Working group: Engagement Education
in the frame of How to Live & Work Now?
How to develop better ways of working in the performing arts sector today – and in the future? As part of How to Live and Work Now?, we are inviting six artists, collectives and researchers to set up self-organized collective working groups.
Higher art education offers students a challenging and safe environment in which they can develop their artistic visions and capacities. At least that's the idea. In practice, art schools still struggle daily with many forms of discrimination and harassment. If we want safe, critical and ethical learning spaces in the arts, we need to nourish a different image of change on all levels of the institutions.
This is why Engagement Education wants to design a 24h course (spread over the course of several days) addressing urgent topics like sexism, racism, ableism, classism, cis-heteronormativity, harassment and power abuse. The training will include theoretical lecture, reading lists, case studies and analysis, participatory moments and self-evaluating interviews. They see the course as mandatory for pedagogical staff, but think it could be of interest for anyone involved in art education.
This project is proposed by Engagement Education, a working group of Engagement Arts focusing on the study and analysis of discrimination, harassment and abuse of power in higher art education. Working with schools and their communities, Engagement Education strives to support the implementation of change within pedagogical, administrative and directional practices.
