Intra-spective Event-encounters in Museums: A Pedagogic Practice Among Community Art Educators in Training

Abstract

This article reflects understandings of artful encounters in relation to ecologies of practice and walking with public art. Introduced as a pedagogic inquiry among art education students training to become teachers in community settings, meaningful event-encounters transpired while walking with the museum. Navigating spaces of becoming-with between body-object-environment encouraged relational positions: self as a/r/tographer, self in relation to artworks, self in relation to a museum space and self in relation to co-participants. Visual, spoken and written responses to artworks were anchored in guiding themes and in an awareness of the artist's creative process. The resultant perceptions are defined in this case as introspective, extrospective and what may be described as intra-spective (reflecting the experience of collaborative exploration). Participant data revealed that the exchange of interpretation becomes a meaningful provocation to one's own assumptions about an artwork. Moreover, intra-spective practice fostered a genuine curiosity about others through the sharing of perspectives in ways that suggest such inquiry offers a pedagogic opening by enhancing focus, stimulating curiosity, and mindfully engaging reflective, affective and reflexive dispositions.