Pedagogical Links
Jagiellonian University
Pedagogy of Art Contemplation in Museum Contexts: How Young Audiences Engage with the Aesthetic Experience of Art
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carmen Urpí, Concha Iriarte, Charo Reparaz Abaitua, Fernando Echarri
The main objective of our study is to consider the pedagogical potential of the aesthetic experience in school visitors to contemporary art museums. Art contemplation is an opportunity to develop sensory, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual dimensions of human perception. To this end, museum educators must design their programs considering art contemplation as a practice that goes beyond artwork information, referring also to visitor personal and social context, shared with others, including the artists themselves. Through art experience, they can learn to find meaning in certain issues of their immediate environment. Furthermore, although most young audiences participate in museum proposals captively during school hours, these are an opportunity for a wide variety of adolescents -regardless of their family cultural background- to experience art contemplation, since many are unlikely to visit art museums by choice. Research methodology is based on descriptive analysis of specific aesthetic experience in school visitors while contemplating contemporary artworks. A previously validated instrument for this type of young public is used for data collection. Results demonstrate the need to develop this type of practice with young audiences, regardless of their previous cultural background, to promote involvement with contemporary art in the search for meaning and significance of life experience. Pedagogical implications are derived for museum aesthetic education with a focus on the engagement in contemporary art contemplation.
Applying Body Mapping Methodology as a Form of Individual and Collective Healing
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Moshoula Capous Desyllas
This paper highlights the ways in which body mapping methodology was used in a graduate-level arts-based research class in sociology. This course focused on applying various arts-based pedagogical approaches, with an emphasis on how the arts in education can be used for individual and collective healing, specifically during the trauma of a global pandemic. This study illuminates the artwork, voices, and experiences of the instructor and graduate students. I share the purpose and process of facilitating a body mapping workshop with graduate students. I will detail the artistic process, what the body maps represent, and the ways in which the arts-based assignment as a form of healing. Concluding thoughts discuss the strengths, limitations, and possibilities of using body mapping methodology for teaching and learning about arts-based research.
The Dynamic Changes from the Structure of a Classroom to a Drama Workshop Space – or Does It? : Exploring Questions of Agency and Dialogic Exchange within Arts Facilitation in an Irish School-based Participatory Theatre Project
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Triona Stokes
This paper is based on emergent findings from an engaged research project featuring a publicly funded school-based participatory project hosted by Ireland’s Civic Theatre. The More-Than-Human project is by Monkeyshine, an arts and theatre company with open and collaborative creative exploration fundamental to their stated methodologies of questioning and exploring, nurture and kindle. With arts funding policy emphasis securely on child voice and agency within the creation and curation of performance-based work for children, the nature of participation is researched, and the extent to which the work of the theatre artists represents a child-centred, democratic approach. Thus, pedagogies supporting child agency within the artistic practices of Monkeyshine are investigated to illustrate and underscore the means by which children contribute to exploratory workshops informing performance. The title emerges from the researcher’s draft analysis of the observed pre-production workshop, and an inherent assumption that the dynamic of the classroom space changes with the creation of the aesthetic space of theatre (Boal, 1995). Breaking down the physical order of the classroom and reducing the social distance between teacher and child, can serve to infuse trust in child and make conversation possible (Singh, 2004), with the affordance of such a space likened to Cahill’s (2014:235) space for enquiry. This leads to a discussion of the extent to which the nature of the dynamic change described can be expected in the given classroom environment, and the identification of the required conditions thereof, demanding an analysis of the pedagogy in use and the associated active methodologies.
‘How Do I Become an Artist?’ : Constructing an Artists’ Identity through Storytelling during a Global Pandemic View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sigrún Lilja Einarsdóttir
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the arts played an important role for people while coping during lockdown and other severe social restrictions. This paper introduces a work in progress, where the researcher conducts a self-observation of herself as an artist by constructing a brand personality through storytelling on social media. Data consisted of weekly YouTube videos during a 20-week period, followed with diary entries and self-reflections and reactions of followers (YouTube and Facebook). Each episode had a specific theme where I intertwined stories from my own childhood, background and surroundings, values, and world views with timelapse videos of the creative process of working on a painting (from the beginning to the end). Furthermore, during the period, the total of three art exhibitions were promoted with good results. Primary findings indicate that the videos and the narrative evolved from the traditional documentary style to the sharper, almost TikTok like formats, where the emphasis on the timelapse of the creative process seemed to be the element that the followers preferred (as well as the researcher). The narrative part of the study helped the artist to gain footing in identifying her inner core as an artist; to go straight to the roots and work through her childhood trauma and reconciliation. As previously indicated, this is a work in progress and as such it considers insights into the narrative and creative process of the artist.
