Education Commons^™

Building Relationships: Art Making And Empty Bowls, Susan R. Whiteland

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

How can collaborative art making foster relationship building for those involved? A Problem Based Learning project that investigated food insecurity and the creation of clay soup bowls provided an answer for a number of students, and various community members. This article follows the story of a university professor’s involvement with her students in a partnership with a local intermediate school when they pursued an initiative to include art in their STEAM based curriculum dedicated to meeting a local need. Older adults, elementary students, and a variety of other interested individuals joined the effort and demonstrated how art can build relationships.

Public School Art Teacher Autonomy In A Segregated City: Affordances And Contradictions, Albert Stabler, Jorge R. Lucero

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Over the past two decades, the Chicago Public Schools have seen a lot of change. First there was the opening of magnet schools, and other gestures at reform, followed by school closures and the flourishing of charter schools. In this essay, two former Chicago art teachers, one who taught in a prominent college prep magnet high school on the north side, and one who taught in an under-resourced neighborhood high school on the south side, examine the commonalities of their otherwise divergent experiences, particularly with regard to the freedom allotted to both them and their students by the administrative affordances …

Full Issue: An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause Part 2_June 2019, Susan Walsh, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Full PDF of the issue An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause: Part 2. Co-edited by Susan Walsh (guest editor) & Barbara Bickel

Closing Pause, Peter London

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Peter London was invited to offer a response to the two part special issue of An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause as a last moment of pause. Peter, in turn, graciously offered his contemplative thoughts that we hope will inspire others to pause and engage their own contemplative reflections inspired by the artist scholar offerings in this special issue.

The Lion’S Gaze: Filmmaking As An Awareness Practice, Robyn Traill

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This is an extract from a Masters study describing my exploration of the art of film as an inner awareness practice from the view of the Buddhist yogic tradition and the teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called dharma art. I call this contemplative film practice.The article speaks to the initial pre-production and production phases of this research where formless Mahamudra meditations were most important. A camera lens was employed as a cue or reminder to practice the lens of awareness while capturing moving images. In the post-production phase, the creative meditations within Buddhist yogas became a major reference point: visualization, …

Music As Meditative Inquiry: Dialogical Reflections On Learning And Composing Indian Classical Music, Ashwani Kumar, Adrian Downey

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This dialogical paper explores Ashwani Kumar’s concept of music as meditative inquiry and its implications for teaching, learning, and living. The notion of music as meditative inquiry is rooted in Kumar’s journey of learning, composing, and researching Indian classical music. This paper makes use of an emerging methodological framework called dialogical meditative inquiry (DMI), which has been theorized by Kumar. Due to its emphasis on meditative and holistic listening, DMI goes beyond a usual interview where the intent is to elicit specific information. Through employing DMI to explore Kumar’s ideas regarding music, meditative inquiry, and creativity, this paper engages with …

Lectio Divina: A Call For Salah & Poetic Being, Momina A. Khan

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

I reflect back on the ARTS Pre-Conference 2017 of the Canadian Society for Studies in Education. It was a day full of non-linear knowledge exchanges, conversations, creations, contemplation and arts-based activities. Collaborators dwelled in, engaged, and emerged together spiritually, poetically, and musically to rekindle their learning, coexistence and mystical understandings. I was in my fasting state with dry mouth, hungry stomach, and thirsty soul combined with contemplative sessions, plus my scholarly and poetic inspirations in the flesh. It was purely an epoch of unbridled spirit tenderly wrapped in creative and contemplative ways of being present in the moment, with the …

Incarnatas: An Artist In Residence Practice In The Ubc Botanical Garden, Celeste Snowber

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article shares some of the poetry and dance that emerged out of a two-year Artist in Residency in the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden in Vancouver, British Columbia.

As a site-specific performance artist, my practice has explored being with and in the Botanical Garden and allowing poetry and dance to emerge out of my walks, arts-based practice of listening, observing the various species in the Asian garden from all over Asia as well as indigenous plants and trees in B.C. My offering was to bring an artistic lens to the exploration and interpretation of the garden. Out of …

“Metramorphosis”: A Socially-Engaged Arts-Based And Contemplative Inquiry, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

The birth story of the Metramorphosis book begins in 2010 at an artist residency on Toronto Island. The book is bound with buttons allowing the cloth pages to be unbound and bound over and over again. In this way it is read anew each time, as it is never re-buttoned in the same order. After a year of stitching into the book I realized it was not my book alone to complete, as the study of matrixial theory (Ettinger, 2005) I was contemplatively engaging in the book making is about relationality, co-becoming and copoiesis. In 2012 I began to carry …

