Documenting and Preserving Art Education Materials From Conflict - Affected Global Contexts: ArtsAction Group

ArtsAction Group members Ann Holt and Cindy Maguire present Documenting and Preserving Art Education Materials from Conflict-Affected Global Contexts at the Mapping International Art Education Histories Conference at Teachers College Columbia, Thursday November 30, 2023. 

​Our presentation focuses on ArtsAction Group’s (AAG) archive of teaching projects and global arts partnerships. Positioning our work here, particularly in regards to Mapping International Art Education Histories, is the notion that archives are vital to countering erasures, amplifying marginalized, at-risk histories, and increasing possibilities of generating discourse in the global field of art and design education. Engaging with archives is an active process that informs teaching, research and creative practices. Archives are not simply materials about the past; they reflect lived experiences, and provoke questions relating to both historical and contemporary educational paradigms. We archive “as a way to document how we live now so that we might change how we live now. Archives are not static hermetically sealed museums; they are active commentaries about our lives” (Tierney, 1993, p. 4).