The Canadian Review of Art Education

A/R/T Emergence: Revisiting a Collaborative Exhibit

2026-09-18T00:42:39-04:00

This visual essay revisits A/R/T Emergence, a collaborative exhibition at the Ottawa Art Gallery during the 2022 joint CSEA/SCÉA and OAEA conference. Co-curated as a relational, accessible, non-hierarchical space, it brought together artists, researchers, teachers, students and community members to explore emergence by engaging with decolonization, accessibility, activism, environmentalism, memory, and identity. Grounded in posthumanist and anti-colonial perspectives, it enacted radical inclusion by resisting fixed, linear knowledge in favour of fluid, relational meaning-making, inviting audiences into co-creation. A/R/T Emergence calls for sustaining arts-based exhibitions that foster inclusive and interconnected pedagogies, in conference contexts and beyond.

Vignettes of Connectivity: The University Art Gallery as a Critical Space for Promoting Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression

2026-02-17T16:35:00-05:00

In this paper, we present findings from a recent study of an artist-in-residence program aimed at promoting anti-racism and anti-oppression in a university art gallery. This research tested new strategies, grounded in contemporary artistic practices and gallery-based education. We propose that play-, will-, and care-infused practices offer relational and affective learning opportunities with the potential to stimulate empathic response, critical consciousness, and radical imagination through embodied, relational, and community-oriented modes of engagement.

Teaching Practices in Visual Arts to Support the Well-being of Elementary Students with Special Educational Needs: A Multiple-case Study in Francophone Ontario

2026-03-16T21:23:59-04:00

Set within an inclusive perspective and incorporating a didactic dimension, this article aims to present teaching practices in visual arts that support the well-being of students with special educational needs. Based on Seligman’s (2011) model, to which we added the health dimension (Konu & Rimpela, 2002; Rousseau & Espinosa, 2018), this multiple case study collected data through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and post-observation interviews with three elementary school teachers working in a Franco-Ontarian context. The results highlight visual arts teaching practices that contribute to students’ well-being.

Collaboration for Conciliation: Developing non-colonial programs for Raven Chacon’s “Place Where the Waters Crossed”

2026-02-17T15:02:37-05:00

This critical reflection reexamines the series of educational and public programs that were developed for Place Where the Waters Crossed, a solo exhibition by Diné artist Raven Chacon that was presented at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (Montreal, Canada) in the context of the 19^thMOMENTA Biennale. Drawing from the field of Indigenous studies, we explore how bringing a cultural mediation approach to Indigenous art exhibits can foster non-colonial spaces of conciliation, in which members from different Indigenous as well as non-Indigenous communities can experience and respond to each other’s practices and experiences.

Cultural Mediation through Slam: An Experience of (Re)Connections among Secondary School Students

2026-03-24T17:15:38-04:00

This article presents the findings of a descriptive study on the effects of a slam‑based cultural mediation program led by a Montreal cultural organization. The program combines two in‑class workshops with an artist‑mediator and a slam performance outing. A questionnaire documented the experience of 80 Grade 11 students. Cross‑analysis shows a reconfiguration of students’ representations of poetry and writing, which are perceived as more accessible, freer, and more closely connected to their realities, as well as increased participation and self‑confidence, particularly among students who were initially little interested in school‑based cultural activities. The article concludes by discussing the conditions under which this mediation can act as a lever for reconnections and greater inclusivity within the classroom.

Mending Through Silk: Craft, Diaspora, and Reimagined Futures

2026-02-17T15:25:02-05:00

What is the role of material considerations in informing us of the past, the present and a reimagined future within art education? In this paper, I mend my familial histories and diaspora, through the lens of intercultural learning and research-creation. The research examines a body of work about silk as a collaborative and cultural material through techniques of weaving, embroidery, and burning. By investigating the stories woven into silk, I address my question above and a second question; Can silk inform us of the past, the present and a reimagined future? alongside themes of craft, memory, and hybridity.

Loving Difference: Embracing Critical Love and Art in Anti-Oppressive Teacher Education

2026-02-17T15:31:21-05:00

We share findings from a critical practitioner inquiry into a new arts-integrated anti-oppressive education course in a teacher certification program. The course responds to pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) desire for more learning opportunities around equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility. Co-designed and co-taught by an arts educator and artist-in-residence with two student participant research assistants, the course foregrounded themes of critical love, unsettling “cancel culture,” and emergence. We focus our inquiry on the instructors’ practices, reflexively storying joyful moments, creative tensions, missteps, and emergent insights experienced throughout the course.

Conducting a Dissertation by Implication: Showing Up as Relational Method in Community-Engaged Arts-Based Research

2026-02-28T15:09:52-05:00

Developing arts-based research that integrates community members making and testimony requires finding willing and eager participants. While existing scholarship in community-based art education emphasizes the need for ethical engagement with participants and communities, it often frames finding community partners as a logistical hurdle rather than a relational endeavour. This paper draws on two embedded arts-based doctoral dissertations to propose ‘showing up’ and getting involved in community as a relational approach to embedding for community-engaged arts-based research situated within broader forms of relational ethnography. We argue getting involved offers core benefits for researchers and community sites, and propose strategies for arts-based researchers developing community projects.

Leading Together through Co-digitizing: The Creative Practices of Young People and their Teachers

2026-02-17T15:17:41-05:00

Recently, educational policymakers have responded to young people's digital media practices through increasingly restrictive bans and controls. Drawing on over forty years of collective research, we argue that art educators are positioned to lead through this moment of moral panic by co-digitizing, that is, participating with young people and their digital practices. We share how art educators have cultivated learning networks where knowledge is assembled through relations among people, tools, and contexts. As a result, we call for pedagogical leadership that reconnects schooling with young people's digital lives.

Ethical Dialogue in Art Education: Immanence, Aesthetics, and Appearances in the Middle Ground

2026-02-17T15:55:13-05:00

This article examines how art education can cultivate relational forms of dialogue at a time when educational policy increasingly privileges individualising, outcomes-driven approaches. Using Dora García’s Exhausted Books as an example, the article explores how art objects create an aesthetic domain where resistance, plurality, and relational meaning-making emerge. I conclude that recognising these aesthetic conditions is an essential quality of art education and essential for sustaining practices that support ethical sociability and dialogic engagement with the world. The article outlines a framework for educators seeking to cultivate openness, dissensus, and ethically grounded dialogue in contemporary learning environments.

Academic Burnout

2026-02-17T16:16:37-05:00

Due to institutional pressures within neoliberal university environments, faculty are experiencing heightened burnout. Exploring ways to reduce burnout in accessible and creative communal ways is significant. To counter experiences of burnout, two professors and one emerging academic examined the three tenets of the self-compassion framework through arts-based inquiry. We created postcard images, mailed them to one another, and investigated our experiences using Maslach’s Burnout Inventory. We analyzed written narratives about the artmaking, receiving, and assessment answers within the self-compassion framework. We found mail art increased common humanity, self-kindness, and mindfulness. We recommend future studies explore self-compassion-focused artmaking while integrating assessments.

List of Reviewers

2026-09-27T17:16:10-04:00

Editorial Advisory Board

2026-09-27T18:04:27-04:00

Editorial Advisory Board

Reconnections: Art, Education, and Inclusive Futures

2026-09-24T17:23:01-04:00

1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back

2026-09-24T17:27:03-04:00