Abstract

This paper explores a one week dance/visual arts project with 9-10 year old children from Black and Coloured townships that took place at the [blinded for review] Arts Centre in Cape Town, South Africa in February 2017. The project is run by an intercultural group of artist-educators and researchers residing in Denmark and South Africa. In the project the children explore ideas of the climate, seasons and elements of nature and see how they both make and receive imprints in the world. It thereby casts light on what children can learn through artistic-educational collaborations about their environment and life in general. The paper illuminates what expressions and experiences become possible in the co-created and ‘lived space’ (van Manen, 1990) of this place through ‘videographic participation’ and dialogues that include arts-based methods (Jones & Leavy, 2014) in both a critical (Apple, 2013) and embodied learning perspective (Wright, 2010; Danuser & Sabetti, 2001). A hermeneutic-phenomenological approach (van Manen, 1990) is used as a starting point for collecting ‘lived experiences’ of all the participants from the project week. Narratives in written and visual formats contribute to exploring what is specific about the space being created, what its purpose for the different participants is, what is specific about the place, what possibilities this place gives for the artistic teaching and learning processes, and what all this leads to from the perspectives of the children. The overarching question guiding both the teaching and the research methodology being: how to give the children a voice in all aspects of the project?

Keywords: intercultural, arts education, co-creation, phenomenology

How to Cite:

Svendler Nielsen, C. & Samuel, G., (2019) “Intercultural teaching and learning in dance and visual arts: Co-creating an artistic-educational space among South African children and artist-educators from Cape Town and Copenhagen”, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 10(1).