School Children's Visualisations of Europe

Abstract

‘Images & Identity’ was a two-year curriculum development project in which citizenship and art educators in the Czech Republic, England, Ireland, Germany, Malta and Portugal collaborated on the production of teacher education materials. The article begins with a critical analysis of educational policy for European citizenship and of the potential contribution visual art and citizenship education might make to understanding what it means to be European. The main body of the article reports on a small-scale survey of school children's visual representations of Europe carried out in advance of the curriculum development. This survey elicited received, recreated and created representations. Whereas many were totemic symbols of European identity downloaded from the Internet, a surprising number were personal artworks in which children explored and developed their personal feelings and ideas. This article describes and analyses the images the children selected, remixed and/or created, focusing on the subject matter, metaphorical meanings and interpretative themes. Findings about their orientation to European citizen identity were that it was dominated by physical and social perceptions, and whilst largely positive, these perceptions varied according to nationality, ethnicity and age.