1. Expressive literacy? Beth Juncker Professor
22/11/2018
Expressive literacy?
A new concept covering the independent meanings, competencies and values gained by children’s participation in artistic experiences and creative processes.
Beth Juncker
Professor
Royal School of Library and Information Science

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We know
that the meaning of children’s and young peoples’ meeting with artistic experiences and involvement in creative processes is not just to support abilities to read, to write and to reckon.
that these meetings and processes contribute to children and young peoples’ everyday life with independent meanings, values, skills and competencies.
That they make a difference exactly because they differ from formal learning in schools and developmental learnings in day care institutions.

6. We lack Evidence strong and convincing arguments
22/11/2018
We lack
Evidence
strong and convincing arguments
in order to turn the instrumental cultural policy thinking upside down
In order to make the independent usefulness of these artistic meeting and creative processes visible.

7. The main research questions
22/11/2018
The main research questions
Do we need an independent concept of literacy, which stems from children and young people’s encounters with and involvement in artistic, creative experiences and processes?
Do we need an independent concept of literacy arguing from the special abilities, skills, competencies, meanings and values gained from these artistic experiences and activities?
Do we need an independent concept of literacy documenting the independent impact on and meaning for children and young people’s everyday expressive life?

8. The instrumental cultural policy tradition
22/11/2018
The instrumental cultural policy tradition
Built on a Cartesian enlightenment thinking
Surrounded by a hermeneutic culture focusing on the ability to analyze and interprete as the center of meaning creation and understanding.
Dominated by dichotomies and hierarchies: brain contra body, reason contra emotion, analysis contra experience (feeling), understanding contra entertainment and the first part as absolute superior to the second.
The conviction that children and young people have to create a distance to the experiences and processes, they have to be able to analyze and interprete them in order to understand.

9. Literacy – intellectual, not sensitive skills and abilities
22/11/2018
Literacy – intellectual, not sensitive skills and abilities
Most literacy studies conclude - as Professor Sonia Livingstone - when she defines media literacy and uses this definition as kind of a basic understanding, which can encompass the other literacy areas:
“I define media literacy as “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages across a variety of contexts” (Linvingstone, 2004)
Intellectual skills and competencies, not sensitive, not creative.

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The new challenge
The media and technological development in the last decades of the 20thcentury challenged this Cartesian instrumental thinking and as a consequence the instrumental perspective of cultural policy and the intellectual concepts of literacy.
Scholars with different approaches to and perspectives on social media, film, fine and popular literature, music, theatre, dance, performances asked for a rethinking and for a let go of dichotomies and hierarchies.
They asked for the meaning of here and now, the intensity, the presence and the participation

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Central studies
The American professor Richard Shustermann coined a new concept of entertainment underlining that to be entertained, to feel the fun, is the prerequisite of meaning creation.
Professor Joli Jensen from Tulsa University, US asked for an expressive logic built on what art and culture actually mean and independently contribute to everyday life with.
The German-American professor Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht asked for the non-hermeneutic meaning of presence and presence effects.
All of them questioned the Cartesian thinking in dichotomies and hierarchies in order to contribute to a supplementary philosophical grounded non-instrumental thinking drawing from philosophy of aesthetics, philosophy of phenomenology, philosophy of pragmatism and the notions of play, presence and participation connected with them.

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A gap?
No one has to our knowledge recognized that we need a notion of literacy encompassing the creative, innovative experiences and processes in the cultural sector
arguing from the special aesthetic symbolic conditions ruling here and for the independent usefulness of experiences, skills, competencies, knowledge and values drawn from it.
As a contribution to variety, richness and meaning creation in an everyday life and as a consequence an independent contribution to the educational formal skills and competencies learned from day care and schools.
No one has to our knowledge asked for cultural expressive literacy.

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The independency
Confronted with sensitive cognition, sensuous knowledge, with artistic experiences, productions and creative processes we know that here we, the world and our conditions are studied by means of different kind of theories and tools
the answers are not giving as books, articles, essays, but as theatre performances, paintings, installations, concerts, exhibitions.
Critical investigations, new approaches to and perspectives on human beings and our social and existential conditions, new knowledge of emotions, feelings, values and meaning creation.

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16. Answers to the main cultural policy question: what do they learn?
22/11/2018
Answers to the main cultural policy question: what do they learn?
We have underlined that the question is not wrong, just wrongly put.
There is much to be learned, but the point is not to link to, not to support, but to supply day care and school curriculum
with skills, competencies and values representing an independent sensitive way to entertainment, joy, feelings, values, knowledge and cognition in our everyday life.
The point is to make a difference.

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Thank you!