Taiteen osallisuus, osallisuuden taide – Tulkintoja taidelähtöisten menetelmien käytöstä koulussa
Keywords:
participation, youth, basic education, art, art-based methodsAbstract
The participation in art, the art of participation: interpretations on art-based methods in school. In this article we examine the use of art-based research methodologies in Finnish upper secondary school. We investigate what kind of possibilities and arenas the participation in the art-based methods provides in the physical and social environment of school. We analyze how school as a social institution and as a physical space limits the possibilities of student agency and ask, what kind of impact the use art-based methods has on individual, group and generational level. The main conceptual tool used is the concept of participation. Participation is seen as a combination of formally and/or informally recognized position, action, and an individual sense of having participated and having been accepted as a member of the community. The article is based on ethnography of following two projects using art-based methods in schools. The main method of producing data was drawing. In an analysis phase the analysis of visual data was triangulated with interviews conducted on an earlier study. Both the interviews of the young (N=8), and the workers (N=12) were analysed. The results show that existing school cultures have a strong impact on how the young face the use of art-based methods. Both social structures of school, such as social norms, the school timetable and the social roles of the pupils, and physical structures, such as architecture of classrooms, contribute to the success or failure of art-based methods. The pupils do not automatically view art as a desirable way to spend the school day. The participation of the pupils can instead mean different ways of using counter-power in the classroom. Our results imply that the use of art-based methods does not change the strong structures of school, but can contribute to different pedagogical and personal border-crossings. Personal agency and generational relationships can transform. Also schools’ rules and school as physical environment can become more student-based.
