PLURART

PLURART addresses the challenge of leveraging the linguistic and cultural diversity of children, youth, and their families to promote educational inclusion and social justice. Implemented in a school located in a socio-economically disadvantaged and highly diverse urban community in Catalonia, the pilot action spans multiple educational levels, including pre-school, primary and secondary education.

The activities carried out in this setting focus on the participatory design, implementation and analysis of arts-based, plurilingual, and pluricultural classroom projects that enhance, promote and develop pupils’ plurilingual and artistic competences. These projects foreground personal repertoires and experiences, engage with socially relevant issues, and foster socio-educational transformation. The co-creation processes involve educational agents (teachers, students, families) together with local and migrant-background artists, artistic collectives and arts-education scholars as key participants. The pilot also includes trainee teachers and MA/PhD students. Researchers in the project are also teacher trainers, supervisors of MA thesis and PhD dissertations and experts in plurilingual education.

What is expected to be reached by this pilot action?

AGENCY
Placing co-creation at the centre allows all participants to have a voice and to exercise agency as artistic creators and researchers of their own process -from defining what art is to discovering how artistic expressions facilitate linguistic and cultural awareness and identity building. As an interdisciplinary, project-based learning process, the pilot engages pupils in meaningful learning and research tasks rooted in their lived experiences and in socially relevant issues, with the aim of improving and transforming their own conditions and those of their community.

INCLUSIVITY
The educational communities will see their linguistic and cultural repertoires, artistic skills, and funds of knowledge and identity reflected in, and incorporated into, educational activities and resources within and beyond the school context. These resources will both remain available for continued use within the school and be shared with other audiences for replication and inspiration.

ARTS-LANGUAGE INTERSECTION
The areas of linguistic and artistic education have often been researched and taught as separate components of the school curricula. This research pilot will jointly explore these perspectives and the affordances or their articulation in educational contexts, with the aim of co-creating purpose-built activities that stimulate pupils’ communicative repertoires and competences, self-expression, and critical reflection.

Expected outcomes of the pilot include producing data-informed descriptions of the affordances of integrating co-creation, arts-based methods, and plurilingual approaches in teaching practices for enhancing teachers’ and leaners’ holistic development and creativity, and for promoting socio-educational inclusion and participation. The focus on co-creating arts-based teaching resources, as well as the involvement of artists, artistic institutions, and trainee teachers will support the pilot’s replicability and sustainability within and beyond its original context and participants.