The international network Another Roadmap for Arts Education is an association of practitioners and researchers working towards art education as an engaged practice in museums, cultural institutions, educational centres and grass-roots organisations in twenty-two cities on four continents. In the Another Roadmap School, the participating working groups carry out local practice and research projects and collaborate in thematical clusters.
The network - Another Roadmap for Arts Education
The international network Another Roadmap for Arts Education is an association of practitioners and researchers working towards art education as an engaged practice in museums, cultural institutions, educational centres and grass-roots organisations in twenty-two cities on four continents. We view arts education as deeply embedded in social and political contexts – but also as a possibility to question and transform the social.
The Another Roadmap network emerged out of a shared interest to critically analyse the Road Map for Arts Education - as presented by UNESCO in Lisbon in 2006 and elaborated in the Seoul Agenda for Arts Education in 2010 - in terms of its history and terminology, subtexts and paradigms, as well as the application of these policies in different parts of the world. The Another Roadmap network contends UNESCO’s policy documents reflect the lack of substantial, nuanced research on art education practices in varying socio-political contexts, and an insufficiently critical engagement with the history and the persistent hegemony of western concepts of art and education within the field.
The chief research aims of the Another Roadmap network are:
- to analyse current policies and practices of arts education (in the context of the increased interest in the role of ‘creativity’ and the UNESCO documents’ other core assumptions);
- to critically assess the continuing hegemony of a colonial westernised arts education;
- to plot alternatives and develop other paradigms for practice and research in arts education.
The Another Roadmap School
The Another Roadmap School, launched by the Another Roadmap network, aims to provide open spaces for trans-regional exchange and learning in arts education as an engaged practice committed to social change. In the pilot phase (2015-18), the participating working groups of the Another Roadmap School carried out local practice and research projects and collaborated in thematical clusters. Focussing on a critical engagement with the discourse around creativity, pedagogy and education in and learning through the arts, the projects of the School employ diverse methodologies, from scholarly to artistic approaches, from historical research to action- and practice-based research. The activities of the pilot phase were canalized into “learning units” on a web platform, allowing network partners as well as further educators and researchers to learn and adapt results for their own practice. The working groups contributed to a multivocal arts education ‘glossary’ inquiring into local meanings and genealogies of key terms in arts education.
Resources produced by the network as well as present activities on: https://another-roadmap.net/