologies, and lessons. New York: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer. E-Draw (2005). http: //edraw.e-xtrategy.net/. Accessed 30 June 2006. Ferneding, K. (2005). Embracing the telematic: A techno-utopian vision of art and pedagogy for the posthuman age of control. Journal of the American Association for the Advancement for Curriculum Studies. 1 (June). Available at: http: //www.uwstout.edu/soe/jaaacs/vol1/ferneding.html. Accessed 30 June 2006. Freedman, K. (1991). Possibilities of interactive computer graphics for art instruction: A summary of research. Art Education, 44 (3) 41–47. Freedman, K. (2003). Teaching visual culture. New York: Teachers College. Galbraith, L. (1997). Enhancing art teacher education with new technologies: Research possibilities and practices. Art Education, 50 (5) 14–19. Gregory, D. C. (1997). New technologies in art education. Reston Virginia: National Art Education Association. Hubbard, G. & Greh, D. (1991). Integrating computing into art education. Art Education. 44 (3) 18–24. Hubbard, G. (1995). Electronic artstrands: Computer delivery for art instruction. Art Education. 48 (2) 44–51. Keifer-Boyd, K. T. (2005). Technology interfaces with art education. Visual Art Research. (Special issue on intersections of technology with art education.) 31 (1) 1–3. Kirschenmann, J. (2001). The electronic Prometheus and its consequences for art education. Journal of Art and Design Education, 20 (1) 11–18. Olher, J. (2000). Art becomes the fourth R. Educational Leadership Magazine, October 2000. Available at: www.jasonohler.com/fourthr. Accessed 30 June 2006. Olivier, M. & Trigwell, K. (2005). Can ‘Blended Learning’ Be Redeemed? E-learning, 2 (1) 17–26. Rose, G. (2003). Visual methodologies. London: SAGE. Rossett, A., Douglis, F. & Frazee, R. V. (2003). Strategies for building blended learning. Available at: www.learningcircuits.org/2003/jul2003/rossett.htm. Accessed 30 June 2006. Sinker, R. (2001). Distance no object: Developing DARE, the digital art resource for education. Journal of Art & Design Education, 20 (1) 31–40. Sweeny, R. W. (2004). Lines of sight in the ‘network society’: Simulation, art education and a digital visual culture. Studies in Art Education. 46 (1) 74–87. Turner, D. (1997). The real world: The history of technology in art education. In A. A. Andersen and p. E. Bolin: History of art education. Proceedings of the third Penn State International Symposium. State College: The Pennsylvania State University (pp. 238–245). Valiathan, p. (2002). Blended learning models. Available at: www.learningcircuits.org/2002/ aug2002/valiathan.html. Accessed 30 June 2006.
DEVELOPING A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR DRAMA WITH HYPERMEDIA Daniela Reimann University of Flensburg, Germany
Abstract The paper reports on a research project based in the University of Flensburg’s MediaArtLab@School and carried out at the UNESCO-Project School in Flensburg. The project was funded under the German Hochschul- und Wissenschafts programme (HWP) that supports research by the Bund and the Land Schleswig-Holstein. It took place in school settings with digital media and engaged with two issues: First it investigated ways in which hypermedia storytelling can be integrated creatively into arts education so as to support media literacy. Second, the school project was linked to the practice-based element of initial art teacher training at the university. The focus of the school project described in this paper was hypermedia storytelling in the context of a play. It was realized in an art education class with 4th-grade elementary students. Keywords Hypermedia, Arts education, Media literacy, Collaborative storytelling Evolution of project The paper is based on work in one school setting developed within the framework of the research project MediaArtLab@School and realized in the Laboratory School of Art Education at the UNESCO-Project School in Flensburg. It was a follow-up initiative to the pilot project (Modellversuch’) described in the report Theory and practice of art, design and computer science in education ArtDeCom by Reimann, Winkler, Herczeg & Höpel (2005: 211–221). The project is researching the creative use of digital media in different fields of interactive media
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such as programmed mixed-reality scenarios for a play (Reimann, Blohm 2005: 1). Laurel has written about integrating drama with computers in the field of human-computer interaction design (1993). In the MediaArtLab@School project, we have explored how interactive environments for plays can be formed and implemented in different fields of digital media (Reimann 2006: 260). The project team understand the computer as a flexible, creative medium rather than a static machine. Overall it addresses two linked questions. First, how to integrate digital media creatively into arts education in schools in a holistic, interdisciplinary way and, second, how to effect more practice-oriented initial art teacher training at university level. The pupils who participated in the project were tutored by teams of arts student teachers who were responsible for planning, implementing and reflecting on the lessons. In the example presented below student teachers worked with 4th-grade pupils at elementary level to introduce and test out a media-arts education strategy using the collaborative painting and storytelling tool KidPad. Experimenting with a software tool for collaborative painting and storytelling KidPad draws from constructivist and collaborative learning theory the idea that children derive added benefit from collaboration and they learn to mix colours through collaborative use of two computer mice. The software tools offer a variety of functions, such as the magic wall, text tool, filler, puller, selection tool, zoom in/zoom out-tool, crayons and eraser, as well as the hand and animation tools (see Figures 1 & 2). The animation tool can be used to make painted digital objects move and make drawings livelier, and the software allows children to develop and link stories on a large, two-dimensional zoomable sheet that becomes a hypermedia workspace (Hourcade, Bederson, Druin, Taxén 2005).1 This consists of two main functions: a collaborative painting tool and a tool for creating hypermedia links. The latter allows for networking with painted objects. In the first phase of the school project, the children were asked to paint pictures of a circus using traditional tools. Afterwards they networked them with string and developed a net of drawings (Figure 4). In the following phase, they explored the software. Collaborative work was facilitated by the teaching-learning strategy of identifying experts with responsibility for particular tools. The pupils created several drawings and explored the software for integrating
Figure 1 Interface with digital tools.
Figure 2 Pupils become responsible experts for a particular tool.
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image and text. The latter offers opportunities for interdisciplinary teaching and learning and linking the subjects of design, arts and language. The final outcome was a play the pupils acted out while projecting stories and drawings into the room. Didactic approach to hypermedia The pedagogy set out to mediate the characteristics of hypermedia in the context of storytelling. The work and design processes had several phases. The main aim was to develop understanding of how to network digital objects – the hyperlinked drawings and stories in the context of collaborative painting activities. The pupils were introduced to the concept of the Net through networking paintings they had already created on the theme of ‘a circus’. After they had created them without computers, they were asked to network them in the classroom using a physical net. Hypermedia stories represent a process rather than adding static, single images; in other words they are dynamic. Linking the use of one image to another effects a process flow, and this didactic strategy was utilized in the project to explain the characteristics of hypermedia. The
Figure 3 Painting.
Figure 4 Net of drawings.
Figure 5 Painting.
Figure 6 Presenting the net of paintings.
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process flow linking different parts of the story together in a non-linear way can be understood as an abstraction of what we call ‘an activity process’. The activity process is described and specified in terms of the algorithm on which the software and computers are based. In the school project, we used the concept of ‘process flow’ as a didactic tool for developing pupils’ awareness of the non-linear nature of hypermedia. In the second phase, pupils were introduced to the software and explored the different tools. They became experts responsible for a particular tool, such as an eraser, animation tool and duplicator, for example. The intention was to encourage collaboration and get them to mediate the learning content themselves. Each ‘expert‘ was responsible for explaining a specific tool to the others. Whole class discussion and a questionnaire were used to find out how they perceived the digital tools and differences between the media.
Figure 7 Mixing colours using two mice.
Figure 8 Reflecting round.
Figure 9 Sketch.
Figure 10 Experimenting with the software.
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Educational Goals Out main aim was to support pupils’ learning and develop their understanding of digital media through a hypermedia storytelling context they drew, developed and realized themselves. Complex designing and forming processes took place. From a media education point of view, learning the principles of hypermedia is very important: The goal we aspired to was to mediate the characteristics of digital hypermedia by getting pupils to engage with, link and experience, physical and digital models of drawing in the context of a play. The following table shows the lesson activities and learning.
Activities
Objectives
Developing a story according to the theme ‘At the Learning how to develop and express ideas and circus’ use imagination Drawing the main elements of the story by hand
Sharpening visual expression skills
Developing a physical net of self-made drawings on paper
Gaining understanding of the term net and networked objects
Drawing and painting with the software tool
Developing digital models Handling the software, exploring the different tools
Developing paintings collaboratively and linking them
Exploring collaborative colour-mixing Exploring the use of hypermedia for storytelling
Writing and integrating text for the story
Linking text and image to create meaning
Getting familiar with the software
Developing understanding of the characteristics of hyper and interactive media
Developing a story flow out of painted elements
Exploring the opportunities opening up for using hypermedia rather than hypertext
Developing a play/choreographing a presentation Dealing with interactive design processes Writing a text to be read during the presentation by a pupil representing a director guiding spectators through the play
Further developing writing and reading skills Presentation skills
Communicating information about the shape of the play between working groups
Acquiring the skills needed to work in team-based arrangements with different peoples
Table 1 Pupil activities and learning outcomes
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The following figures show the forming and learning processes:
Figure 11 Large, two-dimensional zoomable pace.
Figure 12 Experimental sketch.
Figure 13 Sketch by boy who used arrows to show the flow of the story.
Figure 14 Collaborative painting.
Figure 15 Transforming drawing through media….
Figure 16 Digital drawing of lion.
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Figure 17 Data projection of digital model during play.
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Figure 18 The actors.
Concluding remarks The pupils participated in a wide range of activities and aesthetic processes working in small groups. Apart from learning how to deal with the media they actively developed, designed, linked, combined, presented, explained and reflected on them during the project. Complex collaborative design and forming processes occurred in the MediaArtLab@School project (Reimann 2006b, p. 5), as is the case with other situations in which plays are developed at school. The pupils learned that using a computer for storytelling can be both creative and collaborative. In terms of media literacy, they became aware of the characteristics and dynamic nature of digital media, including the principles of hypermedia, and leaned simple techniques for manipulating digital media. Hypermedia plays an important role in developing media literacy and creativity and it was crucial these pupils understood its non-linear nature. In addition, their communication skills had to be developed so they could link the team-based activities to the overall project and present a hypermedia-storytelling performance. They experienced a learning environment in which they had to negotiate cooperative processes. This school project proved to be a fruitful scenario for embedding the computer in aesthetic processes. It proved that digital media can be used to facilitate interdisciplinary media art education in a project-oriented context at elementary school level. Aesthetic forming processes brought together drawing, painting, text, and animation as well as the development and communication of stories. The project has shown that integrating digital media into art classrooms opens up new possibilities for learning. Working in centralized computer rooms with inflexible scheduling and immobile equipment and single workplace systems is not the answer. In terms of teacher training, one finding was that traditional forms of teaching and learning must be re-thought. They should become collaborative and flexible so as to enable more intensive supervision of working groups. Innovative art education must open up to media technology so as to support children’s experiments with and critical reflection on interactive media. The mediaart education of the future must integrate the key disciplines involved in digitalization, such as
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computer science, design, as well as interactive media art so as to overcome present divisions between arts, media, design and computer science. Acknowledgement The paper is based on the research project MediaArtLab@School: Creative media competence with hypermedia – and mixed reality-systems, funded under the German Hochschulund Wissenschaftsprogramm, a Higher Education and Research programme of the German Bund-Länder-Commission for Research Planning and Education (BLK). Special thanks to Dr Manfred Blohm, Professor of Visual Arts/Art Education and Pro-rector of the University of Flensburg, as well as to our partners at the Laboratory School of Art and Media Education at the UNESCO Project School; and to the headmistress, Mrs Gisela Koch, for permission to carry out the research there and link it to initial art teacher training at the university. The project was implemented in 2005 with 4th graders with the co-operation of Thomas Fedtke, art teacher at the UNESCO project school in 2005. Further thanks to our partners in computer science, Professor Michael Herczeg, initiator of the Kids in Media and Motion-initiative (KiMM) and Director of the Institute of Multimedia and Interactive Systems at the University of Lübeck, and his research team involved in KiMM. Finally, I wish to thank the Gesellschaft für Medienpädagogik und Kommunikationskultur e.V. (GMK), the society concerned with media education and communication culture that supports the MediaArtLab@School; the International Society for Education Through Arts (InSEA); and the German Association of Art Educators (Bund Deutscher Kunsterzieher/Fachverband für Kunstpädagogik BDK e.V. for endorsing the project. Notes 1. The software KidPad 1.0 was developed at the University of Maryland’s Human Computer Interaction lab (www.cs.umd.edu/hcil) and the University of Nottingham (www.nott.ac.uk) under the KidStory project (www.sics.se/kidstory). It was funded by the European Union’s ESPRIT i3 Experimental School environmental initiative. KidPad is available freely for download under http: //www.kidpad.org. Other software used in the research project MediaArtLab@School is documented on http: //www.uniflensburg.de/iaekb/kunst/MediaArtLab/medien.php [German version, English version to appear]. 2. All the photos are by Daniela Reimann © 2006 and can be located at MediaArtLab@School, Department of Visual Arts at the Institute of Aesthetic and Cultural Education at the University of Flensburg.
References Hourcade J. p. , Bederson, B. B., Druin, A., Taxén, G. (2005), KiDPad. A collaborative storytelling tool for children. Internet source: http: //www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/kiddesign/kidpad.shtml [10.09.2005]. Laurel, B. (1993), Computers as theatre. Reading (Mass.) MediaArtLab@School website: http: //www.uni-flensburg.de/iaekb/kunst/MediaArtLab/eng.php. Reimann, D. (2006a), Ästhetisch-informatische medienbildung mit kindern und jugendlichen. Grundlagen. Szenarien und empfehlungen für gestaltungsprozesse, in Mixed Reality-Lernräumen, Oberhausen: Athena Verlag. Reimann, D. (2006b), Developing interactive environments for play at school with students in arts education. In Proceedings of UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education, Building Creative Capacities for the 21st Century, Lisbon, 6–9 March.
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Reimann, D., & Blohm, M. (2005), Game on: Mixed reality: Game development in Media Art Education at school and university. Proceedings of Conference on Complex Research on Creativity and Implementation of its Results in Educational Practice, 11–12 November Creativity Centre, Faculty of Psychology, Riga Teacher Training and Management School. Reimann, D., Winkler, T., Herczeg, M., Höpel, I. (2005), Investigating the computer as a medium in creative processes: An interdisciplinary approach. In M. Stokrocki (ed.) Interdisciplinary art education (part III Future directions, pp. 211–221), National Art Education Association (NAEA): Reston VA.
IMPLICATIONS OF MEDIA TECHNOLOGY-BASED WORKSHOPS FOR ART EDUCATION Kaziju Mogi, Kinichi Fukomoto, Nagamori Motoki, Toshifumi Abe, Toshio Naoe & Yuuka Sato Japan
Abstract Some media technology-based workshops were designed with the aim of providing fulfilling learning activities for all children, and especially those with mental and physical handicaps. Several consecutive workshops were implemented using various technologies and the team of researchers involved analyzed the results. They actively participated in the workshops, not only as observers but also as facilitators. The informal settings and unfamiliar media functioned as a catalyst for motivating and sharing learning. Even though the learning objectives were not fully achieved, participating in the workshops stimulated the children with special needs emotionally. The findings about the role of learning facilitator and use of alternative media in process-oriented settings strongly support the case for structural reform of art education. Keywords Media technology, Workshops, Art, Education, Children with special needs Introduction In this age of high-speed, mega-capacity networking, in which media are built into the environment, learning styles that emphasize images and responding to them are attracting attention. Strategies are urgently needed to integrate art activities into an educational reform movement underpinned by the belief that ‘zest for living’ encompasses all an individual’s faculties, and that focus on creating new learning environments unrestricted by time or space.
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This raises the question, what is the best form of art expression for communicating and symbolizing self using the World Wide Web in the information age? whilst not forgetting the emphasis on critical learning and appreciation advocated by media literacy experts. The study featured in this paper attempted to find out if a media-based workshop style of instruction was the kind of structural reform art education is seeking. The key features of the study were the emphasis on communication, human contact and cooperation/collaboration; and inquiry into the relationship between traditional art media like paint/clay and new technologies and media as an extension of the body. Taking this into account, the team proposed and developed a multi-modal workshop, featuring art activities primarily. It was informed by the idea that ‘designing a learning environment’ necessitates consideration of the learning process together with the environment, design outputs and development of textbook and teaching materials. To achieve these purposes, two types of workshop were implemented and the methods and outcomes were evaluated. One of them developed and tried out media teaching materials designed for use by all children including those with special needs. The other emphasized cooperation between participants and application of learning activities that facilitate social education. Asahi de Art Workshops 2003 The Asahi de Art: Media Workshops for Physically and Mentally Impaired Children were held at Asahi School for children with special needs in Kiryu City, Gumma Prefecture Japan, in 2003 and 2004. The first series which took place on Sunday, 7 December 2003, set out to investigate the significance of the workshop as a collaborative learning tool and how to turn learning processes into works of art. The role of the facilitator in this situation is to assist participants to reflect on their activities and expressions and help them externalize images through selfdialogue and dialogue with others. The following section details the workshops. ■ Let’s communicate with T-shirts, shall we? led by Toshifumi Kariyado, Associate Professor, Daito Bunka University. ■ Tenko-Raion (Celestial drum and thunder) and Kaifukeo (King of extended sensation) led by Koichi Mori, Professor of Media Art in the College of Liberal Arts at Doshisha Women’s College together with Takehisa Mashimo, a post-graduate student. ■ Little adventure: eyes of a bird and eyes of an ant led by Yasushi Harada, Associate Professor of Information Design at Tama Art University. ■ Sound catch ball game led by Yoshitomo Morioka, Professor of Media Theory at Osaka Seikei University. Let’s communicate with T-shirts. In this workshop children painted on T-shirts and the key phrase ‘shall we?’ was used to prompt others to take action and share the joy of communication. With the handicapped children, the main focus was enjoyment of personalized communication through mutual finger-painting of images and letterforms on the T-shirts. The rich potential of communication was symbolized by use of fluorescent yarn and the colours were heightened
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dramatically with the use of black light. This learning activity visualized the process of communication so that the children became more aware of what they were communicating to others. Tenko-Raion and Kaifukeo. These workshops set out to provide learning environments for physically impaired children and children without much stimulation in daily life. They were designed to provide maximum sensory feedback through sensing various light colours moving around through space and reverberating sounds with minimum action (using fingertips to switch on/off or touching a pen tablet). The workshop Little adventure: eyes of a bird and an ant: let’s see everything around us by changing viewpoints was designed to enable participants to experience the joy of seeing things from alternative viewpoints through the lens of a video camera. The aim was to provide children with poor mobility with a simulated experience of flying and running about. The sound catch ball game is a media-based educational game in which children create music with balls that are used regularly during lessons and play time in Japan. A device was developed that produced strange sounds through a non-directional speaker by synchronizing the movements of rolling and flying balls detected on the video image coordinates and computer music software. We believe these media workshops achieved positive outcomes. The interactive multimedia works using computer and video equipment responded to faint reverberations made by the physically impaired children’s movements and these were expressed brilliantly in sound and image. Traditional art media (finger-painting etc.) also functioned as tactile tools and mediated communication. The workshop activities compensated for the children’s various handicaps in some instances or extended their everyday sensations in others. Extension of their visual, auditory and tactile senses must have led to bodily extensions. The importance of communication was re-emphasized throughout, providing a new style of learning. Asahi de Art Workshops 2004 On Sunday, 19th December 2004, an additional three workshops were planned under the common theme of Asahi de art: Transmission base for different kinds of light. The coordinators were Toshifumi Kariyado, a workshop facilitator and Associate Professor at Daito Bunka University; Toshio Iwai, a media artist and Director of the Advanced Science and Technology Research Centre at Tokyo University; Yasuhiro Suzuki, assistant at the above research centre; Yuuka Sato from the National Museum of Japanese History; and Yuriko Oki, NPO’s facilitator from e-Topia Kagawa. There were two broad aims: First to provide opportunities for children with relatively severe disabilities to enjoy experiencing ‘the wonders of light and colour’ using various lighting appliances and reflections influenced by artwork by Iwai that utilizes the dramatic character of colours emitted by different sources. Second, to turn the workshops into an artwork in the form
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of a palace or festival of light. In other words, the intention was to design a learning environment at the school for children with special needs using media art. Next, the contents of the three workshops are described in more detail. Light is reversed? Let’s play in reverse time. This workshop was led by Kariyado and the Learning Environment Design Studio (a NPO). Participants used PCs to create artworks and the reverse replay function of a VCR was used to teach children the mechanisms of everyday movement and gesture. A birthday party of light and colour: Experiencing the wonder of light and colour was led by Iwai. This workshop was designed to enable children to experience and enjoy the wonder of colour and relationships between it and light. Incandescent, fluorescent and natrium lamps and LED were used to radiate different types of light onto familiar objects and create diverse colours. Joy doubling plan: Wearing traces of communication. This workshop, led by Sato and Oki, set out to intensify the pleasure of sensual communication. The processes involved included: (i) making wearable poncho-type clothing out of white cloth; followed by (ii) a group activity in which children attached strips of coloured cellophane to each others’ clothes to express their feelings about them; and (iii) developing another strategy with coloured cellophane to enable them to return joyful feelings to the giver. This kind of visualization of the communication process emphasizes the way people’s responses are reinforced by mutual contact and emotional involvement. The activities developed for the three workshops Asahi de Art 2004 focused more on facilitating internal transformations in aesthetic sensibility through media than on production of works of art. While the workshops held in the 2003 academic year focused on achieving the goal of visualizing the communication process, the workshops in 2004 were an artwork. In other words, the process of designing for learning was artistic. The general educational significance of the media art workshops for impaired children has not been fully analysed yet; however, it is fair to say that the workshop style prompted changes in our views of the learning process. Once art education and learning about media were combined and used to augment relationships, ‘joy’, rather than work, informed the design of learning environments. Workshop at Sasayama Children’s Museum The educational significance of art-media workshops designed to effect social learning lies in their potential both to entertain and empower and for exchanges of values between schools (Miuma & Yamauchi 2005: 140–141). They highlight the importance of conveying the joy of learning in contexts that differ from regular classrooms and guaranteeing rewarding activities for each child that result in a sense of self-accomplishment. They confirm that experiencing the whole learning activity is meaningful and develops awareness of alterative values. After considering these points, an art workshop entitled Colour album for memorable times and places @ Chilmu was planned for the purposes of enhancing children’s understanding of the
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use of colour as an artistic tool and exploiting the museum environment as a facility for social learning. The workshop was held twice, on 4th July and 3rd November 2004. Each one lasted for five hours and had sixteen participants. Colour Album for Memorable Times and Places@ Chilmu There were four kinds of learning activity: (i) fieldwork involving discovery of and sampling natural objects and phenomena in a mountainous area behind the Children’s Museum; (ii) identification of and naming colours using colour samples (Pantone solid chips); (iii) making a colour album in the classroom; and (iv) a colour-mapping exercise that reflected on the fieldwork activities. Using ‘colour‘ as the key word, these activities were carried out with the aim of enabling the children participating in the workshop to share the same natural environment (place), colour chips (things) and events (experiences). In the first activity, the children went outside with a digital camera and colour sampling cards, took photographs, collected examples of interesting natural objects and matched them to the cards. In the second, the children identified the colours using the Pantone colour chips and named them using their own words. In the third and fourth activities, the children sorted out the cards in the colour sampling kit and re-arranged the colour chips on a separate board so as to create a colour map. They were given the choice of composing a map from the colours in the kit or natural objects. Finally, they were asked to create an album that reflected their personal experience of the world of colour, and contained digital photographs of activities and objects they associated with the colours in the sample. This workshop was influenced by Charlotte Selver’s ideas about the way nature awakens the five senses (in Bennet 1989) and by a nature game in Rachel Carson’s book Sense of Wonder (1998), but it had different aims. The intention was to value the act of sensory searching and use colours to trigger visual reflection on the process of generating meaning. Hein (1999) has classified types of learning in museums using learning theories as axes for four co-ordinating vectors: namely, (i) stimulus-response, (ii) didactic/expository, (iii) discovery-based, and (iv) constructivist. The educational orientation of the workshop under discussion conformed to his discovery and constructivism types. Colour was the core construct in this art-based learning strategy and the colour samples functioned as media for analysing nature from this perspective. The 1,114 Pantone solid colour chips, used for this purpose were metaphors for the diversity of colour in the natural world. They functioned to induce a sequence of actions beginning with symbolizations of the natural objects the children discovered and ending with their transformation into personal language. The activity of identifying the colours in the natural objects had more meaning than scientific classifications and the intervention of personal descriptions of them based in sensory responses emphasizes the significance of personal meaning. The colour-mapping exercise involved much more than matching colours of objects and chips. It restructured a set of colour symbols in a way that paralleled the shared interests of participants. In this sense, it is no exaggeration to say that it mapped the interests of each
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participant. The final activity of colour mapping visually reproduced individual children’s reflections on past activities. It did not merely reproduce a history of them and was designed to ensure they attached personal significance to the process of reflection through restructuring their own experience. Evaluation An empirical and performance-oriented approach, rather than a conventional achievementoriented one, is important in evaluating activity-based experiences, such as workshops. In the evaluation of this particular workshop, the dialogue protocol between the facilitators and participants (children) was analysed, focusing on the act of colour identification. The sixteen junior high school pupils participating in the colour album workshop, were divided into four groups to undertake the various activities. Each group consisted of two facilitators and four pupils. The sequence of activities and work carried out to identify the colour of each object collected are outlined next. Group A’s naming was idiosyncratic. Some examples of this are ‘energetic green’, ‘chaotic’, ‘sweaty’, ‘crispy’, ‘colourful’, ‘Mutsu apple colour’ and ‘a warm feeling colour’. These children were fairly meticulous in comparing the sample colours to the colour chips and naming them. They often used the word ‘delicate’, which suggested they were struggling to establish correspondence with specific colour chips. While the facilitators assisted their efforts to identify colours without prejudicing them with regard to the conceptualized colour correspondents, the children unconsciously sensed the intricacy and diversity of natural colours as was evidenced by a lingering perplexity about colours they could not find in the colour samples. Children in group B were encouraged to apply symbolic colour codes first (C1 for ‘a nice yellow’, for example, and C2 for a paler purple). But eventually they began to name colours in ways that reflected personal concepts and language (C2: plate colour; C2: spongy colour, because it looks like spongy cotton wool). The fact that it took a fairly long time to name a colour this way and that the dialogue often involved trial and error, suggests these strategies increased their awareness of a wide range of colours. With Group C, the initial dialogue about colours led to naming the objects using conceptualizations such as ‘pale purple’, ‘yellow’ and ‘yellowish green’. The children’s interest in and curiosity about the colours increased once they moved from the mountain area into the school grounds after twenty minutes. After some forty minutes, they were finally freed from the restriction of conceptualizing colours abstractly and asked to name the colour of the petals on a mugwort. The facilitators of this group repeatedly induced observation through senses other than vision by asking, ‘What would you name this colour yourself?’ ‘Why don’t you touch and smell it? Isn’t it nice?’ ‘What do you feel when you touch it?’ and ‘Look, look! This way!’ etc. These questions prompted the children to pick up objects and check the tactual sensations they experienced, leading to verbal expressions like ‘slippery’, ‘slippery front but slightly tufty back’ and ‘prickly’ etc. The facilitators for Group D emphasized sensory experiences other than tactile ones. Presumably because of the dominance of boys in the group, attention focused on animals and
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insects, including a dead stag beetle, a frog, the larva of a butterfly (swallowtail) and a mantis. Naming colours was not restricted or confined by existing colour concepts as indicated by the children’s use of unique terminology, like ‘an unkempt colour’, ‘a refreshing colour’, ‘a gritty colour’, ‘a sour colour’ and ‘a fluffy colour’. Overall, the workshop revealed how important active signification of individual experience is educationally together with collaborative learning assisted by facilitators. A point worth reconsidering, arising from the last workshop, is that the participant children did not fully understand the value of the 1,000 or more excellent colour samples used during the orientation. It was pointed out earlier that they were metaphors for the diverse world of colour. Perhaps we should have spread out all the pages of the sample booklet on the floor at the start so that the vast range of colour symbols was revealed and explained why it was there. Placing sample objects next to similar colours and comparing colours of personally collected objects with ones in the chart would constitute another kind of colour-mapping activity. There is definitely a need for more discussion in art education about how to develop and refine art-related workshops that emphasize the meaning of art activities. The biggest challenge is how to facilitate artistic encounters for children and accommodate a workshop-based approach in the ordinary school curriculum. Both must be seen as a continuum of learning. Conclusions: Towards a New Style of Art Teaching The study explored new approaches to art teaching in the information age and revealed the positive value of workshop-style teaching. The visualization of ‘invisible’ communication that occurred in the T shirt workshop in Asahi de Art 2003, in particular, exemplifies Nakano’s ideas about the significance of collaborative learning for creativity and learning from participation and experience’ (2002). What is the future role of art in education? Society does not understand its importance perhaps because it has focused too much on developing the artistic skills and abilities needed for creative self-expression. Situational theory by Lave and Wenger (1991) proposes that learning results from dialogue and communication and cannot be separated from situations or contexts. So the process of nurturing artistic expression should be lively and generated through social involvement and interaction with objects, people and events within a community. Miuma & Yamauchi (2005: 143), who reject the way the curriculum is divided into subjects, have identified three kinds of meanings in learning activities: (i) meaning buried in a discovery or creative activity: the creation or discovery of something new constitutes a joyful activity in itself; (ii) meaning buried in trouble-shooting: overcoming a problem and moving to a new stage has significant meaning; and (iii) meaning buried in a community: people learn through a process of participation when their own acts are recognized within a community and allow for deep involvement. Thus, they point out the importance of designing learning activities that provide content and meaning at the same time. We agree with this idea and believe learning should be artful as well as playful. We are searching for a broader definition of art education and new style of teaching.
