Session Information
20 SES 10 B, Museum Education and Intercultural Competences
Paper Session
Contribution
Proposal for Helsinki Paper
Locating African Caribbean Cultures in an Historical framework: The Case for Art Education
Ancestral traditions permeate all areas of a people’s culture, forming the backdrop to the commissioning and creation of distinctive art forms (Mason 1995; Pascall 1992). This is apparent in practices as diverse as Nigerian metal works and textile arts from Japan. Masks are recognised as integral to artistic expression across the African continent. They are key motifs in traditional practices that give expression to fundamental needs and beliefs (Schmalenbach 1988). Their forms and symbolic meanings, inform the practices of artists with a background in Africa, even when settled in Europe and elsewhere (Njami 2005). The art work of internationally acclaimed painter Chris Offili is strengthened by his familiarity with African artistic and cultural traditions. Though often making pieces about the black experience elsewhere, much of what he says is shaped in a visual language rooted in African traditional symbolic practices. Similar connections to an ancient cultural resource cannot, however, be experientially made by African Caribbean artists. They are outsiders to traditions with rich, symbolic meanings at the disposal of the African subject (Brathwaite 1974). The voice of the diasporic artist is instead honed by an amalgam of African traces and exposure to other life-worlds in the West, more especially the Western canon to which they have been acculturated and the new syncretic forms they have played a major part in constructing (Hall 1992 (a); Hebdige 1979; Willis 1990). Traditions of making attendant on, say, rites of passage were therefore lost on embarkation on the slave ships, and with them many traditional skills in the ownership of the enslaved. This lost connection with tribal communities in Africa has become an ontological feature in African Caribbean and other diasporic life-worlds (Mintz and Price 1976; McEvilly 1976).
Not only do young people from African Caribbean communities not experience the kudos exposure to traditional crafts would afford them in the classroom, they are also required constantly to be immersed in the practices of the majority group and those of other heritages. Diasporic students move in and out of such worlds without fully being part of them (Parker 1992; Hall 1992). The paper will problematize the issue of teacher awareness of the sense of loss that characterises African Caribbean cultural identities.
African Caribbean students are the inheritors of cultural heritages with roots in the Caribbean Africa, South Asia, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. Importantly, too, in the same way that the descendants of UK peasant farmers who laboured for long hours to feed the British nation and miners who toiled in shocking conditions to produce the coal that fired the industrial revolution can claim a stake in the UK’s cultural and economic history, the descendants of the African enslaved while originating from a different geographical location, have similar, though still largely unacknowledged, rights. My paper will argue the case for a new pedagogy that draws on our shared roots and cross-fertilising interactions.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Chalmers, G. 1996, Celebrating Pluralism: Art, Education and Cultural Diversity, The Getty Education Institute for the Arts: Los Angeles, California Efland, A. Freedman, K. Stuhr, P. (1996) Postmodern Art Education: An Approach to Curriculum The national Art Education Association Virginia Fanon, F. (1986) ‘Black Skin, White Mask’ in du Gay, P, and Evans, J. Identity: a reader, Sage Publications, London, California and New Delhi Friere, P. (1987) A Pedagogy for Liberation, Bergin & Harvey, New York Gilroy, P. 2000, Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London Gilroy (1993) Small Acts Published by Serpent’s Tail, London Hooks, b. 1992, Black Looks: Race and representation, South End Press Boston, Massachusetts hooks, b. 1990 Yearning,: Race Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press Mintz, S. and Price, R. 1976, The Birth of African-American Culture, An anthropological Perspective, Beacon Press Boston Massachusetts Troyna, B. Can You See the Join? An Historical Analysis of Multicultural and Antiracist Education Policies in Racism and Education Structures and Strategies, Gill D. et al (eds) SAGE Publications: London, Newbury Park and Delhi Hall, S. (1992a). New ethnicities. In J. Donald & A. Rattansi (Eds.), ‘Race’, culture and difference. London, Newbury Park and New Delhi: SAGE.
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