Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This paper details the work done as part of a transdisciplinary creative pedagogical project entitled Black love: Expressions of Blackness through arts-based research and pedagogy as a part of a year-long community engagement fellowship. For this fellowship the authors built on their previous work on Black Love, combining the creative arts, interdisciplinary pedagogy, and research to develop experiential and project-based learning opportunities in two university-level courses and art exhibitions at a university gallery. The purpose of this project was to encourage and amplify student voices, preparing them to recognize the importance of creativity, scholarship, leadership, community engagement, and social justice initiatives both on campus, in the local community, nationally, and globally. The project was also designed to help students see themselves as change agents and to demonstrate the various ways in which their movements and communities can benefit from an art-centered, interdisciplinary approach which has its epistemological and pedagogical foundations in marginalized, minoritized, and transnational experiences. Our study focuses on our approach to this project, which we believe has the ability to build a network of empowered creative scholars and student leaders who are engaged and can make a difference locally and globally.