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References Bennett, G. (ed.) (1989), A taste of sensory awareness, California: Sensory Awareness Foundation. Carson, R. (1998), Sense of wonder, New York: Harper Collins. Hein, G. E. (1999), Learning in a museum, New York: Routledge. Lave, J & Wenger, E. (1991), Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miuma, N. & Yamauchi, Y., (2005), Designing learning in the future, Tokyo University Press. Nakano, T. (2002), Workshops: Places for new learning and creativity, Tokyo: Iwanami.
CREATING, DEVELOPING AND MAINTAINING A DIGITAL MAGAZINE: REVISTA DIGITAL ART& Jurema Luzia De Freitas Sampaio-Ralha, Martha Prata-Linhares, Anna Rita Araújo & Gisele Torres Martini Brazil
Abstract This paper describes the history of the creation, development and ongoing operation of a collaborative project: the digital magazine Revista Digital Art&. Born in an online discussion group and nurtured through the voluntary Internet collaboration of a group of professionals, Revista Digital Art& is the first indexed digital publication in Portuguese language dedicated to the teaching of art and currently the only one in Brazil. The paper details the first three years of the publication, the initial expectations of the editorial group, the problems and solutions they encountered along the way and their plans for the coming years. Keywords Digital magazine, Art education, Technology, Internet, Brazil Background Brazil is currently experiencing an increase in the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in schools and universities. These new technologies have been introduced into schools and professionals have an increasing need to use them for their own professional education; for searching websites for information, for example, and participating in the
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discussion lists, forums, teleconferences and computer-based learning programmes offered by universities and corporations. Teachers and professors are being encouraged to integrate the resources these new technologies offer into their classroom activities. However, research has shown that despite the fact they are already part of everyday life for many young people, the majority of Brazilian art teachers have still not incorporated Information and Communications Technologies into their daily routine and many do not know how to use them (Sampaio-Ralha & Prata-Linhares 2003: 283–284). The digital magazine Revista Digital Art&1 was created for the purposes of publicizing scientific research and projects related to diverse arts, helping to incorporate digital technologies into art teaching and teacher training, and providing teachers of art with a space for learning and sharing knowledge. In this paper we introduce the digital magazine Revista Digital Art& and outline its creation and development. It is a semi-yearly thematic academic review, aimed at publicizing and promoting art education, culture, continuing education, learning, communication and production. It has been created by and is maintained, administered and developed through collaborative volunteer efforts and in virtual form. It targets a community of art teachers, students, artists and researchers. It is editorial policy to publish, in integral form, texts that summarize research studies and curriculum projects and disseminate the results. The magazine is open to the possibility of thematic issues and contributions from any area of knowledge that could enrich the field of art education. It relies on a dedicated staff of subject editors, responsible reporters, an ombudsman and an editorial board of proven experience, represented by full professors, members of diverse artistic specializations and representatives of eighteen distinguished research institutions. The importance of this publication for the academic field of art education is underlined by Barbosa’s finding (2004) that, other than association bulletins, only two art education magazines have circulated throughout Brazil – one in the 1970s and the other in the 1980s. The dearth of academic publications devoted to art education was, and still is, a consequence not of a scarcity of intellectual production but difficulties operating and maintaining serial publications. The lack of financial partners and editors interested in this market segment is the fundamental cause of this situation. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, however, the accelerating growth of Internet access among the Brazilian public as well as numerous and profound changes in the nature of communications has generated new ideas and modes of dissemination. Now, with the Internet, ‘…the advantages of different ways of communicating information and ideas can be united in a single means of communication, in an increasingly interactive environment, and at the same time reduce costs and increase the potential for self-discovery…’ (Barros 1998: 202). This new context has enabled meeting places for peoples and ideas with potential to generate actions that change the real world in the most diverse areas of society, culture and the economy.
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Birth of Art& The idea of creating a digital magazine was mooted on 20 November 2002 on the ArteEducar virtual discussion list, when Dr Afonso Medeiros suggested in message number 14,717 that
…while we are on the subject, isn’t it about time for us to start pushing to get a publication on the net? This suggestion was welcomed and received support, as can be seen in the messages that followed. Professor Itamar was the first to show interest in message number 14,921, 21 November 2002.
Tell us a little about this interesting publication… Professor Jurema Sampaio-Ralha (the current publishing head) followed up in message number 14,922:
Well, if you intend to head up a project in this field, you can always count on me, you know! Also there is space for publishing in my domain, did you ever visit it? The idea gained strength and the magazine took form. On 27 January 2003 the group obtained their own virtual space and a virtual address dedicated exclusively to discussions about the magazine. As a demonstration of her support for the magazine, Professor Ana Mae Barbosa sent us an unpublished article she had written for the magazine. Entitled ‘Art Education in Brazil: from modernism to post-modernism’, it was published on 15 October 2003 in number zero of the review, with the approval of the whole group. We realize that the success of Revista Digital Art& owes much to Professor Barbosa’s support and therefore consider her a ‘founding mother’. Moreover, Professors Miriam Celeste Martins and Ingrid Koudela, among others, also made this initial launch of the publication possible. It is important to point out how much difference the support of researchers and professors with previous experience in the academic milieu made to its success. Thus, the digital magazine Art& was born on 15 October 2003 – appropriately the date of Brazil’s National Teachers’ Day. The magazine not only filled a huge gap in the academic field at the time but also gave educators, researchers and interested members of the general public rapid access through the Internet to specialist research material in a practically unlimited way. It is essential to point out that the working group operating Art& is composed of art teaching professionals who voluntarily assume the task of producing, managing and operating the magazine for an indeterminate length of time. They live in different geographic regions of Brazil and many of them know each other almost exclusively by virtual means and through working on the magazine in the virtual Web space set aside for discussion about it. The members receive no remuneration for this work, and voluntarily take on hosting costs for the magazine website.
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The diverse geographic regions of Brazil in which the team members work gives the publication a multicultural character. This shows up in the way critical discussions take place about each new subject. Members strongly emphasize personal experience when they argue against or defend proposals. According to Pareyson (1997: 122), this reaffirms the truism that art is able to express and communicate the most difficult social concepts because it ‘speaks to everyone and to each individual in a different way and thus assures universality through individuality and a community through specificity…’. The increasing demands being made on Revista Digital Art& over and above the original plans necessitate this kind of collaboration. The experience of learning and building something with others has been instructive for the magazine creators and increased their motivation. They learn from each other during online question-and-answer sessions and from messages exchanged on the list. This process involves multiple interactions as members seek to understand what others are suggesting, reflect on it, propose challenges and collaborate on searching out answers. It is exciting to witness such a large project developing harmoniously and successfully without meetings in person. The exchanges of ideas and disagreement, followed by agreement, that makes use of the virtual environment requires personal effort and collaborative commitment from every team member. The original members of the team had strong reasons for joining the magazine and the majority have stayed. They were motivated by a desire to participate in such an important project or had a general interest in art, teacher education and/or ICT. They understood the magazine as a tool for combining all these factors. They wanted to build something different and new to facilitate learning – not only their own but for others. They were motivated also by the challenge of the project, interest in the creative process, and the fact that it was the first indexed publication of its kind in Portuguese. They shared the belief that it was important to create a space for Brazilian art educators to dialogue and reflect and that it encourage a fresh perspective on art pedagogy. There are three different ways people can work on the magazine: as a member of the Assembly Group (currently this has 47 registered members who have exchanged more than 1000 archived messages); as a member of the Academic Council (by invitation of the Assembly); or as a member of the Directorate (through open election by the Assembly and as a result of demonstrated willingness to volunteer). The Project Revista Digital Art& is a semi-annual academic review that aims to publicize and promote art education. The intended audience are art teachers and professors, students, artists, researchers and other people interested in art. It was with this in mind that the Revista Digital Art& project was conceived and has evolved. 1. The Assembly To be a part of the group all one has to do is subscribe to the magazine’s virtual address and start to participate. All subjects under discussion have been approved by the Assembly formed of members of a discussion group. In this way, all decisions arrived at are based in agreed exchanges of knowledge and debate.
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2. The Directorate The Directorate is currently composed of professionals whose names are specified on the magazine site and have the following areas of responsibility.
2.1 General Editorial Department The publisher is responsible for advising section editors, receiving submitted documents and sending them to the Editorial Board for evaluation. All communication between authors and advisors must pass through the General Editorial Department which is also responsible for selecting papers for publication from those approved by the Editorial Board. Where issues arise that pertain to a single subject or theme they are edited in a different way. The publisher is also responsible for the following: determining opening and closing dates for submitting work; choosing issue themes (when necessary and with the support of other editors); inviting artists to present a portfolio in an issue (when applicable); responding to interviews from journalists (when necessary); answering queries about the magazine and authorizing terms of sponsorship and/or financial support. In due course a treasurer will be nominated; for the time being, the editor-in-chief is assuming this function and associated responsibilities.
2.2 Projects and teaching resources The editor of this section is responsible for ensuring the magazine communicates information about completed art education projects or those in process in schools, universities, cultural institutions, the private sector and elsewhere. Her brief is not only to publicize such projects but also to encourage their use as a basis for discussion and reflection by professionals and spokespersons in the field about the foundations of and methodologies for art teaching. 2.3 Website reviews This section of the magazine is dedicated to selecting websites for publication with the aim of offering artistic and pedagogical resources for personal development and to support teachers’ professional practice. 2.4 Film reviews This section presents reviews and analyses of films of artistic and/or educational merit and, where possible, provides information about art cinema productions from interviews with filmmakers and cinema experts. 2.5 Book reviews This section reviews books of artistic and/or educational significance for the field. It provides readers with a critical view of established and recent publications, with the aim of helping them to develop and maintain up-to-date bibliographies in the five main fields that feature in the magazine. 2.6 Agenda and review of events The purpose of the agenda is to publicize significant events and offer information and critical commentary on exhibitions, courses and events in the general field of the arts. Art& already
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has a forum and discussion list through which readers, editors and magazine members can interact. The concern is that this is used not only to transmit information but also for collaborative production of knowledge. For this reason, we also plan to provide an interactive space that promotes learning. This will open up a host of possibilities for continuing education of art teachers and, as Almeida pointed out (2003: 327–340), enable learners to present their own ideas to each other and participate in a constructive learning process. 3. The Council The Academic Council is formed of members invited by the editor-in-chief. Invitations are sent to outstanding academics recognized in their fields by e-mail whose names are suggested during group discussions. This accords with the main objective of the magazine to publish documents on art teaching. The Academic Council was officially constituted on 31 December 2003. It is made up of full professors and members of staff at the most renowned research and teaching institutions who have accepted invitations. Council members take on a lifetime mandate which can only be renounced by their expressed wish, or if they fail to fulfill their obligations without due explanation for more than three consecutive magazine issues. Currently, Council is composed of representatives of eighteen research institutions of recognized merit in Brazil. All the regions are represented. We are moving toward internationalization of the Council while maintaining the same high standards for membership. Collaboration at Art&: How Do we Do It? Developing a collective enterprise is risky. As previously stated, from the very beginning, all decisions are the result of an open democratic vote. We used the tools provided on Yahoo Groups to host the discussion list. The name of the magazine was chosen this way early on. A survey offered choices, and it was chosen by simple majority virtually. The magazine founders chose not to not link it to any existing university or institution. This guarantees one of the principles of the publication: that it should favour knowledge that is open and free and be characterized as a ‘focus of resistance’ within but against the system. Because it is free of institutional obligations it can adhere to the principles of liberty and freedom of access. Members voluntarily assume a monthly contribution to support publication expenses. It is these contributions, in addition to commercial partnerships with bookstores who use the website to sell books, that pay for the magazine. Accounts are provided monthly to members and Council. All expenses are verified and receipts and fiscal documents are archived. Monthly payment is not a condition of group membership or even of candidature for a post in the directorate. Results Currently, Art& is in its fourth year of existence, having published issue number five in April 2006. Up to and including this issue more than 60 documents have been published including
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articles, experiential reports, reviews, essays on a theme, interviews, résumés, translated documents, transcribed lectures and commentaries. So far more than 30 books and websites and some films have been reviewed and more than 400 events included in the cultural agenda. Moreover, magazine members have participated in many academic events, been delegates or speakers at conventions, or been involved in projects and workshops where they talked about their work for the magazine. The academic community has been informed about this virtual project through lectures, workshops, fairs and at conferences and congresses targeted at different audiences. For example, there were presentations at the International InSEA congress in Viseu, Portugal in 2006; at the Forum Mundial de Educação in Brazil in 2004; the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference in 2005; and The Congresso Internacional de Educação a Distância convened in Brazil by Assossiação Brasileira de Educação a Distância (ABED) in 2005. Working on Art&: Satisfactions and Difficulties It is hugely satisfying to see issues come online offering open, free access, since the group are well aware how difficult this is without personal contact and very little financial support. Virtual contacts require a double measure of patience and are a huge challenge, since the time editors/collaborators have to work on the project varies. But it is gratifying to encounter people talking about, showing interest in and referencing the magazine.
Art& has inspired the creation of another digital magazine, e-curriculum, by the post-graduate Curriculum Programme in Education at the University of São Paulo. This was facilitated through discussion on a list in which the editor of Website and Book Reviews consolidated reflection and observation on the process of creating Art&. At the time of writing e-curriculum has already published a second issue in June 2006 and is calling for papers for the next one. Art& also sets aside space for personal practice and adding ‘a new ‘flavour’ to well-established art education paths. The Pedagogic Projects Editor was was able to experiment this way in her area of interest – art teacher training – after discussing methodologies with professionals throughout Brazil. Future Plans The publication is on the way to becoming global in scope because of increasing interest from international authors. To make this possible, professionals from other countries have been invited to join Academic Council. Dr Fernando Hernandez, from Spain, has already agreed and officially joined other councillors at Revista Digital Art&. It is also anticipated that the magazine will implement interactive projects in future that focus on teacher education; for example, building a virtual forum with greater scope for discussing specific topics in each issue. Another project to create and implement a national database of all Brazilian theses and dissertations concerning art teaching is awaiting funding from sponsors. This will be available for consultation and, like Art&, have open, free access. A proposal is
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being drawn up for sponsorship by public institutions. In addition, there are plans to publish a printed edition of the contents of the first five Web-based issues. The date of publication has not yet been fixed, but the intention is to celebrate the ‘conquest of space’ that has become so important for art education in Brazil. Final Considerations The Art& project is collective, collaborative and experimental. The duration of the contract has not been prescribed. It can be terminated if the project is no longer viable by editors sending formal notice to all parties involved. To resign from Council, members merely have to advise others of the fact formally, using any kind of registered communication. Councillors who do not take part in the project for more than three successive issues are automatically considered to have resigned. The authors of signed articles take full legal responsibility, civil and even criminal, for opinions expressed therein. Therefore, the editors, assembly or councillors are not legally responsible for them in any way. Authors are informed of this in the guidelines for contributors and indicate agreement by submitting work for evaluation. Although it is onerous, working on Art& is a pleasurable and valuable learning experience. Accomplishing the task as a team requires a great deal of mutual understanding and respect. But the work is very rewarding because we know it makes a valuable contribution and supports reflection and discussion of practice by a great many art educators. In the absence of Art&, many of these professionals would be denied access to much needed information. The digital magazine Art& is a dream that became possible thanks to the potential for communication and interaction the Internet offers. Note 1. The name of the magazine is a kind of joke. The word for ART in Portuguese is ARTE and the ‘and’ in the ‘&’ sign is the same sound as the letter ‘E’. So read this way the name would be ‘Art-and’.
References Almeida, M. E. B. (2003), Educação à distância na Internet: abordagens e contribuições dos ambientes digitais de aprendizagem, Revista da Faculdade de Educação da USp. Educação e Pesquisa, São Paulo: FEUSP, V.29, Nº 2, Jul./Dec. 2003, pp. 327–340. Barbosa, A. M. (2004), Arte educação no Brasil: do modernismo ao pós-modernismo, Revista Digital Art&, N 0, Oct. 2003, http: //www.revista.art.br/artigos.htm. Accessed 14 Mai 2004. Barros, A. M. de. (1998), Educando o olhar: notas sobre o tratamento das imagens como fundamento na formação do pedagogo, O Fotográfico. São Paulo: Hucitec, pp. 200–206. Coelho, M. I. M. (2001), Muito mais que ‘apontar’ e ‘clicar o mouse: Promovendo educação a distância online em comunidade de aprendizagem colaborativa. http: //netserv.em.com.br/teiaweb/iaoartigo.htm. Accessed 29 April 2001. Pareyson, L. (1997), Os problemas da estética. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, pp. 122. Rheingold, H. (1993), The virtual community: Homesteading at the electronicfrontier, 1993, http: //www.rheingold.com/vc/book/. Accessed 03 December 1999. Prata-Linhares, M. & Sampaio-Ralha, J. (2005), Digital ART& Magazine: Interactivity and collaborative learning in the production of collective knowledge. In C. Crawford et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Society
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for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2005, Chesapeake, VA: AACE, pp. 2059–2062. Rojo, A. (1995), Participation in scholarly electronic forums, Doctoral Thesis, University of Toronto, 1995, http: //www.oise.on.ca/~arojo/tabcont.html. Accessed 05 January 2000. Simon, I. (2000), O Impacto das redes: estudos de informação e comunicação, http: //www.usp. br/iea/infocom.html. Accessed 20 December 2000. Sampaio-Ralha, J. L. F. & Prata-Linhares, M. M. (2004), Revista Digital Art&: Interatividade e aprendizagem colaborativa na produção de conhecimento coletivo. Atas do 11º Congresso Internacional de Educação à Distância da ABED, Salvador/BA: ABED. CD-ROM. Sampaio-Ralha, J. L. F., Prata-Linhares, M. M. (2003), Novas tecnologias e o professor de educação artística: Realidade Brasileira. In: Actas da Conferência IADIS Ibero-Americana WWW/INTERNET 2003. IADIS – International Association for Development of the Information Society. Algarve, Portugal: IADIS. 8–9 November. pp. 283–284. Sampaio Ralha, J. L. F. & Schultze, A. M. (2002), O projeto Arte-Educar: uma possibilidade de capacitação tecnológica e artística de professores de arte. In: Anais do 4º CONED. Coned: São Paulo.
PART 4: COMMUNITY AND ENVIRONMENT
SEMENTINHA: SCHOOL UNDER THE MANGO TREE Ana Angélica Albano State University of Campinas, Brazil
Abstract Sementinha is an experiment in informal education. The project began some twenty years ago in one of the poorest areas of Minas Gerais. The project goal is to shelter young children who are outside the school system and enable residents of these communities, who are unemployed and unskilled, to take responsibility for education in their neighborhoods. Sementinha started in Santo Andre, an important industrial district in the São Paulo area, where two thousand children aged four to six were outside the formal schooling system in 2001. This paper describes a collective initiative in aesthetic education that is not dependent on or regulated by the formal public school system. Keywords Community education, Family learning art, Storytelling When I started to reflect on the educators who have participated in the Sementinha Project, the image of Pandora’s box came to mind: and with this memory, my fascination with this curious woman who dared to open a forbidden box. The Sementinha Project, or ‘School under the Mango Tree’, was set up some twenty years ago in the State of Minas Gerais, one of the poorest areas of Brazil. In 2001, city officers in Santo André realized that although thirty thousand children were enrolled in sixty-five elementary schools and day-care centers, another two thousand, aged four to six, in the outskirts of the urban area, were not participating. This is why the project was launched there.
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Figure 1 Hut built by parents.
Figure 2 Children playing in garage transformed into art studio.
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Figure 3 Art studio in interior of hut.
The project goals are to shelter these young outsiders and enable residents of these communities, who for the most part are unemployed and unskilled, to take responsibility for their children’s education and that of others in their neighbourhoods. We have a dual purpose therefore: infant education and professional qualification of adults. Moreover, it encourages community members to search out and improve their own educational resources. Tião Rocha, who envisaged the project, called it ‘Sementinha’ (little seed) because, he said, ‘we aim to
Figure 4 Children carrying traveling story suitcase – two views of same group.
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educate children at any cost even if it takes place under a mango tree’; meaning – we will work wherever there are children to work with and educators willing to stand by them. Santo André was the first urban center, albeit without mango trees, to embrace the project. The educators had to seek out places to carry out project work – anywhere where educational tasks could be fulfilled. In the event, they included garages, huts built by parents, local halls, city district association premises and cultural centers. I was invited to join the project in 2004 when it became clear that the children’s aesthetic education was not being addressed. The first step was to establish a structure that enabled the whole team to share responsibility for innovation. Then the project coordinators, Ronnie Corazza and myself, planned an intensive workshop and follow-up schedule. For five weeks we gave creative workshops featuring dramatic role-play, body-awareness and Carl Gustav Jung’s active imagination exercises (Jung 2000, p. 385), read and discussed pertinent texts and organized studios for creative visual practice using materials with which the children were already familiar. We also organized a group visit to the Pinacoteca do Estado, one of São Paulo’s leading art institutions. This first phase of development lasted about twentyfive hours. The main purpose was to provide the educators with opportunities to make and experience art and reflect on their newly found skills for working with children using the languages of art to communicate.
Figure 5 Traveling story suitcases decorated by educators.
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Coordinators and educators worked as a team in all the meetings. Evaluation was undertaken at the end of each cycle of action to assist with joint planning for the next one. Everyone’s awareness of their responsibility to attend to the children’s daily routine increased as a result. Ronnie Corazza developed another project called ‘Traveling story suitcases’. As this name suggests, suitcases designed with shelves and wheels were filled with children’s books. A record was kept in a logbook of when the suitcases arrived at a location, their condition and statements about how the group used them and the learning outcomes. All the educators attended a storytelling workshop designed to stimulate new ways of generating and sharing stories and, in this way, everyone gathered new, diversified repertoires. At the end, each group decorated their suitcases with drawings, paintings and collages. Each time a group received a suitcase there was a celebration. The books and logbook were read to children and new learning experiences were recorded in it. Children could borrow books and take them home to share stories with their families. In actual fact, the twenty-four suitcases functioned as moving libraries circulating among all the groups enrolled in the project and involved children, educators, parents and neighbors in a common activity. Rich moments of storytelling occurred and all the participants had opportunities to enjoy the pleasure of reading. At that time, we were working with one hundred and twenty educators and coordinators and reaching approximately two thousand children.
Figure 6 Travelling story suitcase showing books.
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Figure 7 Child telling a story from a book.
After four months we assembled the group for another evaluation. At this point, it became clear that the most significant change in their daily practice, (besides the introduction of the travelling story suitcase) was the creation of small art ‘studios’ in which children worked autonomously, and chose materials freely for whatever they wanted to create. Of all the activities developed during the previous workshops, this was the most surprising. The educator’s role in the studios was simply to monitor children’s choices. They were fascinated by the wealth of ideas that emerged when the children were encouraged to create spontaneously. Other surprises were the children’s ability to keep well-organized studios while working freely and recycling materials. This revelation caused much debate among the educators, some of whom felt uneasy about their new role. Instead of guiding the work, they functioned as alert observers of the children and collaborated with them in their efforts to achieve their own aims. Although they had never experienced this kind of learning for themselves the majority tried to organize it this way. They were obviously fascinated by the freedom but not convinced the children could handle it. It was no easy task to transform the uninspiring spaces where they were working into pleasant, secure art studios. Each educator had to find somewhere to set up a studio, secure materials and decide how often it would open. Choices had to be made as to whether or not to include art studio work in the daily routine or engage with it sporadically. Seeking out their own solutions, forced the educators to be imaginative. Observing how they achieved this goal was revealing given the limitations of space. I would like to quote one of them at this point.
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Figure 8 Children working with recycled objects.
Figure 9 Children working on collective painting.
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I was used to letting them draw whenever they wanted and they hurried on to start something but the results were poor. When I began to trust them and realize the materials wouldn’t be spoiled, even though they were available the whole day long, the children started to create wonderful things through their own discoveries. The key to this new mode of operating was trust: trusting the processes of others and in their capacity to use materials purposefully and responsibly to give form to the invisible and express things through images words cannot convey. As one five-year-old girl said, ‘I like to draw because, when I draw, my heart beats’. There is no better way of describing how expressing ideas visually bridges hearts and minds. Figure 10 Child drawing on the ground.
Why has the art studio become so important for these educators? To answer this, I will return to the initial image of Pandora’s box. The story of Pandora, who was ‘blessed’ with all gifts, gives a clue as to why the art studio and mini libraries were so important. I associate her box with the art studio, a place in which imagination works chaotically and often and ideas and materials wait to take shape. Giving shape to the unknown is one of the chief functions of art. Uncontrolled imagination is frightening and, by analogy, this may explain why Pandora’s box was locked – to contain the monsters within. But it is hope, lying dormant at the bottom of the box that enables imagination to create the new order that rewards curiosity. The act of creation or giving form to chaos, implies having power of choice. Choice is a positive limitation that ultimately gives birth to form, and we cannot find our own path in life without freedom to choose. Viewed in this light, art studios are significant because they are privileged places for decision-making and shelters in which hope is born. Postscript I want to emphasize the fact that Sementinha occurs outside formal schooling. The teachers are women from the communities where the children live. Because we set out both to shelter the children and enable community residents to teach them, we are engaged in infant and adult professional education together. We train women to take care of their own children. After four years, most of them go back to high school or enroll there for the first time and some are attending university courses. We work in a very poor environment indeed. We also encourage the women to create small co-operative groups producing handcrafts so they can improve their
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income. Sementinha has many programmes. The art studio helps the women to develop selfconfidence so they believe their lives can improve. Perhaps this explains why the image of hope on the bottom of Pandora’s box came to my mind. Note Photographs by Sementinha team.
Reference Jung, C. G. (2000). A vida simbólica. Petrópolis, RJ: Editora Vozes.
CULTURAL BROKERAGE AND REGIONAL ARTS: DEVELOPING AN ENABLER MODEL FOR CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY Robyn Stewart & Christine Campbell Queensland, Australia
Abstract: Many rural and remote communities in Australia could be considered ‘unsustainable’ because of the loss of human, financial and consequent social capital and degradation of the natural resource base that provides both the setting for them and, in many cases, the economic foundation. The problems they face, such as lack of services, unemployment, maintaining professional workers in the region and youth suicide have been extensively explored, yet studies of the role of the arts and associated organizations as brokers of culture through pedagogical activities are few. This paper describes stage one of a project that proposes arts activities as a means of stimulating community development through the interface between cultural brokerage, cultural pedagogy and the sustainable outcomes that might emerge from their application in rural and remote areas of Queensland. The project is investigating ways in which performing and visual arts activities might contribute to sustainable communities. The interdisciplinary research approach was developed in a partnership between Flying Arts, The Queensland Murray Darling Committee and the University of Southern Queensland. Keywords Cultural brokerage, Community, Sustainability, Arts
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Background The research project introduced in this paper explores the interface between cultural brokerage and pedagogy and the sustainable outcomes that might emerge from their application in arts practices carried out in rural, remote areas of Queensland. The project is investigating and documenting ways in which creative and artistic disciplines function as a relevant, enabling agency in industry and commercialization in regional and remote communities (Gascoigne 2005); and how performing and visual arts activities can contribute to sustainable communities. These are communities that limit the decline of economic, environmental and social capital, the fundamental pillars of sustainable development. Interrelated elements include: cultural pedagogy; relationships among forms of arts practice; and community ‘gatekeeping’ and generationalism. Many rural and remote communities in Australia could be considered ‘unsustainable’ because of the loss of human, financial and social capital and degradation of the natural resource base that provides both their setting and, in many cases, economic foundation. Problems such as lack of services, unemployment, and difficulties maintaining professional workers and youth suicide have been extensively discussed (Lawrence, Lyons & Momtaz 1996; Pritchard & McManus 2000; Miles, Marshall, Rolfe & Noonan 2004), as have the structural causes of regional decline (Smailes 1998; Gray & Lawrence 2001). The arts may be one avenue for generating community support and development, though such contentions have not yet moved from advocacy to analysis of practice other than some survey work on individual arts productions (e.g., Curtis 2003). Research is needed to evaluate the application of the principles of cultural brokering and best practice concepts and models for community outreach and capacity building (Trend 1992), particularly in rural and remote areas where the depletion of these three forms of capital is especially worrying. For the purposes of this research, a broker is defined as an individual or group who advocates or intervenes on behalf of another (Moffat & Tung 2004). Culture is the ensemble of stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. It is always constructed and positioned within histories (Trend 1992). It is a living, local thing (Overton 2001: 12) concerned with representations and identities and the stories that structure a sense of place, belonging and possibilities of living well (Doubleday 2004: 391). The brokering process involves creating points of convergence and conversation between cultures, choosing and developing debates about difference and creating relationships (Overton op. cit.: 11) using an enabling approach. In their study of eight Queensland country towns, Plowman et al. (2003, pp. 1–2) found innovative communities had a greater abundance of ‘freshness’ in management and leadership; a younger population; higher than average levels of education, and an upward trend in and higher proportion of residents working in ‘creative class’ occupations and industries. They forecast that ‘…(A)trophy or decline awaits those towns that are not innovative or adaptable’ (ibid.: 8). With regard to arts and pedagogy, they suggested that towns develop their cultural capital by encouraging: public celebration of creativity; continuing education (both formal and
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informal) for all residents; home-grown talent; the development of a community resource centre; and exploration of ways to make towns attractive to young people (ibid.: 4–5). Adult ‘gatekeepers’ often dismiss the idealism associated with youth as fleeting and somehow suspicious, yet it is this potential for innovation and ‘thinking outside of the box’ that Florida (in Davis 1999: 16) defines as a necessary ingredient in building creative communities. Davis argues that economic growth depends on a ‘creative class’ that comprises ‘…people who add economic value through their creativity’ (Florida 2002: 68) and that cultural industries drive growth in knowledge-based societies. This research proposes models of community networks, characterized by collaborative environments and new forms of communication, as circles of convergence that recognize the importance of group processes (Overton 2001). A major element in the project is the development and application of a pedagogy of culture that positions the role of the arts and arts practice in community development and natural resource management. Cultural pedagogy involves analysing stories, tellers and their times and encouraging this analytical spirit in others. It cuts across professional and community boundaries to focus on particular objects or community practices within the contexts of the broad range of circumstances in which cultural forms are produced and received (Trend 1992: 2–3). It creates opportunities to re-envision an ethics of the local. Specifically, exploring the roots of sustainability means understanding and applying strategies at grass-roots level that are informed by immediate, local consequences (Doubleday 2004). When they are practised as part of an active assertion of community vitality, the arts highlight the importance of the local ecologies that can render livelihoods in particular locales sustainable. They reflect and constitute identity by retracing and remaking connections between lives, land and place (ibid.: 396). According to Giroux (2006: 4), cultural pedagogy offers a powerful way to effect social and environmental change by providing the cultural circumstances in which citizenship and a sense of community and identity can be learned. Thus, the socially relevant site for information exchange is the local community where adults and children learn how to view themselves, others and the world they live in (ibid.: 5). Issues of public memory are drawn on so as to develop awareness of how the experience of place has been storied by earlier generations (Bowers 2001: 257). By reclaiming the space for pedagogical work we can better deal with problems of community sustainability. We can discover ways of inspiring students and citizens to recognize and address the pervasive problems of their communities by critically examining the patterns of community life they face regularly. In this way we can empower them to regain their role as critical citizens who work collectively to address relevant social, economic and political issues and build a future that opens up the promise of a viable, sustainable community (Giroux 2006: 8). A socio-cultural approach to education that builds on problem solving requires a broad, flexible, creative approach that includes the communities concerned and draws on diverse pools of knowledge to change apparently entrenched circumstances (Smith 1998: 142). As Lim &
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Renshaw (2001) describe it, this sociocultural approach to knowledge building moves people out of their familiar worlds and positions learning within interrelated historical, cultural, institutional and communicative processes. Emerging issues and problems affecting people and their communities can be addressed through the acquisition of skills for lifelong learning, collaboration and creativity (ibid.: 13). The outcomes ‘story’ the collective activities and social practices that are framed in the process of becoming active participants in a variety of communities of practice. As Wertsch (1998) argues, the process of appropriating cultural tools enables individuals to be included into new collective ways of functioning and action as members of more varied and overlapping communities. Lim and Renshaw (2001: 4) understand this socio-cultural space of appropriation as a zone of proximal development in which individuals with greater cultural capital and membership of a particular community of practice mentor people as they begin to participate in social and cultural activities. The interdisciplinary research approach developed for this project comprises a strongly consultative and collaborative bricolage of strategies appropriate for encouraging community dialogue towards the development of new forums for activities. It is a process of collective strategizing (Overton 2001) designed to effect long-term reform in community and intercommunity exchange through establishing and strengthening alliances among ‘backbone’ groups, like students, churches, ethnic coalitions and town councils. Authentic community happens when people engage with each other (ibid.: 17) and believe in the driving value of the innate ability and talent of ordinary people. The process explores the perspectives of the participants by examining their locally situated ‘funds of knowledge’ and provides them with a voice within collaborative contexts (Lim & Renshaw 2001: 15). The research procedures being used include ethnographic observations, focus groups, surveys, conversations and interviewing, life histories and case studies. These modes of inquiry enable a portrait of an array of cultural resources and forms of knowledge and make explicit the wisdoms, beliefs, assumptions and lay theories of socio-cultural practices (ibid.: 15). The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) is well positioned to operate as cultural broker and potential enabler of economic upturn in regional areas in terms of building cultural sustainability. As part of the research project, USQ will auspice a website that promotes a collaborative, selfservice and user-driven approach to maximizing access to information and increasing the profile of the arts in regional Queensland. It is anticipated this will remain in place after the project is completed as a mechanism for continuing to foster the self-actualization of cultural investment in the participating communities, and as a model for other regional areas in Australia. The research will examine, implement and enable ways of sharing cultural and economic strategies and resources and disseminating high-level expertise through regional centres. It will involve an analysis of the potential contribution of visual and performing arts activities to rural and remote community economic development and map changing demographics and social conditions within the arts sector in these areas. Encouraging young people to critique their environments and represent themselves by beginning to suggest solutions to local problems is a central aim of the project (Overton 2001).
