Abstract
This presentation explores the fragile ecologies of art education through my practice in U.S. prison classrooms, with reflections into adult and community contexts. Prisons reveal the stark limits of government policy: education is underfunded, access restricted, and human connection deliberately fractured. Yet within these conditions, art making emerges as an ecology of survival. Working with incarcerated students, I have witnessed how photographs, collage, and speculative practices function as living archives—fragile yet powerful sites of memory, identity, and resilience. Students reassemble fragments such as family photographs, letters, and scraps of paper into spaces of belonging and possibility, resisting systemic erasure through creativity. I frame this work through fabulation: the imaginative reworking of absence and silence into futures of dignity. Drawing from both teaching and studio practice in collage and printmaking, I consider how prison classrooms function as habitats of possibility, where imagination sustains civic equity. The lessons from these carceral ecologies resonate beyond the prison. In adult and community education, similar collaborative processes allow learners excluded from formal schooling to reclaim agency. This presentation positions art education as a site of resilience, inclusion, and advocacy, where fragments of survival are transformed into sustainable futures.
Presenters
Nana AmpofoStudent, Masters in Art Education, University College of London, Southwark, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
PRISON EDUCATION, FABULATION, ARCHIVES, AFROFUTURISM, ART PEDAGOGY, COMMUNITY LEARNING
