Amber Ward

9.5 Crafting-with Radical Democratic Futures: Collective Practices in Craft and Art Education (Panel)

Panellists:

Amber Ward – Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Hsin Fang – Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Merium Qureshi – Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Abstract:

This panel introduces our research that explores craft pedagogies through radical democracy (Freire, 2014; Giroux, 1996; hooks, 1994), when collaborating with each other and residential classes featured in summer programs from a folk school in the United States. In addition to tracing the richness of the folk school’s pedagogical emphasis on craft, we (three researchers) creatively and collectively craft-with our natural and political surroundings as unexpected territories. Working from a communal way of knowing-in-making and embodying co-creation and empowerment, we aim to resist social hierarchies within and outside of our collaboration and advance equity and difference. A research methodology we are calling ‘crafting-with’ is used to foreground underrepresented craft materials, histories, and praxis toward a radical democratic togetherness. This methodology views crafting-with not only as a practice of making but also as an embodied way of knowing, where educators, learners, and materials are in dynamic conversation. Inspired by folk school philosophy, we use a series of craft retreats to creatively document archival data on folk school craft, beginning in the 1950s, and intertwine it with our natural surroundings, cultural experiences, political concerns, and pedagogical optimism as a way to reterritorialize and re-envision the place of craft in art education. An additional unexpected territory materializing from this research is one of horizontal mentorship whereby we – a faculty member, doctoral candidate, and undergraduate student – work to mentor each other all while acknowledging the various power differentials that accompany our given identities and while navigating the discomfort of a new collaboration with fluid, unpredictable responsibilities and goals. In sum, this research interweaves data, pedagogy, culture, gender, and political engagement to animate art education toward a more collaborative and democratic future through craft.

9.14 Creative Retreats in the Anthropocene: Fostering Care, Community, and Emergence in Pedagogical Spaces (Panel)

Chair:

Amber Ward – Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Panellists:

Ann Rowson Love – Florida State University, USA

Susan Uhlig – Penn State University, USA

Emily Dellheim – Department of Art Education, Florida State University, USA

Abstract:

This presentation will explore how art/research retreats, as ‘unexpected territories,’ foster care and community in art and museum education with implications for personal and professional development. It examines their role in deepening our understanding of place through material culture and documenting intra-actions between beings and things (see Barad and Haraway). By highlighting retreats as inner and unexpected territories, the presentation addresses the importance of protected time and space to enable care for self and others. Attendees will gain insights into the transformative potential of these unforeseen experiences and learn how to effectively use them to promote self-care and community in their own learning/teaching spaces. Art/research retreats and residencies are perhaps underutilized in art and museum education. 

This session offers four distinct perspectives on using retreats to explore unexpected encounters in the Anthropocene and to protect time and space for self-reflection, recharging, and building creativity through research and arts making in situ. Retreats offer profound impacts on our complex engagement with the Anthropocene that carry over into our pedagogies in the classroom and art museum. Opportunities for self-care that foster well-being and human-nature connectivity are ever more important in response to contemporary climate and political crises. The four panellists coming from unique perspectives–art education, museum education, doctoral candidates, and university faculty–highlight how a practice of retreats in learning/teaching fosters creativity, interconnectivity, and inclusivity facilitated by this serendipitous collaboration. Made for and by participants, retreats serve as spaces for personal and professional growth. In this way, these new relationships (us; you, as reviewers; panel attendees; and more) also become unexpected territories.