Although I am writing this piece having in the back of my mind the program with students creating “some kind” of social artifacts on local ecologies, located in Lapland, March 2025, I am also reflecting on what kind of cross-cutting competencies teachers articulate in class with social arts pedagogies.
These are some principles we’ve learned that work or don’t work. They are to bear in mind to keep the world turning, and the seeds growing. It won’t be over when the garden is empty and the crops are reaped, it’ll be concluding when the mistakes, the hardships, lost crops, and stunted growth of one will reach another gardener, and that one will use it to keep more of their garden alive during the enchantment.
generative scribing student, Tea C., age 15
Context
I find this reflection for our scribing student during the social art program in Lapland speaking to the key idea of social arts in the classroom for teaching with critical thinking and creativity. The work is not over when you think it is, there is always a maturity on that learning seed planted via teacher-student work that has its own time. What we refer to as sustainable education is education and learning processes that matter to students and teachers (O’Brien, 2022). If we continue this metaphor of gardening, we learn and educate today in a way that leaves the soil fertile for future generations. Would this be worth thinking about while we are playing with the role of AI in education? This is for a future piece to explore.
In this blog article, we will attempt to define social arts in the context of sustainable education.
Social Arts is a process..
Social Arts is a process. By that it is intended that the moment pre-made thoughts about results and how it should look sneak in and we allow them, the process is over (Lonka, 2019). There will be results, and it will be beautiful, and there will be a learning impact yet we need to trust the incrementality and park that story aside while we hold the process.
Inner Stages of Social Art Process
We are inviting via social arts a critical process of creating new learning, referred to previously as what we do in the classroom matters, which leads through successive emotional stages (Lonka).
Confusion
Tolerating confusion it looks like for the teacher not jumping too soon to “save the student” and for the student letting go of what they think they already know to learn the same thing via new ways.
Dwelling with Meaning
Dwelling with and around meaning is the space where new data that previously had no space for one’s attention now is accessible and can inform what one chooses to do next (Hayashi, 2020). The art of the process here to be held by teachers and students is not to jump too quickly and formulate some conclusions about what it is and how it is. Stay with that. It has its own time.
Care
We now care about what is shaped and how we do it. It is concrete because it is some kind of object we refer to as an installation. Yet now with care present, we are no longer separated from the one doing it and the outcome.
As we work together, we care about each other, and we refer to that as WEQ (social intelligence).
Social Arts as Sustainable Education
Teachers and students say what they desire, and renewed international benchmarking like PISA highlights vision: what they do in the classroom matters, to bridge to the world, impactful or practical beyond their classroom walls.
Crafting lessons to move through a process of social arts, students and teachers in a systemic pedagogy move in small incremental steps to open up into their authentic expression, not some kind of performative way with the topic, the object, or subject.
In our program called Campfire, with students from four different countries, there was this “box” with different elements and objects inside we called learning tools. These would move us through the emotional stages mentioned and allow us to learn about our local ecologies, ecosystems, and ecotones while something shifts in our perceptions. We incrementally create what O’Brien calls a field of resonance, Hayashi refers to as a social field.
As these four social artifacts—these boxes—were received, they were unpacked and repacked as students came from a place of authenticity, communicating not only to the other participating country groups but to the larger potential public viewers.
The incredible drawing, the definition of an incredible artwork is not more than the percentage of the authentic presence
Sasportas, 2025
Emerging
Social Arts, as a process, speaks to this quality of learning, whereas as a teacher and student, we cannot pinpoint when and where the learning happens. Hence, we take care of why and what and observe the how (Hayashi).
Social Arts is a “togetherness pedagogy”; we can clarify and hence achieve learning in the company of others, seeing how it happens. This process is truly also a source of well-being. This deserves another article piece as well.
Taking once more the example of the Campfire program with students working in Lapland, although they worked in their culture group on a local ecology artifact, there was this “we care about each other” process, and we care about this foreign to us place hosting us for this program. Sasportas calls it witnessing and being in the presence of other cultures authentically. That needs a togetherness pedagogy; it doesn’t just happen, and social arts help with just that.
This cohort witnessing is the first level; the second level is that with the larger public, which bridges the students-teachers work to the world beyond the classroom walls. As they move through the emerging process, they are changed, and the social art installation is a proof of learning that will speak to outside viewers from that authentic presence, from the image of the one learning.
The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.
Robert Henri
Acknowledgments
Sending gratitude to textile artist and professor Alexandra Sargent Capps, FabLab Director, Wond’ry Innovation Center at Vanderbilt University, who has been resourcefully decoding this process and guiding the Social Artifact installation process in the Campfire program.
Sending gratitude to PhD. Carol Williams, ecologist and researcher, and Project Director at Wisconsin University, for her more than one year of companionship, bridging ecological knowledge and translating it into teaching with cross-cutting competencies processes for the Campfire program.
Campfire- Social Arts for Ecological Leadership, a youth engagement program, is part of the Erasmus project Oddience2030. I acknowledge the meaningful work of all partners in the project, and special gratitude to the high school students from India, France, Finland, and Portugal.
Pictures are made by Alexander Gomez, photographer, Bora Ambientar.
Reference:
Oddience2030 project at www.oddience2030.com
Sasportas, Y. (2025). Unlocking artistic energy [Online recorded session]. In T. Hübl (Host), Collective Trauma Healing Summit.
Hayashi, A. (2021). Social Presencing Theater: The Art of Making a True Move. Design, Pi Press.
O’Brien, K. (2021). You matter more than you think: Quantum social change for a thriving world. cCHANGE Press
