Art Education When the World Is on Fire

Abstract

This article is a revised version of the Studies in Art Education invited lecture that was to have taken place at the annual convention of the National Art Education Association in March 2020. Taking into account the challenges of the global pandemic and the possibilities presented by uprisings for racial, climate, and social justice across the world, it is a call to action to art educators. Contributions of art education scholars connected to racial justice and environmental action are recognized as a shared inheritance from which one can draw to carry on such work. Notions of inheritance, interbeing, and irresistibility are analyzed as they connect to art’s unique and distinctive contributions to activist work. Drawing from scholarship and thinking both within and outside of the field of art education, I make a case in this article for action in the face of the possible end of the world as we know it.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ One reviewer of an earlier version of this article suggested that my use of imperatives may make some readers uncomfortable. While I worked to remove some of the “musts,” I have decided to keep them where I feel they are necessary, believing that the possibility of human extinction is, indeed, a time when we “must” act. I believe we must get used to being uncomfortable to do this work!

² See the following for more:

https://www.instagram.com/indigenousmutualaid, https://www.instagram.com/mutualaidindia, https://www.instagram.com/mutualaiddisasterrelief.

³ See the website for more information: https://www.instagram.com/ayudamutuamke.

⁴ For more information on A Long Walk Home, see https://www.alongwalkhome.org.

⁵ For more on these organizations, see https://c4aa.org and https://amplifier.org.

⁶ For additional information on this organization, see https://rebellion.global.

⁷ The Art Build Workers (https://artbuildworkers.com) is a Milwaukee-based activist art collective that includes Arellano, Joe Brusky, Kim Cosier, Paul Kjelland, Nicolas Lampert, Claudio Martinez, and Josie Osborne. See Cosier (2019) and https://justseeds.org/blog/?js-author=nicolaslampert for more. For additional images and videos of the work we produce with our community partners, see Joe Brusky’s Flickr pages: https://www.flickr.com/photos/40969298@N05/albums and https://www.flickr.com/photos/126164815@N04/albums.

⁸ See https://justseeds.org.

⁹ See http://overpasslightbrigade.org, https://www.culturalpower.org, https://www.forthepeoplecollective.org/about.html, and https://chicagoactcollective.weebly.com.