Though art education and creative placemaking are two established fields within the arts and culture ecosystem, very little research examines the intersections of these two domains. Specifically, a gap exists in practitioner voices to share their practical knowledge and experiences in the field. This study is an investigation of intersections between the self-identified practices of specific art educators and the field of creative placemaking. As a participant researcher, I worked with three art educators from around the United States to engage in collaborative inquiry. This study took place from November of 2020 to March of 2021 and the team worked virtually due to a global pandemic. The team of art educators engaged in a participatory action research (PAR) study to investigate their own practice(s) and potential intersections with the field of creative placemaking. This PAR study is grounded in critical theory to engage in inquiry that can promote a deeper understanding of our own contexts and support transformation through dialogic work with people to elevate and voice the unique experiences and expertise they bring to the research. My participant collaborators brought their expertise as a high school art educator, a museum educator, and an arts education consultant. Utilizing a PAR framework, dialogic work occurred virtually through semi-structured interviews, a group call, and individual arts-based inquiry to answer research questions surrounding their work within art education and intersection and divergence with the field of creative placemaking. Using narrative and arts-based methods, the PAR team shared specific stories where their work as art education professionals converges with creative placemaking and the distinct separation they find among the fields. Through this emergent and collaborative process, participant collaborators and I found intersection with their art education practice(s) and the practices identified within creative placemaking literature. The results showcase four emergent intersections that arose through a diffractive analysis of the data. These emergent themes are: art educator as “creative initiator”, the ability to not work in a silo, a willingness to experiment, and the ability to recognize tensions among our two fields. I posit that these four themes not only demonstrate the intersection with creative placemaking, but also showcase the varying strategies art educators employ to successfully support and serve their respective stakeholders. The divergences that were reveled through this study are specific to this research occurring during the time of COVID-19. The group identified how in this contemporary moment, concepts of place, community, and social unrest need to be further interrogated to fully understand the ways their practices as art education professionals and the field of creative placemaking diverge during and post pandemic. The narratives and arts-based work of specific art educators within this PAR study have implications within the field of art education. Foremost the ability to articulate, document, and share stories regarding art educator practices demonstrate the broad cadre of pedagogical expertise professionals utilize to serve their stakeholders. Secondly this research is starting point in placing art education professionals in a broader discourse regarding the arts and culture ecosystem.

These stories from art educators highlight how art and visual culture can bridge learning with lived experience. Written by and for art educators from all backgrounds and contexts, this volume offers guidance for expanding students’ opportunities to critically examine current events, histories, and cultural assumptions in ways that are relevant and inclusive of all identities. Readers will learn how to use contemporary art and dialogue as tools to acknowledge and value the unique perspectives of each person. Authors from diverse settings offer topics, insights, resources, and research for centering voices and critical conversations in K–12, higher education, museums, and nontraditional classrooms. The book addresses such questions as: How can a teacher reflect on their own assumptions and biases before crafting lessons and discussion prompts?In what ways can contemporary art encourage dialogue in art learning spaces?What happens when current national issues intersect with the personal lives of students?How can teachers democratize the classroom so all students are represented?How can teachers demonstrate ways to critically examine information? Book Features: Offers insights from art educators in public, independent, museum, and community settings.Addresses the role of art teachers in responding to the current highly politicized educational climate.Critically examines concepts of practice, power, and vulnerability in teaching. Discusses issues of race, LGBTQ+ rights, family structures, current events, democratic values, and social change as they concern students.Provides examples of dialogue in various art learning spaces and contexts. Contributors include JaeHan Bae, Kathy J. Brown, Lauren Cross, William Estrada, Pamela Harris Lawton, Amy Pfeiler-Wunder, Natasha S. Reid, Kryssi Staikidis, and Injeong Yoon-Ramirez.

This book makes a significant contribution to the history of placemaking, presenting grassroots to top-down practices and socially engaged, situated artistic practices and artsled spatial inquiry that go beyond instrumentalising the arts for development. The book brings together a range of scholars to critique and deconstruct the notion of creative placemaking, presenting diverse case studies from researcher, practitioner, funder and policymaker perspectives from across the globe. It opens with the creators of the 2010 White Paper that named and defined creative placemaking, Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa Nicodemus, who offer a cortically reflexive narrative on the founding of the sector and its development. This book looks at vernacular creativity in place, a topic continued through the book with its focus on the practitioner and community-placed projects. It closes with a consideration of aesthetics, metrics and, from the editors, a consideration of the next ten years for the sector. If creative placemaking is to contribute to places-in-the-making and encourage citizenled agency, new conceptual frameworks and practical methodologies are required. This book joins theorists and practitioners in dialogue, advocating for transdisciplinary, resilient processes.

Originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, this volume explores how researchers, educators, artists, and scholars can collaborate with, and engage young people in art, creative practice, and research to work towards social justice and political engagement. By critically interrogating the dominant discourses, cultural, and structural obstacles that we all face today, this volume explores the potential of critical arts pedagogies and community-based research projects to empower young people as agents of social change. Chapters offer nuanced analyses of the limits of arts-based social justice collaborations, and grapple with key ethical, practical, and methodological issues that can arise in creative approaches to youth participatory action research. Theoretical contributions are enhanced by Notes from the Field, which highlight prime examples of arts-based youth work occurring across North America. As a whole, the volume powerfully advocates for collaborative creative practices that facilitate young people to build power, hope, agency, and skills through creative social engagement. This volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers, postgraduate students, and scholar-practitioners involved in community- and arts-based research and education, as well as those working with marginalized youth to improve their opportunities and access to a quality education and to deepen their political participation and engagement in intergenerational partnerships aiming to increase the conditions for social justice.

Few educators receive experiential professional development and coaching that support them in articulating and nurturing their creative voices and mindsets. The purpose of the participatory action research (P AR) study was to examine how supporting the pedagogical experiences of three teachers in an arts integrated school influenced their professional identities as they transferred arts integrated practices to classrooms. The theory of action for the study was: If teachers engage in arts-based, creative practices, they can co-create and implement arts integrated instructional experiences for students. I used participatory action research methodology informed by activist research methodology to investigate how teachers' artistic experiences influenced their teaching. As a result of engaging in creative practices as adult learners, they expanded their capacities to design and implement arts integrated curricula that promoted equitable access and rigor. Two findings are: (1) Teachers who articulated their creative practices strengthened their teaching through self-power and being art forward in their thinking and practices; and (2) teachers who engaged in experiential learning re-imagined themselves as teachers who nurtured their creative mindsets, found joy in teaching, and transferred the creative practices to classrooms. The findings have implications for schools and teachers in expanding and deepening their capacities to change curricular and pedagogical practices to promote equity.

This volume presents a scholarly investigation of the ways educators engage in artistic and contemplative practices – and why this matters in education. Arts-based learning and inquiry can function as a powerful catalyst for change by allowing spiritual practices to be present within educational settings, but too often the relationship between art, education and spirituality is ignored. Exploring artistic disciplines such as dance, drama, visual art, music, and writing, and forms such as writing-witnessing, freestyle rap, queer performative autoethnograph, and poetic imagination, this book develops a transformational educational paradigm. Its unique integration of spirituality in and through the arts addresses the contemplative needs of learners and educators in diverse educational and community settings.

Creating Together explores an emerging approach to research that combines arts practices and scholarship in participatory, community-based, and collaborative contexts in Canada across multiple disciplines. Looking at a variety of art forms, from photography and mural painting to performance art and poetry, the contributors explore how the process of creating together generates and disseminates collective knowledge. The artistic processes and works in an arts-based approach to scholarship make use of aesthetic, experiential, embodied, and emotional ways of knowing and creating knowledge in addition to traditional intellectual ways. The anthology also addresses the growing trend in arts-based research that takes a participatory, community-based, or collaborative focus, and encourages scholars to work together, with other professionals, and with community groups to explore questions, create knowledge, and express shared understandings. The collection highlights three forms of research: participatory arts-based research that engages participants in all stages of the inquiry and aims to produce practical knowing to benefit the community; community-based arts research that has community/public space at the heart of practice; and collaborative arts approaches involving multi-levelled, multi-layered, and interdisciplinary collaboration from diverse perspectives. To illustrate how such innovative work is being accomplished in Canada, the collection includes examples from British Columbia to Newfoundland and across disciplines, including the fine arts, education, the health sciences, and social work.