Communication in Arts-Based Educational Practices to Sustain Affectivities

In recent years, arts-based education is experiencing a theoretical and practice-based “renaissance”. This approach integrates different forms of aesthetic expression and communication (e.g., performing arts, literature, visual arts) in learning experiences in order to sustain empathy and critical thinking towards current societal challenges. Arts-based education is rooted in different traditions in the social sciences and the humanities, among which the educational turn in the arts and affect theories. The first refers to the development of educational paths through artistic practices and is highly intertwined with the notion of “engaged pedagogy” which refers to the problematization of the content, modalities of transmission and possibility of teaching for invisibilised and vulnerable subjects. On the other hand, affect theory suggests that aesthetic practices can open new windows of opportunities for social change through unarticulated intimacies and dialectic processes by sustaining sensuous connections and communications. However, although this approach is crucial to developing creativity, artistic expression, and intercultural understanding, it is not always accessible and often reproduces social inequalities and forms of vulnerability.

In the frame of the European project “Alphabetica: Activating Learning Paths: Holistic Arts-Based Education and Training for Inclusion and Cultural Awareness”, this contribution wants to open a space for exchanging experiences, bottom-up communication practices and creative research in the field of arts-based education to fight against injustice and sustain the making of critical affectivities in contemporary societies.