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Social sciences
- Education, culture and society not elsewhere classified
- Social work not elsewhere classified
In this dissertation, we explore the role of participatory arts practices in relation to urban living from a social pedagogical perspective. Such social pedagogical perspective shifts our attention from organising and enabling individuals to participate in participatory arts practices to the relationship between participatory art and views on urban living and the desired social order. Notwithstanding the centrality of social transformation and the promise to disrupt society’s agreed symbolic order in the genesis of participatory arts’ practices, this critical potential increasingly risks to be hijacked by an instrumental debate. Thereby, their original premise to open up, broaden and redefine the existing cultural canon seems to be fading into the background. From a social pedagogical perspective, the central aim of this dissertation is therefore to transcend such technical-instrumental approach and to develop a deeper (empirical) understanding of participatory art in light of the context in which it evolves, in light of it situatedness between people and in light of the demands of a changing urban society.