Is it possible for Art Education to contribute towards Social Justice? Takuya Kaneda and Hatto Fischer

This joint paper shall refer to the Kids’ Guernica Children’s Peace Mural Project as a
case study

Written by
Takuya Kaneda & Hatto Fischer

Abstract

Kids’ Guernica is an international movement with Takuya Kaneda in Japan its coordinator. Since 1995 when it started in Japan over 250 peace murals have been created around the world. It is a kind of saga not easily told as each of the peace murals contains a unique story. Always the initiative comes from one or few individuals but then grows into a community action. By letting children paint together, it means facing basically questions of war and peace together. The answers given around the globe are most revealing about differences and similarities. What implications this movement has for art education can be underlined already by what Takuya Kaneda is quick to point out: a mural painted on a large sized canvas is not a wall, but something movable, something which can help overcome cultural and other kinds of borders and thereby help to bring about a common understanding as to what it takes for this world to be at peace. Without social justice it is inconceivable to experience peace. Hence Kids’ Guernica illustrates what contribution such an informal learning process can make to this overall and huge question, whether art education can contribute to social justice. Hatto Fischer in Athens, Greece from the
NGO Poiein Kai Prattein has taken up contact with Takuya Kaneda and Kids’ Guernica in 2005. Ever since a fruitful dialogue has created the basis for a world wide networking and collaboration to make things possible whether now a peace mural is done in Belfast to bridge two communities still today deeply mistrusting each other or else in Haifa, Israel when Palestinian children in a summer camp shall come to terms with their reality on a canvas the size of Picasso’s Guernica (7,8 x 3,5 m).

Kids’ Guernica

When Kids’ Guernica started in Japan 1995, that is fifty years after the end of t0he Second World War, everyone had on their mind something similar to Guernica, namely Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus the peace mural from Nagasaki with the title “After the bomb! Building a new Life!” continues what Picasso did in response to Guernica, namely to try by art to overcome atrocities in order to give peace a chance.

Only this time instead of one outstanding artist it is a number of children who paint together. Moreover they do so on a similar sized canvas as used by Picasso to paint ‘Guernica’ (7,8 x 3,5 m).

“After the bomb! Building a new Life!”
Nagasaki 2007

The Nagasaki mural was finished in March, 2007. It was done with children from Seihi Junior High School located in Seikai City and therefore part of the Nagasaki Prefecture. The coordinator was the art teacher Sizuko Kakimoto. It took nearly four months to complete it. The painting depicts the Roman Catholic Cathedral Urakami and the peace statue in Nagasaki. The church is one of the biggest Catholic churches in East Asia. The building was completely destroyed by the atomic bombing on August 9, 1945 but rebuilt in 1959. The peace statue is ten meter tall and located in
the Nagasaki Peace Park near the hypocenter of the atomic bomb. Its right hand is pointing to the threat of nuclear weapons and its left hand symbolizes the extension of eternal peace. While its right leg is showing to be in a position of meditation the left expresses an initiative action for world peace.

Expressions of life

In view of all the wars going on in this world and due to all the ‘crimes against humanity’ being committed almost daily against especially the most vulnerable ones, the children, it is indeed an art not to lose one’s voice in such a world. Every attempt to uphold human dignity is invaluable. With avoidance of humiliation goes a community which has a sense of social justice. Linked to that is how children and adults view life when they grow up and live in such a community. The philosopher Cassirer stated for this to become a life long principle people need to carry within
them a friendly attitude towards the world. Expressions of life become, therefore, samples of a culture based on social justice. For example, one peace mural from Japan shows trees reaching into a sky filled with cherry blossoms. It expresses the belief prevalent in Japanese society, namely that life is ‘sweet and short’. Moreover it underlines that social justice without a compassion for life is unthinkable.

Higashikurume, Japan 2003

Linkage between Europe and Japan

The international committee of Kids’ Guernica has its roots in Japan, but soon others took up contact such as Asit Poddar from India, but also Europeans in Italy, France and Greece. The French artist Boris Tissot recalls many years later how good it was to have gone with his then twelve year old daughter to the workshop in Nepal; upon returning to France, his daughter started a campaign of public speeches on behalf of furthering the Right to education for especially girls in Nepal. The example illustrates that Kids’ Guernica means not only painting a peace mural, but involves much more an ongoing learning process. After all the children who participate, they grow up to become in their adult life responsible citizens. If they learn at an early age already public speaking and use this opportunity to speak up on behalf of those who
are not treated with equal rights, then a new sense for social justice begins to make itself felt. By extending beyond the own cultural and societal borders, empathy is needed to consider and to understand all those other people who have to survive under quite different conditions. Since this means taking different religions and values into consideration, Kids’ Guernica entails around the world an intercultural learning process with many different outcomes.

