The Wandering Mobile Art Hub: A Nomadic Action Research Study

This study will explore the role and impact of socially engaged art (SEA) on participants when presented through an interactive and nomadic mobile context. Using an action research methodology, I will use a pop-up camper to serve as research and art making hub. I will travel with the hub to various locations throughout Arizona working with participants to create an artistic response to prompts that encourage them to think about their own communities and participants’ roles within them. Some of these pieces will travel with the hub to future locations, serving as a point of response and/or engagement for participants from other locations or even from future visits to the same location. SEA invites participatory and dialogical interaction through art-making. Using SEA as a pedagogical approach could present alternative teaching and learning methods and locations possible to art educators. Because socially engaged art is heavily focused on agency (Helguera, 2011), responsibility of the arts to impact social change and influence (Bae & Shin, 2019), embraces tools and processes not exclusive to the art studio (Helguera, 2011), and leans heavily on collaboration and dialogue (Chalmers & Desai, 2007), it is an ideal method for creating and examining potential bonds between communities and their educators. This study will also explore how the nomadic state of the research hub impacts the researcher (artist/teacher) and the participants. The pop-up camper exemplifies temporality and limited access, using mobility to evaluate spaces, borders, and communities as a state of fluctuation and fluid movement. Potential impact on the researcher and participants could occur through the experience of a common item, such as the camper, repurposed for something totally different. Moreover, as an artist and educator, engaging with communities through either of these perspectives could cause a considerable impact on the artist/educator pedagogical and artistic practices.