Engaging First Peoples in Arts-Based Service Learning: Towards Respectful and Mutually Beneficial Educational Practices: 18 (Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education) - Hardcover

All educators with an interest in enhancing future teachers’ understanding of social justice and arts-based learning will benefit from reading this book. Arts-based service learning is here presented as a tool for stepping outside traditional classrooms, in order to learn about culture and to engage with real subjects. The central concepts reciprocity, meaningful service, reflection, development and diversity are discussed using a wide range of references to international research. Although many of the chapters concern Australian projects carried out with Australian first peoples communities and Australian universities, the editors present the challenges and affordances on an analytical and reflective level that is both inspiring and useful to international readers. Eva Saether, Lund University, Sweden

I found this collection of essays moving on multiple levels as an artist and teacher who is a descendant of White European colonizers. It evoked a past remembering of forced silencing and deep loss, while simultaneously in the present being touched by the embedded wisdom and knowledge First Peoples bring to the future through restoring the sacred in art and cultural practices. Barbara Bickel, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA