The Art of Social Justice
Popular education aims to combine analytical skills with progressive vision. It links education with social action. This seminar/workshop was a collaboration between writers and designers/ graphic artist (including Margie Adam and Judith Marshall) and focused particularly on using visuals/images as part of education processes. The purpose of the seminar/workshop was to explore images of social justice that suggest alternatives to the prevailing system. How do these work as inspiration for alternatives: compassion, equity, participation, democracy, care and nurture of the ecosystem? What can we do to turn the ‘having more is being more’ ideology into one of ‘being and doing more is having more’?
Hosted by the Popular Education Programme (dvv-international) and DLL UWC, Friday, 7 February 2014.
*Margie Adam is a South African, an artist and text designer, whose art and politics has brought to visual form the work of popular educators and social justice activists over several decades. She was honored recently at a labour educators conference with an exhibition of her work in Toronto. She brought her “the art of social justice†to share and discuss with us.
*Judith Marshall is a well-known and recognised popular educator, labour activist and educator, who has spent many years working in and between Southern Africa, Latin America and Canada. Her book on “Literacy, state formation and people’s power: Education in a Mozambican factory†(1990), was a study which emerged from an association with the Frelimo Party and struggle for people’s power in Mozambique over two decades. She recently retired from Steelworkers Humanity Fund where she encouraged north-south-south exchanges amongst trade unionists and activists as forms of popular education and activism.