The social field(s) of arts education today: living vulnerability in neo-liberal times |
| |
| Authors: | Greg Dimitriadis Emily Cole Adrienne Costello |
| |
| Institution: | Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, Graduate School of Education , University at Buffalo, The State University of New York , Christopher Baldy Hall, Room 468, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA |
| |
| Abstract: | The arts are often seen as peripheral to the ‘real business’ of school and schooling. While this has been the case for some time now, the increasing pressures of high-stakes testing and ever-more draconian public funding schemes (particularly in the wake of 9/11) have created something of a ‘perfect storm’ for those working in the arts. Arts proponents today live and operate within a culture of scarcity, having to justify their increasingly marginalized vocations while competing for continually shrinking resources. The result is an often deep-bodied sense of vulnerability, one which saturates the social field (both micro and macro) of arts education in ways not often publicly acknowledged. In this article, I explore this notion of ‘vulnerability’ as a framework for understanding qualitative data which emerged from a three-year arts and education project I conducted in a large, northeast city in the USA beginning in 2003. In so doing, I look to open up a broader discussion about the oft-ignored intersection(s) between the material and aesthetic in arts and education – a discussion which is sober about the future of such work in times of economic scarcity and conservative retrenchment. |
| |
| Keywords: | educational policy arts education neo-liberalism qualitative research |
|
|