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The research team is working with two industry partners, the Queensland Murray Darling Committee [QMDC] and Flying Arts Inc. The first stage of the research involves working with young people on two projects these industry partners have developed. This paper will describe them briefly. Industry Partner Collaborations 1. Queensland Murray Darling Committee The Queensland Murray Darling Committee (QMDC) catchment area encompasses the Murray-Darling basin bounded by the Condamine, Maranoa-Balonne and Border rivers. QMDC offers vast networks and resources for liaising with and supporting ongoing and longterm research and artistic outcomes that seek to initiate and sustain cultural brokerage partnerships in southwest Queensland. It will also promote communications, education and capacity building programmes that seek to increase public understanding of natural resource management in the region. The Natural Resource Management (NRM) report for 2004 is QMDC’s chief planning document. The section on communication, education and capacity-building specifies key strategies for: (i) proactively supporting young people to maintain viable and vibrant rural communities; (ii) strengthening capacity-building and resource management awareness through education and training opportunities; (iii) developing information sharing with key research organizations; (iv) recording cultural and social practices and their linkages to the environment; and (v) developing and implementing innovative awareness-raising activities (QMDC, 2004: 96–102). QMDC is already actively engaged in forging potential links between education, cultural development and economic outcomes and building sustainable and organic cultural practices that will simultaneously teach and support the ongoing restoration and maintenance of natural resources in southwest Queensland. QMDC believes that the cultural development of regional towns can help to create innovations that add significantly to the lifestyle of the people of Queensland and is committing resources and personnel to the data-gathering process in this research. QMDC is integral in bringing the project to fruition. The Landcare conference As part of the first stage of the project, USQ is assisting with convening and hosting QMDC Landcare Discovery Centre’s annual Landcare Conference. The Landcare Discovery Centre (LDC) is a dynamic Environmental Education facility located in the Queensland Murray Darling Basin serving landholders, community members, schools, teachers, students, industry and local government. It is the educational arm of the Queensland Murray Darling Committee Inc., a notfor-profit organization co-funded by the Queensland and Australian Governments and other investors. The main office is located in Toowoomba, and there are regional offices also in Roma and Goondiwindi <www.qmdc.org.au>. The Landcare Conference encourages young people to investigate their natural worlds and report their discoveries and seeks to empower them to take an interest in their local communities and environments. It recognizes that they learn from peers and provides them with the skills
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needed to stand up and have a say about issues that concern everyone and learn how to make a difference now and for future generations. It provides hands-on, student-orientated learning to ensure that people who are interested in and respect their environments and natural resources will manage the future. The inaugural conference was convened in Toowoomba, a city of 100,000 people in early October 2005. Participants comprised over 280 school students, aged from 8 to 17 years, and their teachers, drawn from 24 schools in the Murray Darling catchment area. The conference spanned three days of talks, workshops and explorations that provided opportunities for students to profile environmental issues and projects they had conducted in their local areas. They presented them in innovative, interactive ways that included puppet and slide shows, art exhibitions and science experiments. The projects dealt with diverse topics such as developing community partnerships, web-of-life activities, conserving ponds, bird habitats and endangered species, ecological monitoring, property planning and saving school yards threatened by blitz programmes. In coordinating the visual arts components of the 2004 conference, USQ’s teams worked with the QMDC’s Landcare Discovery Centre to encourage and facilitate visual investigations by young people of their natural world and the impact of the environment on their local communities. Workshops for youth sectors of the community, including indigenous youth, were devised to develop their production and communication strategies and skills through visual language. The aim was to help them develop a sense of local identity for cultural sustainability outcomes. USQ’s contribution began with a ‘Wearable Art Parade’, with quirky creations that explored issues ranging from introducing weed speices and the gardener as Shaman and then focused on a series of visual arts environmental workshops in Kleinton, the site of one of the first brickworks in the region. Sculptor Andrew MacDonald’s Scrub scrutiny workshop explored the palimpsest of natural features and human intervention in this remnant of early industry. Andrew Stewart’s workshop, An eye for detail: Learning to see nature through photography, evoked personal responses to the environment through creative framing of images, and Randal Fedje’s Clay keepers: Animal’s use of natural clay provided hands-on exploration of deposits built up over thousands of years of settlement. The conference activities enabled the research team to trace outcomes from these events forward and begin the process of identifying communities for the project by establishing contacts with young people and their teachers in the regional communities where future arts activities are planned to take place. The focus now will be on developing strategies and models for exploring the possibilities for creating relevant, appropriate activities and events that will ensure the longevity and sustainability of organic, endogenous arts activities and performances in regional communities. 2. Flying Arts Inc. USQ’s second project partner, Flying Arts, has been delivering sequential visual arts workshops to regional centres throughout Queensland for the past 35 years, with the aim of providing
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access to innovative arts experiences for people in regional, remote and other isolated, or isolating, circumstances. Provision has ranged from traditional painting, ceramic and textile workshops led by one or two artists flown into centres on board a single engine aircraft in the early 1970s, to a host of contemporary practices catering for all levels of experience, age and expertise and reaching thousands of people statewide in 2006. Since 1991, the University of Southern Queensland has hosted Flying Arts at the Distance Education Centre in Brisbane on the basis of mutual commitment to community service and engagement. Though they have been affiliated for fifteen years and regularly reference each other with regard to programming, regional touring and strategic planning, USQ and Flying Arts have never formalized a joint ‘pedagogy of culture’. The research project provides an opportunity to strengthen the FA/USQ partnership through complementing each other’s strengths: an established reputation with, and connections to, regional communities on the one hand and R&D expertise and capacity on the other. With its grass-roots, hands-on, ‘can-do’ approach to delivery, Flying Arts exemplifies what Australian theorist John Hawkes (2001) refers to as ‘cultural vitality’. This is basically a variation on Throsby’s (1999) ideas about ‘cultural capital’ referred to earlier in this paper and the ‘fourth pillar’ of sustainability identified in UNESCO’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) (Culturescope 2006). Because it has an established arts network of more than 60 centres, including communities, schools and cultural organizations, throughout Queensland, Flying Arts is ideally situated for implementing and reporting on cultural events, trends and outcomes. The online discussion forums and training it has developed over the past decade deliver a ready audience of regional and potentially global respondents for this research project. In recent years, Flying Arts has also witnessed a growing trend towards longer-term cross-art form artist-residency projects in regional communities and a huge growth in its youth programme, which was developed both to ensure the relevance and longevity of the organization and guard against any hint of ‘generationalism’. In January 2005, Flying Arts extended its annual Experience the arts (ETA) youth residency to include an ETA summer retreat in conjunction with USQ’s McGregor Summer Arts School held in Toowoomba. In so doing, it delivered a focus group of young people (its primary interest group) to USQ for the research project. ETA brings regional secondary students from many different demographics to Brisbane and Toowoomba, for six to ten days of intensive artmaking, excursions to galleries, visits to university campuses and performance events. Over the years, ETA themes have focused on expanding and challenging practice, individual and community identity and the transitions involved in moving from middle to upper secondary, or secondary to tertiary, education. Responses range from the observation by tutor Catherine Parker that ‘The workshops allowed us to constantly process bringing a more lateral (crossdisciplinary) approach to their art work’ (Flying Arts 2004, 14), to participating students’ statements that:
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ETA helps students from remote areas of Queensland discover other options outside the communities we live in. (Skye Christie, Anandale). ‘It was not just about the things I learned and created. It was about the people I met. To come here and be surrounded by people who know what you know and feel how you feel about art and give you support was an incredible experience. (Stephanie Brown, Mount Sheridan) Experience The Arts (ETA) was truly an art experience. The workshops and talks really opened my eyes to pathways I never even knew existed. They allowed me to make art and therefore experience art’ (Mai Chi, Sanctuary Cove). (Flying Arts, 2005) What is important about the ETA retreat is the opportunity it affords the project to document what happens to students afterwards with regard to career choices, the cultural capital they take back to share with their communities and its potential to stimulate lifelong learning and development. Conclusion We contend that innovative communities can be brokered through socially interactive and collaborative processes rather than individual endeavour, by pooling assets to build proficiency, consolidating practice and forming new communities of cultural networks. Potential can be harnessed and hidden connections explored towards best practice and management this way. We hope the collective strategizing the USQ/QMDC/Flying Arts partnership has proposed will effect long-term change for community and intercommunity exchange. Our belief is that authentic community will only happen when individuals engage with each other and nurture the driving power of the innate abilities and talents of ordinary people. Acknowledgements Our thanks to the following colleagues for their contributions to this project: Randal Fedje, Master of Visual Arts student in Ceramics at USQ; Cindy Lane, professional photographer and member of the photographic team in Media Services at USQ; Andrew MacDonald, practicing sculptor and technician in the 3-D studios at USQ; Andrew Stewart, photographer and Head, Media Studies at St Ursula’s College, Toowoomba. Especial thanks to Dr Janet Macdonald, joint project coordinator, Theatre Department, USQ. References Bowers, C. (2001), Challenges in educating for ecologically sustainable communities, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 33 (2) 257–265. Davis, M. (1999), Gangland: Cultural elites and the new generationalism 2nd ed. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Doubleday, F. (2003), The nexus of identity, Inuit autonomy, and arctic sustainability: learning from Nunavut community and culture’, British Journal of Canadian Studies, 16 (2) 297–308.
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Doubleday, F., Mackenzie, F & Dalby, S. (2004), Reimagining sustainable cultures: Constitutions, land and art, The Canadian Geographer, 48 (4) 389–402. Florida, R. (2002), The rise of the creative class, Melbourne: Pluto Press. Flying Arts (2004), Annual report, Brisbane: Flying Arts Inc. Flying Arts (2005), Annual report, (unpublished), Brisbane: Flying Arts Inc. Giroux, H. (2006), Where have all the public intellectuals gone? Racial Politics, Pedagogy, and Dispensable Youth, http: //jac.gsu.edu/jac/17.2/Articles/giroux.htm 19/6/06 4.15PM. Gray, I & Lawrence, G. (2001), A future for regional Australia: Escaping global misfortune, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawkes, J. (2001), The fourth pillar of sustainability: Culture’s essential role in public planning. Accessed 6 January, 2006. . Lawrence, G. Lyons, K. & Momtaz, S. (eds.) (1996), Social change in rural Australia: Perspectives from the social sciences, Rockhampton Queensland: Rural Social Economic Research Centre, Central Queensland University. Lim, L. & Renshaw, p. (2001), The relevance of socio-cultural theory to culturally diverse partnerships and communities, Journal of Child and Family Studies, 10 (1) 9–21. Miles, R. L, Marshall, C., Rolfe, J. & Noonan, S. (2004), The attraction and retention of professionals to regional areas: the community perspective’ Proceedings of the International ANZRSAI Conference, Wollongong NSW, September. Moffat, J. & Tung, J. (2004), Evaluating the effectiveness of culture brokering training to enhance cultural competence of independent living centre staff, Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 20 (1) 59–69. Overton, p. (2001), The fourth annual Robert E. Gard Lecture, University of Massachusetts Arts Management Institute. 15 June. Plowman, I., Ashkanasy, N., Gardner, J. & Letts, M. (2003), Innovation in rural communities: Why some towns thrive while others languish, Brisbane: University of Queensland Business School and the Queensland Department of Primary Industries. Pritchard, B. & McManus, p. (eds.) (2000), Land of discontent, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Queensland Murray Darling Committee Inc. & South West Natural Resource Management Group Inc. (2004), Regional natural resource management plan 2004 (pp. 93–102) Toowoomba: QMDC. Smailes, p. (1998), Entrenched farm indebtedness and the process of agrarian change, In D. Burch., R. Rickson & G. Lawrence (eds.). Globalization and agri-food restructuring: Perspectives from the Australasia region, (pp. 301–322) Avebury: Aldershot. Smith, L. (1998), Selling green: Environmental education or environmental brainwashing? Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 20 (2) 141–155. Throsby, D. (1999), Cultural capital, Journal of Cultural Economics, 23 (1) 3–12. Trend, D. (1992), Cultural pedogogy – Art/ education/ politics, New York: Bergin & Garvey, United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation. Education Homepage. Accessed 17 April 2005, . Wertsch, J. (1998), The mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.
ART, ECOLOGY AND THE GIANT SEQUOIA PROJECT Elizabeth Kenneday California State University, USA
Abstract This paper chronicles a project developed through an educational grant from the Save-theRedwoods League for the design of lesson plans that use art activities to foster learning about the distinctive characteristics and ecology of the giant sequoia and its groves. A rare tree that lives for three thousand years and grows naturally only on the west side of the Sierra Nevada, the giant sequoia’s reproductive and adaptive systems are unique but are threatened under current governmental environmental policies. To encourage a sense of stewardship of the trees in American youth, art and science were integrated in lesson plans in scientific illustration and mural-making designed to create awareness and understanding of the rarity of the trees. Keywords Environmental education, Art, Giant sequoia, Scientific illustration, Murals Introduction The giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) is a rare tree, once common to all of North America and parts of Europe that now exists naturally in the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada in California. Most of the groves did not survive the last ice age (10,000 years ago), but a slightly milder climate in the region of California, coupled with the distinctive geomorphology of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, allowed the continued existence of the species. With unique capacities for survival, some of the living trees have been dated to over 3,000 years old and can grow to heights around 300 feet with diameters that can equal three lanes of a freeway. At present, the only known natural cause of death for the trees is falling
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over from too much water or extreme escarpment at the tree base. The current groves are not relic species, but thriving groves that are unable to grow outside the western Sierra Nevada due to geographic constraints. While some groves do not have protected status, most exist under the protection of United States National Parks and Monuments that were enacted to preserve these rare trees. Unfortunately, at the present time, all the groves are threatened by current governmental initiatives that seek to undo those protections in an effort to serve logging and other interests.
Figure 1 Loggers around the base of a giant sequoia. (photograph by J. W. Bledsoe, 1890. Courtesy of Kings County Library, Harcourt CA)
The Save-the-Redwoods League1 is an environmental organization dedicated to the protection of both the giant sequoia and its cousin, the coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). The League has defined five objectives for the organization:
■ To rescue representative areas of our primeval forest from destruction. ■ To co-operate with the California State Park Commission, the National Park Service and other agencies in establishing redwood parks, and other kinds of parks and reservations. ■ To purchase redwood groves by private subscription. ■ To foster and encourage a better and more general understanding of the value of primeval Redwood or Sequoia and other forests of America as natural objects of extraordinary interest to present and future generations. ■ To support reforestation and conservation of our forest areas.2 It is clear from the following quotation on their website that the League understands the most efficacious way to ensure the fourth objective is met is through education: In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught. Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet 3 The League offers educational grants to further this aim. Based on work created by the author as an artist-in-residence in Sequoia National Park, together with art activities developed there during that period, the Save-the-Redwoods League awarded a two- year educational grant of
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$3,000 in June 2003 for creating lesson plans that utilize art activities to foster education in the ecology of the giant sequoia. Designed to meet the California State Content Standards in Science and the Visual Arts for students aged 11–12 years, these activities enable urban children to learn about the giant sequoia and related core concepts in visual art and science. The project utilized teacher preparation courses at the California State University, Long Beach, to test out two lesson plans, one in scientific illustration and the other in mural painting. The participants were primarily Liberal Studies majors enrolled on Art 300, a course entitled Art, adolescence and the child. The majority of these students plan to become teachers at elementary school and early middle school levels and have no previous background in art. The students’ efforts were exhibited in February 2005 at the Max Gatov Galleries in the Art Department at the California State University, Long Beach, which donated the gallery space and provided publicity for the exhibition. The works are now in the Save-the-Redwoods League offices where they have been and continue to be exhibited at various League functions. Development of Resources In the initial stages, lesson plans were developed for students aged 11–12 years and connected art, history, math and science. In consultation with Geraldine Walkup, Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator for the Long Beach Unified School District, two lesson plans, one in scientific illustration and one in murals, were selected out of several options. They were chosen because they offered the most comprehensive approach to education in the ecology of the giant sequoia and cultural history of California. Representatives from Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks offered invaluable assistance in autumn 2004 in gathering the resource materials needed for the lesson plan development and trials in the CSULB teacher preparation courses. Valerie Pillsbury, District Interpretive Ranger for Kings Canyon National Park, provided housing and was instrumental in assisting in the collection of specimens4 for the scientific illustration lesson plan. William Tweed, Chief Interpretive Ranger for Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks, also provided housing and assistance with locating appropriate locations for photographs to include in the mural lesson plan. The Iris and Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University donated teacher resources in the form of a CD-ROM and the guide The changing image of California that documented the artists and photographers who contributed to the exploration surveys of California. The latter, which was used to contextualize the lesson plans, was a superb resource because of the way it connected the value of the imagery created during those surveys to our contemporary conceptions of the settlement and natural resource use in California. Pilot Study The lesson plans were tested in two lessons in Art 300 in November and December 2004.5 In the first one, students watched a PowerPoint presentation chronicling the history of scientific illustration and explaining its role in both art and science. Emphasis was given to botanical forms and, in particular, the leaves, cones and seeds of specific trees. Next, they were shown
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Figures 2 & 3 Two examples of scientific illustration by students.
a PowerPoint presentation of the life cycle of the giant sequoia, highlighting the unusual aspects of the reproductive cycle. Instruction in drawing from observation using pencil and paper was provided. Students observed actual cones, seeds and leaf specimens when they completed their scientific illustrations. The second lesson plan involved the creation of murals of giant sequoia tree trunks that illustrated facets of the tree’s survival tactics. The lesson began with a PowerPoint presentation about the
Figures 4–7 Photographs by author showing survival tactics of the giant sequoia. The students scaled them down from 2” X 3” to 20” X 20” and combined them to create a mural.
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social role of murals and the history of this artistic tradition. A second PowerPoint presentation continued to provide information about the life cycle of the giant sequoia and emphasized the importance of tree placement and the role and impact of fire and trunk formation on the longevity of the tree. Four photographs of giant sequoia tree trunks illustrating one or more of the tree’s survival tactics were produced in the resource development phase of the project. With students divided into four groups of fifteen, each group member was given one of fifteen pieces for a group photograph. Each student completed a charcoal drawing from the piece they were given. After completion of the charcoal murals, students duplicated them in soft pastels for the purpose of comparing media types and deciding the best way to render tree trunks. Most students felt the charcoal murals were more successful. Both lesson plans offered opportunities for skills development in art, making historical connections and learning mathematical and scientific concepts, particularly in the area of ecology and conservation. Additionally, the communal effort of creating the mural provided an opportunity for students to work together efficiently as a team. In February 2005, the Max Gatov Galleries of the Art Department at the California State University, Long Beach, hosted an exhibition of the work created from these lesson plans. The art department provided gallery space and exhibition publicity and hospitality for the opening reception was provided through the Save-the-Redwoods League Educational Grant. The
Figures 8 & 9 Students working to join individual pieces into completed murals. (photos by author)
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Figures 10 & 11 Exhibition of charcoal murals.
exhibition offered the University community, as well as the community at large, a chance to learn about the project and the ecology of the giant sequoia. At the time of writing, the student works created under the Educational Grant are housed at the Save-the-Redwoods League offices in San Francisco, where they are exhibited in conjunction with a variety of League functions. The League is currently developing a statewide educational plan that will include these lessons in adapted form for various age groups. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.
Further information about this organization can be found at www.savetheredwoods.org. Ibid. Ibid. All specimens were collected outside the National Park boundaries. Collection of any natural resources is prohibited with certain unique exceptions. Collecting resources is allowed in national forest areas. 5. The course sections were taught by Marka Burns.
Selected references Clark, G. (1907), The big trees of California, their history and characteristics. Yosemite Valley, CA: Press of Reflex Publishing Co. Dilsaver, L. & Tweed W. (1990), Challenge of the big trees: A resource history of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Three Rivers, CA: Sequoia Natural History Association. Ellsworth, R. S. (1924), The giant sequoia: an account of the history and characteristics of the big trees of California. Oakland: J. D. Berger. Fry, W. (1938), Big trees. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Harvey, H. T., Shellhammer, H. S., & Stecker, R. E. (1980), Giant sequoia ecology: Fire and reproduction. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service/ Jastrzebski, Z. T. (1985), Scientific illustration: A guide for the beginning artist. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Kruska, D. G. (1985), Sierra Nevada big tree: history of the exhibitions, 1850–1903. Los Angeles, CA: Dawson Wood, p. (1994), Scientific illustration: A guide to biological, zoological and medical rendering techniques, design, printing and display. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
THE VISUAL ARTS AND DEVELOPMENT OF MARINE ECOLOGICAL VALUES: THE WORLDFISH CENTER PROJECT Lindsay Broughton, Jane Quon & Peter Hay University of Tasmania, Australia
Abstract Conservation of the marine ecosystem is a global issue of the utmost significance. In an increasing number of regions around the world ecological catastrophes resulting from human activity are putting the marine ecosystem under massive stress. These catastrophes have had disastrous socio-economic consequences in developing countries. These communities are the principal concern of the WorldFish Center, which undertakes aquatic resource management and sustainable development programmes that address the crucial issue of food security. Keywords Art, Marine ecology, Visual communication, Social justice Introduction The media regularly confront us with ecological catastrophes that are the results of human activity of one kind or another. These are not only disastrous ecologically but also socioeconomically, particularly for large numbers of poor people in developing countries. These communities are the principal concern of the WorldFish Center, a non-government organization committed to the crucial issue of food security. Non-narrative screen-based artworks developed in collaboration with WorldFish have provided a vehicle for evaluating the extent to which the visual arts effectively communicate relevant
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ecological and socio-economic issues. This paper explores the communicative function of art, art and human values, art and other disciplines and art in relation to social issues. It outlines an art-and-ecology project funded by the Australian Research Council involving WorldFish and the University of Tasmania. Background: Fisheries, Fishers, Communities and Art The world’s average per capita consumption of fish has almost doubled in less than 50 years, while the problem of fish populations being decimated by unsound economic and environmental practices has, in large part, gone unchecked. The profound and startling impact of human activity upon the ocean – over-fishing and associated effects, chemical pollution and eutrophication, alteration of physical habitat; invasion of exotic species and global climate change (National Research Council 1995; Ruckelshaus & Hays 1998) – is sobering and staggering. The scale and magnitude of human-induced alteration to oceans and waterways remain fundamentally unclear both to the general public and scientists (Carlton 1998: 1165). ‘One billion people in developing countries rely on fish as a major source of food and livelihood’ (Choo & Williams 2003: 15, Anon. 2003), yet doubts remain as to whether or not ‘intensive aquaculture production is sustainable and is able to contribute to net growth in fisheries production’ (Choo & Williams op. cit.: 11). Fisheries in South-East Asia that are dependent upon seasonal backflow from the Mekong River, such as the inland lake of Tonlé Sap in Cambodia, are under considerable stress. This is a consequence of several factors including reduced feeder flows from the Mekong in the wake of upstream dam construction and increased pressure from Cambodia’s rapidly escalating population (Deap et al. 2003: 5). The Future Harvest Alliance Office is a strategic organization dedicated to building awareness of global public issues related to food security, health, poverty reduction and the environment. It mobilizes cutting-edge science to promote sustainable development. According to Dr Meryl Williams, the organization’s inaugural executive officer,
The world’s wild fisheries are on the point of passing ‘beyond regulation’. With the multiplication of problems the time has come for an informed, inclusive, public dialogue to establish fish-related matters as a significant issue on world economic and environmental agendas and to devise regimes for the sustainable provision of the amount of fish-based protein needed to feed the world’s poor, whilst maintaining oceanic biodiversity. This being the case, successful policy responses clearly require, as a necessary precondition, a more effective dissemination of relevant information at the human/marine interface. (Williams, Pers comm. 2004). Prior to her appointment with Future Alliance, Dr Williams served for ten years as DirectorGeneral of WorldFish. Based in Penang,. WorldFish focuses on critical provision of protein to feed the world’s poor. Scientists working in its various research centres engage in developing improved fish breeds that can adapt to specific environments of poverty-ridden regions around the world. The complexity of this task is considerable, for the organization’s goal cannot be realised simply by presenting these communities with promising new breeds of fish. It also one
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of educating them, along with the relevant government departments involved in the sustainable management of the resource. Dr Williams and WorldFish are cognisant of the fact that, whilst their work is intimately bound up with ecological problems, solutions cannot be realized through science alone. Science may reveal, explain and provide weaponry for remediation of ecological problems. However, given that a significant proportion of these problems are the result of dysfunctional human action, scientific rationalism does not always prevail. It follows that the critiques and strategies for awareness-raising provided by other disciplines should be harnessed and explored. Kearney endorses such a view. He maintains that multi-disciplinary responses to the complex problems facing the world’s fisheries are required to [counter] the exploitation of ignorance. Marginalization of those affected and the ‘deliberate pursuit of short term gains at the expense of long term sustainability have further confounded resource management and fuelled social tensions’ (Kearney 2004: 82–84). An interdisciplinary team, comprised of personnel from both the University of Tasmania and WorldFish is currently engaged in a three-year research project aimed at more effective dissemination of the issues highlighted by Dr Williams and is doing so through the agency of artworks: specifically, via screen-based works and multimedia sculptural installations. The goal is to raise public awareness of the sustainability of aquatic ecosystems and importance of fish as a source of protein through artistic means. In 2004, Broughton and Quon met WorldFish Center research scientists and fisheries personnel in Cambodia and Vietnam. Relevant video footage was gathered on location and formed the basis for developing a series of artworks. Art and Values The proposition that art and, by extension, arts in general, can influence human values is basic to the project. We consider that this is achieved by the capacity of artworks to instil a kind of ‘felt truth’ in viewers – a consequence of aesthetic experience on the part of the experiencing subjects. We accept that new knowledge is derived from objective acquisition of scientific facts; however, we maintain that the shifts within individual and collective consciousness that lead to formation of values arise from subjective or affective responses to phenomena, including images of various kinds. ‘The idea that images have a kind of social or psychological power is very powerful, …[images form] the terrain on which political struggle should be urged, and the site on which new ethics is to be articulated’ (Mitchell 1996: 73). The idea that art might aspire to promulgating social values is anathema to many in the art world. Within the art-for-art’s-sake ‘bubble’, art and human values are considered mutually exclusive, opposing forces. Viewed historically and cross-culturally, however, art is an active agent in promulgating values, portraying not only what a society is but, also, what it might become. Art functions as an agent of enculturation. However, in the past two centuries, artists in western societies have increasingly operated as autonomous individuals, no longer reinforcing but, rather, critiquing the social hegemony.
