Yesterday at the Joan Miró Foundation, the teachers who took the course developed by Pedagogies de Fricció, Seminar on pedagogical innovation and renovation through art education. Debates, tools, methodologies and educational proposals, presented their final projects.
We saw a total of two presentations, of the three group projects that were developed during the seminar.
Three teachers represented the group project Disruptive actions, which looked at how to reorient the art classroom around risk-taking, improvisation and emergent practices. During their work from January – May, this group shared teaching strategies and implemented different activities in an effort to convert their classrooms into sites of experimentation and inquiry. Their presentation shared the theoretical framework they developed for their work, as well as practical examples.
For the second presentation, the artists and teachers who came together for the project Territories in transit shared their experiences researching walking as an art practice. This project engaged students in three different schools, and in five classrooms, in different actions involving walking. The students then created postcards related to the experience and exchanged them with the other participants. One of the artists involved in the project will later present the results in an art museum in Barcelona.
The discussion we had during the session revolved around questions such as:
- how to keep art practice alive in the classroom through acts of inquiry
- how to develop a space that pushes students beyond their comfort zones
- how to innovate as an educator in emotionally sustainable ways, while avoiding burnout
What we were most impressed with was seeing how the results of the seminar seemed to go beyond the projects themselves, and gave rise to two working groups of art educators. These groups served to help the participants develop innovative pedagogical practices in an environment that was challenging and supportive.
At the outset of this seminar, within Pedagogies de Fricció we worried that the collaboration among attendees would be the hardest part, taking into consideration the difficulties with scheduling and involving different classrooms. We were very pleased to see that this became perhaps the most productive element of the experience overall.