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A Place for Stupidity: Investigating Democratic Learning Spaces in the Diorama
Author(s) -
Hoekstra Marike
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of art and design education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1476-8070
pISSN - 1476-8062
DOI - 10.1111/jade.12240
Subject(s) - contest , storytelling , sociology , visual arts , democracy , the arts , aesthetics , pedagogy , art , political science , literature , politics , law , narrative
This article explores the possibilities of the diorama medium as a method to investigate educational realities and ideals. Contemporary artistic examples of dioramas deconstruct traditional associations of the diorama as a form of explanatory storytelling and critically contest the problematic reproduction of existing hierarchies, which seem to occur when dioramas are used in museums and schools. In contemporary dioramas, the gaze of the spectator is instead invited to engage and contribute to multiple interpretations of spatial creations. The article explains how dioramas have been employed in a doctoral research project on artist teachers and democratic pedagogy and how making dioramas as a research method in arts‐based educational research has been adopted to engage in a dialogue with visitors to a contemporary gallery to collaboratively investigate the spatiality of democratic learning spaces.