Art Education and Capacity-Building: Methodologies and tools used by artists to intervene in the school context.

ended

ARECA is an interdisciplinary, collaborative project focused on the relationship between contemporary artistic practices and learning practices. It fosters artistic work as a pedagogical practice in public schools, highlighting the contexts, methodologies and tools used by artists. Its central aim is to empower artists to design, implement and evaluate artistic projects in school contexts, adopting collaborative approaches with the education, cultural, social and research sectors. Its specific objectives are to formalise an arts education pedagogical model, through a participatory process of experimentation and systematisation of learning; to facilitate transnational exchange, networking and training of artists, fostering new perspectives and tools and the democratisation of knowledge; to scientifically support the work. Simultaneously, ARECA contributes to training youngsters to become active citizens, acting and thinking critically. The starting point is Cláudia Dias’ work, Seven Years Seven Plays, in the context of which she and guest artists have been creating choreographic works on subjects such as Europe, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear danger, language as a tool for female emancipation, or climate issues. The thematic contents of these creations will be the material to work with students. ARECA (2024-25) will take place in Portugal, Spain and France, involving 9 artists as direct beneficiaries, 24 teachers and 150 students as indirect beneficiaries. The artistic-pedagogical experience will be monitored and systematised by ISCTE-IUL, contributing to the methodological deepening, collaborative approach and capacity building of the partnership. ARECA will also be researched by Iscte-IUL as a case study on the relation between the trajectories of artists, learning processes and the development of social practice art. One handbook, 2 scientific articles and 5 performances created by students will be the core outputs to share and disseminate ARECA’ results.