This paper draws on data from an ethnographic study of a multimodal arts residency in the partnership between an arts organization and a school and school district to illuminate the possibilities of healing and hope. It focuses on how arts education, as "radical healing" spaces, fosters students' imaginations to create a community in which they want to live. The study contributes to curriculum inquiry by addressing the ways multimodal arts learning activities afford youth to be healers of their "personal and ideological wounds." (Word Count: 83)
PurposeEducational institutions impart the notion that students are valued as long as they adhere to the basic assimilationist ideals of how pupils should be and act. Valenzuela (1999) has theorized that subtractive schooling prohibits students from learning important social and cultural resources that leave them vulnerable to academic failure. While researchers have documented the adversities that youth face in education, fewer works have illustrated the hope and resiliency young people maintain in these spaces; "healing is an often-overlooked factor for improving achievement in urban schools" (Duncan-Andrade, 2009, p. 181). Smilan (2009) argues that a "multi-modal, arts-based framework can become a foundation for regular curriculum, for all children, to develop resilience to trauma and empathy for those more profoundly affected" (p. 383). Despite disinvestment in public education, which Duncan-Andrade (2009) contends is an "assault on hope," young people have been able to thrive in the
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