When the Olympic Games took place in Athens in 2004, the non profit Urban Society Poiein Kai Prattein created a poetry connection to let poets express their feelings about war and organized afterwards with Peace Waves in Torino a youth festival designed to prepare monitoring of Human Rights during the Winter Olympic Games held in Torino 2006. Especially the youth had grown cynical about the intentions of leading powers in the world that they would observe the Olympic Truce during the Olympic Games. At the opening of the Games in Athens, the American government made it quite plain in a press release that the USA felt not to be bounded by the Olympic Oath in view of what was an ongoing war in Iraq since March 2003.

At this youth festival in Torino, a group of youth from all over the world did paint together a Kids’ Guernica peace mural as Peace Waves was already connected with the international committee in Japan.

Once it became known that Kids’ Guernica would organize a festival in Ubud, Bali in August 2005 to celebrate its tenth anniversary, Poiein Kai Prattein decided to let children of friends and their neighbors paint a peace mural and then send it with a Greek delegation to Ubud. The painting was a reflection of how the theme of war is thought about in Greece and in Europe. Given especially Germany’s involvement in the Holocaust and what destruction this meant as well in Greece – one previous Kids’ Guernica workshop took place in a village where Germans had massacred the men during World War II – the theme of war is linked in Europe to an urge in people who wish never to experience such atrocities again.

Therefore, it is not at all surprising when a peace mural of Weimar carries the title ‘Let us imprison war’ or another one done with the Afghanistan coordinator Fatema Nawaz (she did as well the peace mural of Kabul) in West Germany to exclaim ‘Never again war’. In the latter case,
Fatema Nawaz made the interesting experience that once she took the painting from a Christian church where they had started to a Turkish moschee to complete it, that some German parents did not allow their children to follow. Making visible invisible cultural borders is also a part of dismantling social and cultural borders. Otherwise they would lead to discriminations and thereby inflict social injustices upon those perceived with suspicious, even hostile eyes.

The painting of Poiein Kai Prattein was started by letting the children take off their shoes and to dance to music over the large canvas laid out at ground level underneath a suburban house built on stilts. That empty space is used for cooling purposes but also in many other cases for parking cars. It was an ideal place since providing a much needed shade during the hot month of August in Greece. When the children danced more and more wildly, they naturally fell. The idea of Thomas Economacos and Hatto Fischer was to draw an outline of their bodies. Once done, the
children started to paint their own bodies, so to speak.

Three groups of children participated: two to three year olds who stayed at the edge of the canvas and painted turtles, butterflies, flowers, houses and fences while the seven to nine year olds painted themselves as dancing figures ready to lift off from the ground. Then there were the teenagers of sixteen and seventeen. One of them provoked with her mood at that time all the other children and adults. Maya Fischer painted such a sad figure that the contrast to the dancing figures could not be stronger. More and more the children started to huddle together to think about a possible solution. What to do about this sad figure sitting in the left corner of the painting? It was then and after much discussion that they came up with following solution: a
figure was painted as if floating down to the sad figure and in the hand of that floating figure was a letter containing the news that “The War is over!” This became the title of the peace mural send to Ubud, Bali.

“The War is over”, Poiein Kai Prattein, Athens 2005

If social justice has also to do with restoring a mental and physical balance to be linked to the person feeling happy, then this simple message by children of Athens can be taken a bit further to mean several things. It will have to include the simple equation that war means sadness or happiness is only possible in the absence of war.

A link can be established here to what Paul Klee said after he had experienced all the violence during First World War. Paul Klee said because all beauty had been destroyed by the war, any recollection thereof would by necessity make any artistic expression an abstraction since based solely on memory, hence a selected viewpoint and a mere extraction from reality. The art historian Worringer was correct in anticipating that art of the twentieth century would be polarized between abstraction and empathy with no real bridges inbetween.

Hitler’s condemnation of Paul Klee’s kind of art drove home that point: people were to be kept at mythical levels of meanings conveyed by mere symbols pointing to a common cause. They would follow those symbols without realizing that behind them resides the power of abstraction.

