Although many individual behaviours have changed and a plethora of collective pro-environmental actions are taking place worldwide, environmental problems continue grow. From a framework of environmental adult education, I believe that by continuing to concentrate on behaviour modi cation and awareness-raising, we ignore the strengths, knowledge and power of people on the streets, as well as the larger structural and ideological problems at the root or environmental destruction. It is crucial that adult educators, those working with the 'public', acknowledge the serious and sometimes fatal risks of taking political action while encouraging the potential of people to make change through critically-focused educational-activist work.

This feminist arts-based participatory research project with a group of homeless/street-involved women used group interviews and the creation of collective and individual artworks to explore their personal and political realities and share these with a larger audience. The project built trust and a sense of community, encouraged artistic skills development, and allowed to emerge an artistic identity to combat the stigma of the label ‘homeless’. Individual and collective empowerment came from creating artworks collectively but also, the recognition the women received through publicly sharing their artworks. Tensions and challenges emerged around art as education versus therapy, individual and collective works, the role and place of men, and mental health and the police, two things ever present in the lives of these women.

Increasingly, practices of collective arts-based learning are being used by adult educators and community organizations as creative and participatory ways to respond to contemporary social or environmental issues. Investigating the potential contributions of arts-based learning to cross-cultural and antiracisms adult education was the aim of this qualitative comparative study in Ontario and British Columbia. Through the lens of antiracisms theories and from data obtained through open-ended interviews with project participants and artist-educators in three diverse arts projects, this article highlights some of the characteristics that make arts-based learning a culturally appropriate and effective, imaginative tool. But it also draws attention to the risks involved in creating public art and tacking difficult issues such as racism in contemporary Canadian society.

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This chapter explores the links between war, social unrest, natural resources, and globalization and raises contemporary issues of environmental racism and sexism. Environmental adult education provides a space to examine the negative environmental impacts experienced by people worldwide and to refocus on democracy, accountability, creativity, and action.

Historically, pubic art galleries and museums have a well-deserved reputation for elitism, colonialism and exclusion and they are, therefore, frequently omitted from the discourse of adult education. However, the escalating social, cultural and ecological problems of this new century have placed pressure on these public institutions to change and respond. Using selective examples, this article attempts to illustrate public arts and cultural institutions as contested, problematic, challenging, yet equally progressive, critical and creative pedagogical spaces that play an important role in the struggle for social and environmental change. Through exhibitions, artworks, objects, workshops and seminars, these institutions trouble identity, decolonize, mock, revisualize, tell alternative stories, reorient authoritative practice, interrogate intolerance and privilege and stimulate critical literacies. We must continue to expose and critique traditions that perpetuate inequalities and maintain the status quo but in a world starved of hope, these sites provide new pedagogical possibilities.

We often come across theories and aspects related to 'knowledge', but seldom do we try to understand its hidden implications. Knowledge as understood generally is about the information of facts and understanding of a subject. This article essentially argues against this understanding. It explores the multiple dimensions of 'knowledge' through a literature review and illustrations of practical examples. It makes a case for how important the process of knowledge creation is, especially given current societal challenges. It also outlines the importance of co-creation of knowledge, through acknowledgement and valuation of alternate paradigms of knowledge. Further, it discusses the concept of 'knowledge democracy', and how institutions of higher education, by abiding by its principles, can help achieve 'excellence in engagement'. The article concludes with the findings of two studies undertaken by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Chair, which were based on the principles of 'knowledge democracy' and 'excellence in engagement'.

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