Over the past 15 years, we have witnessed a repositioning of the arts and artistic production within the educational processes and the overall well-being of our societies. This movement has resonated throughout the national and international scene, with significant repercussions for national university systems. Examples include the increasing importance of arts education within various national education systems and the creation of undergraduate and/or graduate arts degree programs, as well as the development of public arts universities in Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela, and Cuba. These developments have revalued the role of arts education in society, significantly democratized access to training, and paved the way for a fundamental epistemological shift regarding the production and dissemination of knowledge. 

While artistic training has a long tradition in our countries, at the beginning of the 21st century, the opening of a new political cycle in the region promoted changes in educational, cultural, scientific, artistic, and technological policies, granting the State a predominant role in fostering autonomous and sovereign development processes. This situation, in turn, allowed for a redefinition of the role of the arts and culture within these processes and a modification of the historical pattern of training, which had been associated with the production of cultural elites.

In this context, our proposal for the formation of a Working Group stems from the understanding that artistic creation and the forms of knowledge production it entails are never an individual matter, but rather, above all, a social and cultural one, and therefore, a collective creation. The arts education processes that have been implemented—recently in our continent within the framework of the aforementioned public higher education projects—implicitly include the idea of ​​learning to think in community: a way of thinking that emerges at the boundary, in that imprecise space where the affirmation of difference allows for the recognition of the other as a fellow human being (Torlucci and Volnovich, 2018). In this way, the arts in education and arts education challenge a rigid, vertical, and utilitarian type of learning, proposing instead a concept of education as a shared, multidirectional, and situated action that, in its practice, generates the emergence of new languages, new ways of thinking, imagining, and shaping the future. An education for the practice of interculturality where other epistemologies, other forms of knowledge, other ways of being and understanding the world come into play. That is, arts education and artistic creation as an emancipatory and political action.

It is in this sense that we propose, as the structuring axis of our project and recovering what was stated in the Guayaquil Manifesto[1], the idea of right to the arts in education at all levels and in all forms. Because to achieve the goal of a possible world that is developed, sustainable, and offers a better quality of life, arts education is a fundamental element in building a new citizenry.

This process can also be seen in the consolidation, at the regional level, of fundamental agreements regarding the role of the arts in educational processes, and particularly in higher education, which in some ways form the backdrop for this project. Thus, the declarations arising from the Regional Conferences on Higher Education (CRES), organized in 2008 and 2018 under the auspices of UNESCO, reveal some conceptual advances and changes in policy orientation. In this regard, the 2008 Cartagena Declaration states that:

“Just as important as the generation and dissemination of knowledge in the areas of exact sciences, natural sciences, and production technologies are the humanities, social sciences, and arts, in order to strengthen our own perspectives for addressing our problems, responding to challenges related to human, economic, social, and cultural rights, equity, wealth distribution, intercultural integration, participation, democratic development, and international balance, as well as enriching our cultural heritage. It is essential to bridge the gaps between the scientific, technical, humanistic, social, and artistic fields, understanding the complexity and multidimensionality of the problems and promoting cross-cutting approaches, interdisciplinary work, and comprehensive education.” (Cartagena Declaration 2008)

Likewise, during the Conference held in commemoration of the centenary of the University Reform of Córdoba in 2018, it was stated:

“Thinking that technologies and sciences will solve humanity’s pressing problems is important but not enough. For the dialogue of knowledge to be universal, it must be plural and egalitarian, to enable dialogue between cultures (...) Science, the arts, and technology must become pillars of cooperation for the equitable and solidarity-based development of the region, based on processes of consolidating an economically independent and politically sovereign bloc (CRES 2018).

However, contrary to the agreements and progress achieved, in the current context of the return to the region of neoliberal and neoconservative governments, there are warnings about the growing reduction and/or eradication of careers and subjects related to the arts and humanities at all levels of educational systems[2]. As Nussbaum (2010) argues, these changes in what democratic societies teach younger generations have not been subjected to an analysis that would allow us to glimpse the impact of their consequences: “Thirsty for money, nation-states and their education systems are inadvertently discarding certain skills that are necessary to keep democracy alive. If this trend continues, nations around the world will soon be producing entire generations of utilitarian machines, instead of fully formed citizens with the capacity to think for themselves, possess a critical view of traditions, and understand the significance of the achievements and sufferings of others. The future of democracy on a global scale hangs by a thread” (Nussbaum, 2010).

In this context, considering the arts and education in relation to the construction of citizenship allows us to question the established system of disciplinary hierarchies within cultural and educational institutions (schools, universities, museums), still dominated by the modern paradigm of an eminently logocentric, patriarchal, and rational culture like that of the West. All of this compels us to reflect on the modifications that the arts produce, or can produce, in the epistemic, pedagogical, and organizational models through which we currently understand the production and transmission of knowledge in a context where breaking with cognitive canons requires dismantling the thought structures that reproduce power in our societies.

