Walking the Talk of Art and Social Justice Education

Abstract

Walking the Talk of Art and Social Justice Education Quinn, T Ploof, 1, & Hochtritt, L. (2012) Art and Social Justice Education: Culture as Commons. New York, NY: Routledge. 201 pages; ISBN 978-0-415-87907-1.Those of us who work at or think about the intersection of art, social justice, and education know that discussions about this intersection are complex and often slippery. As a field, we call the work that emerges from this juncture by multiple names-social justice art education, community-based art, activist art, community cultural development. Concrete definitions and hard-and-fast rules are difficult to come by in the literature about this emerging field. We do not always agree on whether or not a specific artwork, artist, or process should be called social justice or simply a social practice. There is no canon here. To write about art's role in social justice in the midst of this landscape is therefore not only difficult, but also incredibly necessary.Enter Art and Social Justice Education: Culture as Commons (2012), a volume of essays, artist profiles, and teaching reflections edited by Therese Quinn, John Ploof, and Lisa Hochtritt. Here is just the kind of title and compilation those of us interested in justice, art, and learning ache for in hopes of being able to open the pages and have the answers. We imagine that this volume will contain a set of clear-cut definitions and a conclusive list of practices, artists, and tools for doing art and social justice education. Flipping from the graphic preface by Maxine Greene and Bill Ayers (as told by Ryan Alexander-Tanner) to the introductory essays, many a reader will expect a kind of authoritative voice to describe the shape of the field.And yet, herein lies the fundamental conundrum of writing about art and social justice education: there may not actually be definitive answers about a practice that relies on creatively engaging in the in ways that are imaginative, context-specific, collaborative, and ever-evolving.Theeditors, despite an audience's great hunger for the contrary, offer a book that resists hard-and-fast rules, glossaries, and strategies in exchange for a text that seeks to practice what it espouses. Organized around four major themesThe Commons: Redistribution of Resources and Power; Our Cultures: Recognition and Representation; Toward Futures: Social and Personal Transformation; and Voices of Teachers-this text puts multiple views of social justice art education into a lively conversation. Instead of a textbook, we have an invitation to a working kind of party.By calling readers to participate in an analysis of howart can contribute in a wide range of ways to the work of envisioning and creating a more just world (p. xx), Art and Social Justice Education: Culture as Commons suggests that the task of understanding this field is, in and of itself, a task of critical pedagogy. To make sense of the ways art can impact injustice, we must embody the critical education processes we seek to study. In stitching together this set of short essays, the editors prompt us to question, connect, critique, and take action. As Olivia Gude writes in her chapter,the unfolding, increasingly complex, and often contradictory narratives generated by sequences of projects and activities create a rich discursive space that invites viewer/ participants to join the investigation (p. 78). Rather than tell us what to think, the editors encourage us to listen for the underlying dialogue taking place between the various authors, and then, to jump in ourselves. When viewed as a living document of social justice education-one in which we must construct our own knowledge, reflect on the critical connections we experience, and take action to create a more just society-this volume offers three important tools to think about and engage in art and social justice education.We begin with the art-our cultural knowledge production. As Graeme Sullivan writes in his section introduction,Making art, encountering art, and using art, is considered to be crucial in understanding how we learn to make sense of the rapidly changing around us(p. …