Connections between Artistic Practice and Experiences in Nature: Considerations for how Art Education Can Engender Ecological Awareness

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Zuzana Vasko

Abstract

Experiences of artistic engagement share many commonalities with those of being immersed in the natural world. Both experiences call upon sense perception, embodiment, the imagination, the emotions, as well as a sense of beauty and the spiritual implications it can bring. These commonalities are of value to education in their own regard, yet when the arts are explored and experienced in relation to the natural world, they have the potential to form fertile ground in which the seeds of a personally involved and deep ecological awareness can grow.

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