Valuing Lived Experiences and Cultural Identities
How can we use the act of looking at art to prioritize marginalized voices in classroom, museum settings, meetings, and beyond?
Multiple Narratives, a program developed in 2017, shifts the common art historical approach of looking at art to a more inclusive pedagogy that supports students’ identity development, fosters authentic relationships, and values students’ lived experiences and cultural knowledge.
The Multiple Narratives program prioritizes underrepresented voices as valid starting points for conversations and engagements with and about visual media and other art forms. Multiple Narratives addresses diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (anti-racism work) as the underlying goal of object-based learning, furthering equity work through imaginative education.
The Multiple Narratives program begins with a set of simple questions and extends into many realms of arts education which invite voices to be a part of knowledge construction. Multiple Narratives aligns with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as well as with the work of Paulo Freire, Bettina L. Love, bell hooks, Gloria Ladson-Billings and Gholdy Muhammad.
The Multiple Narratives (MN) questions challenge preconceived knowledge and dominate narratives. MN asks students to think about their relationship to an image based on their lived experiences, not on their inferences about the art. When using MN, students begin to feel that they matter, because their cultural identities are valued. MN shifts the authoritative voice from the educator as one who has information about the art to a facilitator who values students as an asset.
The Multiple Narratives pilot took place in 2017. Since then, it has been used in leadership development settings, office meetings, and corporate retreats, as well as K-12 and higher education settings to accomplish a variety of outcomes.
Please email Kris at kstanec@coloradocollege.edu to find out more.
| The Elementary School Partnership | The Colorado College ED210 – Power of the Arts | The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center | ||
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| A Writer’s Workshop curriculum led to students producing personal narratives that connected to artwork before they took a museum field trip. They then had an “author share” of their writing while at the museum. | CC students who studied how people learn supported the writing process for elementary students, then planned tours in which visitors would feel that their stories and connections to the artwork matter. | Docents participated in several days of the CC course, working with college students to develop tours that actively engaged visitors in looking at art. Videos of elementary students’ narratives remain connected to the art through augmented reality. |
Prior to facilitating Multiple Narratives, explore these resources to reflection on one’s intersectional identities and implicit bias, since these can impact participants responses to students and visitors answering the MN questions.
Have you tried Multiple Narratives?
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