Living With A Liminal Mind, Yoriko Gillard

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Learning to be an educational storyteller entails using every creative skill I learned since my childhood and has allowed me to connect with others especially those in pain. This paper is a reflection of my emotional past. My tears are coming from the ocean and rivers in my liminal space. In this space, I contemplate my hopeful future and seek its contemplative challenges to discover what I still do not know and could learn as an educator. My sincere contemplation to serve society shall be a poetic reflection of who I am becoming each step of my life. Creative writing …

Indigenous Poiesis: Medicine For Mother Earth, Vicki Kelly

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Indigenous knowledge practices are ecological encounters of profound ethical relationality that acknowledge the act of co-creating through living embodiments of Indigenous Poiesis. This radical participation in Indigeneity through the offering of our humble humanity allows us to move into the living intensity of profound reciprocal relationship. Through Indigenous Poiesis, art becomes ecological activism. This Indigenous Métissage weaves life writing, indigenous woodcarving, and experiences of native flute playing, and presencing Anishinaabe stories in the spirit of Indigenous oral tradition.

An Arts-Based And Contemplative Pause: Introduction To Part Two: Creating Restorative And Caring Learning Spaces, Susan Walsh, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

The introduction to Part Two of this special issue attends to arts-based and contemplative practices in inquiry and teaching. Co-editing this two-part special issue has been a gift of co-labour that we have been transformed by. For as Lewis Hyde wrote so beautifully in 1979, “it is when art acts as an agent of transformation that we may correctly speak of it as a gift. A lively culture will have transformative gifts as a general feature…. And it will have artists whose creations are gifts for the transformation of the race.” (pp. 59-60). The 20 contributors to Part One …

Front Matter Artizein June 2019, Susan Walsh, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

An Artistic Contemplative Inquiry: What Arrives In Co-Contemplating Assessment And Evaluation, Michelle Searle, Lynn M. Fels

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Contemporary arts-based inquiry invites us to linger in moments, to reflect upon our lives, our encounters, our relationships within the grander context of the worlds within which we dwell and those that we co-create. Here, we explore the landscape of the arts in relation to assessment and evaluation. Through a collaborative artistic contemplative inquiry, an emergent dialogue exploring assessment and evaluation is recorded and presented as a found poem, “What Arrives.” Our hope, when we embarked upon this artistic contemplation, was that we would evoke, provoke, and interrupt each other for the purpose of creating possibilities of alliance and (re)cognition …

Making Peace With The Highwood River: One Year In Contemplative Photographs And Flows, Jennifer Markides

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Since the 2013 Alberta floods, my relationship with the Highwood River has been changing. Before the disaster, I had taken the power of the river for granted. Then, the floodwaters ravaged the community of High River—my home. In the time after the flood, I engaged in a study of place as part of a course in Holistic Approaches to Life and Living led by Elder, Bob Cardinal of the Maskekosihk Enoch Cree Nation. I observed the flows through my camera lens: visiting and re-visiting the river, observing the seasonal changes, forming a stronger connection to my place in the community, …

Relations To Live By, Morgan Gardner

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

In 2017, I experienced the ARTS Pre- Conference of the Canadian Society for Studies in Education as a welcome refuge. As participants, we gathered to feed our minds, bodies and spirits via arts-based, contemplative practice. It became a day of (re)visioning academic life. In gratitude for this day, I share two poems from my research journal supporting my own (re)visioning of academic research. The poems are meditations on the small and large wonders of nature and their connection to the wealth of our fragile, mysterious lives. They explore our immeasurable interconnectedness to all of life and the life-giving relations that …

"Born Different, But Still The Same": My Journey As A Sibling Of Persons With Special Needs: Contemplative Practices In An Academic Environment, Annemarie Cuculiza-Brunke

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article is an autobiographical exploration of the author’s experience as a younger sibling of two people with a cognitive disability. It comprises nine years of conscious self-work and shows how an academic environment can nurture reflection on complex personal issues, and through this reflection, aid in the process of self-discovery and healing. The author explores autobiographical writing and poetic inquiry as a method to develop witnessing consciousness. The purpose of this piece is to contribute to the conversation about the challenges that siblings of people with disabilities face, as much attention is focused upon parents and the people with …

Looking For Water Stories, Janice Santos Valdez

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

As an immigrant settler, I contemplate my role as witness and participant in relation to water and First Nations people, who, for many generations, have been guardians of the ecosystems where I live. The poem I offer here is a reflection and response to my experience of witnessing a First Nations community during a consultation on the topic of water treatment systems with the engineering initiative Res’ Eau. My poem, Looking for Water Stories, contemplates a relationship to water and humanity through physical, socio-cultural, historical and spiritual perceptions. The poem is the form which my field notes took …

Performing Research: Contemplating What It Means To Be A "Man", George Belliveau

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Sharing research in performative modes opens new possibilities for meaning making. This article offers a monologue that explores my experience of working on a theatre project with military veterans. The impact of working on the creative process with veterans inspired this performed piece, and provided an opportunity to contemplate what it means to be a ‘man’ in today’s society. The article first situates performed research within current arts-based literature prior to sharing the creative piece, which is at the heart of this offering. The piece then concludes with how performed research opens the possibility for different forms of engagement and …

Sharing Footprints: Dwelling With/In Loss, Robert Christopher Nellis

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This essay explores spaces between— between presence and absence, model and canvas, page and thought. Launching from the cliché that love is blind, the piece reads through Jacques Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind and its inspirations toward the paintings The Origin of Painting by Jean- Baptiste Regnault (1786) and The Invention of the Art of Drawing by Joseph-Benoit Suvée (1791) to locate spaces in between, spaces of contingency. The essay advocates not rushing through such spaces, but dwelling there—as sites of contemplation. The work engages in conversation with Lectio Divina as articulated by Mesner, Bickel, and Walsh (2015) and follows …

Holding Fast To H: Ruminations On The Arts Preconference, Carl Leggo

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

When Susan, Barbara, Diane, and I began planning for the ARTS Preconference, we quickly decided that the event ought to be different from most conference gatherings. Early on, we suggested that the event ought to be a “happening.” My main way of ruminating, investigating, and questioning is to write poetry. In the process of writing poetry I slow down and linger with memories, experiences, and emotions. In all my writing, I am seeking ways to live with wellness. In poetry I seek new ways of knowing and being and becoming. I write in order to invite conversation about what it …

An Offering And A Prayer, Vicki Kelly

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This offering and prayer opens this special two part issue of Artizein entitled An Arts-Based and Contemplative Pause. Vicki Kelly humbly offers this songful prayer as a way of welcome and as an act of reciprocal recognition for the diverse ecologies of place and being gathered here.

An Art-Based Contemplative Pause: Introduction To Part 1: Sharing Radical Creative Possibilities, Barbara Bickel, Susan Walsh, Diane Conrad

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Contained here is the Introduction for Part One of the special issue An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause. Co-written by Barbara Bickel, Susan Walsh and Diane Conrad.

Front Matter: An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause: Part 1

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

Full Issue: An Arts-Based Contemplative Pause Part 1

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

Using 3d Card-Making Project To Motivate Students’ Writing, Dan Li

The Montana English Journal

Based on the ideas of inclusive education and multiple intelligences, I advocate using a “3D card” project to inspire students' writing. A 3D card project incorporates sessions on organization's logo appreciation, discussion, letter design, slogan design, and 3D card making as well as a writing task. All of these steps provide students with background information on the topic. In this article, I use these steps to teach my diverse middle school students to design a logo and write a statement for a nonprofit organization.

Animal Studies Journal 2019 8 (1): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Notes On Contributors, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2019 8 (1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Editorial and Notes on Contributors.

Is There A Turtle In This Text? Animals In The Internet Of Robots And Things, Nicola J. Evans, Alison Rotha Moore

Animal Studies Journal

This essay looks at the paradigm shift underway in human relations with artefacts from an animal studies perspective. As the Internet of Things (IoT) produces objects that are smart, sensate and agentive, how does this impact the continuing struggle for recognition of these same qualities in nonhuman animals? As humans acquire new digital companions in the form of therapeutic robots, what happens to perceptions of other ‘companion species’? Nonhuman animals are ubiquitous in IoT discourse as researchers draw on animal metaphors, models and analogies to think through the social and ethical implications of these new technologies. Focusing on representative texts …

Space On Par: A Short Performance For One Performer, Peta Tait

Animal Studies Journal

Space on Par is a short performance text that uses gentle humour to communicate an alternative perspective on how open space is used by humans and nonhuman animals, in this instance a golf course. If playing golf for enjoyment is puzzling behaviour for a nonhuman observer, it can emphasise human refusal to recognise the physical and spatial rights of other species and their needs for survival. The effort to educate about the treatment of animals can include theatrical characters who blur the species identities to make a point, and Space on Par inverts the invisibility of the gaze of the …

Greyhounds And Racing Industry Participants: A Look At The New South Wales Greyhound Racing Community, Justine Groizard

Animal Studies Journal

Subsequent to the exposure of live baiting and animal cruelty within the NSW greyhound racing industry in 2015, a public debate emerged about animal welfare, oppression and exploitation. It resulted in a community outcry, an inquiry into live baiting and animal welfare within the industry and a proposed ban of greyhound racing in the state of NSW. Whilst the proposed ban of greyhound racing was celebrated amongst animal activists, it was met with a mixture of sadness, shock and animosity from people from within the industry. Many of the people within the greyhound racing community felt stigmatised and discriminated against, …