Encounters with public art in teacher education: Timely pedagogies disrupting colonial relations with place

Public art is placed in relation to its surroundings, conveying messages that are open to interpretation and thus proposing conversations between art/aesthetics, geography, histories and the subjectivity of the viewer. As such, it can engender possibilities to ‘politicize our relations with place’. Embracing the vision of a multidisciplinary assignment for an introductory course on place relations for first-year students in a Canadian teaching university, the authors designed an assignment of living inquiry with public art. The students placed themselves in relation to the art piece by studying the surrounding area of the artwork, embracing the propositions of the piece, and responding to those propositions artistically and through writing. What does it mean to live on Indigenous land? It was imperative to introduce conversations about the different but interconnected concepts of place and land that house public art pieces. The authors envisioned teacher education beyond the limits of a positivist dominant developmental lens that constrains holistic and critical possibilities to embrace decolonial acts. They asked: How might pre-service education disrupt the colonial inheritance and practices rooted in early childhood education? The students critically reflected on their geopolitical position, the contemporary issues of our time and the implications for their journey of becoming educators.