What the children did in response to that sad figure in the Poiein kai Prattein painting is most telling. They had to go through a space of abstraction before coming to a sound conclusion. Otherwise they would not have bridged this difference between happiness and sadness. That is of importance when it comes to responding to social injustices.

A lot more can be explained with regards to this when coming to some basic characteristics of Kids’ Guernica peace murals, including what the 108th Elementary School of Athens did for their peace mural, but it suffices to say that abstraction allows for a differentiation between form and content so that things are no longer judged merely by their outer appearances.

But to complete the story about the connection between Europe and Japan, once Maya Fischer and Thomas Economacos had returned from Ubud, Bali they conveyed the wishes of the international committee that some Kids’ Guernica workshops be held in Greece. Consequently Poiein kai Prattein organized one in Kastelli, Crete in April 2006 and another one in Chios, May 2007 while together with Spyros Mercouris there was organized in Athens, Oct. 2007 the ECCM Symposium ‘Productivity of Culture’ in combination with a Kids’ Guernica exhibition.

All along there has been a constant dialogue between Europe and Japan. Thanks to an art of personal networking Kids’ Guernica initiatives have extended recently to include Lebanon, Chicago and Ohio in the USA, Australia, Georgia, UK and Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The basic agreement of the Kids’ Gurnica network is that as a bottom-up initiative it requires no hierarchy to organize itself. The informal learning process can be simply continued by giving impulses to new initiatives. They can take place, for example, in a summer camp as the case of the one for Palestinian children from Haifa, Israel and whose parents hold Israeli citizenship although of Arabic descent.

Many Kids’ Guernica peace murals are signs of new trust especially in locations known till then for their political and social tensions. Where violence rules and atrocities are committed against especially vulnerable and innocent civilians, in particular children, traumas have to be overcome best done by linking art to lessons of art therapy.
Indeed, the asymmetry of war has made the most vulnerable ones into prime targets. Also wars have drawn many more sharp borders than what mankind manages to dismantle by often a very cumbersome peace process. The failure of many of these efforts can clearly be seen especially in the Middle East, but not only.

In all cases, injustice leads to violent conflicts. Only by ensuring the rule of the arts is learned by all, good governance can be realized. Where the rule of the gun dominates, people are prevented to enter an intercultural dialogue and thereby are unable to resolve conflicts peacefully. This then sets the stage for giving an account of some basic characteristics of Kids’ Guernica peace murals.

Some basic characteristics of Kids’ Guernica peace murals

As a collaborative work process it involves children of all ages as well as adults. By entering together an informal learning process, they encounter the basics of social justice: the ability to share materials and ideas. While many experience how difficult it is to create space without occupying it oneself, lessons can be drawn from how children use together one common space when painting these peace murals.
Learning a common language is part of the process. Especially painting can be the first common language i.e. before any other language. When the Greek-Turkish painting was created in Izmir, September 2007, the children could not communicate with each other, but within one day, and after having played some games and eaten together, they quickly discovered how to communicate by painting together.
Children and students from Izmir and Chios at school in Izmir, Turkey Sept. 07. Much is made possible in a group once everyone appreciates what the others can contribute. There is also curiosity to see what the others do. While a group of three may paint on one side of the canvas, another group develops a very different idea on the other side. Once startled by the difference, they will go on to the next task and find ways how to bridge the differences.
“Ireni” – in Greek ‘peace’ - allows bringing together the Greek and Turkish flag

Kids' Guernica coordinators in front of the Izmir-Chios peace mural, Chios-Izmir May – Sept. 2007

In the case of the Izmir-Chios painting, the dominance of national symbols e.g. flags from Greece and Turkey on the first day made way on the second to trees of life and a rainbow. All that happened within two unforgettable days.
Takuya Kaneda who had donated the canvas to make this collaboration possible, said once the painting was completed that a dream of his had come true. He had attended the Kids’ Guernica workshop held on the island of Chios, May 2007.
The island is known by the painting of Gericault called ‘The Massacre of Chios’. In today’s world that painting needs to be replaced by a new reference. It may well be the Izmir-Chios peace mural of Kids’ Guernica but such recognition is left best to future art historians.
Every peace mural has a unique story behind it; in Nepal children went from the city of Katmandu to travel through dangerous territories with different factions still at war to a village at the foot of the Himalayas where they entered a dialogue and together set a major premise for peace called friendship. Such a concept is expressed best by children holding hands while looking into a colorful landscape.

“Dialog between city and village”, Nepal 2005

As the painting starts to take shape, one common experience is made insofar as more and more children, but equally adults wish to get involved. Some parents standing by their children cannot resist: suddenly they grab a paint brush and add something what appears to be nebulous, but still is to the point once complementary to what is happening on the entire surface of the canvas. As Thomas Economacos, art coordinator of Poiein kai Prattein in Athens and coordinator of many Kids’ Guernica workshops would say, ‘the most amazing thing is to see what happens at the level of the imagination once children touch with their soul the canvas.’

Boy putting final touches on the mural of Athens 108 School
at the opening of the Kids’ Guernica Exhibition in Athens Oct. 2007

Photo by Kostas Kartelias

All children share common values. They express that in their wish to add their voice to a unique artistic expression because unified by letting everyone join in on the process. The growing involvement of parents, friends and supporters ensures that a cultural action which maybe a single artist has started with children becomes over time and in due course a community wide action.
For instance, the artist Savina Tarsitano worked in Martinique with a group of boys who called themselves the ‘Baghdad gang’. Once she got to know them her fears receded. In turn, they began to entrust their message on canvas when before they had not the trust that someone would listen to them. In reflection of Martinique’s history linked to slavery, they made plain by analogy what is their expression of freedom, namely the ‘breaking of chains’.

“Abolition of discrimination”, Martinique 2007

The mural made possible a first link between them and the community centre which supported the work of Savina. She learned in turn to perceive the role of an artist with different eyes insofar art takes on a community dimension. Thus to further social justice there can be made use of artists and the arts to integrate people, in particular juveniles filled with fear to compromise themselves in a society they do not trust.
It matters if in Afghanistan problems can be faced by means of the paint brush. In Kabul so many children wanted to have this experience, that they waited patiently till it was their turn but still the number of children wishing to get involved grew and grew until they could not do otherwise but close the door.

“Never again war” Kabul, Afghanistan 2005

Once ready, the Kabul painting depicts on the one side a plane dropping bombs while on the other half two children hold hands and look equally into a peaceful landscape. Something similar can be observed in the case of the Nepal painting. Always with social justice go certain symbolic expressions. This is all the more needed in times when Picasso’s white pigeon has outlived its purpose and new generations are in need to symbolize a just life in terms of their own understanding of justice. It is important to note that always friendship, trust and openness rank highest in values attributed to what makes possible a peaceful life.

Aesthetics of life and of resistance

The challenge for children and adults alike is enormous, for when standing in front of such an empty canvas how to make use of this huge space? It is equally a big challenge how to bring together what every child or participant wishes to express.
How to make use of space is a challenge most artists do not know how to cope with and therefore resolve very badly. That leaves the world with a certain distaste for aesthetics as reflected in how arbitrarily spaces of cities are constructed, used and lost in meanings as if an ongoing living process is in no need of such spaces where creativity could be explored. Therefore, any linkage between art education and social justice must be reflected upon by means of aesthetics, that special brand of philosophy which finds words only through what artists create and leave behind as human legacy.
It has always been said about Bach’s fugue in this musical piece the human voice comes up to the surface to be finally heard. It comes close to a notion of human truth. Not to speak with masks or in a slave language, but clearly where humanity is interested to level with the demand for truth, that is a difficult and hard task from which many shy away out of fear to break down before they can attain human self consciousness. Not surprisingly children face that task without hesitation and without inner fears they would fail. That is why the peace messages conveyed by children in all these Kids’ Guernica peace murals existing by now around the world are such
powerful messages to a world in need to look into the eyes of humanity.
What makes these peace murals so strong: they show a clear contrast to reality and underline free of romantic notions what can be considered to be truly beautiful: the land and the people. It underlines one simple truism: if people are at peace, then such language and dialogue prevails which can make common understanding plain and straight forward. It is a language based on empathy furthered by freeing the imagination. It is a language which convinces most by not beautifying what is ugly nor allows beauty to be forgotten but speaks to the heart by expressing what people feel and wish for life on this earth.
Once people see themselves as being beautiful, such sense for beauty will give them self conviction and more importantly they will not allow to be mistreated by others. Such ‘aesthetic of life’ rules out above all arbitrariness and distortion of truth.
The latter is the mark of corrupt power capable of transforming things into something ugly. So while giving expression to ‘aesthetics of life’ (the writer Peter Weiss called it ‘Aesthetics of Resistance’) on canvas the same size as Picasso’s Guernica, children encourage adults to become like themselves by trusting again their imagination. They can then express with more confidence that lawfulness in life can and does exist. It is best expressed through the arts and made possible by learning how to work and to live together in peace and trust of each other. That explains why those who are capable of expressing themselves are still optimistic in life despite numerous set-backs or else faced by all problems besetting both local society and the larger world now described more aptly as succumbing to globalization.
Given all injustices in the world, including the violence and mass deception which goes with it, a lot of learning is needed to stay both alive and honest. The philosopher Husserl said this is one of the most difficult things to do. To honesty belongs ‘rooting oneself in the words one speaks’ (Simone Weil) as well as knowing how few know how to answer violence in a non violent way. Consequently what makes education, including art education in this direction that much more difficult is that children are facing a world completely unprepared for the challenges of the
twenty-first century.

