Socially engaged art with preservice teachers: The aesthetics of making sense of community-embedded experiences

Abstract

In this graphica article, Stephanie Jones and James Woglom have a critical discussion and analysis of the community-based art-making pedagogical project that Woglom undertook with their undergraduate art education students, expanding on Authors’ past work in comics arts-based research. They build upon the idea of ‘ethnographica’ – or ethnographically informed graphica creation – as the primary method of meaning-making Woglom and their students engaged in. Students’ (positioned as co-researchers, and named as authors in the piece) visual-verbal meaning-making of their community-based work with youth is included along with some of their interpretations of their experiences as well as the two authors’ analyses. The article connects this one semester of socially engaged art teacher education to relational aesthetics, A/R/Tography and culturally responsive work with youth.