This book is based on the topics, questions and results of the international conference "Aesthetics of Transformation - Arts Education Research and the Challenge of Cultural Sustainability". It aims to foster and sharpen the understanding of the potential role of arts education and arts education research for cultural sustainability. In an ever more complex and interconnected world, culture is a valuable resource for sustainable development. Based on the thesis that the change towards sustainability has to be a change that starts with cultural practices of perception and knowledge, this book makes an important contribution to the broad discourse on cultural sustainability, which has begun to emerge in recent years. In this context, the volume first deals with Intangible Cultural Heritage and how aesthetic practices and certain forms of art are changing through cultural transformation processes. Subsequently, it focuses on issues such as arts and cultural education in times of neoliberalism, (post-)migration and post-coloniality as well as on arts and cultural education under conditions of digital transformation. These theoretical and empirical contributions are complemented by insights into field trips to institutions and exemplary places of practice, showing different representations of educational art practices, cultural heritage, and cultural sustainability. Against this background the book finally offers responses and commentaries that can form the starting point for a far reaching interactive dialogical process on the utmost importance of cultural, aesthetic and arts education as part of a global endeavor for sustainable development.

Autorentext

Prof. Dr. Benjamin Jörissen is a Full Professor of Education with a focus on Culture and Aesthetics and Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Arts and Culture in Education at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). The Chair's research aims to contribute to an understanding of the role of cultural, aesthetic, and arts education in a transforming and diverse world. Fields of work include the development of an educational aesthetic and media theory, empirical research in postdigital culture including several research projects on digitalization in arts education, as well as UNESCO-related and postcolonial perspectives. Jörissen, amongst others, is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, member of the UNESCO UNITWIN Network Arts Education Research for Cultural Diversity and Sustainable Development, as well as a member of the German Council for Arts and Cultural Education (Rat für Kulturelle Bildung). Prof. Dr. Lisa Unterberg is professor for social work at IU University of Applied Sciences in Stuttgart (Germany). Until 2020, she worked as a post-doc researcher at the Chair of Education with a focus on Culture and Aesthetics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and associated with the UNESCO UNITWIN network. She was the co-organizer of the international UNITWIN conference "Aesthetics of Transformation", held in Nuremberg in 2018. Dr. Tanja Klepacki is the senior researcher at the UNESCO Chair in Arts and Culture in Education at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). Amongst others, she serves as executive manager of the Chair's Academy in Nuremberg. Her fields of work include theoretical and empirical studies in the fields of cultural, aesthetic and arts education as well as in the realm of cultural sustainability and cultural transformations.