Culturally Relevant Arts Education for Social Justice

Book excerpt: A groundswell of interest has led to significant advances in understanding and using Culturally Responsive Arts Education to promote social justice and education. This landmark volume provides a theoretical orientation to these endeavors. Examining a range of efforts across different forms of art, various educational settings, and diverse contexts, it foregrounds the assets of imagination, creativity, resilience, critique and cultural knowledge, working against prevailing understandings of marginalized groups as having deficits of knowledge, skills, or culture. Emphasizing the arts as a way to make something possible, it explores and illustrates the elements of social justice arts education as "a way out of no way" imposed by dominance and ideology. A set of powerful demonstrations shows how this work looks in action. Introductions to the book as a whole and to each section focus on how to use the chapters pedagogically. The conclusion pulls back the chapters into theoretical and pedagogical context and suggests what needs done to be done practically, empirically, and theoretically, for the field to continue to develop.