Abstract

This study, Finding Our Place In The Garden--A Holistic Approach To Art Education is a qualitative research based on the art practices of an alternative community-based rehabilitation program for children with disabilities. The program takes place in an outdoor natural environment in which children with and children without especial needs are offered a variety of workshops directed by an interdisciplinary group of professionals. This group includes artists, art therapists, social workers and educators. The author participated in two summer sessions as a volunteer participant-observer. During this time she recorded her experiences and observations in a diary and a series of slides. An analysis of the Spiral Garden program focuses on: (1) the reciprocal role of the environment on art/art-making and community-building practices, and of the latter on the environment. (2) the emergent function of community art and specifically of the performing arts as agents of both social and cultural cohesion and integration of all the other art languages and crafts. An analysis of the function of art in the social and natural environment of Spiral Garden reveals that its role is subordinate to yet integrated with the primary goal of empowering the child through art-making practices. Education takes place in this setting in a social context more than a strictly educational one. Consequently, art does not have an autonomous formal identity but an organic social function of fostering self-directed creative exploration and social inclusiveness. From the perspective of a researcher working out of the art education official context, the author reflects also on the role that the alternative community-based art programs play within a contemporary art education field.