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Feeling Like a Movement: Visual Cultures of Educational Resistance

Sat, April 18, 2:45 to 4:15pm, Marriott, Floor: Third Level, Dupage

Abstract

Highlighting art and memes generated before and during the 2013 Chicago Teacher’s Union strike, with interviews with key educational social movement participants, this research contributes to critical policy studies by exploring how art, design, and images of struggle are used to shape sentiment, inspire action, and inform policy. A core interest is the relationship of creative cultural products to normative and resistant policy configurations (Gildersleeve, 2013).
Building from the archive of photographs produced by documentarian Sarah Jane Rhee during the 2013 strike, and digital forms, including memes, tweets, Facebook posts and more, created and compiled by organizer Kenzo Shibata in his role as social media strategist for the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU), this research reveals and analyzes images of public education resistance that center teachers and community members. These visual texts, created and recorded by teachers, union staffers, and community members, mobilized participation in the marches and rallies leading up to and held during the 2013 work stoppage. Our participatory interpretive research investigated these cultural products in the context of online and face-to-face dialogs with their creators (Bergold & Thomas, 2012).
While a diversity of themes emerged from analysis of the data and discussion, this research focuses on the powerful, creative, and often witty pairings of text with images in posters generated by teachers; the specific role of internet-based art in galvanizing energy and conveying political ideas (meme development); and the emotional labors attached to social media work in movement-building.
This presentation shares results of our project examining the role of art and media production in the 2013 CTU strike and in wider social and political movements surrounding educational justice. In particular, our research reveals the cultural value of arts labor in organizing; how this creative work in social movement produces feelings and meanings; and the ways that these shifts in ideas and affects register in policy. Through this contribution we hope to illuminate the ways that creative practices play central and affective roles in social movements.

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