6th research symposium of the Hollo Institute
Social Justice and Public Pedagogy
at Aalto University, School of Art, Design and Architecture, Department of Art
Helsinki, Finland (Address Hämeentie 135C, 5th floor)
October 8th and 9th, 2015
Learning occurs in diverse sites and through multiple modalities, outside of traditional schools or schooling. Recent discussions around “public pedagogy” consider what pedagogy is and looks/feels like, especially outside of institutional settings. Public pedagogy focuses, in part, on where and how cultural values and social relations are learned and take root, through popular and corporate culture, through sites from entertainment media, informal sites of learning, and public spectacle. Public pedagogy also revolves around the common sense idea that business, industry, and corporations, as opposed to the State, are increasingly responsible for the public good.
Socially engaged artistic practices cannot be separated from their larger cultural contexts. New modes of artistic intervention into public pedagogy have directed attention to normative practices around the globe. This symposium is an opportunity to discuss what values and lessons are taught through public pedagogy, and share modes of artistic interventions into public life that inspire reflection and social action. The symposium brings together practitioners, researchers, and activists from diverse fields, interested in understanding what pedagogy does in the interplay between art, research, and its social function.
Keynote speakers
Jenny Sandlin:
https://sst.clas.asu.edu/jennifer-sandlin
Jenny Sandlin is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University in Tempe. Her research focuses on the intersections of education, learning, and consumption; as well as on the theory and practice of public pedagogy. She also investigates sites of public pedagogy and popular culture-based, informal, and social movement activism centered on “unlearning” consumerism. Her work has been published in Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Adult Education Quarterly, Qualitative Inquiry, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Curriculum Inquiry, and Teachers College Record. She has edited, with Peter McLaren, Critical Pedagogies of Consumption(Routledge, 2010) and, with Brian Schultz and Jake Burdick, Handbook of Public Pedagogy (Routledge, 2010).
Pilvi Takala:
Pilvi Takala lives and works in Istanbul and Amsterdam. She graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2006 (MFA), was artist-in-residence at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam 2009-2010 and won the Dutch Prix de Rome 2011, Finnish State Prize for Visual Arts and Emdash Award 2013. Takala carries out performative interventions in our everyday life, using her own body as artistic material, placing it in quite humorous predicaments. Her own feelings evolving in the course of an intervention, often nuanced shades of embarrassment, reveal the contours of society's expectations. Her works clearly show that it is often possible to learn of the implicit rules of a social situation only by its disruption.