We’re very pleased to announce the following publication reporting on the Tallahassee Foot Soldier project.

A Vision of Civically Engaged Art Education: Teens as Arts-Based Researchers

Studies in Art Education 61(2)

How might positioning teens as arts-based researchers create an opening for young people to be civically minded critical thinkers and makers?

ABSTRACT

Civic engagement is not just concerned with identifying societal and political structures. It is also concerned with how young people understand themselves as civic agents capable of starting and sustaining change. Seeing students as change makers is a civically engaged goal supported by literature surrounding the aims of art education in K–12 schools. Working in collaboration with local teens, we engaged in a week long art camp that facilitated teens’ inquiry into the legacy of foot soldiers in the civil rights movement in Tallahassee, Florida. Teens explored the people, places, and events that mobilized the community as they made connections with current events and created a collective portrait of change makers. In this article we explore the question: How might positioning teens as arts-based researchers create an opening for young people to be civically minded critical thinkers and makers?