Along the Way: Situation-Responsive Participation and Education

Myers, Misha (2006) Along the Way: Situation-Responsive Participation and Education. The International Journal of the Arts in Society, 1 (2). pp. 1-6. ISSN 1833-1866

Abstract / Summary

This article discusses approaches to participation and education developed through the art projects ‘way from home’ and ‘VocaLatitude’. In ‘VocaLatitude’ (financially supported by Dartington Plus), a map of contextually devised songs composed by asylum seeker/refugee inhabitants of Plymouth guide the listener on walks to places of significance to the group. These songs were subsequently performed at the Barbican Theatre, Plymouth (2004).

In its proposal for a re-conceptualisation of the participant as ‘percipient’, the article argues for the integration and development of knowledges through practical, embedded, embodied and responsive engagements within the world. The particular, localised context of such engagements offers alternative forms of participation/education to those based on the imposition or acquisition of pre-determined problems, strategies, artistic techniques, aesthetic forms, or bodies of knowledge removed from any specific context of use. The article seeks to demonstrate how these art projects employ more collaborative and context-responsive approaches through situated interaction and creative modes of exchange amongst collaborators, encourage acts of self-determination, and provide opportunities for self-representation of learners’ and inhabitants’ knowledges and conceptions of their world in their terms.

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