Social Justice Art: A Framework for Activist Art Pedagogy

• In Event: 72.064 - Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: 72.064-7 - Reimagining: Youth Translating Theory With Action

Abstract

Over the past two decades, there has been an increase in programs that empower youth to create art for social justice. Through an empirical study of fourteen youth involved in an out-of-school activist art program, this paper draws from qualitative data to identify the key educational characteristics of activist art making––connecting, questioning, and translating—and to situate them within the scholarship on social justice education. By naming the ways in which learning takes shape when a young person uses art to address an issue of social inequality or injustice, the findings revealed in this study provide educators and advocates with a framework that describes how art can be an effective platform for socially engaged learning and teaching.

Author

• Marit Dewhurst, City College of New York - CUNY