Images and Identity: a continuum.
The North South exchange.
“It’s easy to see which side you are on”
(Sir Edward Carson’s comment on the paintings of Sir John Lavery)
This chapter examines the potential of art education to contribute to an exploration of national identity and citizenship across the island of Ireland.
Art and visual imagery has long been associated with concepts of national identity. Munro (1956) suggests that that ‘There is no better avenue than art to the understanding of past and present culture’. Eisner (1987) continuing the theme concludes that to be able to understand culture ‘...one needs to understand its manifestations in art, and to understand art, one needs to understand how culture is expressed through its content and form’ (p.20).
The chapter examines some recent research activities carried out with student teachers in the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and the University of Ulster and is structured as follows. Firstly, the context is described in terms of a recently completed EU Comenius project Images and Identity: Improving Citizenship Education through Digital Art. It then outlines the extension of this research in a national context, which is presented as the ‘North South Exchange a continuum: Images and Identity project’. As a cross border initiative this aspect of the research was funded by the Standing Conference for Teacher Education: North and South (SCoTENS). The research activities, are described, and include student teachers’ responses to ‘Passion and Politics’ an exhibition of the works of Sir John Lavery at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. This was followed up by a questionnaire examining the student teachers responses to the exhibition and their perceptions about the role of the artist as a visual commentator of his times. Text data drawn from the questionnaire was analysed qualitatively and some initial findings presented. Finally the chapter concludes by reflecting upon the potential for further research and practice.
Context.
This part of the research study emerges from the EU Comenius project Images and Identity: Improving Citizenship through Digital Art carried out with six education partners (UK, Ireland, Malta, Portugal, Germany and the Czech Republic) from 2008 to 2010. The project was primarily an art education initiative, co-ordinated from Roehampton University, London, which was designed to support and empower teachers to investigate citizenship themes/concepts through art education and digital media with a specific focus on European Identity. Art education provides important opportunities to address emotional and symbolic aspects of human experience, integrate verbal and non-verbal forms of expression and promote intercultural communication between learners and teachers. Its potential contribution to teaching citizenship has not yet been explored in the European context (Mason, 2010). In defining the project’s objectives Mason states (as cited in Kerr, 2004) that ‘Education for democratic citizenship (EDC) has been a Council of Europe priority since the mid 1990s. However Citizenship or Civic Education was established as a specific education aim very recently in many member states and there are shortfalls in resources and teacher training’ (p.6).
The findings drawn from the Irish aspect of the original study suggests that ‘...building discussion around citizenship issues related to Europe in art classes was challenging and it was perceived as difficult to achieve a satisfactory balance between art making and the discussion of citizenship and Europe’. At the same time the findings showed that within the setting of the art and design room, pupils were highly motivated to explore issues relating to personal identity within the context of their own national identity.
The findings from this first phase of the research provided the impetus to expand the study and to explore the potential of the visual arts could be used to support the development of citizenship education across the island of Ireland (North and South) with particular reference to the pre-service stage of teacher education.
Image and Identity: the North South focus.
Since the 1990s there has been a renewed interest in citizenship education across the island of Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, a programme of Civic Social and Political Education (CSPE) has been in place in post primary schools since 1997. Significant economic, political and social change in Ireland during final decades of the 20th century were to have a profound effect on the development of curriculum and education policy in the Republic of Ireland (Kerr McCarthy and Smith, 2002, p.183).
The introduction of citizenship education into the Northern Ireland school curriculum however, was potentially more contentious because of the difficulties of growing up in a society where loyalties are strongly divided in terms of national identity.
Issues around national identity and the role of citizenship education in Ireland (North and South).
During 1970s and 1980s, when ‘the troubles’ were at their height, schools in Northern Ireland often saw their role as providing what was for many young people a stable environment in otherwise hostile and turbulent surroundings. Teachers often saw their role as one of limiting discussion or simply avoiding controversial issues that might create dissension within the classroom or what Arlow (1999, p.14) calls ‘...their oasis of peace’.
The signing of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) on 10th April 1998 affirmed in law that Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom for so long as it is the wish of the majority of the people who live there while acknowledging the legitimate wish of a significant minority within Northern Ireland to be part of a united and independent Ireland. The potential contribution of education was seen as an important means in helping to develop an overall culture of tolerance and in 1999 the Department of Education (DENI) recommended that the school curriculum should be developed to include citizenship and human rights education.
Defining citizenship and its relationship to national identity however, remains problematic in spite of the fact that Northern Ireland may be viewed today as a relatively peaceful and functioning democratic society.
The legacy of the past is still powerful and still deep enmities can remain and along with a perceived lack of cultural understanding and trust between communities. There also continues to be unresolved issues as to how historical events are perceived The two traditions are now likely to be portrayed in terms of identity and allegiance- either ‘unionist / loyalist / protestant’ or ‘nationalist / republican / catholic’ and there continues to be a 90% religious segregation in schooling.
Strong family and community loyalties also tend to promote ‘tribal’ political interests, which often include a selective or partisan version of historical events that are often conveyed through folklore, pageantry, memorials and in various street paintings such as wall murals. In loyalist / protestant areas banners or wall paintings will commemorate the 1916 Battle of the Somme during World War 1 where thousands of Northern Irish died in the cause of the British Empire. Alternatively, republican / catholic neighborhoods images might commemorate the Easter Rising (also in 1916) against British rule. Such visual images have been used extensively in Northern Ireland to draw selectively on the past.
