“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” - Nelson Mandela
All over the world images are used in education (e.g. art-works, architecture, logos, photos, fashion, artefacts …) as these are part of our collective memory, images shape our perception and understanding of the world, we imagine the future through images, images are models for creation and they also incite discussion and debate.
The project ‘Exploring Visual Cultures’ (EVC – www.explore-vc.org) deals with images in education as a central focus.
- EVC is an international project that started as a mutual cooperation between art educators, scholars in visual culture and historians at universities in South Africa, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya and Germany.
- EVC is an open, transnational network of scholars, teachers and students, coordinated by an expert panel. The panel is chaired by Dr. Avi Sooful, University of Pretoria, South Africa, and Dr. Ernst Wagner, Academy of Fine Arts, München, Germany serves as secretary to the Project.
- EVC shares its information with a worldwide community of researchers and educators through conferences, publications, and a website. The website provides material about images that are relevant in education and concepts of how they can be used in education.
- EVC’s interest is diversity – in the selection of images, the narratives related to them and their usage. EVC promotes the African voice in the selection of images from Africa and a global dialogue about the images.
We are inviting scholars from partnering institutions to contribute to this project by
- selecting a few images that are relevant for education in their countries / institutions
- interpreting these images by answering two main questions (amongst others): What do they mean? Why have they been selected?
- The EVC will publish the submitted interpretations after a peer review process on its website: https://www.explore-vc.org/en/objects.html
We hope that these initial steps in promoting the use of images and its relevant content will develop a mutual exchange of ideas on the images selected in different contexts e.g. through symposia, online co-operations, publications.