Unlimited possibilities: Co-creating partnership learning with Community, Culture and Country through Art Reach connections

What if we designed our teaching and learning around the notion of people coming together to build each other’s capacities and then extend them further? What if we thought of art education as a form of living inquiry that spreads the power and joy of creativity through inclusive, community-connected, whole-of-life learning together? What if social connection led the way and simultaneously enabled greater inclusive practices across age groups?

This presentation explores the Art-Reach program that I embed into my teaching as an ongoing provocation within visual and creative arts units at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. It explores ways that we are re-examining art education methods so that we more consciously learn-to-learn-with- each other, with culture and with our environment. Knowing that loneliness and social isolation are problems of our time, these Art-Reach experiences seek to cultivate reciprocity and cooperation across age groups and with partnership learning opportunities.

Throughout this presentation I showcase the role of interdisciplinary approaches to art education by sharing several Art-Reach experiences such as; the We Are Well: Intergenerational art-moving-well-being project where First Nations artists were central to the learning with tertiary students, children, seniors, McClelland Gallery and Monash researchers as together we explored art-moving-well-being assets that built social connections and understandings of culture and Country; while the Learning with the Land: Learning with Respect project (part of a broader SSHRC project led by UBC University) shares how pre-service teachers, children, and parents worked with First Nations artists, Faculty of Education and Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) to move with Country and ‘make Country beautiful’ through biodiversity-inspired art experiences. While employing participatory arts-based educational research (P-ABER) as a mode of inquiry I simultaneously present a bricolage of possibilities that emanate from the Art-Reach experiences. They speak to the possibilities of co-creating pre-service teachers’ capacity to teach the arts and ultimately offer trans-disciplinary renderings that go beyond single discipline knowledge. These a/r/tographic rhythms awaken co-created possibilities that respond to the pulse of our times.