USSEA 2026
June 11-13
Join us for the USSEA 2026 conference, where leading experts from the United States, Canada and worldwide will gather to share insights and knowledge on the latest trends and developments in the field of art education.
The conference will be held at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Cultural Conversation in Art Education as Social Advocacy
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What is cultural conversation? What is social advocacy within the art and visual education field? How do our personal and professional conversations lend themselves to support and advocate for the health of our society? How can cultural conversations and social advocacy in art education classrooms promote a healthy society? What does pedagogy that includes cultural conversation look like?
In the Barngarla Aboriginal language, wadlada means “tree” and “communication” concurrently (Zuckermann, 2015). By extension, we might consider that to converse is to breed and grow roots across cultures. Cultural conversation is the sharing or co-constructing of discourse around and through identity practices that provide learners and educators the space to honor each other’s voices. Such discussions may arise at any point in the art/design teaching and learning process, inside or outside of the formal art/design classroom, and may elicit both contentious and/or caring responses. Results, however simple or complex, are those that provide collaborative insights into another human being’s experiences and truths beyond their own (Garber, 2004) through visual, textual, and/or verbal pathways.
Over centuries cultural conversations have included a variety of art forms; cave drawings, theater, illuminated manuscripts, paintings, billboards demanding social justice, and even story telling. All are slow and cultural approaches to teaching and learning that mirror and complement one another with the goal to improve learning (Leddy & Miller, 2023). The purpose of this conference is to encourage conversations about varying artistic cultures resulting in the sharing of information across time, place, environment, and visibility. We aim to support both learners and educators in their pursuit of artistic understanding through these cultural conversations toward finding meaning in their own potential social actions. The proposed outcome is that participants will walk away with deeper knowledge of how they can better understand and support one another, building stronger platforms for social advocacy across cultural differences that can promote a healthy society.
References:
Garber, E. (2004) Social justice and art education. Visual Arts Research, 30(2), pp. 4–22.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20715349
Leddy, S. & Miller, L. (2023) Teaching where you are: Weaving indigenous and slow principles and
pedagogies. University of Toronto Press.
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad; et al. (2015). Engaging: A guide to interacting respectfully and reciprocally
with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People and their arts practices and intellectual property.
Australian Government: Indigenous Culture Support.