Abstract

The year 2012 marks the longest and most widespread student strike in Québec’s history. During this period, art students and artists participated in initiatives to bring awareness to the movement as a means to mobilize others. In this practice-based thesis, I investigate how social commitment to affordable education inspired art students and artists to initiate engaged projects, and I will argue that these practices offer insights that can stimulate a rethinking of post-secondary art and design education. As part of my research, I developed an art project titled École libre which was presented in a solo exhibition. This project was inspired by the events and the artistic production around the 2012 student strike, but also by the history of the province’s commitment to accessible education, and by ideas associated with free education. This thesis uses a combination of methods which includes practice-based research, textual analysis, critical visual methodology and interviews with experts. By discussing examples of art initiatives, I argue that these practices adopted pedagogical frameworks and were driven by notions of possibility. Through praxis, I consider modes of production, processes and materials associated with activism, and connect them to types of learning that exists in the margins between educational institutions and the street. I will discuss the movement’s relationship to pedagogy, not only as a fight for free or affordable education, but also how it inspired many students to set their own objectives, precisely because they were involved in a larger social project that they consider meaningful.