Is it possible for art education to contribute to social justice?

Naturally the answers given by Kids’ Guernica can at best contribute only modestly to this huge question if art education can contribute to social justice. But it involves freeing the imagination and requires the organizational art of investing in an unusual peace processes by going exactly to areas of conflict and of injustice. Kids’ Guernica can convince, political speaking, because it is a bottom-up, very democratic and comprehensive process based on trust and openness. When attempting to initiate Kids’ Guernica in Tripoli, Lebanon after the war in the summer of 2006, local people mistrusted at first this impulse coming from outside. They asked if not Israel would be
behind it. Only once the canvas arrived, did the process take on concrete form based on trust. As a result there was brought about this amazing peace mural by Iman Mourad, mother and business woman who took the initiative and ever since has been fighting against ‘fake peace’ keeping so many people in a schizophrenic mind with here the bombs, there the beautiful beaches with wind surfers returning to the bars filled with young people listening to their kind of music. That split in the mind is another main characteristic of modern life as depicted by peace murals like the one from Lebanon “Enough! We want to live.”

“Enough! We want to live” Tripoli, Lebanon 2007

Therefore, to answer the question, if it is possible for art education to contribute to social justice, a closer look shall be taken at the concept of social justice out of the perspective of Kids’ Guernica.

Social justice

Takuya Kaneda believes that art has various forms and therefore is not necessarily related to the issue of social justice. On the other hand, he thinks that art education should always be concerned with social justice. As coordinator of Kids’ Guernica International, he complements his formal teaching at university by involving, for example, his students in Kids’ Guernica. It alters the very concept of art education. Students gain practical insights into how to animate children to paint and to play together. At the same time, the exhibition of peace murals involves the creation of a larger audience making a bottom-up cultural action into a community action. That
is important for culture has to be perceived by art education in a much wider sense if the arts are to bring about a just society.
If social justice can be defined as a society capable of making peace, then art education has to show how reasons for man in conflict and worse at war can be countered by art. There is the famous question by George Steiner, whether or not playing Schubert on the piano can prevent the same person from going the next day into a concentration camp to kill people as was the case in Germany during National Socialism? That question underlines the deep belief that cultural reflections brought about by the arts give people access to humanity. A denial thereof would mean no creativity and therefore being cut off from any human self consciousness.
Thus a culturally refined self understanding links learning to humanity. It is something art education besides humanities and philosophy can potentially communicate in the best conceivable way. Unfortunately such art education is not realized in many schools. That explains a gap in human knowledge.
If this gap is not bridged by communities, people will work and live together only under great difficulties. Maybe art education cannot be taught exclusively in a formal way? Many schools as formal institutions aim solely to enhance the cognitive development of a child, but nothing else, in particular how to remain spontaneous, sense orientated and outgoing to stay in touch with reality. There is a failure in education altogether when children feel they were indoctrinated. After a while children stop drawing and their creativity withers once cut off from their imagination.
They would prefer to be given real knowledge in order to come to terms with the world as they experience it. That poses the more serious question: what can be a corrective as to what takes place in many schools?
The Polish Journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski concluded after re-visiting the former Soviet Union following its break up: people cannot cope with changes due to a lack of cultural tools. Art education should provide these tools to be gained through the arts. That includes perception of things from different and not just one particular, indeed highly politicized angle. Also it needs no reminding that freedom in the imagination means not to take the given as if ‘the’ reality. A high rise apartment does not need to stand there; it could be an open field. A man made world is based on the ability to create alternatives. The ability to correct mistakes and to give shape to
something which is more compatible with the needs of everyone, can give reason for optimism, the much needed motivation to go on.
Since children inherit a world not only rich in knowledge but one beset with many problems, they face huge obstacles. Altogether many people are unable to express themselves. Without a strong sense of equality they tend to be unjust and by being inconsistent they are a threat to continuity of life. Children sense that very much. Basically children are most sensitive at an early age to all kinds of injustices while their forgiving and loving hearts make them still want to find solutions. Always they are ready to shoulder all responsibilities even if too small and too young to carry these burdens.
Consequently when speaking about art education in a broader sense, lessons to be learned should focus not only on creative individuals, but recognize that an entire collectivity can express itself in a most artistic equally social way. There was held an exhibition in Paris 1929 to compare Picasso’s faces in his Avignon painting with African masks carved by anonymous artists of a village. The similarities were striking. The art of making these masks was handed down from one generation to the next and each as expressive as if made by a single artist. Clearly the Western world has yet to recognize art works not brought about by a creative individual, but by a collectivity. The value of these collective art works resides in the fact that they can
help clarify common assumptions about living together in peace. Once people perceive themselves not as mere victims of war but as self conscious human beings they can assist in attaining social justice in a peaceful way. There are lessons to be learned from Kids when they paint together peace murals of the same size as Picasso’s Guernica.
But above all social justice has to ensure that children and adults become just to themselves and therefore realize their inherent creative potentialities. There can be no justice as long as creative potentials are suppressed. A peace process stands only then a chance to overcome violence and war by non violent means if it makes people become creative in their own Rights. This implies for Kids’ Guernica becoming conscious about some important aesthetical principles realized by practice rather than being imposed like a strict rule to be followed by children when they start to paint together. One of these principles can be stated as expressing agony about war but
without taking recourse to ‘enemy pictures’.

