A SEARCH FOR COMMUNITY PEDAGOGY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kathleen Keys, B.F.A., B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Christine Ballengee Morris Dr. Vesta Daniel Art Education Graduate Program Dr. Patricia Stuhr ABSTRACT Informed by community-based arts education, arts-based community development, and critical pedagogy, this research explores and articulates an evolving model of possibility for community pedagogy. Important and relevant for arts educators, arts administrators and other cultural workers, a community pedagogy utilizing the arts for social change offers entrances to reclamation of self, space and place leading to individual and/or communal agency and progressive social justice efforts. Ethnographic methods such as participant/observation, portraiture of community- based arts workers, arts-based research methods, and narrative writing, were equally utilized to yield highly self-reflexive education data constructions resulting in significant implications for art education. The research journey culminated in a participatory visual art exhibition/installation entitled, A Search for Community Pedagogy: Collage Reclamations of Space and Self. Artistic works created by the artist-educator-researcher-administrator including paintings, panels (visual journals) and mixed-media self-portraits developed visual metaphors which created understandings into relationships to pedagogical building blocks, assertion of voice, location as an activist, notions of community and even issues ii such as life and death. As the research progressed the artwork and narrative reflections served as signposts exposing new directions, clarifying emergent thinking and becoming part of data analysis. Mirroring its exploration, community pedagogy is gradually presented in the research journey in the form of a collage. As an initial foundational layer, a base of a sincere and well functioning egalitarian community must exist, no matter what the teaching/learning setting. Next the educator/learner-cultural worker must commit to ideas of facilitative leadership and to empowering students/colleagues/communities. Additional layers include fostering an educative experience that demands decision-making, encourages freedom and facilitates self-expression. This creates a situation or experience of lived community—the essence of community pedagogy. Processes, evolutions, arts based research and manifestation of the exhibition/installation each reflected theories and performed practices of community pedagogy. Implications of community pedagogy for art education and the aforementioned sister fields are noted and the usefulness of arts- based research is discussed. iii Dedicated to the ancestors, those I walk the world with, and in loving memory of my sister-in-law, Melissa Katherine Taylor and my uncle, Sean McAree Maloy. You all have taught me how to live in community. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Several individuals and indeed my personal, family, peer, practitioner and academic communities in total have helped to make this work possible. Sincere and extensive thanks to Dr. Christine Ballengee Morris, my adviser, and artist-educator-researcher-administrator role model. Her never-ending and unconditional support of my abilities to move forward, risk and articulate my ideas is consistently refreshing and encouraging. Thank you to Dr. Vesta Daniel for guidance within studies of community-based art education, additional counsel in the research process, and her encouragement and general excitement regarding my work. Thank you to Dr. Patricia Stuhr for believing in me and my research and cultivating spaces within the art education department for new kinds of research. Thanks also to Dr. Amy Shuman for her thoughtfulness, feedback and encouragement through my proposal and examination processes. Thank you to the many additional scholars and community arts practitioners, artists and teachers who came before me and whose shoulders I stand on. Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, Maryo Ewell, Henry Giroux, David Trend, and William Cleveland to name but a few. v To Dr. Sue Anne Lafferty for her support, feedback, advice and friendship. I would also like to gratefully acknowledge the important support from my doctoral student colleagues. To Anniina Suominen for walks and talks about arts-based research and other things doctoral. To Karen Clark-Keys, Rina Kindu, Cynthia Collins, Melanie Buffington, Judy Brown, and Keith Lee for their friendship and encouragement. To my partner Brian Taylor for continually suggesting that I work on my dissertation and his never ending belief in me as an artist (even prior to reclamation). To my sister, Kerin, for listening to my crazed rantings and offering feedback and support across e-mail and telephone lines. To my mother, for asking in almost each and every phone conversation—“Are you getting any work done?” And later her selfless contribution of many hours and labor in the initial exhibition/installation preparation. To my father for his unconditional support and interest. To my Grandmother who posited that “it would be good when I was finished so that I could get on with my life.” Thanks also to my mother and father in-law for their love, support and assistance in journeying back to Idaho. To my many supporters in Idaho who encouraged me and divulged that they wished they could make such a change or alteration in their lives to complete an important goal. Special heartfelt hanks to colleagues and dear friends Ruth Piispanen, Maria Carmen Gambliel, Heather Ferrell, Fran Valentine, Brian Hunt, & Greg Hahn. Special thanks as well to Belinda Higgs, who gave advice at the copy machine one day when she heard me talking about giving in to others’ doubts and skepticism about my ability to progress at a quickened pace. “Don’t let others define what you can or cannot do” she said, and thankfully, with the support of the aforementioned individuals vi and community—I did not. Thank you also to the nay-sayers the doubters and the pessimists—your doubts at first troubled and then motivated me. To other new colleagues I met at the Multicultural Center, Rebecca Nelson, Debra Shipper, Dr. Dionne Blue, Dr. Kay Fukuda, Carol Kane, Stepanie Daza, Patricia Gray- Mendoza, Rose Bremer, and most recently Molly Springer and Kashif Khan and Brent Peacock for their support, insights, and interest. I will miss creating community with you. vii VITA August 6, 1970…………… Born - Williamsburg, Virginia Summer 1992……………… Intern, Museum of Modern Art 1992……………………… B.A. Arts Administration, The University of Kentucky 1992……………………… B.F.A. Art Studio, The University of Kentucky 1994……………………… Arts Specialist, Federal Medical Center, Bureau of Prisons, Lexington Kentucky 1995-1996……………….. Assistant Education Coordinator, The University of Kentucky Art Museum 1996-1999……………….. Graduate Administrative Associate: Curator & Manager of the Ohio State University - Newark Art Gallery 1997……………………… Graduate Intern, Dublin Arts Council 1999-2002………………… Director of Community Development, Idaho Commission on the Arts 2002-2003………………… Graduate Administrative Associate: Grants Research & Support, Multicultural Center, the Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Keys, K. & Morris, C. (2001). Car art & cruise in: A tour through community culture. In D. Blandy, P. Bolin & K. Congdon (Eds.) Histories of community-based art education (pp. 42-53). Virginia: National Art Education Association. viii FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Art Education Other Fields: Community-Based Arts Education, Arts-Based Community Development, Critical Pedagogy, Community Arts, Arts Policy & Administration ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication.......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v Vita................................................................................................................................... viii List of Figures................................................................................................................... xii Chapters: 1. Introduction..................................................................................................................1 2. Literature Review.......................................................................................................32 PART I: Contours of an Arts Pedagogy for Social Change...............................33 PART II: Subtexts of an Arts Pedagogy for Social Change ...............................56 3. Methodology..............................................................................................................79 PART I: General Overview of Merged Ethnographic Methods ........................80 PART II: Arts-Based Research: Natures, Connections & Services to Inquiry...95 4. Community Frames, Pedagogical Continuums & CBSL Experiences....................121 Corner Wall Self-Portrait .........................................................140 5. Findings & Data Constructions: Variations on Call & Response............................142 PART I: Written Portrait of Dr. Daniel’s Ways...............................................144 Very Aloe Vera [?] Self-Portrait...............................................157 x PART II: Portrayal of Shirley Bowen...............................................................158