Anita Sinner

Sensorial A-r-tography: Walking with Public Art through Unexpected Territories (Panel)

Anita Sinner – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Chair: Elly Yazdanpanah – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Xi Chen – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Saman Farkhak – not registered, please, register at: https://www.inseaconference.com/registration

Rita Irwin – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada – attending the congress and presenting virtually

Ashleigh Janis – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada – attending virtually 

Koichi Kasahara – Tokyo Gakugei University, Japan

Anita Sinner – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Manisha Tripathy – The University of British Columbia, Canada

Mengkai Zhang – The University of British Columbia, Canada

Abstract:

In this panel, we will present seven provocative visual essays that explore the convergence of art, pedagogy, and public art in relation to space through the lens of a-r-tographic practices. The collection of visual essays examines how public art engages with diverse geographies, socio-cultural contexts, and pedagogical practices, creating “unexpected territories” that challenge conventional approaches to art education. Central to this issue is the notion of “geographies-in-relation,” where artists, educators, and researchers embrace experimental and speculative inquiries that push boundaries of public art, expanding it from static articulation to dynamic, relational experiences. By employing a-r-tography, the contributors delve into critical themes such as anti-racist and decolonial education, cultural memory, queer identity, and the politics of public spaces. Adopting walking as a mode of inquiry, these engagements uncover hidden curricula within public art and reveal how art operates as a vibrant force for addressing social inequities, fostering collective memory, and challenging dominant narratives. Through engagements with spaces – from urban intersections to natural landscapes – the essays illuminate the potential of public art to act as a transformative pedagogical implement, bridging private and public spheres while fostering inclusivity, equity, and decolonial approaches in art education. By embracing the fluidity and overlapping nature of a-r-tographic practices, this issue reimagines public art as an essential component of a socially engaged, responsive, and resilient educational framework. The initiatives challenge educators to reconceptualize their pedagogical approaches, inviting them to engage with public art as a means of fostering embodied, meaningful learning experiences that acknowledge the diverse, more-than-human world we inhabit.

Translanguaging Territories: Worlding Higher Education Differently (Panel; 45 mins.)

Chair: Patricia Osler – The Convergence Initiative – Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Samia ElSheikh – Faculty of Art Education, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt – virtual 

Anita Sinner – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Susana Vargas – Bogota Museum of Modern Art / Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

Elly Yazdanpanah – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Cristian A. Zaelzer-Perez – Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Abstract:

Worlding higher education differently offers a unique accounting of unexpected territories through arts-based, integrative, accessible projects that shift learning to cultivate new translanguaging activations. Our session presents a tripartite ecosystem of transnational (local, national, international), transdisciplinary (technology, art, science) and transmedia (digital media platforms), and in this panel we explore how art-sci-tech immersive learning activations operate as iterative, open systems for transformative change. With translanguaging at the heart of practice, we present processes of becoming(s) in which we embrace seeing what might be, instead of what is. This panel invites educators to rethink art education paradigms, equipping students with the skills and knowledge to thrive as global citizens in a rapidly changing world. We emphasize encounters with difference: diverse modes of thinking, feeling and doing that involve multi-levelled, multi-layered, and intra-disciplinary collaboration with, in and through other perspectives and experiences in teaching and learning. Highlighting a series of projects in Colombia, Egypt, Japan and Canada that seek to disrupt arts education through international virtual and onsite exchanges, we demonstrate why this resonates among students at our site-specific locations. We address core questions: How do international university and museum collaborations advance transnational learning partnerships? In what ways do art-science partnerships contribute to decolonizing discourses of creativity and learning? How does technology function to equalize access and transform lifelong learning? Through open discussion and shared examples of inventive and experimental activations, we will demonstrate the dynamic convergence of art, science and technology as a learning commons with applied ‘glocal’ projects, bringing situated, arts-based knowledges to global contexts. By integrating museums as extended educational settings, we present new ways to diversify theory-practice discourses. Our goal is to enable collaborative, unifying activations as an arts-based blueprint for higher education globally.

Shifting Grounds: Imagining Global Possibilities for Community Arts Education (45 mins.)

Chair: Anita Sinner – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Sophia Chiata – University of the Aegean, Greece

Sue Girak – City Beach Primary School, WA, Australia

Kazuyo Nakamura – Hiroshima University, Japan

Merna Meyer

Patricia Osler – The Convergence Initiative – Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Abstract:

In this multi-paper session, we envision community arts education (CAE) as shifting ground, where discursive changes at the local level informs pedagogy and practice at the intersection of complex and ever-changing global dynamics. We reimagine the role of the arts in community inquiry – a role that is responsive to relations among individuals, communities and the arts – to cultivate more sophisticated understandings of future pathways for community arts education, deliberating on the concept of transversality to signify both an overarching theoretical framework and the methodological structure for reimagining the complexity of community. To move this collective scholarship forward, we make a distinction in philosophy and practice when defining the term community arts education. We purposely favour the term community arts education over community-based arts education. Community arts education implies the necessary equality of education (e.g. pedagogical implementations) and a variety of practices (e.g. programming) for advancing and solidifying relationships between education and community through access to the artistic fields. In this way, we engage with community as not just a place to enact curriculum; it is the curriculum – a practice in which community life, learning and learning activities, and educational aims intersect. We present case studies from Japan, Australia, Canada and Greece that outline challenges ahead and address how thinking transversally is changing our engagement as artists, researchers and teachers. We facilitate greater resilience through multimodal, multifaceted research architectures, produced across three dimensions: horizontal (first person, creative expression); vertical (analytic, sequential problem-solving); and diagonal (traversing digital matrices) to ensure rigour and accountability. In this way, the cartographic potential of community arts education through diverse and socially engaged art, public pedagogy, community engagement, artistic research, and hybridized practices, reflects the growing impact of critical post-humanism, new materialism and worldly education – approaches that reconceptualize community spaces and international educative borders.

Propositions for Museum Education: International Art Educators in Conversation (Panel; 90 mins.)

Chair: Patricia Osler – The Convergence Initiative – Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Lilly Blue – Art Gallery of Western Australia Perth Cultural Centre, Australia

Sue Girak – City Beach Primary School, WA, Australia

Anniina Koivurova – University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

Tatiana Kravtsov – University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

Rolf Laven – University College of Teacher Education, Vienna, Austria

Anita Sinner – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Lisbet Skregelid – University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway – virtual

Anniina Suominen – Aalto university, School of Art, Design and Architecture, Finland

Susana Vargas-Mejía – Bogota Museum of Modern Art / Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

Abstract:

This panel discussion explores how international art educators are engaging with new approaches to museum education in response to 21st century challenges. Panellists discuss how and why museums are shifting, evolving as sites that mediate different and multiple knowledges for the future. Who is a learner? What is a museum? Whose art is missing? Within the shifting discourse, authors of this edited collection investigate museum futures as contiguous educational sites that contribute to inclusivity, equity and diversity, and embrace dynamic innovations for teaching and learning. We open the conversation in an ‘artful exchange’ across global, local and glocal contexts, reconceptualizing museums to consider accessibility, differences in lived experiences, and how both situated and virtual practices create impactful change. With an overarching concept of relationality between art museums and interdisciplinary perspectives, museums as informal learning sites offer the communities they serve unexpected territories for meaningful experiential and educational exchange through practice-based projects. As catalysts for public scholarship, the propositions for museum education in this collection reflect living futures in relation to practice, weaving the learning potential of interacting with artworks more fully within international and localized communities to present a distinct socio-cultural discourse that is at the heart of teaching and learning.