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  2. EDU S312

Practices in Community Art
EDU S312

Course Information

Description

Community artmaking practices play an integral role in strengthening the field of education. For nearly a hundred years, community arts organizations have provided a context for investigating local cultural concerns, amplifying placed-based creativity and knowledge production, and affirming meaningful traditions—activities that are all vital to the pursuit of a culturally sustaining education. Students in this course will build on these propositions to found and steward HGSE’s Community Art Commission, a student organization responsible for leading participatory arts education experiences at HGSE. In doing so, students will gain familiarity with a broad range of community arts organizing tasks, from learning design and public engagement to project management and documentation. To support these activities, students will draw on the theoretical foundations of community-based art and education while working with peers in a highly collaborative, hands-on learning environment to develop and test their evolving ideas about the goals, methods, and mechanisms of community arts education. This course will equip students with deepened understandings about how arts practices can support the holistic aims of education and with hands-on leadership and learning design experience.

School Graduate School of Education
Credits 2
Cross Reg

Available for Harvard Cross Registration

Department Education
Course Component Regular Course
Instruction Mode In Person
Subject Education
Grading Basis HGSE Student Option (Letter Graded, Sat/Unsat)
Learning Goals • Historical and contemporary understanding: Students will learn to think strategically about challenges and opportunities in community-based arts education by situating contemporary discourses within broader historical contexts. Along these lines, students will understand how imperialist assumptions about art have become embedded within the field of arts education over time and will study frameworks that offer strategies for disruption. • Structural Understanding: Students will understand how institutional logics legitimize and perpetuate systemic exclusion and inequality in arts education. • Personal Responsibility: Students will identify their biases and assumptions about the kinds of cultural practices that “count” as art and arts education and will challenge those assumptions through rigorous reflection and class discussion. • Strategies for Action: Students will sharpen their skills for analyzing justice and equity-oriented arts education practices and will leverage their analytical insights to lead a significant public and community art initiative at HGSE.
Career Focus <p>arts education, learning design, leadership</p>