Vol. 13 No. 1 (2017)

EDITORIAL

Rita L. Irwin

Pages: 3–5

ARTICLES

Children make observational films – exploring a participatory visual method for art education

Nigel Meager

Pages: 7–22

Abstract: In a well-established domain of social anthropology, observational filmmakers employ digital video cameras and audio-visual editing as a research method to investigate human experience. They embrace qualities such as the material, sensory, aesthetic and ineffable. To review this visual method for art education, this article presents film extracts from the Childhood and Modernity project led by anthropologist David MacDougall. Indian children, 10–12 years of age, shot digital video material to create new knowledge about the circumstances of their lives. This keeps qualities that are difficult or impossible to put into words at the foreground of the research. The article also discusses how MacDougall prepared children to use a video camera for observational filmmaking by teaching specific skills that facilitate close observation and analysis through audio-visual means. In this way,

MacDougall’s methodology and methods present a challenge and an opportunity for both art education research and classroom teaching.

Sustaining Huaco making in Perú: A decolonizing study with a native knowledge bearer

Amanda Alexander

Pages: 23–41

Abstract: This article investigates the extensive knowledge and experience of a traditional Peruvian huaco maker named Lorenzo Cabrera Abanto. Huaco is a pre-Columbian pottery form that western museums and literature identify as a portrait jar or vessel. Lorenzo is discussed as a living repository of ancient heritage and Andean art making for those unfamiliar with its expressions. Due to globalization

and changing dynamics in Peruvian culture and economy, huaco making as an expression of Peruvian heritage is threatened. Examining huaco making and history through a decolonizing lens, Lorenzo’s life and work as a native knowledge bearer is considered in light of globalization, the demands of the capitalist markets, theoretical premises of critical pedagogues, and concerns of an art educator. Confronting cultural interactions and shifting global paradigms, the arts education field can productively draw on critical art pedagogy that is informed by diverse discourses and reveres Native wisdom and knowledge of living art forms such as those sustained by Lorenzo.

The changing face of students in New Zealand: Are visual arts teachers keeping pace?

Jill Smith

Pages: 43–59

Abstract: The changing face of students in secondary schools in New Zealand is evident from the population statistics in the 2013 national census. The greatest numbers of young people under 20 years now come from ethnically diverse groups. In contrast, visual arts teachers remain predominantly European New Zealand. This article reports on research conducted in 2015 that investigated how secondary school visual arts teachers are responding to the increasing ethnic and cultural diversity

of their students. It focuses on one key finding – that 16–18-year-old students who study visual arts at years 12 and 13 are being empowered by their predominantly European New Zealand teachers to express their individual identities using three pedagogical approaches. The stories of the students, articulated through the voices of their visual arts teachers, are visualized in examples of their artworks. The data illustrates how these teachers are keeping pace, albeit in differing ways.

Comparing, contrasting and synergizing Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) and Aesthetic Education strategies in practice

Christina Chin

Pages: 61–75

Abstract: This article details understandings from a pilot study based on interviews with student teachers experienced in the implementation of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) and Aesthetic Education strategies. I aim to share the perspectives of these practitioners regarding some of the major similarities and differences between VTS and the Aesthetic Education strategy, and to highlight what they experienced as the primary challenges and benefits to implementing each strategy. Based on their experiences, it appears that VTS and Aesthetic Education can be integrated as complementary and synergistic strategies. Equipped with this information, I anticipate that K-12 educators, and educators of pre-service art teachers, will be able to make sounder choices and suggestions regarding the use of

these strategies.