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‘Science Communication’, Cognition and the Visual Arts The artworks produced within the context of this project are intended to resonate at the point where art, science and education intersect with environmental issues, social values, policy and justice. The project has brought artists together with scientists, social policy-makers, government officials and politicians, and has also brought them into direct contact with the poor communities that are the project’s ultimate concern. The common practical focus of all the various stakeholders, despite their differing ‘cognitive styles’, has benefited, rather than compromised this work. The belief that science is more efficacious than art persists, a belief paraphrased by Rudolf Carnap, that ‘no object in any mode of art can be of value in attaining new knowledge’; and, further, that ‘whatever we take from a work of art may offer emotional or formal pleasure but cannot offer intellectual meaning’ (Ross 1969: 219). But such views have been refuted for a long time. In his book, Ways of worldmaking, Nelson Goodman asserted that ‘the arts must be taken no less seriously than the sciences as a mode of discovery, creation, and enlargement of knowledge in the broad sense of advancement of the understanding’ (Goodman 1968: 102). John Dewey’s writing on the social functions of art provides the rationale for this project. In Art as Experience, he argues that the ‘live creature’ requires, as a fundamental human need, social circumstances that facilitate an aesthetic experience of his/her communal state (Dewey 1958: 3–19). Art is the ‘means whereby the meaning of group life [is] consummated’ (Dewey 1958: 7). This implies that the arts are able to develop a sense of community that transcends a narrow economic focus and foster a principled, value-based social existence. The Marxist theorist Ernst Fischer reached a similar position from a different philosophical premise. For Fischer, a part of ‘the necessity of art’ is it’s capacity to enable man [sic] to understand himself as part of a larger whole: ‘He wants to refer to something that is more than “I”, something outside himself and yet essential to himself…to make his individuality social…Art is the indispensable means for this emerging of the individual with the whole’ (Fischer 1963: 8). Art achieves this by extending human imagination and generating a sense of insight or discovery (Osborne 1970; Eisner 1979; Goodman 1984: 80). Sensitivity to what is revealed is accomplished through evocation rather than explanation. ‘If the “meaning” of works of art cannot be explained in the way the meaning of a scientific hypothesis can, this should not be taken to imply they are meaningless or mere expressions of subjective feeling’ (Graham 2000: 17: ). A statement by Gilbert Murray in Literature as revelation (Murray 1964: 93) picks up on this proposition. Murray refers to Rousseau’s achievement in bringing the collective unconscious of late-eighteenth-century Paris to a new heightened consciousness, and this through the agency of his electric one-liner, ‘Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains’ (Murray 1964: 96). Murray states, ‘A curious thing about these revelations…[is that] they are never statements of fact. They are never accurately measured…their value lies in their power of suddenly directing your attention, and the whole focus of your will and imagination, towards a particular part of life…[c]onclusions are not defined; they are left vague [and] that makes them all the more tremendous’ (ibid.: 1964: 98). Marxist theoretician Gyorgy Lukacs seems to concur. He
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conceived of ‘aesthetic assimilation as a process of revelation’, arguing that ‘it frees what is otherwise not amenable to change’ (Kiralyfalvi 1975: 121–122). That artistic meaning should resonate at a subjective level, within the affective domain of knowing, does not diminish the validity of artistic understanding or the notion that artistic statements are expressions of ‘truths’. The impact of the aesthetic experience may not be felt immediately, but realized slowly and unpredictably. The ‘truth-revealing’ potential of art is not realized through ‘expand[ing] theories or [providing] summaries of facts’, but by ‘taking the form of imaginative creations which can be brought to everyday experience as a way of ordering or illuminating it’ (Graham 2000: 64). Therefore, ‘there is no reason why art should not be able to reflect the social concerns of our day as naturally as novels, plays and music’ (Lippard 1984: 345). Together with testing the veracity of art/science affiliations, the project is challenging conventional attitudes within the world of art, particularly those of contemporary gatekeepers who question the epistemological validity of collaborating with ‘non-art’ organizations and pursuing social aims. Such an overtly ‘applied’ function for art is unpalatable to those who argue that expecting art to fulfill specific social objectives reduces it to mere propaganda and compromises its integrity. Paradoxically, to state that art has no role to play in promulgating values is itself a statement of values. We argue that art can play an important role in both environmental and values education – and retain integrity as art; for it has the potential to ‘communicate truths not communicable in any other language’ (Marcuse 1978: 10; Hirst 1974: 153). Chaplin alludes to the unique character of artistic communication when she says: ‘Images do not reflect their sources but refashion them according to pictorial or textural codes, so that they are quite separate from, and other than, those sources’ (Chaplin 1994: 1). Graham defines artistic knowing as ‘aesthetic cognitivism’, maintaining that ‘art is most valuable when it serves as a source of understanding’ (Graham 2000: 64). He points out that artworks also serve as sources of understanding for the art audiences who experience them. Art is a unique way of knowing. Hirst states that ‘artistic knowledge is autonomous because it involves elements over and above those derived from elsewhere’ (Hirst 1974: 162). The uniqueness of art does not mean it is disconnected to the matrix of life. In the case of an art/science affiliation, for example, each discipline ‘delivers communicative outcomes that are not available to the other’ (Quon 2005: a: np). Rather than compromising each other’s veracity, together they provide a richer understanding of phenomena. To Reap for Gold: An Exhibition Jane Quon utilizes metaphorical mages and explores forms of artistic expression that might ‘help us to secure experience that is valued intrinsically’ (Eisner 2003: 343). Her solo exhibition To Reap for Gold, was mounted in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s historic Bond Store Gallery in late 2005. The show consisted of seven major works – five screen-based pieces and two sculptural installations, one of which incorporated audience-activated sound. All the
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works stemmed from a visit to Cambodia and Vietnam by Quon, Broughton and artistcollaborator Kirsty Fellowes in 2004 where they met locally based WorldFish Center scientists and government fishery personnel, including the Cambodian Director of Fisheries. The resulting artworks are not documentaries. They are non-didactic, layered, complex constructions that fuse recognizable, comprehensible images and sounds with enigmatic, dissolving, ambiguous impressions. They refer to phenomena such as the seasonal flow of the Mekong (an imperative for sustainable fishing practices); the critical role of women in fisheries within developing countries; and the ecological and social consequences of dysfunctional fishing and other human activities for fish-dependent communities. The Artworks The Sound Is a sculptural installation consisting of steel rods that allude to Cambodian bamboo fish traps. Some rods are fitted with sensors that trigger recordings of the lilting work-a-day sounds of the women of the Mekong Delta, interspersed with sounds of explosions; the latter referencing the destructive electro-fishing technologies currently employed.
The Plenty is a screen-based work depicting a frenzy of feeding fish. The imagery is integrated with the voice of a Vietnamese woman reciting poetry and is intended to embody the ideal of a future of plenty with imagery. Yet, there is ambiguity in this work and a suggestion that a future based upon aquaculture may come at the expense of benign, non-capitalist, traditional ways.
Figure 1 The Sound (2005) Steel & interactive sound installation. Size: 5m (w) x 2.8m-2.1m (h) variable. By Jane Quon©
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Figure 2 The Borne (2000). Multimedia installation. Size: variable. Sound: Peter Sculthorpe, ‘Djilile’ Australian Chamber Orchestra with Richard Cognetti (cello).
The Divide is another sculptural installation comprising 98 flat starch sheets moulded into the form of empty bowls. This work employs dramatic lighting effects to produce reflections on the undersides of the bowls that suggest human skulls. It intentionally refers to the possibility of future food shortages and alludes to images of Cambodian genocide. The Source is the most abstract work and consists of two overlapping discs of light. It is accompanied by ambient traditional Cambodian dance music: specifically, ‘the fish dance’. The work is both celebratory and lyrical with a dominant mood of flow and joy in the predictability of the seasonal cycles. Running water is heard, and shadows cast by reeds on the water are seen within the discs. In the more meditative midsections of the film, the light becomes dull, audio slows and visuals become sparse, evoking the less exuberant seasons in the cycle, before the return of more cornucopian times.
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The Catch is the most narrative of the seven pieces. A boy can be distinguished emerging out of abstract imagery, casting a net. His resultant catch is a single, tiny fish. In resignation the net is cast again. The overall visual aesthetic of the piece derives from an effect of spangled sun upon water. The imagery of this work inspired the exhibition title: To Reap for Gold. In terms of source material The Borne is the only non-Cambodian piece. Via three-screen video in wide format, the work takes the viewer to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Low-angle filming has realized images that confer a monumental, heroic quality to women working their boats. The film presents women of strength, resilience and patience. It references gender issues within fisheries, a key focus of WorldFish. The visual imagery is integrated with music by Peter Sculthorpe, a renowned Australian composer.
The Cycle is a somewhat abstract work with imagery derived from footage of a traditional, small village waterwheel fed by an open bamboo pipe. The alternating slow-to-rapid turn of the waterwheel evokes the rhythmic cycle of the seasons. The images and accompanying improvised sound is intended to evoke a life force – albeit one of struggle against the diminishing flow of water along the Delta – and to reassert the resilience of natural cycles. The imagery also seems to suggest that traditional and tenacious technologies hold the key for sustainability outcomes as well as concomitant ecological goals and social justice. Project Evaluation The five screen-based artworks each ran continuously throughout the Bond Store exhibition. Excerpts of approximately 5–7 minutes have been produced (auteur Quon & Fellowes 2005) from each for evaluation purposes. These will function as primary instruments for obtaining feedback on the effectiveness of the artworks in achieving the project aims. Local, national and international forums of interest groups representing a range of disciplines, along with community and school groups, have been identified for evaluation workshops. Group discussion of the artworks, their themes, form and content will follow the screening of each film. This discussion component is a crucial aspect of the research and will take the form of ‘unstructured conversations’, requiring the ‘handling [of] empirical material in a reflexive way, setting in motion reflection on several issues at the same time and consistently admitting ambiguity’ (Alversson & Skoldberg 2000: 288). Implicitly, the research will also serve to evaluate the role of language in art pedagogy. The evaluation will be qualitative in nature. Elliot Eisner argues that art criticism provides an excellent model for evaluation of educational programmes asserting that ‘the paradigmatic use of qualitative inquiry is found in the arts’. He describes qualitative educational evaluation as ‘educational criticism’, and those who undertake it as developing the attributes of ‘educational connoisseurship’. By criticism he does ‘not mean the negative appraisal of something but rather the illumination of something’s qualities so that an appraisal of its value can be made’ (Eisner 1979: 190–1). We agree with this conception of evaluation and embrace it as highly appropriate for this research.
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References Alversson, M. Skoldberg, M. (2000), Reflexive methodology: New vistas for qualitative research. London: Sage. Anon. (2003), Fish unlimited proposal: Fish for food, fish for livelihoods, fish and environment. Penang: WorldFish Center. Carlton, J. T. (1998), Apostrophe to the ocean. Conservation Biology, 12(6): 1165–1167. Chaplin, E. (1994), Sociology and visual representation, Routledge: London. Choo, p. S. & M. J. Williams. (2003), Fisheries production in Asia: Its role in food security production. NAGA WorldFish Center, 29(2): 11–16. Deap, L., p. Degen & N. van Zalinge. (2003), Fishing gears of the Cambodian Mekong. Phnom Penh: Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute of Cambodia. Dewey, J. (1958), Art as experience. New York: Capricorn. Eisner, E. W. (1979), The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs. New York/London: Macmillan. Eisner, E. W. (2003), The arts and the creation of the mind, Language Arts 80(5): 340–344. Fischer, E. (1963), The necessity of art: a Marxist approach. London: Penguin. Goodman, N. (1984), Of mind and other matters. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Goodman, N. (1968), Ways of worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett. Graham, G. (2000), Philosophy of the arts: An introduction to aesthetics (2nd edn.) London/New York: Routledge. Kearney, R. (2004), Fish, aquaculture and food security: sustaining fish as a food supply. In Brown, A. G. [ed.] Sustaining fish as food supply, ATSE, Canberra: Australia. Kiralyfalvi, B. (1975), The aesthetics of Gyory Lukacs. Princeton: Princeton University Press Lippard, L. R. (1984), Trojan horses: activist art and power. In Wallis, B. [ed.] Art after modernism: Rethinking representation. New York: Museum of Contemporary Art, pp. 341–358. Marcuse, H. (1978), The aesthetic dimension: toward a critique of a Marxist aesthetics. London: Macmillan. Mitchell, W. T. (1996), ‘What Do Pictures Really Want?’ October, 77: pp 71–82. Murray, G. (1917), Literature as revelation. In G. Murray (1964). Humanist essays. London: Unwin. National Research Council. (1995), Understanding marine biodiversity: A research agenda for the nation. Washington, D.C. : National Academy Press. Quon, J. (2005a), Imaging ocean space: Marine ecology and the visual arts and tidal interchange. In Lester, L. & Ellis, C. [eds.] Proceedings of Imaging Nature, Media Environment and Tourism Conference, 27–29 June np. (http: //www.utas.edu.au/arts/imaging/). Quon, J. (2005b), Phenomenology and artistic praxis: An application to marine ecological communication. Leonardo 38 (3): pp. 185–191. Quon, J., Rix, E., Rimmer, Z. & Urban, R . (2005), Art, communication and marine ecology. Hobart: ACME Publication. Rader, M. & Jessup, B. (1976), Art and human values. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Ross, S. (1969), Literature and philosophy. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Ruckelshaus, M. H. & Hays C. G. (1998), Conservation and management of species in the sea. In p. L. Fiedler & p. M. Kareiva [eds.]. Conservation biology for the coming decade, (pp. 112–156), New York: Chapman & Hall.
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Williams, M. J. (2004), World fish supplies, outlook and food security. In Brown, A. G. [ed.] Sustaining fish as food supply, ATSE, Canberra, Australia. Williams, M. J. (1997), The role of fisheries and aquaculture in the future supply of animal protein: Food for the future? Paper presented at the 2nd International Symposium on Sustainable Aquaculture. 2–5 November, Oslo (Norway).
ENVIRONMENTAL ART AND COMMUNITY ART LEARNING IN NORTHERN PLACES Timo Jokela & Maria Huhmarniemi University of Lapland, Finland
Abstract The Department of Art Education at the University of Lapland has developed a programme of Art, Community and Environmental Studies that integrates art education and the work of artists and art institutions with the activities of local inhabitants and culture in the North. New Webbased learning methods support these studies. The purpose of this article is to describe and explain a place-specific and community based art project that set out to support local livelihoods and strengthen communities in the Barents region. It reports on the aims, methods and results of the Trans Barents Highway Art Project carried out in 2003–2004 and explains the structure and benefits of the Web-aided learning. Keywords Environment, Art, Community, Web-aided learning Background As the northernmost art education institution at university level, the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland (established in 1990) strongly emphasizes northern issues. The mission of the faculty is to explore and study cultural life in the North as well as provide high-quality information that will enable local people to further develop their area. The Department of Art Education offers a wide variety of programmes in the field of ‘Community, Art and Environment’. They provide students with the basic skills needed to carry out art projects in communities and methods of combining art education with activities initiated by different sorts of art and cultural institutions, organizations and informal communities. Their purpose is to refine students’ personal
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Figure 1 Salla is a small village in a border region of Finland and Russia. The tradition of participating in village voluntary works (talkoo) is still vivid. Local villagers cut huge heaps of willow beforehand and helped Trans Barents artists to create these sculptures beside the road. The project activated countryside culture also. Sculptures at Salla designed by Birgitta Johansson & Anita Mikko. (2003 and 2004) (photos: Timo Jokela)
artistic skills and integrate art and community education. Lately Community Art and Environment Studies has focused on Web-aided learning. With the help of distance learning students can implement art education projects in their everyday environment and share their experiences with other students in a Web environment. The Trans Barents Highway Symposium of Art took the form of a one-month travelling workshop starting from the Norwegian town Bodø on the Atlantic coast, moving to Northern Sweden and Finland and then into Russia and Murmansk on the Barents Sea. The project connected people with five nationalities: Norwegians, Swedish, Finnish and Russian and the region’s indigenous Sámi people. The Barents Region has a varied ethnological and anthropological-geographical history. The Trans Barents Highway project exemplified the organization, working methods and results of ‘project based art education.’ It was based in art pedagogy and delivered environmental art workshops and lectures in fourteen municipalities along the Barents road. The main aim was to involve the general public in creative activities that are experienced positively and engender a deeper understanding of socially active contemporary art. Project-based Studies in Art Education Contemporary artists and art educators in general work in interdisciplinary, artistic contexts applying and combining different modes of expression. Participation in multidisciplinary collaborative projects is altering their job descriptions. Project leaders have to network so as to finance and prepare proposals and reports. The indirect influences of art are increasingly being emphasized in funding applications for projects that support employment, regional development and wellbeing. This being the case, artists or art educators have to be able to document and describe projects systematically and evaluate achievements against stated goals (Adams 1997; Jokela & Hiltunen 2003). Project training courses aim to provide students with these kinds of skills.
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Project proposals cover every aspect of an initiative: aims, goals and objectives, a schedule and methods. The case for and significance of the project has to be explained. The proposals outline what will take place and where, who is responsible for it and the participants. They also incorporate a theoretical framework covering conceptions of art and learning. In addition, they include plans for an environmental/community analysis, and for documenting, financing, reporting and disseminating the project. The starting point is a survey and needs analysis. In-depth knowledge and understanding of the working environment and participant community has to be secured to enable positive longterm effects. Surveys of places and socio-cultural situations have five dimensions: they explore place as an objective, subjective and textual entity and the community’s socio-cultural situation. Surveying the objective aspects necessitates observing and describing forms, materials, and distances. Subjective experience of place is gained by spending time there and participating in community activities. Surveying subjective place is a multi-sensory activity involving first hand observation and analysis by an artist-researcher. It could focus on recovering past memories associated with place, or examining personal conceptions and assumptions. Textual place refers to the stories and communal conceptions associated with it. Place names, travel descriptions, historical and present books and oral discussion with locals can all serve as source
Figure 2 Lack of knowledge of place and the social situation complicated the realization of this project and it ran into trouble with town politician. There were difficulties securing promises and a suitable place for art work. In the end wooden constructions were placed outside the Regional Art Museum for one day. On another day one of these was exhibited and photographed at different locations in central Murmansk. Installation in Mumansk. Designed by Maria Huhmarniemi. (photos: Mikko Kenneth & Maria Huhmarniemi)
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material. Art making leads to more sensitive and accurate observation. Art can also be used to evoke personal and collective memories and inspire discussion. Surveys of the social situation of place give an accurate account of an area’s overall social situation. They seek to establish which associations and societies are active in the area, what cultural services are offered and who uses them (Kurki 2000), to bring community needs and problems to awareness, to understand the special characteristics of the local community and identity resources and partners. It is vital to become familiar with local practices so as to ensure successful execution. Documentation widens the audience and influence of environmental/community art projects and supports learning and motivation. The following aspects are documented: (i) the environmental and community analysis, modes of work and results; (ii) creation of artworks and events, from sketches and thematic development to stages in the work, working methods, the learning and peoples’ feelings about them; and (iii) events or artworks in the environment: from near and far, during different seasons and times of day. (Documentation can also be targeted at experiencing artworks and dialogues between audiences and works); and (iv) achievement of project goals, increases in cooperation or active participation and interaction between learners. A continuous process of formative evaluation is important and a final evaluation. Evaluation should involve participants. It is appropriate to concentrate on the knowledge active participants possess themselves and on the socio-cultural context in which the artwork is produced. Attention is paid to individuals learning about their own actions in terms of thought processes and conceptions. Evaluating the different aspects of a project provides concrete information about how the practical work has been carried out (Kurki 2000). Reports are used to develop and improve environmental and community art and art education. They cover the entire project from the initial stages to completed artworks or events and the findings of the evaluations. Possible problem situations and developmental needs are highlighted to assist the creation of similar projects. They also include critical evaluation of the potential of specific modes of action for other environments and communities. Benefits of Web-aided Learning A community art project starts with analysis of the community and environment, and proceeds to defining problems and future visions, planning the activity, then creating it. It ends with documentation, evaluation and reporting all the fields of action. In every phase of this process, students describe their progress verbally and visually to the tutor and peer group in the Web environment. Ideas and comments are shared in discussion lists formed according to project themes. Most students realize projects in schools or as public art in their hometowns or villages. Schoolbased projects have resulted in winter art in schoolyards, murals, outdoor installations, playground designs and environmental artworks in forests and parks. Projects vary a great deal, since the places and communities differ and the students adopt different roles: as artists or
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teachers in primary, secondary or upper secondary schools, art schools for children and young people, or polytechnics. Some projects involve entire school communities. Successful Web-aided community and place specific art projects depend essentially on effective documentation skills. The students create detailed records that describe the places, communities and their own learning. Digital documentation (videos and photos) catch the essence of public art very well (Coutts 2004: 33–39). Their reports pass on experiences and a sense of place to the peer group and a wider public. High quality documents and reports can be used to develop new methods for art education in communities also. Web-aided learning has revolutionized the process by making it more open and students study at home as well as on campus. Furthermore, it gives them a chance to study their home communities and environments closely. The opportunity to study in the real world is important. The students comment on each other’s work and share theory and practice in discussion lists in the university Web-based learning environment. The aim is to construct knowledge collaboratively through interaction. Disappointingly their discussion seldom constitutes a chain of messages. Course tutors have to participate actively to encourage better interraction and improve this learning process. On the other hand, discussion lists and requests for comments motivate students to study project designs and peer group reports. Master’s degree students who live far away from the University benefit most from this study mode. They often have jobs and access to networks of people through personal interests, families and hometown. Networks are essential elements of community projects; and they
Figure 3 The city of Kandalaksha is situated on the shores of the White Sea in the narrow Gulf of Kandalaksha. There have been many archaeological findings on the outskirts such as graves and huge stone labyrinths. Local artists and teachers proposed labyrinths as the workshop theme. Alexander Harlamov from the Barents Highway group designed them and children and adults collected and arranged the stories and pebbles. Labyrinths at Kandalaksha. (photos: Timo Jokela)
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collaborate with at least one local partner. Learning materials are ready at hand in the Web environment. Producing and publishing new learning materials is simple and cheap which is important with small audiences. The university publishes photographs in a Site Specific Art Gallery (http: //olos.ulapland.fi/mm/katoavapublic) and a Winter Art Gallery (http: //olos.ulapland.fi/mm/talvipublic). Some of the materials and strategies on the Web, for example, galleries have been developed specifically for Northern environments but others could be elsewhere. Lately, the Universities of Lapland and Strathclyde (in Scotland) have opened an Art, Community and Environment Project archive (ACE) (http: //ace.ulapland.fi), containing summaries of student project reports so they can share their experiences. Distance learning requires the ability to self-direct study. This is an important aspect of academic studies, especially in teacher education where trainees are being prepared to meet the demands of future work and society (Virta 2005: 50.) Students enrolled on Community, Art and Environment programmes generally show interest and ability in self-directed learning. However, when their studies are entirely Web-based, they often long for a more personal relationship with tutors. Their shared comments in discussion lists sometimes lack individuality and they complain tutors leave them to face the challenges of creating projects alone. More guidance for these cases and more interactive systems are needed. On the other hand the students must learn how to seek support from and lean on colleagues in similar circumstances. Trans Barents Highway art symposium Barents Nature Interest in nature and landscape has grown enormously in recent years not only in academic disciplines but also in art. One of the main aims of the Trans Barents Highway Symposium of Art, as well as of many other community art projects in the North, was to promote artistic methods of working with diverse elements of nature in the Barents region. In the rest of the paper we will report on how this aim was achieved in the symposium. In traditional art practice, nature was represented in paintings, drawings or engravings; photography, film and theatrical scenery; writing, speech and presumably, even in music and other sound images. Our project worked with nature more directly, using natural materials and language and respecting their beauty. Northern nature was the physical medium for art. In many cases nature provided the materials for making works of art: earth, stones, vegetation, water, sound and silence, light and sky etc. Working with natural materials, we tried to make art that reflected the changeable landscape of Barents area. The project had an ecological and geographical aspect therefore. Ecological and environmental approaches to art are not new, but until recently were considered a part of modernist thinking. Modernist artists were intrigued with the idea that a universalist approach to art in nature, such as using archetypal patterns, would somehow trickle down and alleviate environmental problems (Neperud 1995). This view has changed substantially in recent years with the growing interest among eco-artists in manipulating natural materials, forces and processes to comment directly and locally on environmental matters (Gablik 1991). Discussion of these cases happens inside art institutions at centers and also in communities in
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regions. That is why the art world and art education also needs to develop new methods of interpreting and understanding nature. Landscape and Culture Landscape in not only physical nature, it is a part of culture (Muir 1999). The Barents region has a colourful past that effects how we interpret and understand its diverse landscapes. The description of Ottar’s journey by boat from Halagoland to the White Sea and a mythical Bjarmia in the year 870 is the first written mention of living in the region (Lainema & Nurminen 2001: 57– 58). In his book History of northern peoples (1555), Olaus Magnus described different ways of living, livelihoods and trades like fishing and hunting, for example, and different people’s habits in incredible detail (Linnilä 2002). In the 1600s and 1700s, explorers, tourists and adventurers described the North as an extreme experience on the edge of the world and as a place to purify and clarify the mind (Acerbi 1953). The explorer Willem Barents, who became stuck on the ice searching for a way to China and perished on Novaja Zemlja during the winter of 1596, gave his name to the whole region (Lainema & Nurminen 2001: 84–92). However, for the people who live there, the Barents region is situated at the centre not on the edge of the world, and is not mythical. Work and livelihoods have fashioned the region’s unique history of landscape. Knowledge of history and tales of the North helps us to understand the language of this landscape. Stories of man and the environment are interwoven. The cultural landscape is proof of interaction between man and nature and has recorded many unique traditions. Besides the
Figure 4 This installation was spread over a large area on the border between Sweden and Finland. On the opening day a group of performance art students led by Annika Kronqvist from Svefi Academy, Haparanda performed a minimalistic event inspired by cement signs and symbols. Installation designed by Antti Stöcke. (photo: Timo Jokela)
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history of livelihood in the North, Barents landscapes tell us about Sámi, Swedish, Norwegians, Finnish and Russian peoples and meetings between their ways of life. History is not just traces of the past; it is the outcome of dialogues between present and past. Cultural meanings encoded in landscape and art connected to landscape, are important for renewing and revitalizing values. One of the central aims of this project was to develop and try out art that is based on and uses the history of the landscape and traditional working methods of the region. You could say we wanted to bring the past into the present so as to inspire the future. The project was cultural and historical therefore and aspired to revitalize unique local traditions. Art and Economic Life One hundred years ago the region was more open and contacts and trade between nations were lively. After the national boundaries closed in, the trade collapsed. Today we are rebuilding these contacts. The question is: What kinds of attitudes do we have to this landscape and nature today? The most common way of responding to Barents is to exploit the natural resources. For others the problems this poses are so pervasive that local environmental issues are their predominant concern. The pollution of waterways and nature, destructive clear-cutting of forests, construction of nuclear power stations and physical and social disintegration of towns and villages are contemporary problems in the Barents area. One option is to develop the travel and experience industry (tourism) in a way that takes nature’s beauty and diversity into account. Once new more ethical forms of tourism emerge, active measures will be needed to integrate art into economic life through regional cooperation and networking. The Barents Road might be the right site to open a new kind of nature-cultureoriented economic way of life involving industry and commerce. In the North these kinds of projects have already resulted in positive developments and collborations between winter art and winter tourism (Huhmarniemi, Jokela & Vuorjoki 2003; Huhmarniemi, Jokela & Vuorjoki 2004). Successful products of culture-oriented tourism can invigorate the lives of local people, not just the tourists (Jokela & Hiltunen 2003). The Art World in the Barents Region Barents is a region of scattered settlement with isolated pockets of art and cultural life. Recently there has been a lot of talk about networking with arts projects but real interaction demands real encounters. There have been art-based collaborations with museums and institutions but, in most cases, these have not connected with local/social aims (Methi 2002; Harri, Hoogkammer, Kuusikko & Lemmetty 2001). The artists’ roles have been passive and they have not engaged in collaborative environmental work on site. Finding artists to work on the Barents Highway project proved problematic. First, the majority we approached was not trained to work with communities or lacked confidence. Second, some of them did not understand our local, social and environmental aims. Some artists had fixed views about art; and said things like: ’ I’m an artist and what you are asking me to do isn’t art’. The modernist tradition is still deeply embedded in art training.
