As an artist, educator, and researcher who has worked in the field of art for social change in Canada and abroad for over 40 years, I am delighted to see this very approachable and useful book.
Anyone needing to be convinced of the transformational power of arts-infused education needs to read this collection of detailed and sometimes provocative essays. If you are already integrating art for social change into your work, you will be offered a panoply of methods and guiding philosophies, and you will be able to hear the voices of project participants as they describe the changes they experienced. Readers who are simply curious about education and art for social change (ASC) may well become converts to these effective and enlivening approaches to teaching and learning.
Comprehensive methodological detail, excellent references to seminal scholarly publications, and, especially, the voices of participant learners (or co-creators) come together to produce a persuasive validation of education through participatory arts. This book challenges us to think critically about what really matters.
The collection includes work from Canada and the US, Norway, India, Hong Kong, and South Africa. The authors describe how they integrated visual, performance, and literary arts into their work, recount what happened during these processes and provide analyses of impacts.
Despite the diversity of contexts and approaches, these essays reveal remarkably common themes and findings. In many of these case studies—referred to as “snapshots” by the editors—we read about how participants experienced self-empowerment and new agency; how they further developed curiosity and awareness; and how a sense of possibility and active engagement was nurtured. Silence was transformed into expression. Bodies, minds and emotions were connected—head, hands and hearts—reminding us all that they are inseparable.
Many of the writers explore how ASC builds community, penetrates cultural barriers, and destroys stereotypes. Through exposure to the arts, to collective and individual artmaking, as well as to dialogue and reflection, a more inclusive and expansive view of the world inside and outside of the classroom is nurtured. Critical perspective is developed in the framework of a broader and more detailed understanding of both local and global issues.
In a time of profound polarisation (and some would say deep cynicism), the experience of inclusion and equity, of listening and imagining, and of dialogue through metaphor becomes a powerful tool for emancipation. These educators, scholars, and community activists address issues of social and environmental justice (including the human rights of children), of trauma and oppression, and suggest actions that can be taken to encourage new ways of being and acting in the world. Over and over, we read about how energising and effective these unpredictable and surprising processes can be.
Risk-taking and risk-evaluation come along with these approaches and some of these projects lead to an entry into areas beyond the usual and conventional. Writers suggest that these processes demand a critical re-imagination of the power and role of the educator (as we begin to think about the teacher as facilitator rather than as traditional instructor) and of the researcher (as we learn to view participants as active co-researchers rather than as passive subjects). They also question and challenge the long-lived hierarchical systems within which many teachers and students operate, and pose questions about how educators, themselves, are educated.
The examples in this book describe a growing global movement. The battle to legitimise ASC work is being waged around the world, aided by the now extensive and compelling evidence of its positive impact on individuals and communities, and its power to accomplish even systemic change.
This collection of provocative pieces offers us stories rather than just masses of data. Since ASC approaches put more emphasis on process rather than on the ultimate art objects or events, the authors suggest that the impacts of both process and product must be evaluated in different qualitative, quantitative, and art-based ways.
It is notable that the few longitudinal studies that exist refer to how former students are able, many years later, to remember the pictures they painted and the songs and dances they performed then. A story told by a father to a former teacher comes to mind: the sudden memory of a poem about violence that he and classmates had created ten years earlier had stayed his hand when he was just about to strike his partner. Once the door is opened .…
Since technocratic and data-driven forces sometimes overpower our ability to connect with each other in more than superficial ways, I hope that readers will enjoy the messages of generosity, inclusion, expansiveness, and hope that permeate this book. Art as an Agent for Social Change offers inspiring approaches to education and research, and to changing the world.
We are born with great powers of imagination. When we are encouraged to use and share this capacity, change becomes more than a desire: we create new understandings and possibilities.
Perhaps readers of this book will be inspired to write a poem, to dance or to sing, to draw an image or to share a story!
Judith Marcuse
Founder and Artistic Director, Judith Marcuse Projects
Founder and Co-director, International Centre of Art for Social Change
Senior Fellow, Ashoka Canada