Spaces of solace and world-building: A praxis-based approach to Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) outreach for equity and widening participation in higher education

Abstract

This article argues that Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) outreach can produce relational dynamics with the capability of disrupting contextual power relations to create spaces of solace and collective world-building. Using a Pedagogical Methodology, an academic, a practitioner-researcher and two university students develop a collective praxis to co-theorise the underlying social dynamics of various CAPA outreach practices. Focus groups led by the two student authors and conducted with other university students directly involved in recent outreach functioned as our primary formal method of data collection. The underlying, generative dynamics identified relate to the collaborative nature of CAPA practice, the way mentors/teachers as CAPA ‘practitioners’ carry embodied knowledge of practice, and the non-text-based character of much CAPA practice. These themes merge under the overarching theme of world-building in recognition of the ways arts-related education practice can transcend simplistic notions of ‘creativity’ to a more fundamental reminder that we can create. We acknowledge that the rich spaces this form of outreach can produce are also vulnerable to deep injuries of misrecognition and shame, and advocate for a pedagogy of creative care.