About This Publication
The advance of neo-liberal policies across global borders has increased interest in the imagination and creativity. For some, this means innovative products, increased productivity and more effective and applicable outcomes. However, for those who believe that the social and economic fabrics of many communities are fraying under neo-liberal policies and gloabilisation, the arts and the imagniation are viewed as forces for resistance and movement towards social justice.
The authors contend that 'the arts' are capable of engaging the disinterested and the disenfranchised. They argue that within the realm of arts and crafts there exist alternative spaces and practices of critical social learning, in which engagement with symbolic aesthetic media can raise issues of critique, choice, debate and control.
This book makes a contribution beyond the mainstream by suggesting a theoretical reconnection of arts practice with ideas of empowerment, autonomy and self-definition as central building blocks of active citizenship.
"...a welcome escape from the dreary, instrumental, and increasingly coercive, preoccupation with skills for work and crowd control..." (Jane Thompson)
"Any adult educator could benefit from reading The Arts and Social Justice... come away inspired" (Katherine McManus, Simon Fraser University)
Contents
| Introduction | Darlene E. Clover and Joyce Stalker |
| Section One | Teaching and Learning Art We disobey to love: Rebel clowning for social justice – Isabelle Fremeaux and Hilary Ramsden Educating socially responsive practitioners: What can the literary arts offer health professional education? – Anne Elizabeth Kinsella |
| Section Two | The Emancipatory Potential of Arts-Based
Adult Learning Everyone performs, everyone has a place: Camp fYrefly and arts-informed community-based education, cultural work and inquiry – André P.Grace and Kristopher Wells Tapestries through the making: Quilting as a valuable medium of feminist adult education and arts-based inquiry – Darlene E. Clover |
| Section Three | Arts-based Learning and Democracy
Voyeurism | consciousness-raising | empowerment: Opportunities and challenges of using legislative theatre to ‘practise democracy’ – Catherine Etmanski Journey to a (bi) cultural identity: Fabric, art/craft and social justice in Aotearoa / New Zealand – Nora West and Joyce Stalker |
| Section Four | Arts and Community Development
Passion and politics through song: Recalling music to the arts-based debates in adult education – Francesca Albergato-Muterspaw and Tara Fenwick Weaving community: Social and economic justice in the mountains – Penne Lane |