Aesthetical principle: no enemy pictures

`After the original peace mural was stolen in Ramallah, Palestine the artist and coordinator of the children, Jad Salman, asked the children to make an improvisation. He had only a few days left before leaving for France and then to continue to Athens where the ECCM Symposium and the Kids’ Guernica exhibition at the Zappeion Oct. 18 – 21, 2007 was being held. The most telling response to what is happening in Palestine came at that symposium from former Minister of Culture for Ireland, namely Michael D. Higgins who said to Jad that the Palestine narrative is one of the most difficult ones to tell.

Michael D. Higgins and Jad Salman

As to the little painting, the Israeli flag was painted on the mast of the destroyer and on the airplane flying over Palestinian territory. This raises the question about the nature of enemy pictures.

Ramallah, Palestine 2007

For instance, the Kabul painting depicts as well a plane dropping bombs but it does not identify the plane with a particular enemy. Here then begins a true question : what messages can children convey when directly under siege of war and violence? Moreover to depict the world as it is but without taking recourse to enemy pictures, would mean Kids’ Guernica follows in the footsteps of Picasso. His Guernica shows human pain without becoming aggressive and violent as a result.

From Picasso’s Guernica to Kids’ Guernica – another entry into art education

Pablo Picasso created ‘Guernica’ after the city by the same name had been bombed during the Spanish Civil War. The painting can be interpreted as a highly artistic response to something profoundly inhumane, namely the bombing from the air of innocent civilians. It entailed an unknown brutality and consequently evokes the question: can an artistic response restore a sense of social justice despite such an event?
Important is that Picasso painted Guernica without taking sides with any of the political fractions of the day. While Communists condemned the painting as not depicting workers fighting heroically Fascism, the Right could not come to terms with such an outcry of human pain. Till today Picasso is a source of a language in painting which can talk about human pain without getting engulfed in ideologies distorting perception of reality. As such he goes beyond politics and underlines that people belong to humanity.
By responding to the atrocities incurred in Guernica in such a way, Picasso does not accept silence as only response to such violation of human rights. By expressing human pain while not furthering hatred, he goes beyond the usual blamegame.
Equally the painting attests to that fact that Guernica shall never be forgotten.

