Darlene E. Clover

Culture and Antiracisms in Adult Education: An Exploration of the Contributions of Arts-Based Learning:

Increasingly, practices of collective arts-based learning are being used by adult educators and community organizations as creative and participatory ways to respond to contemporary social or environmental issues. Investigating the potential contributions of arts-based learning to cross-cultural and antiracisms adult education was the aim of this qualitative comparative study in Ontario and British Columbia. Through the lens of antiracisms theories and from data obtained through open-ended interviews with project participants and artist-educators in three diverse arts projects, this article highlights some of the characteristics that make arts-based learning a culturally appropriate and effective, imaginative tool. But it also draws attention to the risks involved in creating public art and tacking difficult issues such as racism in contemporary Canadian society.

Successes and challenges of feminist arts-based participatory methodologies with homeless/street-involved women in Victoria

This feminist arts-based participatory research project with a group of homeless/street-involved women used group interviews and the creation of collective and individual artworks to explore their personal and political realities and share these with a larger audience. The project built trust and a sense of community, encouraged artistic skills development, and allowed to emerge an artistic identity to combat the stigma of the label ‘homeless’. Individual and collective empowerment came from creating artworks collectively but also, the recognition the women received through publicly sharing their artworks. Tensions and challenges emerged around art as education versus therapy, individual and collective works, the role and place of men, and mental health and the police, two things ever present in the lives of these women.

A Contemporary Review of Feminist Aesthetic Practices in Selective Adult Education Journals and Conference Proceedings

This feminist content analysis of selective adult education journals and conference proceedings draws on feminist aesthetic theory to develop a deeper understanding of women adult education scholars’ work with/in the arts. Four major categories identified were community cultural development, aesthetic civic engagement and knowledge mobilization, arts-based research, and art education. Within these were multidimensional and at times contesting themes of cultural justice, identity and agency, elitism and postmodernism in museums, artistic quality and collective process, personal and social transformation, and pleasure and subversion. Women’s diverse cultural practices contribute not only to liberatory or emancipatory struggles in feminist adult education but also to discourses of feminist aesthetic theory that all but ignore the educational potential of the arts.

Adult Education for Social and Environmental Change in Contemporary Public Art Galleries and Museums in Canada, Scotland and England.

Historically, pubic art galleries and museums have a well-deserved reputation for elitism, colonialism and exclusion and they are, therefore, frequently omitted from the discourse of adult education. However, the escalating social, cultural and ecological problems of this new century have placed pressure on these public institutions to change and respond. Using selective examples, this article attempts to illustrate public arts and cultural institutions as contested, problematic, challenging, yet equally progressive, critical and creative pedagogical spaces that play an important role in the struggle for social and environmental change. Through exhibitions, artworks, objects, workshops and seminars, these institutions trouble identity, decolonize, mock, revisualize, tell alternative stories, reorient authoritative practice, interrogate intolerance and privilege and stimulate critical literacies. We must continue to expose and critique traditions that perpetuate inequalities and maintain the status quo but in a world starved of hope, these sites provide new pedagogical possibilities.

Social movement learning: a contemporary re-examination

Welcome to this bumper special issue on social movement learning which, we believe, makes a timely and important contribution to the literature on the subject by exploring and articulating the links between adult learning and movements for progressive change. From the Arab Spring, to the democracy demonstrations in Spain, the new student movement in Chile and student and public sector mobilisation against welfare cuts in the UK, there are emerging signs and stories of public disquiet and unrest, new citizen action and social movement activity, which are questioning the hegemony of ‘there is no alternative’. Not surprisingly interest in social movements, their formation, growth and ways of working, is growing within the academic world and research can help inform the practice and activities of these movements. The study of social movements has never attracted such a level of interest since the late 1960s and the mid 1980s. Unlike the academic writing that emerged during this period however, the contemporary academic social movement scene is experiencing a growing number of scholars, from the ‘majority world’ and the Global North who are looking at the learning dimensions of social movements (see http://www.interfacejournal.net/). Many of these are ‘engaged scholars’ who are linked to local, regional or global movements themselves. Social movement learning, which has to some extent always been part of the radical tradition of adult education, is now attracting new and more sophisticated analyses, new research and new forms of expression and academic engagement. This special issue of Studies features what we believe is a stimulating mix of established scholars and newer voices. It features genuine diversity in terms of the range of social movement represented, the theoretical resources and interests which are drawn on, the research approaches and methods that have been utilised and the geographical scope of movements, their constituencies, and the aims they seek to achieve. It may seem patently obvious that movements move people, but the important point is that they do so in concerted ways, and the knowledge they create, and the