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Only a few recognized that the conditions for art making have changed and there is no funding in a classless society for what they did. In the past ‘modern’ artists were supported by individuals or groups who earned intellectual capital from buying their work. But funding for artwork today is increasingly being directed to regional and other kinds of development projects. Reforms to the way artists are trained are essential and new ways of thinking about the skills they need to interact with the environment. Artists need to know how to collaborate with representatives of a wide range of academic disciplines and social sectors. So this project was a pilot study and a means to exploring new possibilities for artwork and explaining the profession to society. It was also a form of continuing education for the artists involved. Place-specific Design
Marlene Creates writes, ‘The land is important to me, but even more important is the idea that it becomes a place because someone has been there’ (in Lippard 1997: 32). As Relph (1976) and Tuan (1974) have pointed out, we live in a world full of places we find meaningful. We do not actually perceive the environment or nature, it becomes concrete in places we experience. So all our activities connected with nature, environment and community focus on certain places. This was the case with our project. The artwork was concentrated in certain places in the municipalities we cooperated with. The idea of Barents road became concrete in the places where we worked. Place is not universal. It has space and time limits. Recently environmental and community art has developed a new way of looking at it that emphasizes temporal, local and social ties. This kind of art emphasizes real places and communities as starting points for activities and reveals new depths of place that engage viewers or inhabitants (Lippard 1997). Place-specific art becomes part of, or involves criticism of the built and/or everyday environment. At its best, this makes places more meaningful to those who live or spend time there. This explains why both landscape and place are ideological, even political concepts. They represent ways in which certain groups of people have signified themselves and their worlds. Peoples’ relationships with nature play a central role In the Barents region. Places in nature, like certain rivers, hills and woods play a large part in people’s local identity – especially in villages. According to Tuan (1974) and Relph (1976), it is the emotional ties to and memories of places that create an individual’s local identity. But a sense of place is also important for achieving communal comfort and group identity. Community-based Design Efland, Freeman & Stuhr (1996) argue that art is a form of cultural production whose point and purpose is to construct symbols of shared reality. Besides being place-specific, the project also exemplified ‘new genre public art’ as Suzanne Lacy (1995) describes it. The works created during the symposium were planned and created by artists together with local participants. The artists activated local people to make art with social meaning. Art was not ‘brought in from outside’, from the center to the periphery and this made it easier for the local public to take
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part in and identify with it. It was possible also to link the art making to other cultural events taking place in the municipality during the workshop. Suzanne Lacy (1999) has written about the way artists’ roles and relationships with artworks and audiences have changed. In our case the project sought to bring local inhabitants closer to nature and culturally related art on the one hand; and on the other it served as a tool for developing co-operation between art associations and cultural workers. In many cases it was difficult to distinguish the artists and audiences. The project offered space for interaction, participation and dialogue between contemporary art, nature and local people. It fits Gablik’s (1995) description of ‘new art’, embodying a new cultural paradigm that embraces a revitalized sense of community and an extended ecological perspective, and providing access to mythic and cultural sources of spiritual life. The programme had an art pedagogical design. It sought to involve the local public in lectures and workshops that would create deeper understanding of and participation in contemporary art. The goal was to bring environmental art closer to the people in the Barents region and develop possibilities for temporary art to become both an agent with respect to cultural and natural values and a network for these questions in the region. The project created cultural networks in at least five different categories: (i) professional artists; (ii) artist associations/cultural organizations; (iii) art museums/galleries; (iv) open colleges/art schools; and (v) tourism. Thus, it may become a platform for a long-term cooperation in the future. Art Activities The project created the world’s longest sculpture trail between Bödö and Murmansk. The Trans Barents Highway Symposium of Art was a place-specific art project. And the 26 works of art created during the symposium can be categorized as: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Land art relating to the land and geology Environmental art – based on natural materials and processes Installations – using materials typical of the region Sculptures – constructed of material connected to the place Environmental performances – including happenings
The participants were artistic leader Timo Jokela, travelling artists, a cultural journalist and a project coordinator. The artistic leader chose the traveling artists from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia respectively – one from each country. These individuals were not just environmental or community artists, they included traditional fine artists, photographers, textile designers and art educators. There were two groups and two symposia each lasting one month. In 2003 one group travelled on the Barents road from Bodö to Murmansk and in 2004 another group travelled from Murmansk to Bodö. In both cases they stopped at each municipality that agreed to participate in the project. In each municipality we searched for a group of artists and persons interested in art and culture to take part in a workshop together with the travelling artists. The size of the group varied
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Figure 5 This installation was designed by Timo Jokela and realized by Trans Barents and Norwegian and Swedish artists. It is located on a mountain near the border between Norway and Sweden. Stone installation on a mountain. (photo: Timo Jokela)
depending on the workshop theme. In some municipalities there were only one or two people, in another almost one hundred. Local artists, art students and people interested in art took part in the planning and created works of art on site. The project also connected with local art associations, cultural heritage museums, open colleges, art schools and even the tourist industry. Local participants, culture organizations or artists chose places and materials for the art made at each workshop. Places and materials were selected to represent the characteristics and identity of each area and its cultural history. The names of the sites, materials and contact people were given to the artist leaders who picked the most suitable artist for the projects in each commune. They acted as contact persons for the traveling artists, local artists and local community members and also took part in the first steps of planning the artworks. Each work was created during a two-day workshop (the day the symposium arrived in the municipality and the following day). Where there was shortage of time or the municipality chose large projects, local artists finished them later. Some works were stable and long term and some were temporary. Some municipalities insisted on durable artworks. The project tried to respect their wishes. One problem was that local partners did not always have a clear understanding of the differences between monumental public art and environmental art; they considered durable long-term artworks more singificant for ecomomic reasons.
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Public lectures about contemporary art were organized at each place, with the help of the municipality, at which two artists presented their work and professional activities or art in their country or region using slides, photos, videos or PowerPoint presentations. Together, the workshops and lectures provided a space for interaction, participation and dialogue between contemporary art, nature and local people. Achievements of Symposium The resulting works have given the Barents road a unique, exciting profile as a tourist attraction that combines contemporary art with cultural history and magnificent experiences of nature. Even though each workshop can be viewed as an independent venture, the overall project should also be considered one gigantic work of art. A 1500 km long sculpture! The role of the artistic leader in each art work ensured sufficient visual coherence even though the landscape and materials changed. When art challenges reigning tenets and radically different working methods are introduced, the critical task is complicated. Artists must learn to evaluate themselves through the processes they use to make art, not simply the art objects they create. Art processes, just like art objects, may be locally specific and have no single aesthetic; a diverse community and landscape may generate very different forms of site-specific art. On the spot feedback suggests that the surveys of places and processes involved in creating the art, as well as the finished art works, increase artists’ and participants’ knowledge of cultural heritage and respect for the environment. But long-term evaluations of the effects would be valuable. The University of Lapland and Trans Barents Highway Symposium of Art project have published documents, reports and presentations in a range of media. The project has been disseminated to a wide audience through seminars, photography, exhibitions, exhibition catalogues such as
Figure 6 The Forestry Museum of Lapland has a large collection of log cabins, steam tractors and other objects related to the logging industry in northern Finland. A popular sport amongst loggers is to ride a log through the foamy rapids of the river transporting the timber down to the coast. This installation, designed by Mikael West-Hammer and created by Trans Barents artists, reflects this history. Installation designed for Forestry Museum of Lapland. (photos: Mikko Kennet)
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Figure 7 The municipality of Älsbyn wanted the artists to redesign a fountain in the centre of the town. Eija Mäkivuoti, the responsible artist, felt pressured to create something, beautiful and stable. After brainstorming she designed this water-driven photo-wheel, with twelve portraits of Älvsbyn municipal commissioners in continuous rotating motion. Water-driven photo wheel in Älsbyn. (photo: Timo Jokela)
The Trans Barents Highway (Jokela, Kynman & Mikko 2004) and websites. The Art, Community and Environment project archive (ACE) and Site Specific Art Gallery publishes documentation in the open Internet. Disseminating the project this way has clarified fundamental principles of environmental, socially active art and raised the profile of art education so there is increased understanding of them in the Barents region. At the same time this communication has brought new collaborative partners to the University of Lapland. After the successful closure of the symposium, new plans are being made for the next steps. References Acerbi, G. (1953), Resa i Finland 1799. (Översättning E. R. Gummerus). Helsinfors: Söderström & C: o Förslagsaktiebolag. Adams, E. (1997), Public art: People, projects, process. Leeds & Leicester: AN Publications. Andrews, M. (1999). Landscape and Western art. New York. Oxford University Press. Coutts, G. (2004), Mulitimedia, curriculum, public art: Art Education 42 (4), pp. 33–39. van Delft, M. (1998), Community art: Implications for social policy: Themes from Finland. Helsinki: National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health.
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Efland, A., Freedman, K. & Stuhr, p. (1996), Postmodern art education: An approach to curriculum. Reston, Virginia: The National Art Education Association. Gablik, S. (1991), The reenchantment of art. New York: Thames & Hudson. —— (1995), Connective aesthetics: art after individualism. In S. Lacy (ed.) Mapping the terrain: New genre public art. Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 74–87. Harri, H., Hoogkamer, M., Kuusikko, R. & Lemmetty, K. (eds.) (2001), New potatoes 2001: Barents region young artists´ exhibition and seminar. Rovaniemi: Art Council of Lapland & Rovaniemi Art Museum. Huhmarniemi, M., Jokela, T. & Vuorjoki, S. (eds.) (2003), Talven taidetta: Puheenvuoroja talven kulttuurista, talvitaiteesta ja lumirakentamisesta. (Winter Art: Statements on Winter Culture, Winter Art, and Snow Construction.) (Trans. V. Välimaa-Hill). Rovaniemi: University of Lapland. —— (eds.) (2004), Talven tuntemus: Puheenvuoroja talvesta ja talvitaiteesta. (Sense of Winter. Statements on Winter and Winter Art.) (Trans. V. Välimaa-Hill). Rovaniemi: University of Lapland. Jokela, T. & Hiltunen, M. (2003), Art pedagogical projects in northern wilderness and villages: Lifelong learning in Europe, 8, (2), 26–31. Jokela, T., Kynman, F. & Mikko, K. (2004), The Trans Barents Highway Symposium of Art. Umeå: Nyheternas Tryckeri. Kurki, L. (2000), Sosiokulttuurinen innostaminen. Muutoksen pedagogiikka. Tampere: Vastapaino. Lacy, S. (1995), Departed territory. Toward a critical language for public art. In S. Lacy (ed.). Mapping the terrain: New genre public art. Seattle, WA: Bay Press, pp. 171–185. Lainema, M. & Nurminen, J. (2001), Ultima Thule: Arctic explorations. Helsinki: John Nurminen Foundation and WSOY. Linnilä, K. (ed.) (2002), Olaus Magnus: Suomalaiset pohjoisten kansojen historiassa I, II. (Original O. M. Gothus: Historia de Gentibus septenrionalibus, Roma 1555). Helsinki: Tammi. Lippard, L. R. (1997), The lure of the local: Senses of place in a multicentered society. New York: The New Press. Leopold, A. (1966), A Sand county almanac. New York: Ballantine Books. Methi, Hilde-Merette (ed.) (2002), Migration: A Barents art project 2003. Tales of Passage. Vadsø: Pikene på Broen. Muir, R. (1999), Approaches to landscape. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. Neperud, R. (1995), Texture of community: An environmental design education. In R. Neperud (ed.) Context, content and community in art education: Beyond postmodernism. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Relph, E. (1976), Place and placelessness. London: Pion. Thoreau, H. (1995), Walking. New York: Penguin Books. Tuan, Y. F. (1974), Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes and values. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Virta, K. (2005), Sloyd teacher trainers´ self-directed learning and metacognitive regulation and webbased support. The relationship of Nordic handicraft studies to product development and technology (ed. S. Kullas & M-L. Pelkonen), Turku: Turun yliopisto, pp. 50–73.
PART 5: ART EDUCATION FOR PEACE
THE IRAQI WAR THROUGH OUR EYES Bitte Fossbo Nacka High School, Sweden
Abstract This project was carried out with 22 students aged 15–16 living in Sweden with families from many other countries in and outside Europe. The starting point was a lecture I attended at the University of Stockholm in which a professor examined similarities between the compositions of classical paintings and media photographs of the Iraqi war. After these students had studied historical paintings at the National Museum in Stockholm, they were asked to create their own dramatic paintings of the Iraqi war from newspaper photographs. The results were moving and the pedagogy was successful in that it increased their understanding of how to use historical artworks and the media to interpret everyday reality. Keywords Iraqi war, Classical paintings, Mass media, Art pedagogy In March 2003, the USA invaded Iraq and I attended a lecture given by Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf, an art professor at the University of Stockholm. She showed us news photo shots during the first week of the war and pointed out similarities in their composition to Renaissance and nineteenth-century historical and mythological paintings. The snapshots of yesterday’s attacks resembled images of dying kings in history books and museums. It seems that public perceptions of conquerors and conquered have not changed as much as we think. The focus is still on the conqueror. I decided to test out this idea in a project with 15 and 16 year-old-students. They were an atypical group since, for various reasons, they had come to live in Sweden from all over the world. Only four were born there. Many were refugees from the Middle East or had one
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Swedish and one foreign parent. I used readily available resources including newspapers published the previous week and paintings in the National Gallery of Art. The students learned about present attitudes to war by studying visual source materials produced by war correspondents. They learned about attitudes in the past by studying fine art works produced at a time when Sweden was a conquering nation. Then they compared them. The practical task I gave them was to choose a news photograph of the American invasion of Iraq and refashion it into an historical painting. Given their diverse backgrounds, I anticipated the paintings by students who had grown up in Sweden and not experienced war would differ from those by students born elsewhere who might have experienced war first-hand. Two girls used the same photograph of George Bush giving a speech. Figure 1 representing ‘our hero’ amidst the disaster and terror of falling bombs is by a Lebaneseborn girl; Figure 2 representing him throwing a cocktail party in the desert is by a Swedish-born girl. Excepting the cocktail party, he could almost be a religious leader with a Holy Grail
Figure 1 George Bush by Lebanese born girl.
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Figure 2 George Bush by Swedish born girl.
(ironically) personifying the Saviour. Bush is not speaking to his own people – as was the case in the photo – in either painting, but to the people he has invaded. Figures 3 and 4 show girls standing in front of their devastated homes. The first is painted by a boy recently arrived from Afghanistan and the second by a Swedish-born girl. They used the same photograph as a resource. While the Afghan student highlighted the pain of the situation, the Swedish-born student drew a surrealist scene and the expression on the girl’s face is contemplative and inward looking.
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Figure 3 Real war by Afghani born boy.
Figure 4 Surreal war by Swedish born girl.
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Figure 5 Girl and father in hospital by girl with Swedish/Polish girl.
Figure 6 Girl and mother in hospital by girl with Kurdish/Turkish girl.
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The tendency of the refugee children’s paintings to reveal more about the experience of war and show compassion for war victims is not surprising. Although this was not my main concern, it provided food for thought. The central point I want to make here is that these paintings were created by children who understood what war is really like. The majority show injured victims, mostly children, taking part in events that were reserved for kings and soldiers in the classical paintings (Figures 5, 6 and 7). When Fidane asked me how to make his painting (Figure 8) more expressive, I advised him to put an aura round the main character like one he had seen in a painting of a dying king on a battlefield. But he added an aura of pain, not glory. This is what war is really like. Fidane is right. It is not a question of glory but pain. When this painting (Figure 9) was shown at the InSEA congress in Viseu, it made an American participant cry. Looking at Daniel’s image of an American soldier pointing a gun towards captured children was too much for her. In the original photograph, the prisoners are not children, but this modification strengthens the message about the roles of conqueror and conquered. The ultimate purpose of war is to gain power, of course, which mostly concerns leaders. Back in Sweden this picture upset a man who may have been born in Iraq because it shows Donald Rumsfeld as the ‘Bad Guy’ and Saddam as ‘Good’. In his eyes, America was the saviour. But I am not sure the photographer or newspaper editor shared his opinion. The original
Figure 7 Boy and physician by Tunisian born boy.
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Figure 8 Aura of pain by boy with Kurdish/Turkish parents.
Figure 9 Prisoners of war by boy born in Guinea Bissau.
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Figure 10 Donald Rumsfeld by boy with South African/Swedish parents.
Figure 11 Saddam Hussein by Tunisian born boy.
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Figure 12 Group of people by Eritrean born boy.
photograph of Rumsfeld is not very flattering. Theo added two tiny details to this image of Rumsfeld – horns on the forehead – to make his point clear (Figure 10). And what about Reza‘s portrait of Saddam? (Figure 11) Does it really show us a ‘Good Guy’? Isn’t it just one of his many faces? There is something threatening even in this gentle look. And the black and yellow colours signal ‘danger’, ‘explosives’! Even when power resides with the people it is not automatically a force for good. The image by Ahmed (Figure 12) of individual people combining to form one homogeneous religious group, all wearing black dresses and red shoes, seems as threatening to me as images of their leaders. And they are neither greeting, nor surrendering to their new leader. On reflection there are differences between historical and present-day images of war. There are no heroes in today’s war images; only soldiers doing their job, victims, prisoners of war, frustrated physicians, suffering children and mourning parents. The children helped me to see this through their eyes. Our role as art teachers is to help them search out more of the information hidden in old master paintings and media images produced today. Note All 22 paintings can be viewed at the following link to Medelhavsmuseet, where they where exhibited in 2004: http: //www.medelhavsmuseet.se/smvk/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1294&a=5459&l=en_US Access 2006-06-27.
ART EDUCATORS’ POSITIONS ON VIOLENT CONFLICT IN ISRAEL Nurit Cohen-Evron Beit Berl College, Israel
Abstract Children exposed to violence in war-torn areas of the globe have both visible and invisible scars. As an art educator working in Israel, I was troubled about the way art education deals with violent conflict. The majority of art teachers I encountered professionally preferred to ignore the conflict that constructed and influenced their students’ experiences and social worlds. However some of them tried to address the challenges the situation provoked by initiating peace education programmes. Based on studies of their practice, this paper describes four approaches: (i) art creation as an act of therapy involving expression of feelings and thoughts related to violent experiences; (ii) promoting peace and tolerance toward the ‘Other’ through the arts; (iii) broadening the gaze on the ‘Other’ beyond the conflict; and (iv) dealing with political imagery through detaching it from the student reality. Whereas the issues these Israeli art teachers were trying to cope with are embedded in a particular political/ethnic conflict, their practice has relevance for arts educators who believe that schooling plays an important role in the construction of identities and understanding human experience. Keywords Art teachers, Attitudes, Practices, Conflict, Israel Artistic creation as a therapeutic act Children and adults affected by violence and tragedy often turn to artistic creation to express and understand these events. Their coping strategies include restructuring painful experiences, finding imaginary alternative solutions and ‘travelling’ in imaginary worlds. Access to fantasy,
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imagination and symbolic thinking can be a source of strength and protection (Punamäki 1999). Art-making can help people connect to former identities and effect bridges to the future. It serves to document events and can be an act of resistance (Dokter 1998). When victims reconstruct fearful, helpless situations, they gain a feeling of control over reality. Art-making teaches them how to work through losses and envision a better life than the one offered thus far. Emil Tanay describes this process in Heart in the middle of the world (1995), a book about his work with displaced Muslim and Croatian refugee children during the war in former Yugoslavia. Israeli psychologists and counsellors who treat victims and eye-witnesses directly affected by tragedies and traumatic events regularly get them to create images that voice their feelings of fear, loss and grief as a way of getting violent situations ‘under control’. Art teachers in Israel who work with students living amidst constant, violent conflicts apply similar practices. While working on standard set topics like, for example, ‘the interplay between words and visual images’, ‘creating an outdoor sculpture related to place’ (physically or conceptually), or, developing personal projects for the matriculation exam in visual art, some students express feelings about their constant experience of violent conflict and create images dealing with death, violence and war. The spring issue of Halonot 18,1 a journal for children published in Arabic and Hebrew, contains a drawing (Figure 1) by an eight-year-old Jewish girl living in Tel Aviv that expressed her feelings about the suicide bombings taking place there almost every day, causing casualties and death. The armed guards placed at the entrance of every supermarket and coffee shop do not ensure security. Children are afraid to use buses to go to school, visit malls, movie theaters or other public places. Figure 2, by an eleven-year-old Arab boy living in Jaffa,2 is a drawing of a traumatic event shown on television in real time. The scene showed a young boy and his father caught in the midst of crossfire between Palestinians and Israelis; the helpless father, unable to protect his son, witnessed the child’s death together with the TV audience.
Figures 1 & 2 Drawings by Jewish girl and Arab boy.
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It is difficult to draw a line between art-making and therapy (Freedman 2000; Orr 2002). It is blurred when art is used as a means not only to communicate spontaneous feelings in response to violent events, but also to express political consciousness in thoughtful acts of visual representation. Many artworks by Israeli art students and artists respond to the long-term effects of the conflict rather than dramatic moments and explore ways it constructs the collective and individual identities of people living there. Expressing unpleasant topics in art lessons is widely construed as ‘safe’ practice in schools; probably because is embedded in the natural tendency of art to express feelings. It is associated also with the ‘political artworks’ being exhibited in the contemporary art scene. Nevertheless creating images of victims and violence in art lessons unsettles the distance from political issues schooling seeks to regulate. Promoting Peace and Tolerance Toward the ‘Other’ Through Arts While students frequently initiate therapeutic practices themselves in art lessons, broadening the gaze on the ‘Other’ through the arts is a teacher led initiative. In arts education, developing concepts such as tolerance towards others, cultural pluralism and social equity are dealt with as part of multicultural art education (Efland et al. 1996; Chalmers 1996). Promoting tolerance and peace implies teaching students to respect one another regardless of differences such as race, sexual preferences, ethnicity or nationality and ‘correcting’ cultural ignorance. Several Israeli-Palestinian arts projects I studied applied this multicultural approach. They were based in cooperative art-making activities like playing music together, creating joint dramas, painting peace murals, and creating a large-scale mosaic that provided opportunities for students who studied in separate school systems (and labeled ‘Other’, or the ‘enemy’) to meet each other. They emphasized similarities between participants and used the arts to foster a sense of unity among them by stressing shared qualities and characteristics of art making (Efland et al. 1996). According to Clark (1996, p. 54), art activities that attempt to build bridges between groups and individuals can ‘foster self-esteem, promote group identity, reduce stereotypes and eliminate systemic biases and prejudices’. Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli pianist and music conductor, and Edward Said, a Palestinian scholar, initiated a workshop for young musicians from the Middle East in Weimar, Germany, in August 1999. In the West-Eastern Divan workshop, talented young Arab and Israeli musicians between the ages of 14 and 25 came together to play music on neutral ground under the guidance of some of the world’s best musicians. The initiative developed into a series of joint concerts that took place all over the world. Recently (August, 2005), Barenboim conducted such a concert in Rammallah, Palestine, with young musicians from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine. His rationale for this project follows:
An orchestra requires musicians to listen to each other; none should attempt to play louder than the next, they must respect and know each other. It is a song in praise of respect, of the effort to understand one another, something that is crucial to resolve a conflict that has no military solution. (Barenboim 2000)
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The effort of creating music together taught participants to listen to one another and the equal treatment was meaningful. However, many joint projects are merely well-intentioned creative endeavors. Joint painting projects do not leave much space for examining stereotypes of the ‘Other’. The aim of ‘creating a positive atmosphere’ sidesteps critical examination of conflicts, hierarchies, oppression or abuses of power. Opportunities to listen the ‘Other’s’ collective narratives recalling painful memories of the past affecting how group members interpret the conflict are rare. Participants are not encouraged to reflect on their own positions toward the ‘Other’ or consider how they were formed. Conceptualizations of conflict and ‘Other’ cannot change without this. Broadening the Gaze on the ‘Other’ Beyond the Conflict Programmes that fall into the category of broadening the gaze on the ‘Other’ category seek to unlearn some of the biases and stereotypes created in the process of socialization. They aim to uncover and change the effects of socialization on children influenced by a variety of agents such as the media, parents and schools (Raviv, Oppenheimer & Bar-Tal 1999). One strategy is to include the Other’s art and culture in the curriculum as a means to providing an alternative context for knowledge and discussion. This enables questioning of stereotypical perceptions of the ‘Other’ as a threat or enemy. This strategy is important in Israel because the school system divides students according to ethnicity and religion. Jewish and Arab Israelis do not study with each other until they enter higher education and there are only three elementary schools in the entire country with mixed student populations, even though Arabs make up 20 per cent of the populace. Arab literature and culture are not part of the Israeli curriculum in Jewish schools. Arabic language is an elective subject, usually introduced to Jewish high school students to increase their chances of service in the military intelligence. One example I studied of the ‘reframing the relationship with the “Other” approach’ was a curriculum unit on Islamic Art co-planned and taught by one Arab and three Jewish art student teachers.3 They were working with sixth-grade students at a Jewish elementary school in a small middle-class settlement near Jerusalem. In the first lesson the students looked at slides of important Muslim buildings such as the great Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.4 For these students this famous building with a golden dome was a visual symbol of the capital and of a place where a Jewish Temple once stood but the slides provided a different view of this familiar scene. They studied the decorative tiles and marble patterns covering the building inside and out closely, learned about the Islamic traditions associated with it and why it was built. The lesson themes were excellence in Islamic ornament and design and representing spiritual ideas. They created Islamic patterns individually using paper-cutting techniques then combined them into a decorative façade for an Islamic building resembling the Dome of the Rock. The student teachers wanted to present Islamic art as a living culture in the next lesson. So they showed the students work by Matisse influenced by Islamic ornament and by young Jewish, Druze and Muslim artists living and exhibiting in Israel today. In the following workshop, the students freely created designs using paints and brushes using Islamic ornament as a resource.
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The student teachers distributed a questionnaire that asked the students how important it was to study Islamic art. Although it was never mentioned in class, the majority equated this topic with learning about the’ Other’ with whom they were in political/ethnic conflict. For example, they wrote: ‘We are surrounded by Arabs, and they also live among us. So it is important we know and understand them a little.’ ‘Now we know something about those who throw stones at us.’ ‘There are other things we can study about them. Usually we discuss important things such as their terror attacks.’ From these answers it is clear that offering knowledge of the ‘Other’s’ culture was meaningful to most students. The second approach to broadening the gaze on the ‘Other’ beyond the conflict resembles the critical social reconstruction stance referred to by jagodzinski (1999; 1999a) and Freedman (2000). According to Stuhr (1995), some North American multicultural art educators try to educate students to become more analytical and critical thinkers, capable of examining their life circumstances. An art teacher at a vocational high school with many ‘newcomers’ in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area applied this strategy. She planned lessons around the theme ‘Other in art’ because she wanted to introduce her students to postmodern artworks dealing with social issues such as gender, ethnicity, race and sexual orientation. However, she planned the lesson content around her tenth-grade students’ understanding and experience of ‘Otherness’. As part of this programme she asked them to videotape a short interview with someone they considered ‘Other’. The objective was to learn something new about this person. Several videos recorded interviews with ‘newcomers’ including a street sweeper and, in two cases, with an Arab woman living in Jaffa. The students’ positions were a part of the content and engaging with people labeled ‘Other’ encouraged them to re-examine them. From this activity they learned that everyone can be ‘Other’, and that ‘Otherness’ is situated. Learning about an individual from the Arab minority challenged their stereotypical image of this group as a threat and the enemy. Dealing with Political Art and Imagery Relating to the Student Reality Dealing with political art and imagery in a way that connects it to student experience is another strategy associated with critical pedagogy and social reconstruction. The art teachers who used it wanted their students to inquire into the way authoritative discourses and institutional knowledge constructed their positions and identities within (and against) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This kind of pedagogy was implicit in one high school teacher‘s art lessons about Picasso’s Guernica (1937). Picasso’s protest against the war and its effects on innocent victims informed the theme ‘political motivation for art creation,’ included in the art history curriculum. However, there are strict regulations about how to teach this kind of topic for matriculation exams;5 teachers are expected to disseminate ‘objective knowledge’ (facts) for students to memorize. As a consequence, Guernica and political art referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is detached from the student reality. Whereas learning about political artworks is about
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accumulating knowledge, learning from them crafts this knowledge in the light of the tacit understandings students’ derive from their own life experiences and mass media (Britzman1998). Once this teacher had delivered the lesson content required for the test, her pedagogy changed and she showed students a photograph from a morning newspaper of a suspect Palestinian arrested by the Israeli Army. Together they explored the way the photographer had documented this event, and compared it with Picasso’s use of news photographs as a resource for Guernica. The comparison was extended with reference to two black-and-white staged photographs by Micha Kirshner, a famous Israeli photographer. The art teacher read the stories attached to the photographs of Palestinian victims of the Intifada while the students looked at them. One showed a wounded baby girl shot in the eye; the other showed a woman holding a newborn baby in front her home ruined by the Israeli army, leaving the family without shelter. The students uncovered differences in the Picasso painting and photographs when they analyzed their representations of victims. For example, the ‘crying woman’ in Guernica and Palestinian mother both held babies in the traditional pieta position of the dead Christ. Through comparing the newspaper photograph, staged photographs and Picasso’s painting, the students learned that subjects like war and war victims are interpreted differently in different media and that artists adopt a range of perspectives and foci. However, this knowledge was extended by something that happened in class. Because the subject of the Spanish civil war was related to the conflict as the students’ experienced it in daily life, a spontaneous political argument broke out. The staged photographs raised questions they had resisted, like, ‘Can “Others” be victims?’ and ‘If they are, then who are the victimizers?’. And they challenged the hegemonic narrative of the conflict – the Hollywood dichotomy of ‘good’ against ‘evil’ – that depicts Israeli ‘heroes’ as ‘innocent victims’ and ‘violence’, ‘cruelty’ and ‘terror’ as Palestinian traits. The students found it hard to accept the photographer’s position in presenting Palestinians as victims. But they re-examined their own positions when the teacher asked them to create their own political artworks from newspaper photographs. The addition of photographs depicting the conflict experienced by the students transformed this learning process. When the classroom discourse was objective ‘Picasso’s famous symbol of protest lost its radical agenda. Learning about the painting within the context of the Israeli conflict brought it to life. Instead of presenting it as an idealized version of a conflict embedded, in the past, the teacher evoked a moral conflict in her students and confronted them with its meaning in their everyday lives. Guernica was experienced more meaningfully once Picasso’s concern for innocent victims on both sides of a conflict was illuminated. At the same time, their understanding of their own reality was complicated by his revelation of unpleasant aspects of war and by blurring the dichotomy between ‘good’ (us) and ‘evil’ (them). Art teachers applying critical pedagogy take risks if they introduce ‘unpopular subjects’ that call into question what is taken for granted (Britzman 1991). Violence and political art are not unpopular as such. It is the way they are presented – as problems that connect with the students’ life experiences and are brought to the surface in classroom discussion. Talking about and reexamining student experiences complicates the normal pedagogical situation because it
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confronts them with ‘difficult knowledge’. Students (and teachers) often resist ‘difficult information’ because it forces them to face up to moral conflicts in real life. It puts the way they view themselves and everything they learned beforehand at risk. In situations in which students’ experiences and emotions are at stake, teachers may have to face pedagogical obstacles like racist discourse (Cohen-Evron 2005). Conclusions Some Israeli art teachers believe they have a significant role to play with regard to student experiences of violence and conflict. The arts activities described above reveal some differences in their positions, however. Some of them understand the arts as a way to voice feelings and thoughts, or pay respect to the ‘Other’s culture. Others strive to re-examine and change how the conflict is conceptualized. While arts programmes cannot bring peace, they can increase understanding and provide opportunities to listen to ‘Other’ narratives. In unsettling the simplistic dichotomy of ‘us’ (good) against ‘them’ (evil), art educators risk working against hegemonic discourse and face pedagogical difficulties. However, curricula that critically examine conflicts and their narratives are based on the premise that art can play an important educational role in constructing the hybrid, unfixed, personal and cultural identities of students. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
The journal is published by a non-profit organization; www.win-peace.org. Jaffa is an old Arab city within Israel. After 1948, it became part of the Jewish city of Tel Aviv. The majority of Arabs who live in Israel and in the occupied territories are Muslims. In recent years it was forbidden for Jews to visit this place. Art (art history and studio) is an elected subject in high school and students can add it to the core subjects in order to complete their matriculation exams. The art history curriculum consists of 170 western artworks the students have to learn for this test prepared by the Technological Educational System in Israel.