The Museum of Innocence: Five concepts for challenging the status quo in art education

Ismail Ozgur Soganci

Pages: 77–93

Abstract: In 2012, novelist Orhan Pamuk, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature, created a museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Awarded ‘European Museum of the Year’ by the Council of Europe in 2014, Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence represents a personal, local and small-scale model for museums. Crafted first as a novel of fiction and later as a real-life museum, the interplay of the novel–museum

duo unfolds a love story through a collection of objects. The article, investigating Pamuk’s curatorial lenses in arranging the museum collection, elaborates on five concepts extracted from this unconventional museum: Proximity to everyday objects, suggestiveness, polyphony, enquiry through the arts, and emphasis on the individual. By examining these key concepts in relation to and within the

museum context, the article encourages discussion to challenge the status quo in approaching artworks and provides insight towards relevant practice for art educators who have close proximity to current art practices in art museums and similar institutions.

Dancing in the gallery: Opening children’s eyes and mobilizing their response to art, reflections on a DART project

Barb Snook and Carol Brown

Pages: 95–110

Abstract: Well into the twenty-first-century performing and visual arts education and practice

are at a critical juncture. While the demands on arts practitioners (including teachers, performers and artists) have become increasingly interdisciplinary and collaborative, training and education in arts within mainstream education in Aotearoa, New Zealand, remain tied to discrete disciplinary categories. Students study music, dance, visual arts and drama and specialize in one or more of these as they progress, but where do we see them learning about these arts forms in combination and dialogue? The Dance and Art (DART) project aims to create an interdisciplinary and intergenerational model of peer-to-peer learning that is collaborative, situated and culturally relevant.

VISUAL ESSAYS

Moments of (aha!) walking and encounter: Fluid intersections with place

Geraldine Burke, Alexandra Lasczik Cutcher, Corinna Peterken and Miriam Potts

Pages: 111–12

In contemporary art, research and art education, the concepts of walking and mapping in singular and collaborative encounters with place are established as a generative learning, creative and research event. In this iteration of walking and encounter, four arts academics sought to extend and engage the practice of itinerant drift, collaboratively and discretely, mapping manifestations and then responding

with an artful riposte in relation to educational practice. Using the provocation of playfulness, the methodology was inspired by the concept of the dérive and stimulated by Dada, Surrealist and Fluxus legacies. This visual essay portrays the assemblage of walking and encounter at the Peninsula campus site at Monash University through visual poetics, which aims to arouse continuing dialogue

around place, learning, encounter, chance and disruption.

‘Humorous financial crisis cartoons’: A visual essay of an elementary school art project

Martha Christopoulou

Pages: 123–30

This visual essay reports on the first part of an eight-week resilience art programme at a public primary school in Athens, Greece. The students were asked to create humorous cartoons as a response to the financial crisis. Humour as coping mechanism can defuse tension and anxiety and may lead to more positive re-appraisals of the financial crisis and as such contribute to developing children’s resilience.

Αυτό το οπτικό δοκίμιο αναφέρεται στο πρώτο μέρος ενός προγράμματος ψυχικής ανθεκτικότητας και εικαστικής αγωγής το οποίο διήρκεσε οκτώ εβδομάδες και έλαβε χώρα σε ένα δημόσιο δημοτικό σχολείο στην Αθήνα. Οι μαθητές δημιούργησαν χιουμοριστικά καρτούν ανταποκρινόμενοι στο ζήτημα της οικονομικής κρίσης. Το χιούμορ ως μηχανισμός αντιμετώπισης καταστάσεων μπορεί να απαλύνει εντάσεις και άγχη, να οδηγήσει σε μια

πιο θετική αντιμετώπιση της οικονομικής κρίσης και ως εκ τούτου να συμβάλει στην ανάπτυξη της ψυχικής ανθεκτικότητας.

BOOK REVIEWS

Art, Education and Gender: The Shaping of Female Ambition, Gill Hopper (2015)

Elizabeth Garber

Pages: 131–33

Culturally Sensitive Art Education in a Global World: A Handbook for Teachers, Marjorie Cohee Manifold, Steve Willis and Enid Zimmerman (eds) (2016)

Anabela Moura

Pages: 133–35

Developing Visual Arts Education in the United States: Massachusetts Normal Art School and the Normalization of Creativity, Mary Stankiewicz (2016)

Mary Stokrocki

Pages: 135–37