The resident artist in the school as an agent of change in learning strategies of children

Abstract

The main goal of this research is to show the influences that an artist contributes when he makes a residency during a year in a primary school, in the Espace C project. In this program the artist has an artistic workshop inside the school, which he shares and manages with the children. The research seeks to suggest new perspectives in relation to learning through art, analyzing and making visible the changes that the presence of the artist provokes in the learning of children, which becomes more autonomous, meaningful and creative. In the research we have used qualitative tools, basically observations of sessions in the workshop and interviews with artists, children and teachers, to obtain data that we have analyzed and used through methods of Educational Research based on Visual Arts. If we want to investigate and reflect on the impact of creating links between school and art, we think that we must approach educational issues through artistic languages. We have developed a visual narrative in Photo Essay format that we hope will help rethink the distance between education and art, promoting projects and policies that promote a more creative learning. The work Autobiography by Sol LeWitt (1980) serves as an artistic reference for our photo essay, using Lewitt’s work as a metaphor of how permanent contact with an artist in a creative space develops disruptive changes in learning.