References Barenboim, D. (2000), Upon receiving the ‘Principe de Asturias; Prize Oviedo, Spain. [Online] Personal Journal Retrieved 22 January 2005 from http: //www.danielbarenboim.com/journal_asturias.htm. Britzman, D. p. (1991), Decentering discourses in teacher education: Or, the unleashing of unpopular things. Journal of Education, 173 (3), 60–80. Britzman, D. p. (1998), Lost subjects, contested objects; Toward a psychoanalytic inquiry of learning. New York: State University of New York Press. Chalmers, F.G. (1996), Celebrating pluralism: Art, education, and cultural diversity. Los Angeles: Getty Education Institute for the Arts. Clark, R. (1996), Art education: Issues in postmodernist pedagogy. Reston, Virginia: National Art Education Association. Cohen-Evron, N. (2005), Students living within violent conflict: Should art educators ‘play it safe’ or face ‘difficult knowledge’? Studies in Art Education, 46 (4), 309–322. Cohen Evron, N. (in press), How do arts educators relate to conflict and peace? In L. Bresler (ed.). Handbook of Research on Arts Education, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
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Dokter, D. (1998), Art therapists, refugees and migrants: Reaching across borders. London, UK: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Efland, A., Freedman, K., & Stuhr, p. (1996) Postmodern art education: An approach to curriculum. Reston, Virginia: National Art Education Association. Freedman, K. (2000), Social perspectives on art education in the U.S.: Teaching visual culture in a democracy. Studies in Art Education, 41 (4) 314–327. Harris, I. M. (1999), Types of peace education. In: A. Raviv; L. Oppenheimer, & D. Bar-Tal, (eds.), How children understand war and peace, (pp. 299–317) San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publication. jagodzinski, j. (1999), Reading Hollywood’s post-racism: Lessons for art education. Journal of Multicultural and Cross-cultural Research in Art Education, 17, 74–90. jagodzinski, j. (1999a), Thinking through/difference/in art education context: Working the third space and beyond. In: D. Boughton & R. Mason (eds.) Beyond multicultural art education: International perspectives, 303–330. New York: Waxman Publishing Co. Orr, p. p. (2002), Exploring the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack through an expressive mural project. Art Education, 55 (2), 6–10. Punamäki, R. L. (1999), Concept formation of war and peace; A meeting point between child development and political violent society. In: A. Raviv., L. Raviv, A, Oppenheimer, L. & Bar-Tal, D. (1999), How children understand war and peace. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publications. Rosandic, R. (2000), Grappling with peace education in Serbia. Peaceworks (no. 33). Washington, D.C.: US Institute of Peace. Stuhr, p. L. (1995), Social reconstructionist multicultural art curriculum design: Using the Powwow as an example. In: R.W. Neperud (ed.). Context, content and community in art education: Beyond Postmodernism (pp. 193–221) New York & London: Teachers College Press. Tanay, E. R. (1995), Heart in the middle of the world. Zagreb, Croatia: Studio Tanay.
FOSTERING COMMUNITY COHESION THROUGH VISUAL ARTS: AN ‘ART FOR PEACE’ PROJECT WITH YOUNG BRITISH-MUSLIM GIRLS Mousumi De, Alan Hunter and Andree Woodcock Coventry University, UK
Abstract British society is faced with the challenge of bridging the disparity between the British-Muslim and British–non-Muslim communities, which were further, severed after the London bombings (2005). There is a damaging lack of understanding of Islam in the West and various initiatives have been undertaken to promote better understanding between the two communities and foster the growth of a cohesive society. This paper describes an art project involving young British-Muslim girls, that sought to make a small contribution towards understanding Islam as a peaceful religion, and to initiate dialogue between the two communities. It also raises issues about how to engage Muslim communities with visual arts and utilize the potential of arts and peace education to facilitate the growth of a creative and a cohesive community. Keywords Visual arts, Community, Cohesion, Peace Conflict between British Muslims and non-Muslims Contemporary British society has evolved as ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse, with Muslims (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) forming the second largest religious group in the country (Census 2001). Mutual tolerance between the British Muslim and non-Muslim communities has proved increasingly hard to sustain since 2001. Prior to 2005, it was acknowledged that
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relations between the host (white) community and various immigrant populations were tense in some cities and had broken down into occasional violent confrontation. Various research initiatives were commissioned by Government to determine the roots of and possible solutions to such issues. Cantle’s 2001 report, compiled after disturbances in several cities in northern England, revealed that Muslim and white working-class communities living in the same city had very little contact with each other and lived ‘parallel lives’. The rift between the two communities intensified after the London bombings on 7th July 2005. The fact that the bombers were resident in the UK, brought violent British and anti-British sentiments to the surface. The latter were held by a small minority of the population acting ‘beneath the radar’ of the security services, and away from the surveillance of extremist groups. The incident shocked the whole nation and had potential to unleash a series of hate crimes and racial harassment. Whilst condemning the bombings, some Muslim speakers attributed them to the British government’s apparently anti-Muslim foreign policy, in particular, support for Israel and US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the government denied that any links could be made between the bombers’ motives and British foreign policy. The stakes had clearly escalated from inner-city disturbances. Most people were concerned and needed reassurance that both the Muslim community in the UK and the Government were doing everything they could to prevent a repetition of the bombings and to develop co-operative relationships. Community Cohesion in Britain The term ‘community cohesion’ has been widely used in recent years as an analytical framework for discussing relations between white and non-white populations in the UK. Forrest & Kearns (2000) summarize the dimensions of community cohesion as including common values and a civic culture, social order and social control, social solidarity and reduction of wealth disparities, social networks and social capital, place attachment and national identity. They further suggest that it is possible to find social cohesion within increasingly divided neighbourhoods. However, individuals may be well integrated into local ethnic and/or religious communities and this may create division with others. Cantle’s report suggested that to achieve community cohesion it is necessary to consider access to education, employment, poverty, social inequalities, social and cultural diversity and communication and information technologies. The Community Cohesion Agenda proposes constructive activities to improve community relations as well as highlighting conflict. However, it is imperative that participation extends beyond the precincts of local, ethnic and religious communities and involves all sectors of society (Cantle 2001). The Community Cohesion Review Team (CCRT) were impressed by the views of young people who emphasized the need to promote knowledge and understanding of different cultures so as to break down barriers. They noted:
…a great desire among younger people for better education, more social and cultural interaction and commitment to contribute and achieve personal success. Some young people had pleaded desperately for this to overcome the negativity that they felt was blighting their
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lives and left them ignorant of other cultures and lifestyles…The younger people were seen to be leading the process of transition’. (Cantle 2001, p. 30) Engaging with young people and children is crucial because they are the future of communities. Encouraging a sense of belonging, ownership and responsibility for their local areas constitutes a sustainable investment towards community cohesion (Local Government Association 2004). Community Cohesion and Visual Arts Visual arts offer multifarious applications of skills, aesthetics, imagination and intellect as means for individuals to engage with and respond to the external world they are exposed to. Engaging with them not only stimulates and develops creative and cognitive skills but also shapes and transforms individuals’ perceptions of their lives and communities. Ishaq (2005, p. 1) makes a case for their social benefits when he points out that that fine art education contributes to important social objectives like group harmony and appreciation of diversity. Arts Council England works with young people from all backgrounds and abilities to develop a creative economy. The Council argues that every young person has the right to participate in the widest possible range of artistic and creative activities as practitioner, participant and audience. However, it points out that opportunities for children and young people to engage in the arts are not available consistently. ‘There are areas of significant deprivation, with little arts and creative provision, and those young people most in need of high-quality provision are often least able to access it’ (Arts Council England 2005, p. 9). Candle’s report recommended establishing well-resourced programmes that engaged young people in the decision-making processes affecting their communities, including cultural activities and youth inter-faith networks. Various arts initiatives are being undertaken for the purposes of stimulating community engagement and participation in planning and a sense of identity and pride. The Festival of Muslim Cultures conceived in 2002 and implemented in 2006 is inspired by the belief that the arts have potential to change society for the better, because they enable us to enter into other people‘s experience (Festival of Muslim Cultures 2005). It is a nationwide, yearlong festival that seeks to increase understanding and respect for Muslims by changing negative perceptions of them and creating a space for their cultures to be celebrated. As-Salaam: An Art for Peace Project The project called As-Salaam (Arabic for ‘Source of Peace’) was conceived and implemented just after the incidents of 7th July 2005 in London. It is widely acknowledged that there is a profound and damaging lack of understanding of Islam in the West. This problem is further exacerbated by negative media reporting of current conflicts in the Muslim world that breeds a climate of fear and hostility towards Muslims in the community (Festival of Muslim Cultures 2005). The failure to communicate is a major impediment towards achieving social cohesion, compounded by the lack of honest and robust debate within black and ethnic communities, meanwhile people ‘tiptoe around’ the sensitive issues of race, religion and culture (Cantle 2001, p. 19).
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This project seeks first to initiate inter-cultural dialogue between the strained British Muslim and British non-Muslim communities and make a small contribution towards understanding perceptions of Islam as a peaceful religion among its young believers; and second, to use visual arts as a means of expression to enable them to explore their own beliefs and notions of peace and share them with the wider community. Coventry: City of Peace and Reconciliation… This project is based in Coventry, the eleventh largest city in Britain with a population of just over 300,000. It had a fourteenth-century cathedral and evolved as a thriving industrial city and centre of the British Motor Industry until it was devastated by German air raids during World War II. The city and cathedral have been rebuilt since as a global testimony of hope. It holds an annual Peace Month and has an international reputation as a city of peace and reconciliation. Coventry has a multi-cultural population made up of a rich blend of communities with different racial, cultural and religious backgrounds. Sixteen per cent (16%) are from Black and minority ethnic groups (including Asian, Black, Mixed White, Chinese and other ethnic groups), and Muslims (3.9%) form the second largest population by religion (Census 2001). The Coventry City Council and Local Strategic Partnership (Coventry Partnership) have been working with local organizations and communities on developing a framework and strategy to promote cohesion and bring together people from different backgrounds to build a fairer, more inclusive community (Coventry Partnership Resource Book 2005). However, the findings of an Inclusivity Survey suggested under-representation of younger people and that engaging them in partnership activity is a challenge (Coventry Partnership Inclusivity Report 05 2005). Participants: Sisters United and Me… Sisters United is a voluntary organization running a youth club for young Muslim girls aged 8 to 18 years. Its prime objective is to help girls living in Coventry and surrounding areas to develop their full potential, as individuals and responsible members of society, by offering them help, advice, educational and recreational visits and excursions. It also seeks to provide a ‘moral and healthy environment’ that ensures privacy, since many girls come from conservative communities that object to mixed-gender activities. The organization charter did not include the arts and the music and visual arts were not widely practiced in the Muslin community. The lack of opportunities for girls to engage with arts activities was a major concern of the Chair of the Youth Club when I was appointed Arts and Media Facilitator in July 2005. Initially twelve young girls were recruited for the project of whom only seven stayed the course. A girl of Malaysian origin dropped out because she found it difficult to integrate into a predominantly British-Pakistani group; a British-Pakistani girl with an English father who had converted to Islam did not receive enough parental support. The other three girls dropped out because they could not commit to the amount of work. The girls who participated throughout were aged between 8 and 15. One girl’s roots were in Syria, the others in Pakistan. Three of them had Pakistani mothers and English fathers. The
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parents of the others had all come to England from Pakistan. The administrative facilitator (age 27 years) who had Pakistan roots belonged to a community that discourages arts practice. Her immediate family members were informed she was conducting ‘An Islamic Project’ not ‘An Art Project’. I am a Hindu from India and from the onset, was concerned about how my situated national and religious identity would affect the girls’ trust and influence participation. I was also concerned about how the project would challenge my own and their perceptions of issues relating to Islam and conflict. The Project… As-Salaam, the first arts project initiative for this Youth Club, had the following stated objectives: ■ To engage the girls in creative practice that enhanced their self-confidence, tolerance to ambiguity, motivation and curiosity and developed cognitive skills such as divergent thinking, sensitivity to problems, breadth of knowledge and evaluation. ■ To contribute to the community through the skills and knowledge gained and creative practices engaged in, and encourage community participation. (This objective was directly influenced by the incidents of 7th July 2005 in London and the urgent need to foster a sense of cohesion between the strained communities in question.) It was anticipated the objectives could be met through: ■ Exploring artistic skills in a range of media. ■ Creating artworks that communicated Islam as a peaceful religion and shared universal notions of peace in ways that encouraged response and dialogue between the two communities and contributed towards social cohesion. Motivation: From ‘Fun’ to ‘Showing the World’… The core objectives were communicated to the girls at the onset. Their stated reasons for getting involved ranged from hoping to ’improve their knowledge of art and artistic skills’, to ’having fun during holidays’ and ‘becoming personally strong‘. They also included ’becoming a better Muslim‘, ‘letting other people know that Islam has a creative side too and is not just about rules and regulations and can be fun too‘; and ‘to redress the negative publicity’. One girl said, ‘the media presents Islam as harsh, violent and cruel, but this project will give an opportunity to portray Islam in a different way, a way known and seen by true and showing the world that Islam is not about war but there is more to it’. My first concern was to model peace awareness, second to disseminate the idea of peace, as opposed to conflict, at personal and community levels and, third, to engage young people in discussion about peace. Running the Project… We met once a week for twenty-four weeks, for three to five hours. This allowed for workshops, indoor and outdoor activities and individual tutorials. The process of creating artworks was collaborative and cooperative. Sessions incorporated the following:
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■ Pre-project reflection to identify relevant issues, concerns and interests to address within the project (namely negative perceptions of Muslims and Islam in contemporary society and the need for community cohesion). ■ Reviewing knowledge and information about relevant aspects of visual arts (such as symbolism, colour, tools and techniques) and notions of peace in the context of self, community and religion. ■ Reframing and articulating issues and concerns based on discussions that correlated ‘self’, ‘Islam’ and ‘Peace’ so as to conceptualize content, medium and colours for artworks. ■ Production of artworks. ■ Reflection on the process, critique and iterative creation of artworks. ■ Post project reflection on artworks and the project as a whole. Project Outcomes Developing the capacity for sustaining tolerant and respectful relationships within different community factions is central to achieving cohesive and peaceful communities. Hence, gaining an understanding of peace and the contributory values of tolerance, integration and cooperation is imperative. However, even though we may all have a shared understanding of peace, the term operates on many levels and may have different meanings for individuals and groups at different times in different places Being peaceful is often associated with being passive and in a state of non-conflict. To understand peace, therefore, it is important to understand ‘conflict’ (Hicks 1988 p. 72). However, terms like ‘conflict’, ‘violence’, ‘terrorism’, ‘war’ and ‘war on terrorism’ were consciously avoided during the workshop to encourage responses related to ‘positive rather than negative peace’. Positive peace refers to collaboration, integration and cooperation in contrast to ‘negative peace’ which refers to the ‘absence’ of conflict, violence or war (Salomon 2002). Fell (in Hicks 1988, p. 71) argues that most concepts of peace are negative and definitions couched in the language of opposites have no real meaning other than by contrast to their corollary. Thus, positive concepts associating peace actively with the presence of justice, equality etc. are needed. It is important to discourage passive notions and encourage dissemination and identification of the more dynamic, positive ones that inspire people to action in everyday life (in Hicks 1988, p. 71). The question arises, ‘What has to be present for a situation to qualify as peace-ful?’ A starting point is to think about moments and occasions when we feel peaceful, or experience peace (Hicks 1988). Hence, the questions were ‘what do you like, what do you find peaceful or, what does peace mean to you?’ The three categories of response were – peace within self, community and religion. The question ‘What do you hate?’ was also posed. Reflection on individual interpretations enabled participants to visually communicate their notions of peace to the community through artwork. The following are some of their thoughts about ‘hatred’ and ‘peace’. Hatred: ’ I am a Muslim and a human being as well’ They all associated feelings of ‘hatred’ with negative perceptions of their community. Whereas no one had experienced ‘hate crimes’ directly, the feelings resulted from prevalent disparities
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in British Muslim and non-Muslim lifestyles. The girls said they hated ‘racism’, ‘stuck-up people’ and the fact that other ‘people give me the evils, but not my brother just because I wear a scarf’. One said, ‘I don’t understand why people are normal with me when I don’t wear a scarf and when I wear it their attitude changes‘, Another said, ‘I get a bit sick because people don’t understand that, even though I am a Muslim, I am a human being as well, it’s not just about my faith‘. Their comments suggested they would experience a greater sense of peace if these attitudes changed. Peace within Self: ‘Hills, Flowers and Dairy Milk White Chocolate’ Interpretations of peace in relation to self were varied. For some it was a concrete sense of personal happiness, like ’being on a beach with sunshine‘, ’seeing very nice scenery with hills and flowers‘, ’being with their best friends‘, and ’eating dairy milk white chocolate‘. For others it was intangible and embedded in activities like ’going to sleep’, ’seeing white light with eyes closed‘, ’feeling the rhythm of classical music‘, ’listening to the sound of water‘. For still others it was abstract; for example, ’having no conflict within one’s self‘, ’being nice to parents’ and ’being respectful’. Peace within Community: ‘Equality and Barbie Dolls’ Concepts of peace at community level were both positive and negative; with interpretations, for example, like ‘equality’, ’harmony’, ‘no one fighting’, ’being all quiet with no wars’,’ ‘no jealousy or hatred and respect for others’, ’being content and not selfish because that is how wars start,’ everyone being nice to each other’, ’everyone treating each other the way they treat their own selves’, ’considerate of other’s feelings and not fighting’. One idea of peace was to ‘have Barbie dolls instead of military soldiers, Barbie cars instead of military tanks and magic wands and roses without thorns instead of guns’. Peace within Religion: ‘Islam means Peace’ For some participants, peace within religion was intangible like ’the poetics of Koran‘, for others it was tangible like ’being in a mosque‘ or ’being at the Kabah in Mecca‘ which is the epitome of peace or, ‘reading the Ayah (verses of the Koran)’ or ’singing the Naats (Songs in Praise of Allah)’ or ’praying regularly‘. However, the first response from most participants (including the administrative facilitator) was that ’Islam means Peace‘, ‘it means not restricting’ and ’it’s not what people think it is but it provides guidance as to how to lead a life and that is peace’. ‘Muslim people shown on TV are Always in black’ During informal discussion, it surfaced that participants consciously avoided wearing black scarves except for aesthetic reasons (i.e. to match their clothes). Typically they avoided wearing black clothes only and included a dash of bright colour. (The administrative facilitator never wore anything in black.) They said that ’Black is not just a traditional colour representing crime but black is the colour of the terrorist and we don’t like to wear black‘, ’if we wear black, apparently we are terrorists because everyone says it‘, ’whenever you see Muslim people on TV, they are always in black’.
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Participants’ Perceptions of ‘Throne of Weapons’ Installation In 2001 the artist Cristóvão Estavão Canhavato (Kester) created an installation called the ‘Throne of Weapons’, from decommissioned firearms collected after the end of the civil war in Mozambique. Participants went to see this work on display at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry. Their responses ranged from ’it was dudy but a bit weird and freaky but I loved it‘, to appearing interested and curious and wanting Figure1 Participants looking at installation. to touch it to ‘see how it felt like‘. They suggested ’the artist must have been very clever with his hands to have melted the sides of the guns together so carefully’ and were amazed the installation was ‘so detailed that it actually looked like a throne or a chair‘. No one questioned the use of guns, where they came from or why the chair has been created this way. The majority seemed genuinely impressed with the piece and described it as ’totally different’ and ’a very beautiful idea and a very clever concept’. The Artworks Next participants conceptualized their own artworks choosing appropriate symbols, colours and graphic representations. The majority had little or no previous engagement with art. The works they produced served as a means to reflect on and represent their understanding of peace. For one participant, the dove was a universal symbol of peace across religious, national and cultural boundaries. ’A dove is used worldwide to express and represent peace, the color white symbolizes peace and in many religions white is used for purity and cleanliness‘. Her artwork had intricate motifs of Mehendi (henna) designs with Arabic inscriptions in the background symbolizing Islam as a religion that professes a universal message of peace. It was more important to communicate this message than exhibit artistic skills ’As-salaam project is all about raising awareness to the people, to let them know that Islam is just not about war and terror; it has a beautiful side to it which is usually ignored and this project hopefully will shine through and people will Figure 2 Dove, by 14-year-old participant. understand and appreciate us Muslims’.
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‘Peace flowers by participant, age 8 For one younger participant the term ‘peace’ had many strands, just like the petals on a flower. She was influenced by her grandfather’s practice of origami to create paper-sculpture flowers communicating her own understanding of various dimensions of peace. Another participant wanted to tell the world about all the stories in the Koran proclaiming messages of peace. She wanted to interview Figure 3 Notion of peace. young British-Muslim girls of her own age, to find out what peace meant to them personally in terms of self, community and religion and create a short documentary. ‘Koran is not a User Manual for Terrorists’ by participants age 13 For two participants the ‘Kabah’ in Mecca is the epitome of peace. Initially they wanted to represent this in paper sculpture and include a handmade Koran with verses professing messages of peace strewn with rose petals. They wanted it to be interactive so that viewers could flip through pages containing quotations about peace. Because this idea was too ambitious they ended up painting a Kabah with olive leaves on the door against a serene blue background. Figure 4 Co-existence by participants aged 11 and 15. The mosque was the centre point of inner peace for two participants ages 11 and 15 and their religion. Initially they focused their attention on drawing a mosque, then they represented the British flag graphically as a symbol of communal harmony between British Muslims and non-Muslims. ‘Unity’ by a participant, age 14 The single participant who had previously engaged with art was inspired by ‘Goth Culture’ and attempted to incorporate this into her work. She wanted to use her interest in fashion to convey a message about ‘unity’ and highlight peaceful co-existence of Islam with other religions. ‘As-Salaam’, Joint work by author and participant This was a set of artworks surrounded with empty spaces for people to write about their ‘perceptions of peace’. The writing marked their completion. Participants intended this to serve as a medium for encouraging dialogue between the two communities; first by informing members of each other’s perceptions of peace and, second, by offering a shared visual
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platform for collating perceptions thereby realizing and appreciating the universality of the idea; and, finally, to encourage reflection on them so as to develop the capacity for sustaining more tolerant and respectful relationships. One of these artworks was displayed in Coventry Cathedral – a symbol of peace and reconciliation – so as to encourage dialogue among visitors. The others were housed in secondary schools Discussion Partipants’ motivation levels fluctuated throughout the project. Some described the project as ‘groovy’, ‘funky’ and ‘a unique experience’ and others reported feeling ‘bored’, or ‘nervous because it might be too difficult’. Meanwhile, it offered a platform for discussing communal issues and personal responses that would not have been raised with family or friends. As one girl said, ‘we only talk about these issues during the sessions over here, we don’t talk about these otherwise’. There was some evidence that engaging with art enhanced self-expression, motivation and creativity. The artistic outcomes contributed to a sense of achievement, and furthered their selfconfidence and self-esteem. Communicating a message of peace increased their understanding of their religious beliefs and this contributed to commitment. The project as a whole raises issues about engaging Muslim communities with visual art, therefore, their role in peace education and how to facilitate the growth of creative and cohesive communities. Islam and peace To understand the concept of peace within Islam according to Abdalati,
…one has to appreciate how Islam approaches the question of peace; one has only to consider a few elementary facts about Islam. Peace and Islam are derived from the same root and may be considered synonymous. One of God’s names is Peace. The concluding words of the daily prayers of every Muslim are words of Peace, the greetings of the Muslims when they return to God are Peace. The daily salutations among the Muslims are expressions of peace. This is how fundamental and dominant the theme of peace is in Islam. (Abdalati 1975, p. 36) Even though participants interpreted ‘peace’ individually, for the majority the instinctual response was ‘Islam means Peace’ meaning peace and religion are indistinguishable. Fell (in Hicks 1988, p. 71) notes that the rhetoric of peace surrounds us everyday. Because this seemingly simple word is manipulated so many different ways, the meaning is blurred (Hicks 1988). The resolution of the 18th Session of the General Conference of UNESCO (1974) offers a starting point for defining peace in stating that,
…peace cannot consist solely in the absence of armed conflict but implies principally a process of progress, justice and mutual respect among the peoples designed to secure the building of an international society in which everyone can find his true place and enjoy his share of the world’s intellectual and material resources.
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A culture-bound notion of peace, as defined by Stanford (1976), is one in which a culture believes the relationship of human beings to nature is important. Peace with the forces of nature, other animals and with the spirits of ancestors is as important in some cultures as peace with other people. (in Hicks 1988, p. 71) During the project it became apparent that the participants were uninformed or misinformed about Islamic notions of peace. My efforts to disseminate theoretical understanding of the concept were viewed with some hostility at first. One example is the comment: ‘If you said that Islam doesn’t mean peace, it would be very offending to a devout Muslim‘. Four participants firmly resisted incorporating more conventional universally accepted peace symbols into their artwork. They understood the Islam, mosques or the Kabah as universally acknowledged symbols of peace. This resistance continued until one of them said, ’If I don’t have a problem with drawing a dove, I don’t understand your problem‘. Two participants finally settled for drawing the dove, the others placed an olive branch at the door of their Kabah. The participants and administrative facilitator eventually gained an understanding of the fundamentals of peace once they realized it could be achieved through the practice of Islam in their own lives, religion and community. Islam and Graphic Imagery The legitimacy of graphic imagery has been subjected to various levels of interpretation in Islam and some Muslim communities do not engage with art. A large majority of Muslims in Coventry come from small patriarchal villages in Pakistan dominated by fundamentalists. Conservative Muslims do not hang images in their houses because ‘angels will not visit their homes if they do so’. Therefore, their experience of art and art education is limited. This project enabled participants from a community that restricts images to negotiate graphic imagery. However, one family member objected to the representation of doves (God’s creations) on the grounds it was blasphemous, ’and the Dove has eyes too! drawing of such features as eyes is prohibited in Islam‘. This objection not only shook the foundations of the project, but also necessitated participants justifying their beliefs and the very basis of their practice. The influence of religion on participants’ attitudes to graphic imagery were evident in comments such as ‘representation of Allah in any graphic form is prohibited’, ‘hanging of paintings or artifacts in a mosque is prohibited since it stands the chance of distracting the worshiper from prayers’ and that ‘representation of anything considered immoral within Islam is prohibited’. Most parents were very supportive. However, there is a strong need in this Muslim community not only to address the disparities in interpretations of Islam so that more members can engage in art, but also to disseminate the importance of art education. As The Arts Council of England (2005) point out, the arts have potential not only to promote the social skills that contribute to societal harmony but also to enhance personal growth. They can enhance the process of learning and nourish and integrate the sensory, attitudinal, cognitive, emotional and motor
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capacities that are the driving force behind all learning (Jenson & Eric 2001). Thus, parents and family supporters play a vital role in encouraging young people’s engagement in creative arts activities. Afterthought: Of Military Tanks and Barbie Dolls…. On a personal note, the project resulted in an afterthought – what would happen if all the toy manufacturers in the world stopped producing toy guns, toy soldiers and military tanks? How would it change childhood? How would it change notions of fighting and the world?’ Finally, I hope to witness similar projects with young people from different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. I would like them to create artworks that enable us to learn more about their perceptions of peace. References Abdalati, H., (1975), Islam in focus. London: American Trust Publications. Arts Council England. (2005), Children, young people and the arts. London: Arts Council England publications. Cantle, T. (2001), Community cohesion: A report of the independent review team, London: Home Office Publication. Coventry Partnership Inclusivity Report 05 (2005), report from the Inclusivity Subgroup to the Equalities & Communities Group (24.05.05): Findings from the Inclusivity Survey. http: //www.coventrypartnership. com/ index.asp?page=44. Coventry Partnership Resource Book (2005), http: //www.coventrydiversecity.co.uk/downloads/Resource_Book.pdf. Festival of Muslim Cultures (2005), http: //www.mlawestmidlands.org.uk/assets/documents/10000146 Festival of Muslim Cultures Summary.pdf 9 July 9 2006. Forrest, R. & A. Kearns (2000), Social cohesion, social capital and the neighbourhood. Paper presented to ESRC Cities Programme Neighbourhoods Colloquium, Liverpool, 5–6 June. Hicks, D. (1988), Education for peace. London: Routledge. Ishaq, A (2005), The importance of fine arts education, Frontline The Global Publication (August). Jenson, E. (2001), Arts with the brain in mind. Alexandria, Va.: Association Supervision and Curriculum Development. Local Government Association (2004), Community cohesion action guide. London: LGA. Publications Office for National Statistics 2001 Census. Salomon, G. (2002), Peace education: the concepts, principles and practices around the World. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
CHILDREN’S PICTURES IN THE AFTERMATH OF WAR: WHAT DO THEY TELL US? Victoria Pavlou University of the Aegean, Greece
Abstract Around the globe children are innocent victims of continuing warfare; thus they are likely to develop distressing reactions that may lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This paper reports on a study of nine- and ten-year-old children who had experienced war and argues that pictures can make a unique contribution to the diagnosis of PTSD. Teachers who scored children’s pictures ‘blindly’ were able to identify those in greater need as confirmed by the results of the Impact of Event Scale. By looking at the themes, figures, colours and objects in the pictures the teachers were able to identify instances of persistent re-experiencing of traumatic events or avoidance of trauma. The findings have implications for the way teachers use pictures as diagnostic tools within a crisis intervention framework in schools. Keywords Children’s pictures, Post-traumatic stress disorder, War Children in need History has repeatedly shown that the ultimate sufferers of war are innocent non-combatants: the children and the elderly. According to UNICEF (2006), the proportion of civilian casualties in armed conflicts has increased dramatically in recent decades and is now estimated at more than 90 per cent. About half the victims are children. It is unlikely war will cease to exist as means to resolving conflict, so it is important to consider what can be done to help the children caught up in such terrible events.
