Abstract

This thesis documents a participatory action research project in which I collaborated with a Caribbean-Canadian family of four, to study their experiences of familial art education and photographic practice, and to generate recommendations for Emancipatory Art Education in Montreal’s Black community. Emancipatory Art Education (EAE) is an emerging approach to Black community art education that I situate among African Diaspora traditions of ‘education for liberation’ and critical multiculturalism discourses in the field of art education. Family Photos begins a long-term participatory research practice aimed at defining and developing EAE theory and practices for the community from within the community. An autoethnographic study through which I locate and situate my identities as a Black Montrealer consequently emerges as a critical component of this work.

Through studying and practicing photography as art, family members develop technical skills and inclusive understandings of art, while increasingly expressing their own individual and collective aesthetic identities. All express affirmative feelings about the project and a desire to participate in similar projects in the future, and thus conclude that family art practice can be a positive and engaging practice for other families and members in the Black community. Our results emphasize photographic practice as a site for exploring issues of identity, race and representation, and tensions between the private and the public. Recommendations are geared toward EAE and address familial and intergenerational community art education; photography, ethics and boundary control; and participatory action research in community art education.