ABSTRACT
Communication skills and spaces for visibility in public spaces are not granted to everyone. To promote counter-hegemonic narratives and be able to make visible the voices of marginalised communities, citizens need to master the technologies of discourse, representation and dissemination. Over the past ten years, the Association of Teachers of Expression and Visual Communication (APECV) in Portugal has developed artistic projects with marginalised groups (e.g., for their culture, ethnicity, age, gender, cognitive or physical differences) providing artistic workshops with artists and educators to explore communication skills through relational art and design processes. Within the scope of the AMASS International Project “AMASS: Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture”, 1 APECV has tested participatory and collaborative methodological strategies to work with communities using strategies based on activist participatory art and the pedagogy of hope of Paulo Freire. Central to these strategies are group knowledge and establishing trust activities, collaborative design of the actions, creation of a collaborative art and design work, and public visibility of the processes and products. Throughout the chapter, the strategies explored by the participants of APECV AMASS project will be described with examples illustrating the concepts inherent to artistic collaborative practices and pedagogies. Problematic issues, such as ethical aspects of the research, will be shared with the readers. Finally, discussion about the impact of APECV actions under AMASS will raise concluding questions about the right to express participant voices to influence local cultural policies and the need for greater impact of art and design-based research.