Framed in this way, the Working Group begins with some thought-provoking questions to guide and organize our proposal: To what extent do the arts in education modify traditional forms of knowledge production? What kind of knowledge are we talking about? What is its connection to the new conditions of production in contemporary life within the framework of so-called knowledge economies or cognitive capitalisms? How do the arts and education relate to society and its development, both in terms of the production of material and symbolic value, and to well-being?

Our proposal takes as its antecedent a process of political and academic articulation that has been promoted by the art universities of the region, together with faculties, artistic careers and research departments, who consider that in order to guarantee the human right to knowledge “it is fundamental to recognize the strategic place of the arts and culture in the production of knowledge with social commitment, in the struggle for cultural sovereignty, sustainable development and the pluricultural integration of the regions” (Declaration of Buenos Aires and Chuquipata[3]) and that “it is essential to generate matrices of legitimation and evaluation specific for the teaching-learning and research processes in the arts” (Guayaquil Manifesto).

In this context, the GT aims to strengthen a working network that will allow progress in the production of a shared agenda with a comparative approach at the regional and international level on the various aspects involved in the articulation of the arts and education, extending our field of work towards the concept of building citizenship as an essential element to rethink democracy, sustainability and resilience in the contemporary scenario.

To achieve this, we propose 4 main areas of work:

1- Right to the arts in education: pedagogies, creation and research, interdisciplinarity and interculturality, evaluation and accreditation.

2- Arts, cultural-educational policies and social transformation: culture, economy and society.

3- Arts, citizenship and contemporaneity: digital revolution, anthropocene and Good Living.

4- The arts and humanities within the framework of knowledge governance in cognitive capitalism and in the construction of collective subjectivities/temporalities.

[1]http://www.uartes.edu.ec/sitio/educacionsuperiorenartes/2018/05/24/manifiesto-de-guayaquil-por-el-derecho-a-las-artes-en-la-educacion/

[2]. The cases of Chile and Brazil deserve particular attention. On the one hand, the Chilean government has promoted a reduction in class time for Visual Arts, Music Education, and Technology Education (in subsidized schools—review), while simultaneously pushing for an educational reform that will eliminate mandatory subjects from the 3th and 4th grade curriculum, such as history, geography, and social sciences, making them electives. The case of Brazil shows a similar trend, as the government decided to cut approximately 30% of investment in education, primarily in federal universities, for humanities programs, arguing that it would "focus on areas that generate an immediate return for the taxpayer, such as veterinary medicine, engineering, and medicine" (Jair Bolsonaro).

[3]Available at: https://www.priu.com.ar/acciones

In an international context that exhibits a radical change in its productive matrix, which has shifted the core of economic valorization towards the sphere of knowledge production, the study and discussion of the arts in education and their contribution to the construction of citizenship constitutes a relevant and novel area of ​​knowledge, which allows us to problematize key issues for the future of our countries and the continent.

This Working Group is part of a current of thought that revalues ​​the arts as a fundamental form of knowledge production, challenging the logocentric paradigm upon which our educational institutions, and especially universities, were forged. In this sense, the arts in education and the progressive place they have occupied at the university level in recent years represent considerable progress. This allows us to organize our proposal around academic, institutional, organizational, theoretical, and artistic trajectories that have demonstrated the importance of the arts in addressing complex problems and in the construction of values, imaginaries, and identities, and therefore, the possibility of a new citizenry.

In this way, we start from considering the arts in education, as a producer of knowledge and a shaper of citizenship, as a universal human right, a collective right of our peoples, a social and common public good for the sovereignty, good living and emancipation of our societies, and for the construction of Latin American and Caribbean citizenship.

Thinking about the arts in education as a human right implies challenging the individualistic prejudice with which we tend to think about our life in common, which leads us to translate the idea of ​​universal right as the right of all individuals, of the citizens of a political community, without investigating the profound consequences of thinking not of the individual subject, but of the collective subject, of the community itself as the holder of those rights.

Thinking about the arts in education, then, in relation to building citizenship, means thinking about it from the perspective of communal life and collective rights. It means considering everything a community needs to live with dignity, to achieve fulfillment, to form well-rounded human beings and not merely utilitarian beings at the service of market demands.