A peaceful mind

The world needs peaceful minds before peace can be sought in practical terms and more so social justice is not served by taking revenge, but by finding a way out of the vicious cycle of violence and hatred. As the Irish poet Brendan Kennelly would say in the introduction to his epic poem ‘Judas’ the most difficult thing to unlearn is ‘learned hatred’.
Thomas Economacos did exactly this with children of the Athenian 108th Elementary School. By asking them to clean up their surroundings in their mind, he gave them a way to think abstractly as to what can evoke a peaceful mind. As a result of this experimentation with children returning from their homes eager to continue painting, they found a relieve in not being glued to their crowded surroundings, narrow streets filled with rubbish and stuffed by cars, and a school confined to an urban space existing in-between high rise apartments. The peace mural let them
explore spaces which let them imagine something beautiful in contrast to their surroundings and which was peaceful at one and the same time. Their peace mural carries the significant title: “Insights into the psyche of a peaceful world”. Everything beautiful and playful in that painting is equally objects in orbit around a larger globe which can symbolize earth but does not have to be.

“Insights into the Psyche of a peaceful world” , Athens 2007

Freeing the imagination

Most important is to draw from art and in particular from all these Kids’ Guernica peace murals some lessons. As peace messages they express multiple stories by which people are touched and can come to terms with reality. This is the case once social reality does not exclude the rich imagination of children. If they can express their imagination and free adults in the process, then a lot more can be said on how art can contribute to social justice.
Freeing the imagination allows according to Takuya Kaneda not only children, but as well adults to develop empathy for others. Once their pains and fears are perceived, then not a closed off world dominates but one open to let in fresh air and the songs of other people. If that is any indication as to how through the arts social justice can be brought about, then by furthering empathy for others. It can be developed best by entering such a collaborative work process as entailed in painting these peace murals. It can involve any number of people and all ages.

In other words, it does not need to exclude adults, fore mostly the parents of these children. Important is not the creative individual or genius, but children creating something together.
Against the dogma of unity of perception children show an amazing gift insofar they discover more and more spaces and still manage in the end to bring everything together. By being just to everyone, unity in diversity is made possible. By contrast, plurality of opinion is suppressed in
unjust societies. They uphold the dogma that only one truth counts to ensure ‘unity of perception’. This makes accommodation of other opinions impossible and therefore contributes to the fact that the Rights of others are not respected. Unfortunately the media reinforces this wrong perception of reality; the moment politicians offer different viewpoints even though from the same party, there is an immediate talk about a crisis.
In that regard art contains a crucial lesson. It is not propaganda nor can or should it convey a dogmatic truth. By staying differentiated, it keeps people open in their perception to diversity, complexity and even contradictions. Good art does not enforce a fake unification under just one guiding principle and which carries with it all the risks of becoming a dictatorial rule.
Indeed people have to learn not to respond negatively to a plurality of opinions but see in it their freedom to have an own opinion. After all the agreement to disagree marks a corner stone of democracy and contributes towards social justice. Such an agreement allows people to come together peacefully and lets them work together.
More importantly children trust then adults as being more capable in ensuring everyone has a fair share and that everyone can participate i.e. is not excluded from the social process. Where this is not the case and privileges start playing a role, then children can easily exclude most harshly the one who appears to them as unjust. It takes then a good art educator to mediate between the children and to show to both sides how to share and to let everyone participate on equal terms. Kids’ Guernica points in that direction, but when it comes to art education a definite lesson can be learned from Vincent Van Gogh.

Lessons from Vincent Van Gogh – learning to work together

Perhaps the best entry into art education is Vincent Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo. Here valuable lessons include recognition what others can do better than oneself e.g. Van Gogh thinking Rembrandt and not himself could paint much better his father emerging out of the mine and walking in his black robe through the snow. To Van Gogh the main lesson of art is realizing a measure of proportions, whether the tree against the sky or the waiter bringing drinks to the table where the unemployed stare into their empty glasses as if forgotten by the world. Above all Van Gogh’s potato pickers underlines the need to do justice to people. He shows how they eat with the very same hands they use to dig out of the earth the potatoes. He portrays them with dignity for even if they seem forlorn in their poverty stricken lives, they still carry within their hearts ‘the good old stories’ to explain the light in their eyes.
Interestingly enough, and most relevant to the Kids’ Guernica project, is that Vincent Van Gogh learned a great deal from Japanese art. Moreover he saw so many subjects worthy to be painted but they were never painted. Individual artists lack the energies, but, so his emphatic point, artists hardly manage to come together in order to paint them. He too failed to realize his dream of an atelier of the South.