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How do Traumatic Events Influence Children? Children forced to cope with the dangers of war may adapt in dysfunctional ways, most notably with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although knowledge of the factors and predictions of adult post-traumatic stress reaction is increasing, much less is known about children (Landolt 2003; Steil & Straube 2002) and even less about those who actually experience war. Garbarino & Kostelny (1993) note that children who are separated from their families, or for whom attachment relationships have been destroyed, are at greater risk of dysfunction. However, even children with access to parental protection may develop PTSD in the short term. Other factors that influence stress reactions are experiencing loss of family members, friends and proximity to the location of a traumatic event (Klingman, Sagi & Raviv 1993). The ability of children to comprehend the element of threat and danger associated with war varies with age and level of cognitive development. Webb (1991) found that younger children showed higher levels of anxiety. Groome & Soureti (2004), who researched children’s reactions to an earthquake, noted the youngest ones close to the epicentre had the highest PTSD and anxiety symptom scores. Gender differences in anxiety levels have been noted. Girls tend to show higher anxiety levels than boys, which has been linked to modelling and socialization patterns (Swenson & Klingman 1993; Klingman et al. 1993). Awareness of behavioural signs assists programme planning designed to alleviate the fear and anxiety felt by children who experience war (Csapo 1991). According to the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, DSM-VI (American Psychiatric Association 1995) five key issues determine diagnosis of PTSD: (i) the experience (direct or indirect) of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others, and a response to this that is characterized by intense fear, helplessness or horror; (ii) re-experiencing the event; (iii) avoiding aspects of it or a persistent numbing of responsiveness; (iv) showing persistent symptoms of increased arousal in the presence of relevant stimuli; and (v) prolonged duration of disturbance. A number of researchers have verified the existence of these symptoms in children and adolescents who experience traumatic events (Burke et al. 1982; Terr 1982; Terr 1984; Yule 1991; Motta 1994; Lonigan, Phillips & Richey 2003). When and How Can Schools Help Children who Experience Trauma? Early intervention is very important for helping children deal with the possible effects of exposure to traumatic experiences. Ideally, intervention should occur during the time of the traumatic event – something that is not usually feasible – and one of the aims should be to increase the child’s perception of safety. There are two ‘support systems’ with intervention potential: family and school. Research involving children in the aftermath of different traumatic events has shown that family is not always the best option; parents sometimes suppress their children’s distress because they do not want to admit to such feelings (Burke et al. 1982; Terr 1982; Terr 1984; Yule & Williams 1990; and Peterson et al. 1991). Beyond the family, the most natural support system is the school (Cole & Brown 2002). It is important to acknowledge there are many possible ways of identifying distress in children. Schaefer (1994) and Yule (1993), for example, note that the impact of trauma can be assessed
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through studying their play and pictures. Klingman (1993) points out that children often defuse their emotions in narrative interchange and/or nonverbal expressions like pictures that function to keep anxiety to tolerable levels. There are three good reasons to employ picture-making in schools within a preventive conceptual framework for children affected by war or other traumatic events. First, drawing is a natural, socially acceptable way to express emotion. Second, children may gain access in a safe and controlled way to traumatic memories this way. Third, art materials are readily available in school settings and in most cases children have easy access to them. Having said this, few art crisis interventions have been conducted as school-based procedures. Klingman, Koenigsfeld & Markman (1987) have worked this way with non-patient groups. They argue that art sessions can help children to overcome emotional confusion and adjust to new situations. When children work in art rooms, they are offered a protected environment in which art forms serve as potential therapeutic tools. Furthermore, they suggest that ‘because art is nonverbal, art-based crisis intervention is not only feasible but valuable in the context of preventive mass emergency intervention in community settings; especially for reaching out to children whose speech is electively or selectively withheld’ (Klingman et al. 1987, p. 165). This paper argues that art can play an important role in the education of children in need when teachers use it as a provisional diagnostic tool to identify those in most distress and refer them to health professionals. Specifically, I will demonstrate how pictures made several months after the end of a conflict represented children’s emotional states. A Case Study Although the research presented here was conducted nearly a decade ago, the findings remain timely because studies of the after-effects of war-related trauma in children are few and far between. The participants in the study were 27 nine- to ten-year-old children from former Yugoslavia, who were hosted for a few months by Greek-Cypriot families after the end of the war in former Yugoslavia as part of a ‘relief’ programme. The children were accompanied by their teachers who ran their day-to-day educational programmes in classrooms in two schools in Nicosia. All the children were refugees. According to their teachers, sixteen had actually observed warfare (fighting, killing, bombing, fire etc.) and eleven had heard about these events or watched them on film. Five children had experienced the loss of a member(s) of their family, twelve had an injured family member(s), and the fathers of two children were reported as missing. It is worth noting that the PTSD literature shows that not all children are affected by traumatic events. Some are not affected and others develop some or all of the symptoms required for diagnosis of PTSD (Keppel-Benson & Ollendick 1993). The important question is ‘are pictures a reliable and valid mean for identifying those at risk of developing PTSD?’ The children in this study were asked to draw twice. On the first occasion they drew freely and on the second they drew a picture of their home country. The same instructions were given to a comparison group consisting of 21 nine- to ten-year-old children of Greek-Cypriot origin living with in stable conditions with their families in London.
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The validity of the interpretations of the pictures was checked with the use of independent assessments. Comparisons were made between the scoring by a group of Greek-Cypriot teachers and other objective measurements. References to statistical tests will be kept to the minimum in this paper as the argument put forward focuses on what the results actually mean and their implications for art education. Instruments Scoring the Pictures All the pictures were randomly assembled and fourteen Greek-Cypriot primary schoolteachers scored them. The teachers were given background information about the symptomatology1 of experiences of traumatic events (mainly about symptoms of avoidance and intrusion), definitions of these symptoms and explanations of how they might be incorporated into the pictures. They were also given background information about the two groups. Finally, they were provided with score sheets (see appendix) and asked to indicate on a continuum the extent to which they thought each picture showed evidence of ‘avoidance’ or ‘intrusion’ elements. Impact of Event Scale (IES): Each child from former Yugoslavia completed the Impact of Event Scale (IES), which is a tool for systematic assessment of the after-effects of traumatic events (Horowitz, Wilner & Alvarez 1979). Since 1979, it has become one of the most widely used measures of post-traumatic phenomena (Joseph, Williams, Yule & Walker 1992). It is a self-reported measure that can be anchored to any specific life event that taps into the two most commonly reported specific types of experience in responses to stressful happenings, namely: (i) ‘intrusion’; understood as intrusively experienced ideas, images, feelings or bad dreams, and (ii) ‘avoidance’; understood as consciously recognized avoidance of certain ideas, feelings or situations (Zilberg, Weiss & Horowitz 1982). The IES contains fifteen statements describing emotional reactions. Respondents are asked to indicate how frequently each reaction was experienced the previous week on a four-point scale ranging from ‘not at all’ to ‘often’. There are two sub-scales that give two sub-scores: (i) intrusive feelings and ideas associated with the event and (ii) avoidance of thoughts, situations and feelings associated with the event. A total score is calculated by adding them together. Pictures as Diagnostic Tools This section provides a brief description of the results of each ‘instrument’: first the IES and then the picture scores. Then the picture scores are compared with the IES scores in order to answer the following key question: Were the teachers who scored the pictures ‘blindly’ able to identify children at risk in a way that was consistent with children’s reports (IES scores)? Children’s Self-assessment: The Impact of Event Scale (IES) A summary of the results of the IES is presented with reference to factors associated with high scores that may warrant the diagnosis of PTSD. (For a detailed presentation of statistical tests and results, see Pavlou 1997.) Three main factors were examined:
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■ Witnessing warfare: children who experienced war directly got significantly higher intrusion and total scores in the IES than those who had indirect experience. ■ Family well-being: this was an important factor determining children’s emotional state as the results showed a significant difference for Intrusion. Avoidance and total scores. Children who had experienced the death of a family member had the highest total and avoidance scores. Children with an injured family member got the second-highest total and avoidance scores. Children with missing parents got the third-highest total scores and highest intrusion scores. ■ Gender: Gender differences were revealed but only for intrusion scores. Boys got higher intrusion scores than girls. Teachers’ Assessment: Scoring the Pictures Fourteen teachers scored the two sets of pictures blindly. The first set contained 48 pictures with an ‘open’ theme, and the second contained 48 pictures with a ‘country’ theme. For the purposes of analysis the mean score for each picture was used. Each one was allocated intrusion and avoidance composite scores and, subsequently, a total composite score. The comparison of the two groups of scores, revealed a significant difference in the sets of pictures, in that all the children who had experienced war created ‘gloomier’ ones than the comparison group. This is evidence that the blind judges were able to differentiate pictures in the comparison and study groups. Scoring the pictures was not straightforward and required a lot of thought. But the teachers were willing to go through this time-consuming procedure because they had experienced war themselves as children in Cyprus.2 They all had art teaching experience. Most of them took a quick look at the pictures first to get a general impression, then examined each one carefully and allocated avoidance and intrusion scores. While they were scoring the pictures, the teachers were encouraged to comment on them. The comments were subsequently categorized in four ways: ■ Figures: they assumed that pictures without figures or pictures that included only children (and not adults) were drawn by traumatized children. This proved to be correct, especially for the pictures with a ‘country’ theme. The teachers also studied the facial characteristics of human figures. For example, they considered omission of facial characteristics and figure size in relation to other objects very important and colour and gender. All the above provided indicators of children’s emotional states. ■ Themes: the teachers studied the action in the pictures and asked themselves, ‘Is this a peaceful or violent scene? Has the child actually drawn war? Are there signs of life such as animals, birds and people?’ ■ Objects: teachers studied objects that looked ‘strange’. For example, in terms of scale (e.g., a huge house, tree or bird). A few teachers thought birds symbolized planes. They also looked for objects that reminded them of war. ■ Colours: Typically, dark colours and extensive use of red were considered intrusive. However, some teachers were unsure whether bright colours were signs of normality or avoidance of reality.
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Correlations between the scores for the two pictures were also examined. I was interested to see whether children allocated low or high scores for one picture, got similar scores in the other. As expected, all the children in the comparison group received low scores for both pictures indicating normality. However, there was no significant correlation between scores for the two sets of pictures drawn by the affected group. This was unexpected and raised important questions: Why was there no match between the scores of the two sets of pictures for this group? Which set revealed the ‘true picture’ of these children’s emotional states? The Impact of Event Scale and Scoring of Pictures To answer the above questions the scores for each set of pictures were examined separately and compared with IES scores. The significant positive correlation between the scores of the ‘country’ theme pictures and IES was a very important finding. It suggested that the ‘country’ theme pictures reflected children’s sympomatology (reactions) of the traumatic event they experienced more clearly. The open-theme pictures were not good predictors of children’s emotional states, although, as mentioned earlier, the teachers were able to distinguish between pictures drawn by children who had and had not experienced war. The Pictures To substantiate the findings mentioned above, two pictures are shown below and the scores they received are discussed in the light of all the data. Figure 1 received the highest total score of the ‘country’ pictures and Figure 2 received the highest total score of the ‘open’ pictures. Alexia’s picture attracted everyone’s attention because it was so unusual. It has a big tree in the middle almost reaching the sun and sky. The sky is an awkward shape. To the left of the tree a house is barely visible. It only has sides and looks like a ‘ghost’ house. To the right of this tree there is a girl – probably Alexia herself. The teachers were struck by the colours of the figure – dark blue covered with black. She has no facial characteristics and looks helpless; she cannot see, hear, talk or run. According to her classroom teacher, Alexia had witnessed war. She hid in the bathroom when soldiers entered her home and beat up her parents. After this incident, she escaped from the town with her mother and brother but her father stayed behind to look after the property. Afterwards, they learned he was injured. The teachers gave this
Figure 1 Alexia’s picture: country theme.
Figure 2 Luca’s picture: open theme.
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picture a high avoidance score because it did not actually depict war and the composition worried them. They found the colours and way the figure was drawn quite intrusive; also the size and shape of the tree reminded some of them of a bomb. Others assumed the unfinished drawing of the house showed she was one of the most highly affected children. It revealed disturbing symptoms of avoidance and intrusion at this time. Luca’s picture obtained the highest score in the ‘open’ picture category. Luca drew dinosaurs fighting each other. On the left side, one dinosaur is biting another one’s throat and there is blood running out. Underneath, a car is shooting at another dinosaur. Whereas the presence of the car and aeroplane imply people are fighting, she did not actually draw any. On the upper right side a big volcano has erupted and lava is running out of the mountain forming a river. The teachers assumed Luca had witnessed war and identified many intrusive elements in the picture (shooting, blood, airplane, exploding lava). So, they gave it a high intrusive score and a relatively high avoidance score. But Luca had not actually observed war; he had escaped from the village when warfare began and moved to a safer area. However, his father was killed after which he developed a speech defect. It seems he was affected by war, although not as much as the children who actually lived through the horrors. This conclusion is based on what he said when he completed the IES, what his classroom teacher said and the score for his ‘country’ picture. Perspectives on Intervention As mentioned earlier, the consequences of exposure to life-threatening traumatic situations may be a dysfunction called post-traumatic stress disorder. Children are particularly vulnerable and can, and often do, develop distressing reactions leading to PTSD. Two groups of symptoms – persistent re-experiencing of the traumatic event and avoidance of aspects of the trauma – were identified in children from former Yugoslavia who had experienced highly stressful events such as witnessing warfare and family tragedies. The level of exposure to war-related stress correlated highly with symptoms of PTSD as reported on the Impact of Event Scale (IES). Art, and especially drawing, has a unique contribution to make in diagnosing PTSD. Victims of psychological trauma, like the children in this study, often have difficulty expressing their experiences directly and effectively in words. One classroom teacher said, he gained the impression at first these children did not have any significant problems because they did not talk about war. This assumption proved to be incorrect, when the children completed the IES. It seems that encoding traumatic memories visually is less painful for children than verbally. Symptoms of avoidance and intrusion were traced in these children’s pictures by the teachers who scored them. The pictures showed some kind of disturbance as indicated by: (i) colours; (ii) objects with symbolic meanings; (for example birds looking like planes); (iii) depiction or omission of human figures (omission of adults and especially males appeared important); and (iv) what was happening in them. These results are consistent with other studies. For example, Gregorian, Azarian, DeMaria & McDonald (1996) noted that colour preferences in children’s artwork are significant indicators of emotional states and that traumatized children use black, white and red colours. Moreover, tests developed in order to assess personality, maturity and emotional states (such as the ‘Draw-a-person’ and ‘Figure-Drawing Technique’ mentioned in
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Knapp, 1992) suggest that tiny figures may be indicators of inadequacy, low self-esteem and depression; and omission of hands or facial characteristics may indicate feelings of powerlessness. Higher and lower extremes of avoidance and intrusion symptoms were traced in the ‘country’ pictures. These pictures revealed the level of each child’s distress more clearly. This finding is very important since it implies only some pictures are good predictors of emotional states. Themes must be carefully selected when pictures are used as provisional diagnostic tools. In this study the ‘country’ theme proved the most appropriate stimulus perhaps because these children were overseas at the time and their stay in the safe, stable environment was coming to an end. Soon they would return. Further research into use of pictures as provisional diagnostic tools is important before nonprofessionals apply such procedures. The boundaries between diagnosis and treatment must also be considered. Teachers cannot undertake the role of therapist, although they may feel they want to when they suspect children in their care are experiencing great stress. However, they can help by providing a provisional diagnosis based on their pictures and an overall reaction. In such cases, a short training programme that informs them about avoidance and intrusion symptoms and how to look for them in children’s pictures would be helpful. If the teachers in this study had not been asked to look for signs of avoidance and intrusion, the children’s PTSD would have gone unnoticed. Art-crisis intervention is invaluable for reaching out to large numbers of children in the everyday environment of school. They benefit most when a public health approach to dealing with emergencies is in place. A number of texts have been written especially to help schools develop contingency plans for dealing with the effects of disaster (Johnson 1993; Klingman 1993). Teachers cannot prevent war or disasters but can try to help children faced with tragedy to get on with their lives. Epilogue Children in armed conflict often experience emotionally and psychologically painful events such as the violent death of a parent or close relative; separation from family; witnessing loved ones being killed or tortured; displacement from home and community; exposure to combat, shelling and other life-threatening situations (Unicef 2006). Schools can play a crucial role in helping children release their distressing feelings. School-based support can provide a break for stressed parents and give children opportunities to resort to alternative care-seeking models through interactions with teachers and counsellors whereby they can express their fears and gain support directly (Burke et al. 1982; Mowbray 1988; Yule 1993). These kinds of intervention programmes can be planned in advance and be a part of a wider policy that includes systems and principles borrowed from public health, preventive medicine, communal welfare and urban planning (Laor, Wolmer, Spirman & Wiener 2003). A first step in any such programme is diagnosis of children in need, and art can play a crucial role to this end.
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Notes 1. This is a common term used by many authors and researchers when referring to symptoms. For example, Singleton, C. & Trotter, S. (2005), Visual stress in adults with and without dyslexia, Journal of Research in Reading, 28 (3), 365–378; Hale, C. & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2005), Brief report: the relationship between discourse deficits and autism symptomatology Journal of Autism and Development Disorders, 35 (4), 519–524. It derives from the Greek word symptomatologia, which means the sum of symptoms of an illness or disorder. 2. The majority of the teachers were children when war in Cyprus took place in 1974. One-third of the population became refugees and 37 per cent of the island has been occupied by Turkish troops since 1974.
References American Psychiatric Association (1995), Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorder, (fourth edition) (DSM-IV). Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association. Burke, J., Borus, J., Burns, B., Hannigan-Millstein, K. & Beasley, M. (1982), Changes in children’s behaviour after a natural disaster, American Journal of Psychiatry, 139, (8) 1010–1014. Cole, E. & Brown, R. (2002), Psychological needs of post-war children in Kosovo. School Psychology International 23 (2) 131–147. Csapo, M. (1991), Post-traumatic stress disorder in children: recognition of behavioural signs, B.C Journal of Special Education, 15 (2) 111–126. Garbarino, J. & Kostelny, K. (1993), Children’s responses to war: what do we know. In Leavitt, L. & Fox, N. (eds.) The psychological effects of war and violence on children (pp. 23–40). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Gregorian, V. Azarian, A., DeMaria, M. & McDonald, L. (1996), Colors of disaster: the psychology of the ‘black sun’, The Arts in Psychotherapy, 23 (1) 1–14. Groome, D. & Soureti, A. (2004), Post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety symptoms in children exposed to the 1999 Greek earthquake, British Journal of Psychology, 95, (3) 387–397. Horowitz, M., Wilner, N. & Alvarez, W. (1979), The Impact of Event Scale: A measure of subjective stress, Psychosomatic Medicine, 41 (3) 209–218. Johnson, K. (1993), Trauma in the lives of children. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Joseph, S., Williams, R., Yule, W. & Walker, A. (1992), Factor analysis of the Impact of Event Scale with survivors of two disasters at sea, Personality and Individual differences, 13 (6) 693–697. Knapp, N. (1992), Tabulated review of diagnostic use of art as a preliminary resource for research with Alzheimer’s disease. American Journal of Art Therapy, 31, (2) 46–62. Klingman, A., Koenigsfeld, E. & Markman, D. (1987), Art activity with children following a disaster: A preventive-oriented crisis intervention modality. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 14, (2) 153–166. Klingman, A. (1993), School-based intervention following a disaster. In C. Saylor (ed.) Children and disasters (pp. 187–210). New York: Plenum Press. Klingman, A. Sagi, A. & Raviv, A. (1993), The effect of war on Israeli children. In Leavitt, L. and Fox, N. (eds.) The psychological effects of war and violence on children (pp. 75–92). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Landolt, M. (2003), Coping with acute psychological trauma in childhood, Praxis der kinderpsychologiy und kinderpsychiatrie, 52 (2) 71–87.
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Laor, N., Wolmer, L., Spirman, S. & Wiener, Z. (2003), Facing war terrorism, and disaster: Toward a child-oriented comprehensive emergency care system, Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 12 (3) 343–363. Lonigan, C., Phillips, B. & Richey, J. (2003), Post-traumatic stress disorder in children: Diagnosis, assessment and associate features. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 12 (2) 171–196. Motta, R. (1994), Identification of characteristics and causes of childhood post-traumatic stress disorder, Psychology in the Schools, 31 (1) 49–55. Mowbray, C. (1988), Post-traumatic therapy for children who are victims of violence. In F. Ochberg (ed.) Post-traumatic therapy and victims of violence. (pp. 196–212). New York: Brunner/ Mazel Phsychosocial Stress series, no. 11. Pavlou, V. (1997), The iconographical representation of children who experienced trauma. Unpublished M.A. dissertation. Institute of Education, University of Warwick. Peterson, K., Prout, M. & Schwarz, R. (1991), Post-traumatic stress disorder. New York & London: Plenum Press. Schaefer, C. (1994), Play therapy for psychic trauma in children. In K. O’Connor & C. Schaefer (eds.) Handbook of play therapy (pp. 297–318). New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc. Steil, R. & Straube, E. R. (2002), Post-traumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents, Zeitschrift fur Klinische Psychologie und Psychotherapie, 31 (1) 1–13. Swenson, C. & Klingman, A. (1993), Children and war. In C. Saylor (ed.) Children and disasters (pp. 137–160). New York: Plenum Press. Terr, L. (1982), Psychic trauma in children: observations following the chowchilla school-bus kidnapping. In S. Chess & A. Thomas (eds.) Annual progress in child psychiatry and child development (pp. 384–396). New York: Brunner/Mazel Publishers. Terr, L. (1984), Chowchilla revisited: the effects of psychic trauma four years after a school-bus kidnapping. In S. Chess & A. Thomas (eds). Ibid. (pp. 300–317). UNICEF (2006), Child protection from violence, exploitation and abuse. http: //www.unicef.org/ protection/index_armedconflict.html. Accessed 15th of June 2006. Webb, N. (1991), The crisis of war. In N. Webb (ed.) Play therapy with children in crisis, a casebook for practitioners (pp. 437–442). New York, London: The Guildford Press. Yule, W. & Williams, R. (1990), Post-traumatic stress reactions and children, Journal of Traumatic Stress, 22 (3), 279–295. Yule, W. (1991), Work with children following disasters. In M. Herbet (ed.) Clinical psychology, social learning, development and behaviour (pp. 349–363). London: John Wiley & Son Ltd. Yule, W. (1993), Technology-related disasters. In C. Saylor (ed.) Children and disasters (pp. 104–120). New York: Plenum Press. Zilberg, N., Weiss, D. & Horowitz, M. (1982), Impact of Event Scale: A cross-validation study and some empirical evidence supporting a conceptual model of stress response syndromes, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 50(3) 407–414.
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Appendix: Instructions for scoring pictures Background Information: On the basis of extensive psychological research, it has been suggested that children who have experienced a traumatic event may incorporate their symptomatology into their pictures. The two main clusters of symptoms experienced are those of Avoidance and/or Intrusion. ‘Avoidance’ means that they try to repress the trauma and behave in a way as though the trauma has never happened. In terms of pictures, the child blocks out the experience completely and representations are completely irrelevant or insignificant. ‘Intrusion’ means that despite conscious or unconscious efforts to repress the memory of the trauma these memories intrude and they may be incorporated into their pictures. The pictures that you will see and are asked to score according to the instructions given below were made by two groups of children. The first group consists of children who had been exposed to war in former Yugoslavia. Not all the children exposed to war had similar experiences; some had worse experiences than others. The second group consists of children of Greek-Cypriot origin who were living in London at the time of the drawing. The pictures of the two groups are mixed. Instructions 1. Please study carefully each picture. 2. Then indicate on the scoring sheet – provided for each picture – the extent to which you consider each picture represents “avoidance” and “intrusion”. 3. Have in mind that all the children from former Yugoslavia were exposed to war but not all of them had the same traumatic experiences. Some had worse experiences than others. Scoring sheet No. of picture: _____ Avoidance 0
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Not at all
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Very much so
Intrusion 0
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POSTSCRIPT: CHILDREN'S DRAWINGS
THE ETHIOPIAN VILLAGE IN JEWISH CHILDREN’S DRAWINGS Rachel Kroupp Kaye Academic College of Education, Israel
Introduction Immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel began in the 1980s and continues to this day. These children experience difficulties adapting to Israeli society, culture and education. One way to bridge the gap between the host society and their own is through the language of drawing. These drawings by children of life in the Ethiopian villages where they were born were collected during research I carried out in elementary schools in the Negev district of Israel. The drawing by Almer depicts an Ethiopian village from a distance. In the bottom part you can see the Tukul, a traditional windowless hut with a cone-shaped roof. The water source for the village, a large, flowing river, is depicted in the centre. The tree drawn on the horizon above symbolizes a wood or forest. Almer explained: ‘This is like our village, all the houses stand crowded together and there are water and trees far away.’ Yazav, like Kindaon, related to the weather. She drew the sun in order to depict summer, but added big drops of rain and a girl with an umbrella. In response to a question, she answered, ‘It rains sometimes in the summer’. She also depicted a ridge of mountains in the distance, the water sources for the village (on the right), and huts and livestock beside the house. Almaco has drawn two windowless one-room tukul. Only one has a door. The cone-shaped roofs, built from branches and straw, slope down over the walls. The short poles coming out of the top are extensions of the central beams around which they are built. Almaco’s dog (looking more like a lion) is standing in front of the hut which has an Ethiopian flag next to it. There is a
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Figure 1 Ethiopian Village: Almer age 11 (in Israel 11 months).
Figure 2 Ethiopian village: Yazav aged10 (in Israel 4 months).
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Figure 3 My house: Almaco age 10 (in Israel 10 months).
square house, on the lower right side of the drawing built from boards (according to Almaco) with a narrow rectangular roof. Structure of the Synagogue – Masgid Almaro has situated the synagogue against a background of mountains. It resembles a tukul in every respect. There are no windows in the walls and the sloping roof is made of branches and straw. The Star of David symbol is mounted on the roof. A fence has been built around the synagogue and there is an open-flame cooking installation in the courtyard. The Shelter of Blood and the Parturient House Yeshuma has drawn one of the salient features of the Jewish Ethiopian village; namely, a ‘shelter of blood’. This is a structure women live in when they are in Niddah and are understood to be ritually impure as a consequence of menstruation or childbirth. The ‘shelter of blood’ is a small tukul with no windows and a sloping roof of branches. The small circle of stones positioned around it marks the border between ‘impure and pure’. Yeshuma and her mother are shown sleeping outside on a bed.
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Figure 4 Synagogue: Almaro age 9 (in Israel 4 months).
Figure 5 The Shelter of Blood: Yeshuma age 6 (in Israel 5 months).
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The School Yismau has drawn a school at the bottom right-hand side of the page. This square building has a metal roof (according to her), windows and a door. There is an Ethiopian flag beside it.
Figure 6 My village: Yismau age 10 (in Israel 1 week).
Figure 7 My mother, my sister and me: ‘A’ age 12 (in Israel 7 months).
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There are three figures in A’s drawing. To the left is a figure of an adult woman with braided black hair and round, black eyes. Her dress is decorated from top to bottom with an embroidered stripe with Star of David symbols on both sides. The edges have ornate fringes and she has a sash around her waist. A netela (cloak) designed to wrap around the whole body, extends to her feet. This woman is wearing earrings and a necklace and her ankles are decorated with foot-bracelets. The two girls on the right side are not wearing jewellery. The one in the centre has a kind of short Afro hairstyle and the other has a shaved head. They are wearing dresses and have black eyes. It is not clear whether the two long rectangles stretched over their shoulders are netela or their hands. ‘A’ did not colour in the faces of these figures and they are white like the colour of the paper. External Appearance and Dress of the Ethiopian Man Seven-year-old Q, resident in Israel for about one month, has drawn himself wrapped completely in a white cloak. The boy’s eyes are black and quite large, his head is shaven and his face uncoloured (white like the colour of the paper). He carries an Ethiopian flag in one hand.
Figure 8 Me: Q age 7 (in Israel for 4 weeks).
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Priest’s Apparel Ten-year-old Yismahu has drawn two male figures: a boy and a Kes (priest). The boy’s hairstyle is short, his eyes are black and he is wearing a western shirt and trousers. The Kes, on the other hand, wears a white turban over his black hair. He is dressed in a long white shirt and his entire body is wrapped in a long white netela.
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Figure 9 A Kes: Yismahu age 10 (in Israel 2 days).
Occupations of Ethiopian Women The centre of the drawing shows a woman dressed in a green kamis (dress) cooking. (Yazav explained that she is cooking chicken soup). The left side of the drawing shows another woman serving injera (bread) to her husband. Below, on the left-hand side, Yazav’s own mother is depicted using a small vessel to draw water from a river and transfer it to a larger jug. All the faces are coloured black and have large, dark eyes. Occupations of Ethiopian men Yakov has drawn himself with his father participating in the craft of blacksmithing. According to Yakov, they are in a workshop suggested by the sketchy lines around the figures. Religion: Description of Shabbat, the Festivals and the Life Cycle Ten-year-old Eli has portrayed the most important festival in the Ethiopian community, the Festival of Sigad. He has drawn members of the congregation going up the side of a mountain to pray. They are all dressed in festive attire and the women’s necks and feet are adorned with jewellery. Postscript This visual essay has only shown a very small sample of the drawings I collected during the research. The underlying aim has been to show how they function on the one hand as a means for Israeli teachers to understand Ethiopian culture and, on the other, as a source of pride for the immigrant children concerned.
Figure 10 My mother working: Yazav age 10 (in Israel 6 months).
Figure 11 Blacksmiths in the village: Yakov age 10 (in Israel for 10 months).
Figure 12 Sigad Festival: Eli, age 10 (in Israel for a month and a half).