Feisty fabrics: Women's education, learning and activism through fabric arts in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract This article shares the findings of an international study of 28 fabric arts projects by individual, pairs or groups of women in British Columbia and Ontario in Canada and the north island of Aotearoa New Zealand. Using a feminist approach and lens we explored womens views of their fabric arts work. Our study shows that womens fabric arts/crafts provide important spaces for reflection, contemplation and individual and social learning. In both countries women demonstrated a passion for the process of creation, expressiveness and the artworks themselves, although many tended to undervalue their talent as artists. Two key differences emerged: external and internal censorship of the fabric arts; and the collective public nature of the work in Canada versus the individual approach of the women of Aotearoa New Zealand. The findings contribute to contemporary debates in feminist adult education and to feminist aesthetic theory by emphasising the importance of activist fabric arts in learning for social justice.

Knowing Their Place: Feminist Understandings and Perceptions of Women Adult Educators in Museums.

Arguing gender inequity remains one of the biggest challenges of our time, and framed within the concept of ‘pedagogic contact zones’, our article shares findings from a five-year feminist, cross-national study of women adult educators and community practitioners in public museums and art galleries in Canada and the United Kingdom. Findings show a general lack of feminist consciousness and pedagogical skills amongst these women, problematic essentialist depictions of women educators that contrast portrayals of curators, and an equation of feminism with ‘bias’. Yet there is a growing number of women who identify as feminists and take up women’s issues in a variety of ways. Museums have the ability to be sites of feminist adult education and make contributions to gender struggle.

Knowledge Democracy and Excellence in Engagement

We often come across theories and aspects related to ‘knowledge’, but seldom do we try to understand its hidden implications. Knowledge as understood generally is about the information of facts and understanding of a subject. This article essentially argues against this understanding. It explores the multiple dimensions of ‘knowledge’ through a literature review and illustrations of practical examples. It makes a case for how important the process of knowledge creation is, especially given current societal challenges. It also outlines the importance of co-creation of knowledge, through acknowledgement and valuation of alternate paradigms of knowledge. Further, it discusses the concept of ‘knowledge democracy’, and how institutions of higher education, by abiding by its principles, can help achieve ‘excellence in engagement’. The article concludes with the findings of two studies undertaken by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chair, which were based on the principles of ‘knowledge democracy’ and ‘excellence in engagement’.

Aesthetics, Society and Social Movement Learning

Visually illuminate. Aesthetically dissonante. Satirically implicate. Theatrically expropriate. Creatively resonate. Imaginatively educate. This is a chapter about the positionalities of the arts and the arts as educational practice in society and social movements. My passion for the arts began with my tenure with the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), a Toronto-based non-governmental ‘place of encounter’ for adult educators worldwide who shared a commitment to the critical and social purposes of adult education.

Women learning politics and the politics of learning: A feminist study of Canada and India

Abstract Our feminist cross-national comparative study explored the informal and nonformal education and learning of women politicians in Canada and India. Using individual interviews, focus groups, surveys and observations of training sessions we compared and contrasted socio-cultural contexts, challenges, education and learning philosophies, and diverse practices. The findings show that training programmes and the women themselves placed an emphasis on practical skill and knowledge, although this often did little to prevent tactical uses of power by men. In India, where literacy training is provided there exists a practical, tactical and emancipatory emphasis. In both countries, issues of identity as politicians are complex and hetero and other culturally normative practices pervade the educational process. Although the Indian educators apply a feminist lens, much of the training in Canada is non-gender-specific or tends towards ‘nonpartisanship’, thereby de-politicising the process. Important differences also exist in terms of how the educational programmes understand and make the links between women politicians and the community.