Belonging Together Through Art: Reconstructing Connections by Deconstructing Stories

Abstract

The sense of belonging is a complicated topic that is closely connected to one’s understanding of identity, culture, and unique life experiences. We organized a one-semester-long workshop series titled “Revisiting Identity, Culture, and Belonging Through Art Making.” This article discusses the outcomes of this multi-institutional project facilitated online via Webex to support our undergraduate students, who mainly comprised pre-service teachers. The workshop series focused on two objectives: 1) to address the complexities and multiplicities of identity, culture, and sense of belonging through storytelling from the perspectives of Korean immigrant art educators, and 2) to expand students’ understanding of belonging in various contexts in the form of a collaborative project. In this article, we examine what we learned from the Belonging workshops and what our students shared in response to the topics and contents highlighted in the workshops through their reflection papers, discussions, and artworks. We also provide pedagogical suggestions for educators who are interested in incorporating the theme of belonging into their multicultural or cultural diversity lessons.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 Throughout this paper, we will refer to this workshop series as “the Belonging workshops.”

2 The Belonging workshops were supported by the Anti-Racism and Diversity Initiative Grant from East Carolina University, College of Fine Arts and Communication.

3 We define artwork in a broader sense for the purpose of art education, so not limited to conventional approaches such as painting.

4 All student names included in this article are pseudonyms.