YOUNG ADULTS’ CONSTRUCTIONS OF MEANING IN CHILD ART Lourdes K. Samson Miriam College, Philippines
Keywords Constructing meaning, Child art, Symbols, College students These drawings are by Freshmen College students from an all-girls’ school in the Philippines whose ages range from 16 to 18. They were created as part of a research project that inquired into the way young adults re-interpreted the symbols in spontaneous artworks produced by children aged 4–9. There were three steps in the research process. First, the student-participants were tasked to bring one sample of art produced by a child to class. The next step was to identify the symbols and discern possible meanings reflected in the art. Third, they composed their own artworks using personal symbols. Fourth, the student-participants talked about their work. Imagination is critical to symbol-making in early childhood. Young children develop their own theories of the world well before starting school and transform their experiences of the world in order to express and interpret them (White 1993). When young children draw, reality and perception are transformed by the very act of capturing them on paper. Their ability to imagine different outcomes or perspectives is what enables children to construct solutions to problems. Art for them is a kind of trying out what life can offer. Games and play are fundamental to early childhood also. When young children use a broom or a stick as a horse, they have no illusions about its real function, yet for the purposes of play, are able to see it as a horse in addition to a broom or stick (White 1993). However, about 90
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Figure 1 Circus. Pencil Drawing by Jernie, 4 years old.
Figure 2 Fascinated Eyes. Cray pastel by Mary Rose, 17 years old.
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Figure 3 A Day in the Farm. Colour pencil drawing by Loreta, 9 years old.
Figure 4 Natural Perspective. Cray pastel drawing by Floriefel Ann, 17 years old.
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per cent of the student-participants in this study interpreted the meaning and symbolism in the children’s artworks literally in a linear fashion (Freeman 1997; Parsons 1987) and about 10 per cent mentioned symbols that were not visible in them. Freeman (op. cit.) argues that younger children use realism simplistically. Their portraits stand for nothing other than what they are intended to represent and children do not extend their reasoning to embrace more complex beliefs. Adults, on the other hand, acquire a mature understanding of art, after experiencing a sequence of aesthetic insights. Parsons (op. cit.) has identified five stages of aesthetic response that he calls ‘favoritism,’ ‘beauty and realism’, ‘expressiveness’, ‘style and form’ and ‘autonomy’. He associates these aesthetic insights with psychological changes – from a stage of early egocentrism to socialization and psychological autonomy. In their own work, these college students did not venture far from the symbolism and meanings in the children’s art. They did not slavishly copy the works, but reinterpreted their themes, keeping close to the subject matter. This response to the task in hand is not surprising given the Philippine setting and is a consequence of the declining importance of art in the basic curriculum in my view. The primary school curriculum currently favours science, maths and language. The Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) implemented in 2000 is limited to five subject areas: English, Filipino, Maths, Science and Makabayan (Nationalism). Art, music, physical education and social studies have all been incorporated into Makabayan so the emphasis on art and creativity has been reduced because so much is crammed into this one subject. With the reduction of time allocated for art in basic education, we will continue to see impoverished interpretations of visual symbols in artworks by young adults studying humanities subjects at tertiary level. Aesthetic awareness is not being encouraged or enhanced by this curriculum reform. Note Photographs by Lourdes K. Samson.
References Freeman, N. H. (1997), Identifying resources from which children advance into pictorial innovation. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 31 (4) pp. 23–33. Parsons, M. (1987), Talk about a painting: A cognitive developmental analysis. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 21 (1) pp. 37–55. White, M. (1993), Imagination in learning: Learning to Imagine, In Early Child Development & Care, volume 90, pp. 99–111.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Editors Rachel Mason Rachel Mason is Professor of Art Education at Roehampton University. She has taught art and art education in England, Australia and the USA and is well known for research and publications on multicultural, cross-cultural and international art education. She edits the International Journal of Education through Art. Her books include Art Education and Multiculturalism, a second edition of which was published for a second time in 1996; Beyond Multicultural Art Education: International Perspectives coedited with Doug Boughton (1999); Por Uma Arte Educação Multicultural (2002); and Issues in Arts Education in Latin America co-edited with Larry O’Farrell (2004). Contact: Teresa Torres Pereira de Eça was Vice-President of the Portuguese Art Teachers Association APECV from 2005 to 2009 and has edited the Portuguese art education Journal IMAGINAR since 2000. She was one of the organizers of the InSEA International Congress: Interdisciplinary Dialogues in Art Education held in Viseu-Portugal in 1–5 March 2006. Currently she is teaching drawing at Alves Martins Secondary School and collaborating in international art education research projects. Contact:
Contributors Toshifumi Abe is a Professor at Osaka Women’s Junior College. His specialist field is art in early childhood education. He is coordinator of the Kid’s Guernica projects implemented in over twenty countries. Contact: Ana Angelica Albano has been a Professor in the Faculty of Education at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) Brazil since 1997. She has a visual arts degree from Fundacao Armando Alvares Penteado, Spain and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of São Paulo. She coordinated social arts interventions in São Paulo, Santo Andre and Diadema between 1983 and 1997. She has published many papers on psychology of art and aesthetic education and authored two books. Currently she is a researcher with LABORARTE at UNICAMP and the Imaginative Education Research Group (IERG) at Simon Fraser University Canada. Contact: Dolores Alvarez-Rodriguez is Professor at the University of Granada in Spain. She teaches visual arts education in teacher training and informal education courses. Her main research areas are new technologies in informal art education and the role of Web-based visual art education in blended
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learning. Also informal art education in museums and other cultural and social contexts. Contact: Anna Rita Araújo is Educational Projects Editor of Digital Art& Magazine. Ms Araújo received a master’s degree in Art Education from USP São Paulo State University in 2003. She teaches Art Education classes at Goiás State University. She lives in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil. Contact: <[email protected]> Ana Mae Barbosa is Professor of Graduate Studies in Art Education at the Universities of São Paulo and Anhembi Morumbi, Brazil; and ex President of InSEA (1991–1993). She directed the Museum of Contemporary Art in São Paulo from 1987 to 1993. She has published seventeen books on Art and Art Education and numerous articles in national and international books and journals and is the recipient of many awards including the National Prize for Art Criticism from APCA and the Edwin Ziegfeld Award from USSEA. She was the first art educator to receive the Comenda Nacional de Merito Científico form the Presidente da Republica Federativa do Brasil in 2005. Contact: Nancy Barnard was born in Jamaica in 1970 and lives in the Cayman Islands. She received a B.F.A in Art Education from Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada, and an M.A. in Museum Studies from Leicester University, England. She is currently working on becoming a qualified art and antiques appraiser and is Director of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. Her main interests are art education and museology within the global, post-colonial context, international relations and conflict resolution, ecology and environment and rights and representation of women and children. Contact: Dan Baron Cohen is a playwright, community-theatre director, performance-based arts educator and cultural activist. He studied English Literature at Oxford University and researched theatre as popular education in collaboration with Edward Bond and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. Since he moved to Brazil in 1988, he has been collaborating with the landless, indigenous and trade union movements. Dan is President of the International Drama-Education Association (IDEA), and one of the architects of the World Alliance for Arts Education launched at the UNESCO congress of Arts Education in 2006. Recent publications include Theatre of self determination (Guildhall Press, Derry, 2001) and Cultural literacy: The intimate struggle for a new humanity (Alfarrabio Press, São Paulo, 2004). Contact: Lindsay Broughton is an artist and Head of the Drawing Department at the School of Art, University of Tasmania. He has an extensive background in art education, art historical research and art teacher education, as well as long involvement in theatre. He is a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council project featured in his paper. Contact: Christine Campbell was Executive Officer of Flying Arts from 1994 to 2006. She trained and practised as a secondary teacher, worked for five years as Director, Theatre in Education at the Queensland Theatre Company and holds a master’s degree in Educational Theatre from New York University. Christine’s future plans include working in a voluntary and/or consultancy capacity with international cultural organizations. Contact: <fl[email protected]> Nurhit Cohen-Evron is Senior Lecturer in Art Education in the School of Art, Beit Berl Academic College, Israel. Recent publications include: Conflict and peace (In L. Bresler [ed.] Handbook of research in arts education, Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer; Examining the implementation of visual education and critical pedagogy within a school art gallery (with Springer 2006 in E. Paldi (ed.) and Education and the challenge of time, Israel: Rehes Educational Projects. Contact: Mousumi De is pursuing practice-based research in communication and media studies with the School of Art and Design at Coventry University in conjunction with the Centre for the Study of Forgiveness and
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Reconciliation. Her research focuses on the use of interactive documentaries as peace-building tools. Contact: <[email protected]> Elizabeth Grierson is Professor of Art and Philosophy and Head of the School of Art at RMIT University, Australia, and Adjunct Professor at AUT University in New Zealand. She has a Ph.D. on the politics of knowledge in visual arts education, and a master’s in Art History both from the University of Auckland. An art educator of many years standing in studio art and art history, Elizabeth was National President of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators for two terms (2001–2005), is on the Executive Board of the Australian Art Educators Association and Asia-Pacific representative on the InSEA World Council. Her research focuses on the politics of knowledge in art, culture, education and globalization. Contact: <[email protected]> Bitte Fossbo has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Stockholm. She has been employed as an art educator in museums and was an art teacher at an upper secondary school when the project reported in this book took place. Art of various kinds plays a central role in the curriculum in her vision of the school of tomorrow. Contact: Kerry Freedman has worked as an administrator at university wide level. She has been a representative to the Faculty Senate and member of the Committee on Student Advising and the Faculty Seminar on internationalizing the curriculum and an invited participant on the Minnesota Presidents Forum on Teaching and Learning. For over fifteen years she served as a member of educational advisory boards of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. She is past Senior Editor of Studies in Art Education. Professor Freedman’s recent published books include: 2003 Freeman K. Teaching visual culture: Curriculum aesthetics and social life of art. (New York: Teachers College Press); 1998 (with Hernandez) (eds.) Culture and curriculum and art education: International perspectives (New York: SUNY Press). Contact: Kinichi Fukumoto is Associate Dean of the Joint Graduate School at Hyogo University of Teacher Education. His specialist field is art education, and he has been an InSEA World Councillor member since 2002. Contact: Peter Hay is Reader in Environmental Studies at the University of Tasmania. His principal focus is the area of environmental thought. His book Main currents in western environmental thought (also published under the title of A companion to environmental thought) has received wide acclaim. As well as being Chief Investigator in the ARC project, he is a widely published poet and essayist. Contact: <www.utas.edu.au/acme/home;html: [email protected]> Maria Huhmarniemi is a Lecturer in Art Education at the University of Lapland. She has taught several annual environmental art workshops and participated in community art projects in the Barents region. Her doctoral research will deal with art education in the northern sociocultural context. Contact: <maria.huhmarniemi@ulapland.fi> Alan Hunter is Senior Lecturer with the Centre for the Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation at Coventry University and specializes in Asian philosophies. Contact: Nelson Hoedekie is an artist and ethics teacher at an art school in Belgium. He studied art in Washington DC and philosophy in Berlin. He has master’s degrees in philosophy from the Universities of Brussels and Stellenbosch South Africa. He undertook a postgraduate course in teaching and development aid at the University of Ghent in Belgium and is currently involved with an inter-disciplinary group studying phenomenology, psychoanalysis and neuroscience. The Face (in) the Mirror-Project
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applied ideas about shadows developed when he was a student and development worker in South Africa. Contact: <ww.faceinthemirror.be> Timo Jokela is Professor of Art Education in the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland. He is Head of the Department of Art Education. His action research focuses on phenomenological relationships between visual art, the environment and community. Timo Jokela is an environmental and community artist and has exhibited work in Finland and abroad. He has directed a number of art and art education projects. Contact: Elizabeth Kenneday is Associate Professor of Art & Liberal Studies at the California State University in Long Beach where she teaches photography and art education. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography and a Doctorate in Philosophy in Art Education from the Claremont Graduate University. Active in international education and environmental education through art, she was a Fulbright Professor at the Iceland University of Education and has lectured worldwide on issues of ecology and art. Her artwork has been collected extensively and received numerous awards. Contact: Rachel Kroupp was born in Israel. She is a senior lecturer in Art Education, pedagogical supervisor and art curator at the Kaye Academic College of Education in Israel. Her research is mainly oriented toward children’s drawing Contact: Raimundo Martins is Professor of Art Education at the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. He holds a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University and was Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona, Spain in 2005 and 2006. Contact: Gisele Torres Martini is Website and Book Editor of Digital Art& Magazine. Ms Martini received a specialist degree in Art and Technology from UNB Brasília University in 2006. She lives in Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brazil. Contact: <[email protected]> Kazuji Mogi is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, Gunma University. He has planned and implemented many art-based workshops worldwide including Italy, Philippines and Indonesia. Contact: <[email protected]> Christine Ballengee Morris is Associate Professor of Art Education and American Indian Studies at The Ohio State University. She is the founding director of The Multicultural Center that explores current diversity issues and provides programming and student support. She is a past president of the United States Society for Teaching through Art and co-wrote Interdisciplinary approaches to art education in high school, published by the National Art Education Association. Her research examines social justice, social reconstructivism and postcolonialism as they relate to arts policy, curricula development, integrated curriculum, pedagogy and identity, and she is trained to lead Social Justice workshops and mediation. Contact: <[email protected]> Durgadas Mukhopadhyay was Contract Professor in the Faculty of Theatre and Television University of Rome. He is consultant to UNESCO, UNEP, UNDP and UNICEF and grantee of the Ford Foundation for documentation and research on mask dances of India. He has taught in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Osaka Cagliari and Sassari universities. He has translated Sanskrit treatises like the Gitagovinda, Natayshastra into contemporary English and organized nearly 100 performances of folk theater and dance. He has written and produced plays in English, Bengali, Hindi and Sanskrit and written numerous books and articles on classical art and culture, performance, folk arts, tribal life and social communication. He has produced fourteen films on cultural and anthropological subjects for Indian TV, RAI, Rome and Swiss television. Contact:
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Motoki Nagamori is Professor of Art Education in the Faculty of Education, Wakayama University. He is well known as a critical art educator. He is a vice-president of The Association of Art Education. Contact: Toshio Naoe is Associate Professor at Tsukuba University. He is an active art educator and researches international art education. Contact: Victoria Pavlou currently lectures at the University of Cyprus and at Frederick College in Cyprus. She is also a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Humanities, University of the Aegean, Greece. Her teaching focuses on visual arts and education at undergraduate level and gender and visual arts at postgraduate level. Her research interests include primarily pupils’ learning preferences, initial and continuing teacher education and art and new technologies. Contact <[email protected]> Martha Prata-Linhares is Website and Books Editor of Digital Art& Magazine. Ms Prata-Linhares received a master’s degree from PUC/SP São Paulo Catholic University in 2003 and is a doctoral student in Education at PUC/SP São Paulo Catholic University. She is also a professor at Uberaba University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate programs and a researcher with the Teacher Education in Practice research group. She lives in Uberaba, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Contact: <[email protected]> Jane Quon is an installation/multimedia artist who has regularly exhibited major works in both gallery and non-gallery public settings. She has conducted research into interdisciplinary applications of art, in particular regarding synergies between art and science. She has applied this research to art education contexts within the Tasmanian School of Art, Utas, and forged links with major science organizations. As a Postdoctoral Fellow she conducted the research and produced the artworks that formed the evaluation instruments for the project reported in this book. Contact: <www.utas.edu.au/acme/home.html; [email protected]> Daniela Reimann is Researcher and Lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts, Institute of Aesthetic and Cultural Education, University of Flensburg, North Germany. In 2005/06 she was Visiting Professor in the Department of Art Education at the University of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria. Her Ph.D. from the University of Kiel was based on the interdisciplinary model-project ArtDeCom of the German Bund-Länder-Commission. She was awarded a Magister Artium (Master of Arts degree) in art education and literature in 1994 and a Diploma in Pedagogy of Media Technology in 1997. Her research focuses on digital media and arts in schools and initial teacher training and interdisciplinary media arts education. For her publications, see http: //www.daniela-reimann.de/publikationen.html. Blog: Contact: Jurema Luzia de Freitas Sampaio-Ralha is Editor in Chief of Digital Art& Magazine. Ms SampaioRalha received a master’s degree in Visual Arts from UNESP São Paulo State University, Julio de Mesquita Filho in Brazil in 2003. She teaches art education classes at UNIP Paulista University in Jundiaí, São Paulo, to students of the Education Institute. She lives in Campinas, São Paulo but was born in Rio de Janeiro. Contact: <[email protected]> Lourdes K. Samson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Humanities Department in Miriam College, Quezon City, Philippines, where she has completed twenty years of service as a teacher of Humanities and Art History. She is active in the school’s community programme in adult education. Her outreach involvement includes the Coca Cola Foundation’s training programme for art teachers (Guhit Bulilit), Metropolitan Museum of Manila’s art programme for children, the Ayala Museum programme for Don Bosco out-of-school youth centre and Tuklas Talino children’s art programme sponsored by Philippine Long Distance Telecommunications Company (PLDT). Lourdes Samson is presently a world councillor of InSEA. Contact:
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Yuuka Sato is Assistant Researcher at the National Museum of Japanese History. She develops and plans creative workshops. She worked at the National Museum of Ethnology for many years and developed learning packages for school children. Contact: Robyn Stewart is Associate Professor, Head of Visual Arts and Director of Research for the Faculty of Arts at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. She co-ordinates the Visual Arts Honours and Masters programmes and teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in aesthetics, art theory and practitioner research. Robyn’s research explores issues of creative praxis; the role of the arts in cultural brokerage in regional and remote regions in Australia and the construct of neo-narratives. Contact: <[email protected]> Manoela Souza studied theatre education at the State University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. She is an arts educator and cultural activist who has been working with landless, indigenous, trade union and university communities in Brazil since 1998. Her project collaborations have contributed to the development of ‘cultural literacy’ as a pedagogical proposal for personal and community selfdetermination which she is currently exploring through dance. She is the founder-coordinator of ABRA, the Brazilian Association of Art Educators, and co-director of the IDEA 2010 World Congress. Contact: <[email protected]> <www.idea-org.net> Patricia L. Stuhr is Professor and Chair of the Art Education Department at The Ohio State University. Dr Stuhr received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and taught art in K-12 schools for fourteen years and taught evening art classes in prisons for eleven years. She has done extensive research and writing in the area of contemporary Wisconsin Native American visual culture, artists and multicultural art education. She received a Fulbright Award to teach and research multicultural art education and integrated curriculum at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, Finland, and was presented the Ziegfeld Award from the United States Society of Education through the Arts for her contributions to multicultural cross-cultural studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Irene Tourinho is Professor of Art Education at the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. She has a Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and was Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona in Spain from 2005 to 2006. Contact: Daniel A. H. Vesta is Professor of Art Education at The Ohio State University. Her background includes public school teaching and working as an education specialist for the Illinois Office of Education Department of Urban and Ethnic Education in Chicago. Dr Daniel has co-authored grades one through five textbooks and instructional materials: Art Express published by Harcourt Brace and How History and Culture Come Together as Art sponsored by the Getty Education Institute for the Arts. She also co-curated the exhibition African Influences in Contemporary Art: Artists and teaches a course called ‘Art Education as a Community Act’. Contact: Andree Woodcock is Senior Research Fellow and postgraduate tutor, School of Art and Design at Coventry University and specializes in Ergonomics and Design Research. Contact:
INDEX Page numbers in italic refer to illustrations. Aotearoa New Zealand, 24–29 Arendt, Hannah, 65 Art and Design in National Curriculum (Britain), 103–105 Arts Council England, 233, 241 Arts in New Zealand Curriculum, 24–25, 28 As-Salaam (‘Source of Peace’) project, 233–242 238, 239 Asahi de Art workshops, 142–144 assessment, and fiscal policy, 42–43 Australia, 17, 171–178 Ballengee-Morris, C, 86 Balrow, Baljit, 106–109 Self-portrait with Union Jack, 108 Barbosa, Professor Ana Mae, 151 Barenboim, Daniel, 225–226 Barents region, 197–209 Barros, A.M. de, 150 Beardsley, John, 56 Belgium, 111–117 Bennet, Tony, 53 Berrueta, Domínguez, 64 blended learning, 121–128 Bourdieu, Pierre, 55 Braidotti, R, 65 Brazil, 9, 16, 17, 18 critical pedagogy, 63–66 Land is Life mosaic, 69–80, 70–78 Revista Digital Art& magazine, 149–156 Britain and UK, 16, 17–18, 40 British national identity, 102, 105 Muslim communities, 231–242 national curriculum, 97–109
British-Muslim communities, 231–242 British national, 102 British, 102 British national identity, 105 Britkid website, 106 Brookes, Vincent, 86, 86–87 Brown, Gordon, 103 Bush, George W, 214–215, 214-215 Canhavato, Cristóvão Estavão, 238, 238 Carnap, Rudolf, 190 Cayman Islands, 16, 49–59 Chauda, Meera, 99–101 Untitled, 100 children’s art Ethiopian village, 258, 261, 263 peace images, 238, 239 Philippines, 265–268, 266–267 post-traumatic, 243–250, 248 self-portraiture, 104, 103–107 war images, 91, 214–221, 224, 248 Citizenship in National Curriculum (Britain), 101–102, 104–106 Clifford, James, 55 Codd, J., 28 community-based design, 205–209 Community Cohesion Review Team (CCRT), 232–233 community education, 161–169 computers, in art education, 121–128 conferences Future of Multicultural Britain conference, 98, 102–103 Landcare Conference, Queensland, 175–176
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Nga waka conference, 26–27 Te whakatere: Navigating with the arts in the Pacific conference, 26, 27–28 UNESCO General Conference, 240–242 UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education, 13, 14 contemporary artworks, 97–109 Corazza, Ronnie, 163, 164 creativity, and policy, 39–41 critical pedagogy, introducing, 63–66 cultural brokerage, 171–178 cultural identity, 11, 21–22, 97–108 personal, 85–86 cultural literacy, 69–80 culture definitions of, 85, 172 national and global, 86–88 curriculum see also national curriculum and fiscal policy, 42–43 and identity, 102–103 and social justice, 81–94 Denzin, N., 64 Desai, N., 84 Dewey, John, 190 digital media, 132–138, 149–156 Dilbert, Leonard, 50 drama, 131–138
e-curriculum magazine, 155 e-learning, 123–124 eDraw, 127 Eisner, Elliot, 194–195 environmental art, 197–209 environmental education, 33–37, 181–186, 182 Ethiopian Jews, 257–263, 257–263 ethnic identity, 104–107 Face (in) the Mirror workshop, 111–117, 112–117 Fedje, Randal, 176 Finland, 17 fiscal policy, and curriculum, 42–43 Fischer, Ernst, 190 Fleming, David, 58 Florida, Richard, 40 Flying Arts Inc., 176–178 folk arts, 33–38 Freedman, Kelly, 10 Freeman, N. H., 268
Freire, Paulo, 64, 66 Future of Multicultural Britain conference, 98, 100–101 Gaine, Chris, 109 Germany, 16, 131–138 Giant Sequoia project, 181–186 Giroux, H., 64, 65, 173 global and national culture, 86–88 Goodman, Nelson, 190 Grierson, E.M., 27 Guernica (Picasso), 227–228
Halanot 18 journal, 224, 224 heritage, history and tradition, 84–85 Hewett, Robert, 45–46 Huhmarniemi, Maria, installation in Momansk, 199, 200 Hurricane Katrina, 87, 87 Hydes, Bendel, 53 Hylton, Teri, 99 Object of Desire, 99 hypermedia, 131–138 identity British national, 105–106 and contemporary art, 98–100 cultural, 11, 21–22, 85–86, 97–109 and curriculum, 102–103 ethnic, 105–116 professional, 100–101 and self-expression, 44–45 identity research, 97–109 Illeris, Helene, 45 Impact of Event Scale (IES), 246–249, 253 India, 33–37 informal education (Sementinha experiment), 161–169 interculturalism, 10–11 International Dialogues in Art Education (congress), 13–15 International Drama/Theatre and Education Association (IDEA), 13–14 International Society for Education Through Art (InSEA), 13–14, 218 International Society for Music Education (ISME), 13–14 Iraqi war, 17–18, 86, 214–221, 214–221 Islamic art and imagery, 226–227, 241 see also As-Salaam (‘Source of Peace’) project
INDEX |
Israel, 17–18, 223–229, 257–263 Israeli-Palestinian arts projects, 225–226 Itamar, Professor, 151 Jagodzinski, Jan, 27 Jahnke, Robert, 26, 27 Jan Mohamed, Abdul, 54 Japan, 16–17 Johansson, Birgitta, sculptures at Salla, 198 Jokela, Timo, 206 Jowell, Jeffrey, 50 Jung, Carl, 164 Kasarhérou, Emmanuel, 22, 25 Kastello, Lisa, 45 Keane, Webb, 55 Kincaid, Jamaica, 54 Kincheloe, J., 64, 65 Koudela, Professor Ingrid, 151 Lacy, Suzanne, 206 Land is Life mosaic, 69–80, 70–78 Landcare Conference, Queensland, 175–176 Livingston, Jane, 56 Lukacs, Gyorgy, 190–191 MacDonald, Andrew, 176 magazines, digital, 149–156 marine ecology, 187–194 Martins, Professor Miriam Celeste, 151 McLaren, P., 64, 65 Medeiros, Dr Afonso, 151 media, digital, 132–138, 133, 134, 136, 137, 149–156 media literacy, 131–138 media technology, 141–147 MediaArtLab@School, 131, 132, 137, 138 Mel, Michael, 27 Mikko, Anita, sculptures at Salla, 198 Miss Lassie, 56 Morris, David, 85 multiculturalism, 10–11 multiculturism, in the United States, 81–84 multiculturist societies, developing, 69–80 murals, 184–186, 186 Murray, Gilbert, 190 Muslim communities, in Britain, 231–242 national and global culture, 86–88 national curriculum absence of in United States, 43–44 in Britain, 97–109
National Gallery (Cayman Islands), 53–58 national identity, British, 97–109 neo-colonialism, 10–11 Neruda, Pablo, 30 New Zealand, 24–29 New Zealand Curriculum Framework, 24 Nga waka conference, 26–27 No Child Left Behind (NCLB), 42–43 nomadic consciousness, and critical pedagogy, 64–65 Okuyama, Misako, 98–99, 100–101, 106–107 The Snake, 98 Ott, Robert, 9 Pacific region, 21–30 Palmer, J.A., 33–34 Pareyson, L., 152 Parsons, M., 268 peace see As-Salaam (‘Source of Peace’) project Pereira, Beverly, 50 personal cultural identity, 85–86 Peters, Michael, 25 Philippines, 18, 265–268 Picasso, Guernica, 227–228 Pillsbury, Valerie, 183 Plato’s Cave, 116–117 Plowman, I., 172–173 policy in art education, 39–47 and creativity, 39–41 fiscal, 42–43 responding to, 43–44 and self-expression, 41–42 political art and imagery, 227–229 post-colonization and art education, 49–59 post-traumatic stress disorder, 243–253 Powell, Colin, 86, 86–87 professional identity, of artists, 100–101 public art, 205–208 public sphere, and critical pedagogy, 65–66 puppet theatre, in India, 33–34, 36 Queensland Murray Darling Committee, 175 Quon, Jane, 191–193, 192, 193 race, media representations of, 87 racism, 100–102 Revista Digital Art& magazine, 149–156 Rice, Condoleezza, 86, 86–87 Rocha, Tião, 163 Rogoff, Irit, 55–56
277
278
| INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUES ABOUT VISUAL CULTURE, EDUCATION AND ART
Rossholm, Margaretha, 213 Rumsfeld, Donald, 218, 220 Saddam Hussein, 212, 212 Said, Edward, 225–226 Sampaio-Ralha, Jurema, 151 São Paulo, 161–169 Sasayama Children’s Museum workshop, 144–147 Save the Redwoods League, 17, 182–186 science/art affiliations, 190–191 scientific illustration, 183–185, 185 Sculthorpe, Peter, 194 secondary education, European, 127–128 self-expression and identity, 44–45 and policy, 41–42 self-portraiture, 104, 103–107, 107 Sementinha informal education experiment, 161–169 images, 162, 163, 164, 165 Shadowcaster installation, 117 Shohat, Ella, 56 Sisters United, 234–235 site-specific design, 205–209 social justice, 187–194 and curriculum, 81–94 South Africa, 117 South-East Asia, 187–194 South Pacific, 15–16 South Project, 28–29 Spain, 16, 115–117 special needs, children with, 141–147 Stam, Robert, 56 Stewart, Andrew, 176 Stöcke, Antti, installation, 203 storytelling, 133–138, 165–166, 166 Straw, Jack, 103 student teachers see teacher training sustainable communities, 171–178 Sweden, 17–18 Tanay, Emil, 224 Te whakatere: Navigating with the arts in the Pacific conference, 26, 27–28 teacher training, 124–128, 137–138, 202
terrorism, 88–93, 90 To Reap for Gold exhibition (Quon), 191–193, 192, 193 Todes, S., 116 tourism Barents region, 204, 208 Cayman Islands, 57 tradition, history and heritage, 84–85 Trans Barents Highway Symposium of Art, 198–209 images, 198, 199, 201, 203, 207, 208, 209 Tweed, William, 183 UK see Britain and UK UNESCO, 21–24 General Conference, 240–241 Medium-Term strategy (2002–2007), 23 World Conference on Arts Education, 13, 14 United Nations Environmental Programme, 33, 37 United States, 16, 17 curriculum and social justice, 81–94 Giant Sequoia project, 181–186 policy in art education, 40–44 visual culture, and social justice, 81–94 visual literacy, 121–128 Walkup, Geraldine, 183 war, in children’s art, 214–221, 224–225, 243–250 images, 91, 214–220, 224, 248 Web-aided learning, 200–209 West, Cornel, 50–51 West-Eastern Divan workshop, 225–226 Williams, Dr Meryl, 188–189 Winchester, Simon, 56 workshops, 141–147 Asahi de Art, 142–144 An eye for detail (Stewart), 176 Face (in) the Mirror, 111–117, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117 West-Eastern Divan, 225–226 World Alliance for Arts Education, 14 World Wide Web, and art education, 121–128 World Fish Center project, 17, 187–194
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