Unlike other societies (including the Republic of Ireland), providing a universally accepted single model or even definition of citizenship in the context of Northern Ireland society can still be seen as elusive. More worryingly, Arlow (1999, p.14) has suggested that ‘Citizenship Education in the Northern Ireland curriculum has the potential to alienate not only teachers but pupils as well as the wider community’. There is however, an expectation that it will be prioritised by schools with learners given opportunities to discuss and examine key contemporary and often controversial issues relating to equality, diversity, democracy, human rights, and identity.
Why Art and Citizenship?
Throughout history, human beings have looked to the arts to make sense of experience (Davis, 2005.p12). This quality in the art process of making discussing and reflecting on meaning is one that is particular to an arts education. Art teachers and artists are familiar with processes of engaging with issues of identity, difference, justice, politics through image making and construction of meaning. As Jessica Hoffman Davis (2005) suggests in her paper Redefining Ratso Rizzo: Learning from the Arts about Process and Reflection, ‘creating art gives students the opportunity to encounter and value different perspectives in their own thinking and action to integrate the learning they are doing in separate areas into a coherent artistic production’ (p.14).
Granville (2009) in his paper ‘The Art is in the Tea; Educating against the grain’ argues that the transformative power of art is one of the key features of an arts-based approach to exploring issues of Identity: In the words of Mezirow (1999):
‘The focus of the educator is on facilitating a continuing process of critical enquiry wherever it leads the learner. There are no ‘anticipated learning outcomes’ in transformative learning’.
When exploring issue-based work which can be difficult and contentious, art making, discussion and analysis can go places where other more traditional educational methods cannot go. Often it is said that ‘words fail you’ or ‘actions speak louder than words’. Human capacity for expression through the arts is relied upon to capture a mood or a profound sense of emotion when all else fails. Irish artists North and South such as Paul Seawright, John Kindness, Perry Ogden, Neil Jordan, Dorothy Cross, amongst many others have dealt with issues of national identity in ways which challenge us and create new meanings of what it means to be Irish. The work of these contemporary Irish artists formed the basis of discussion around national identity throughout the first phase of the Comenius Images and Identity project. As a result of the Comenius research project it seemed a natural extension to focus more closely on what it meant to be ‘Irish’ across the whole island of Ireland. Given that we are dealing with art education in the North and South of Ireland it was appropriate to examine the differing perceptions of what it means to be Irish on both sides of the border.
Link with Art and Design teachers North and South.
Two groups of postgraduate students (from both campuses) embarked in September 2010 on a joint Images and Identity the North South Exchange project which involves exploring, making and discussing collectively images which represent their national identity. The aim of the project was to examine the potential for art education within the context of Initial Teacher Education to contribute to an exploration of national identity and citizenship across the island of Ireland.
Art and Design student teachers have a common sense of purpose in this regard. Their stock in trade is image-making and art education. Both these cohorts of student teachers are well positioned to reflect on their concept of national identity at this point in time.
Both groups of teachers share a similar process of formation, in that both courses are highly competitive, as many apply but few are chosen, and they are very intensive in nature. The profile of the northern group of student teachers, eleven in number was younger with an age cohort from 22 to 35 years. The gender breakdown was nine females and two males. The southern group were slightly more mature with an age cohort from 23 to 44 years and were larger in number with fifteen females and eight males.
The first phase of the research collaboration was a joint visit to a significant art exhibition in Dublin, related to the theme of national identities. Both cohorts visited the exhibition ‘Passion and Politics’ Sir John Lavery :The Salon Revisited’ at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. They participated in a tour and drama workshop which focussed on exploring the work of Sir John Lavery, whose work chronicled the period from the 1916 Rising to the War of Independence through to the birth of the Irish Free State and the State of Northern Ireland. This exhibition was key to initiating discussions around identity. In the foreword to the catalogue Lavery’s portraits are described as a non-erasable and vivid account of the nascent States (Dawson,2010).
‘The approach to 2016, the centenary of the Easter Rising, one of the most significant events in modern Irish history, this must be seen as the most singular opportunity for a current appraisal of those events which culminated in the birth of modern Ireland as well as a critical evaluation of the consequences for Irish contemporary identity’ ( p.6).
This exhibition formed the backdrop for the conversations and image sharing which followed and following the gallery visit and a period of reflection, a structured survey was completed by both cohorts.
Methodology
The study was qualitative in nature and used an open ended questionnaire as the main data gathering instrument ( Appendix 1).
The aim was to be unobtrusive and did not set out to verify a predetermined idea, but instead to discover new insights. Responses to the nine open-ended questions were analysed qualitatively and the words of the students are presented as the findings of the study.
Qualitative content analysis: open-ended questions
The data was collected primarily through a questionnaire using open-ended questions. Having first read all the data thoroughly to get a sense of the whole (Tesch, 1990) it was read again, highlighting words in the text that appear to capture key thoughts or concepts and also to establish initial codes (Miles and Huberman, 1994). The findings drawn from the student responses were analysed thematically following a qualitative approach as recommended by Vaughan et al., (1996) searching specifically for the following information: