Where Did We Go Right (and Wrong)? Reflecting on Definitions of Success and Failure With Youth Organizers

• In Event: A Praxis of Possibilities: Creative and Critical Research for Social Justice With Young People

Abstract

Objectives and framework: A relatively new subfield in art education, social justice art education merges critical pedagogy with art education to describe an iterative process by which people create works of art in an effort to impact conditions of inequality or injustice (Author, 2010). As a pedagogical approach, social justice education seeks to engage learners in a critical analysis of the factors of injustice through creating works of art that imagine new realities and shift ways of social interaction (Quinn, Hotchtritt & Ploof, 2012). Drawing on perspectives of young artists engaged in social justice art education, this paper highlights findings from an empirical study that identified the key learning processes involved in making art intended to impact society.

Research overview: Qualitative research methods provided the ideal tools to investigate the following question: What teaching and/or learning activities do youth identify in making activist art? To answer this question, I conducted a study of a free, museum-based class on activist art for New York City teens. Participants included fourteen youth aged fourteen to eighteen from public and private schools. Over multiple sessions, participants observed, discussed, and created their own works of activist art. Youth identified issues of injustice or inequality that were important to them, explored those issues through several studio activities, and created a final work of art that was shown in a public exhibit.

Author

• Marit Dewhurst, City College of New York - CUNY