Aesthetics, Society and Social Movement Learning

Abstract

Visually illuminate. Aesthetically dissonante. Satirically implicate. Theatrically expropriate. Creatively resonate. Imaginatively educate. This is a chapter about the positionalities of the arts and the arts as educational practice in society and social movements. My passion for the arts began with my tenure with the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), a Toronto-based non-governmental ‘place of encounter’ for adult educators worldwide who shared a commitment to the critical and social purposes of adult education. Within the ICAE the arts—photography, popular theatre, music, poetry, dance and the like—were used as enablers of new understandings, containers for dialogue, and mediums to generate new knowledge. By extension visual artists, poets, photographers, musicians, and theatre performers were mediators and agents of critical social learning and change. I also saw the potential of the arts in social movements when I took part in a women’s march in Ottawa in 1995. Imagine this…