Herein exists then the value of Kids’ Guernica. By bringing together not only children, but everyone, it proves that a collectivity of people can paint very well.

Learning to anticipate changes and tasks ahead

If art is to do justice to human reality, then by stepping out of the past in anticipation of things still to come. Here the naked light bulb in the Guernica painting depicts what shall be in future new violations of human rights: prisoners being deprived of sleep as form of torture. By contrast, the broken sword in the hand of the fallen warrior underlines how senseless is war. It quotes indirectly Homer who said about fallen heroes like Achilles they smell only the grass for the first time when already too late, they sink mortally wounded to the ground.
Education, so it seems, is there to learn from the past in order to shape a better life in future. Art education can contribute by strengthening the senses and the creative potentials in every individual. As Gombrich would say, ‘the story of art’ shows how perceptions change and what it takes to realize great art.

Alterations in the epistemology of art education: references to be used

But not only war and conflict leave their imprint upon the canvases. There is the peace mural by the Blind Boys Academy in India. It alters the epistemology used in art education once things are communicated beyond visual references. It changes our assumptions about common knowledge.

The Blind Boys Peace Mural from India, 2007

Blind children use threads and gums to make an outlay of the form and the knots on the threads tell them what color to use e.g. eight knots for red, six for blue. Still, these blind boys wish also to say something as to what they understand about the difference between peace and war.
By the way, these blind boys use threads with knots to know what color to use when painting later along the lines they have pasted on the surface.

Conclusion:
On hand of Kids’Guernica the value of an ‘informal learning processes’ can be made explicit when it comes to link art education to the quest to seek and to uphold social justice. Since these actions take place outside formal institutions and regular teaching hours, it is understandable that this method does not belong necessarily to the official educational curriculum. But the Kids’ Guernica action contains many invaluable insights into another kind of art education and which has as learning out of practice many long term impacts. This is especially the case if seen in terms of the path taken by children who have partaken in Kids’ Guernica workshops and therefore
have entered intercultural learning processes already at an early age. For sure over time they start to create their own networks. By experiencing an intercultural dialogue as exemplified by the Chios-Izmir painting which brought together Turkish and Greek children, they learn a common language exists in painting and on the basis of which cultural and political differences can be overcome. More so the trust and support those involved in the action feel once the entire community joins in, that is a tremendous experience. When the Kids’ Guernica workshop was held in Chios May 2007, the public square was converted into an exhibition space for 18 such peace murals. It became a point of multiple encounters. Japanese students played with Greek children
while adults stopped on their way to evening work in front of the Lebanon painting. And since the Japanese delegation had brought with them plenty of food free for all, there was something else to be noted. Those who took advantage of this opening up in public space were those who are usually socially excluded by local society often too insular to overcome prejudices against outsiders, including immigrants, foreign workers and those without steady income, if they have any at all. As formulated by EU policy social justice begins with social inclusion. To bring that about and to sustain an open local community, there is a need for active, equally creative citizens who are not afraid of different encounters at the level of the imagination. If that is
possible, then dreams about social justice may become one day reality.

Bibliography:
Becker, Carol (1994). The Subversive imagination. New York: Routledge
Bernstein , Richard (2008). “New antislavery law in U.S. may be wrongheaded”
April 9, 2008 http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/09/america/letter.php
Enzensberger, Hans Magnus(2006). Schreckens Maenner – Versuch ueber den
radikalen Verlierer (Scaring men – attempt about the radical loser). Frankfurt a.
Main: Suhrkamp
Gombrich, Ernst (1950). The Story of the art. London: Penguin
Kapuscinski, Ryszard, (2000). Sowjetische Streifzuege – Imperium (Soviet
impressions – Empire). Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn
Kennelly, Brendan (1993). „Poetry and Violence“, essay posted on
http://poieinkaiprattein.org/beyond-images/poetry/poetry-and-violence/
Steiner, George (1967). Language and silence: Essays 1958-1966. Faber and Faber.

Links:
International Kids’ Guernica www.kids-guernica.org
Poiein Kai Prattein in Greece: www.poieinkaiprattein.org/kids-guernica/
ECCM Symposium ‚Productivity of Culture’: www.productivityofculture.org

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Is it possible for Art Education to contribute towards Social Justice? Takuya Kaneda and Hatto Fischer