Interculturalism in art education: presenting latin american culture through music and visual art

Resumen

Interculturalism in art education refers to pedagogic strategies that support positive attitudes regarding the specific aspects of cultural plurality of our societies. Cultural plurality and diversity refer to the variety of cultural identities and are understood as sources of knowledge. The question that inevitably opens is how to insert contents about interculturalism in the pedagogical process not transforming them in an exotic product and how to discourage a “decontextuated cultural tourism” that does not fit any educational aims. Trying to solve this question, we developed a general pedagogic strategy based on the comparison of theoretical concepts from the worlds of music and visual arts. The task that students were engaged in was to listen to music and to try to transform it in visual signs which should be later shaped in a visual composition. With this exercise, cultural characteristics became know through an individual engagement in universal expressive languages that do not share the eventual obstacles imposed by verbal communication. In the conclusion we reflected on how to develop a teaching-learning process sensitive to the differences and commonalities of different cultures living in our space.