Creative Social Movements as Public Pedagogy

• In Event: Arts as Public Pedagogy: The Necessity of Engagement With Arts as Public Education

Abstract

Objectives

How and what can educational theorists and practitioners concerned with social justice education learn from the activist strategies, public pedagogies and educational interventions of global social movements? In this paper, we focus specifically on the synergies of creativity, pedagogy, and activism evidenced by such collectives as the Women’s Marches and Occupy Wall Street’s People’s Puppets.

This paper also considers the socio-spatial aspects of creative activism (Jasper 2008), from in-the-street actions to web-based communication networks, examining the in/visible labor required to build unintentional communities and intentional connectivity. We explore how young activists embody modalities of public pedagogy, interrogating how and when these creative/artistic modalities appear to have pedagogical effects over traditional forms of protest. Youth and feminist activism augments contemporary scholarship on networked communities, which too often disregards the significant relations between formal and informal learning networks (Bennett & Segerberg 2012).

Theoretical framework

To rethink social justice education, we draw from performance studies (Phelan 1993; Harris 2014), social movement theory (Jaspar 2008; Welty 2013; Postill 2014), and digital media education (Jenkins 2006) to explore digital ethnographies as new forms of public pedagogies and civic engagement made possible through social media platforms and information technologies (Bennett & Segerberg 2012). We outline how - in keeping with the rise of pervasive contemporary creative economies and creative industries discourses (Harris 2014; Flew 2013) - pedagogical work is increasingly playful (Hjorth 2016), creative and at times invisible as ‘formal learning’.

Methodology

Educational theorists help us re-examine young people’s relationships to civic engagement and democracy. We theorise recent social movements to understand how networked activist collectives and practices are tied to both local and global contexts, (Postill 2014; Welty 2013) and as such are crucial to culturally-responsive education and global youth cultures.This work engages feminist, digital, and ethnographic theory to understand how young people’s engagements with creativity and activism suggest new ways of thinking about activism as spaces for informal learning.

Data sources

This paper draws on popular media accounts, as well as interviews conducted in New York City with social movement activists. Additional sources used for triangulating data include close analysis of relevant Twitter hashtags/threads, Facebook pages, and media representation of creative and arts activist approaches.

Scholarly significance

Feminist and performance studies scholars (including Case 2009; Schechter 2003; Phelan 1993) have noted the productive links between creativity and activism, and the ways in which performance serves a public pedagogical function. Our analysis invites educators and scholars concerned with equity to explore the centrality of creativity and activism for developing innovative methodological approaches to public and social justice education.

Authors

• Anne Harris, RMIT University

• Stacy Holman Jones, Monash University