This proposal needs to be considered within the framework of a new approach to knowledge management, one that is not based solely on academic knowledge but also on social knowledge with a non-commercial objective. This approach should contribute to environmental sustainability, the satisfaction of needs, peace, the guarantee of rights, the indefinite continuation of cultures, and the empowerment of individual, collective, and territorial capacities. All of this implies, as Boaventura de Sousa Santos argues, breaking with the “epistemicide” (Santos, 2009) that has been imposed on society and the elitist colonial university. The current cognitive system, primarily a product of colonialism's mode of accumulation, anthropocentrism, and patriarchalism, shapes a subjectivity that produces a convergent, marginally plural, dominant, and hegemonic way of thinking. This thinking structures individual and social subjectivity in such a way that changing the prevailing social common sense is unlikely. (Rene Ramirez, 2018).

Undoubtedly, these elements—which are initially configured at the individual level—are necessarily linked to the need to rethink the concepts of citizenship and democracy in the digital age. This is not only due to the abundant empirical evidence that has widely demonstrated the benefits of fostering an artistic and cultural fabric as incentives for socio-economic development, urban regeneration, and an improved quality of life for the populations involved. From an economic perspective, “evaluations of the social impact of culture have focused more on its extrinsic individual impacts (cognitive development, physical and mental health) than on its collective impacts (building social capital and community cohesion)” (Azevedo, 2016). Indeed, one of the most interesting theoretical elements recently discovered is that the role of culture in development is better grounded in community-oriented values ​​than in other channels of individual motivation (Maridal, 2013).

In this sense, various current transformations are promoting a repositioning of the arts and cultures on an epistemological plane that challenges established hierarchies of knowledge, and are stimulating and expanding a greater understanding of their role in research, development, social innovations, and therefore in the well-being of peoples. This has partly modified the very definitions and ideas of development, making visible the crucial role of the arts in achieving more just and democratic societies. Amartya Sen (2000), for example, in his proposal for Human Development, brings about a kind of “cultural turn,” recognizing the arts and culture not as just another factor of development—as in the “developmentalist” perspective—but as an objective and purpose of development itself. This perspective accounts not only for the potential of the arts and culture to affect individuals cognitively, aesthetically, and spiritually, but above all, for their capacity to transform the civic, social, political, and economic dimensions of our societies. While influencing our sense of belonging, it feeds the knowledge that gives us autonomy, shapes our sensitivity, and enhances our capacity for integration.

From the empirical experience of university work, a primary element that directly links arts, education, and citizenship has been the community engagement projects implemented in the region. Indeed, arts education, artistic creation, and the use of hybrid methodologies for engaging with the community through the arts have emerged as powerful instruments for social transformation. The benefits of community engagement projects have been demonstrated as fundamental elements of arts education in the region, particularly the implementation of a two-way educational system (a dialogue of knowledge). This has led to the strengthening of community networks and the involvement of the local population in the search for alternatives to well-being (Carrillo, Ana, Hilgert Bradley, 2018).

These elements, rooted in real processes of building social capital—which is precisely an essential element in the processes of affirming citizenship and building democracy—are, in our view, far more significant than discourses that value culture and art based on their economic interpretation, rooted in the instrumentalization of cultural and creative industries—and more recently, in the “orange economy” (IDB, 2013). While these discourses may seem to favor the development of activities related to art and culture, they are simultaneously a double-edged sword regarding their standardization and homogenization under a Fordist industrial production approach. And while they may be interesting from a comprehensive perspective of valuing art and culture by categorizing them as performing economic sectors, they are reductive in their assessment of the real impacts that the development of arts education and artistic creation can have at a societal level.

It is precisely within this theoretical and political discussion that our reflection aims to focus on various aspects of the arts in education and their impact at different scales (individual and social), framing them within the context of regional political challenges and global threats in the Anthropocene era. A central aspect of this debate lies in the capacity to generate new knowledge and how this knowledge is integrated into the global landscape of cognitive capitalism.

Ultimately, the political dispute over what constitutes knowledge is a political dispute over what kind of society, what kind of region, what kind of world. The civilizational crisis the world is experiencing is a product of a particular way of managing knowledge. In 1975, 83% of the market value of the 500 largest companies listed on the US stock exchange corresponded to tangible assets. In 2015, the opposite was true: 84% of the value of these companies corresponded to intangible assets (Vercellone, 2017, p. 33). We live in an era where exchange value in global trade is rooted in the immaterial. Despite the many forms of resistance, artistic production and its enjoyment are not exempt from this logic. Innovation-intensive activities (development of production techniques and creation of dominant designs) assume central roles in the new structure, while production-intensive activities (the "adopter" position) take a peripheral role in the structure's dynamics. This generates a new neo-dependency in countries of the Global South, where the arts, through various mechanisms, create highly valued intangible assets within capitalism. One of the working group's fundamental objectives will therefore be to elucidate and understand the governance of knowledge in the transition from industrial capitalism to cognitive capitalism, as well as the role of the arts in education within the logic of global accumulation. In this context, it will be essential to study the role of the humanities and arts programs in higher education systems in the region (Global South) and compare it with the trends emerging in the Global North.