Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 6, No. 40

January - March 2022. e-ISSN 2550-6862. págs 47-56

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31876/er.v6i40.811

The children's collective as a space for artistic production

and cultural management

El colectivo infantil como espacio de producción artística y gestión cultural

María del Carmen López Cuevas*.

Received: July 21, 2021.

Approved: October 11, 2021.

* Master's Degree, Universidad Popular

Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, Puebla,

Mexico, mariacarmen.lopez@upaep.mx,

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2909-8545

Abstract

Social life is full of multiple manifestations that will evidence the

structures that sustain it; given the dynamics of a globalized world,

it is necessary to direct efforts to culture as one of the essential

nuclei in the evolution of societies. Due to the above, the population

has generated proposals such as cultural collectives, which try to be

the space where such production is generated, protected and

motivated. Directed by the methodology of action research, the

Cocotón Children's Collective project was born, a space where

children from the city of Tehuacán and its region are apprentices,

producers and cultural managers, allowing them to interact, express

themselves and take on new roles in their development

environments. The first stage of the project's implementation was

achieved thanks to the interest and active participation of the

children's population, using the resources and capital of their home

environments.

Keyword:

Arts education, cultural management, children.

Cite this:

López, M. (2022). The children's

collective as a space for artistic

production and cultural

management Espirales. Revista

Multidisciplinaria de investigación

científica, 6(40), 47-56

María del Carmen López Cuevas

Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 6, No. 40

January - March 2022. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 47-56.

Introduction

Social life is full of manifestations that will allow the transmission of culture. Given the

dynamics of globalization, it is necessary to direct attention to culture as one of the

essential nuclei in the evolution of societies. This is how each country has built

discourses and practices to highlight identity, causing the objects of culture to be

modiﬁed and adapted depending on the time in which they are inserted.

Society appropriates these discourses and responds to cultural needs through various

proposals; one of these forms are the cultural collectives, which offer a space for

interaction, learning, expression and development of multiple skills. This is how this

project is gestated, in which, the children of Tehuacan and its region have the

opportunity to influence cultural expression and management under the following

general and speciﬁc objectives: To design a space for cultural production and

management under the collective model, focused on the child population; To examine

the existence of common cultural elements that favor the insertion of a child collective

and its due correspondence with the curricular contents; To identify the child population

with concerns about artistic and cultural production; To plan mediation strategies

between formal and informal education, as cultural sources. With this project we intend

to vindicate the role of artistic education as the axis for an integral formation of children,

fostering values, allowing them to recognize their individuality and guiding them

towards active, responsible and informed citizen participation.

Resumen

La vida social está llena de múltiples manifestaciones que van a

evidenciar las estructuras que la sustentan; dadas las dinámicas de

un mundo globalizado, es necesario dirigir esfuerzos a la cultura

como uno de los núcleos esenciales en el devenir de las sociedades.

Debido a lo anterior, la población ha generado propuestas como

los colectivos culturales, que tratan de ser el espacio en donde se

genere, proteja y motive dicha producción. Dirigido por la

metodología de investigación acción, nace el proyecto del

Colectivo Infantil Cocotón, un espacio en el que niños de la ciudad

de Tehuacán y su región, son aprendices, productores y gestores

culturales; permitiéndoles interactuar, expresarse y tomar nuevos

roles en sus entornos de desarrollo. La primera etapa de aplicación

del proyecto, se logró gracias al interés y la participación activa de

la población infantil, utilizando los recursos y capitales de sus

entornos de origen.

Palabra clave:

Educación artística, gestión cultural, infancia

Technological innovations in the textile sector in the canton of Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 6, No. 40

January - March 2022. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 47-56.

Childhood is conceived as the stage in which children acquire the capital necessary for

social life; this condition indicates that children are incapable of expressing their

opinions, participating and proposing; therefore, the aim is to promote the participation

of children, aiming at an integral development that will allow them to enhance their

autonomy.

"A large percentage of the world population, are girls and boys" (Chacón, 2015, p.

134), so the UN, attends to children, considering them as individuals with the right to

full physical, mental and social development, and with the right to freely express their

opinions, arguing that, the comprehensive care of childhood guarantees the survival

and progress of human society. In addition, it should be kept in mind that such

deﬁnition, for Durán (2015) goes through a process of social construction; thus, more

signiﬁcant conceptions identiﬁed by the school of Culture and Personality, stand out:

Three different types of culture: postﬁgurative, children learn primarily from their

elders; coﬁgurative, both children and adults learn from their peers; and

preﬁgurative where adults also learn from children. (Jones, 2008)

Complementing the above, Erickson's Theory of Psychosocial Development points out

that the context and the individual exert a mutual inﬂuence between them, allowing

people to guarantee their physical and symbolic continuity in society. Pavón & Ferruz,

(2010) according to the Mexican Political Constitution, the country is governed by

democracy, which opens the possibility for citizens to take "actions that affect the social

order in their relationship with power" (Botero, Torres, 2008, p. 566). To understand

political participation, it is necessary to take into account that people are integrated, "in

response to needs or challenges to authority and institutions" (Garcés, 2010, p. 63).

In addition, "it is necessary to recognize the multidimensionality of the phenomenon",

since "today, this participation takes different forms and uses new spaces to be

exercised". (Hernández, 2018 p. 45) because nowadays, this participation takes

different forms and uses new spaces to be exercised. Therefore, political participation

has to do with the way in which people organize themselves, focusing on the search for

the common good. Art is a space for personal and social expression and knowledge; in

SEP programs, it ﬁgura as a subject, but, in school realities it is usually omitted because

it is considered not very relevant in the academic trajectory; there are few institutions

that consider that:

Arts education enriches and makes a great cognitive contribution to the development

of students' skills and abilities, such as entrepreneurship, cultural diversity, innovation,

María del Carmen López Cuevas

Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 6, No. 40

January - March 2022. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 47-56.

creativity and curiosity, as well as contributes self-conﬁdence, respect and tolerance

(Aptus, 2021, p. 2).

Creativity has been linked to art; however, the individual is also capable of directing his

creative capacity to the resolution of personal and community needs, students, by

automating the processes and skills involved in creative thinking, are able to transfer

them to the resolution of problems in their daily lives; therefore, the role of arts

education should be vindicated as a meeting point for the individual and his context.

Collectives have common objectives, activities and identities. They are important

because they are "agglutinated by horizontal forms and with "slogans" related to

everyday life" Garcés (2010), as they seek to make effective changes without resorting

to formal organizations In the academic production around collectives, the action of

youth collectives stands out, as these spaces are used to make visible their position on

issues of social relevance; however, this does not mean that other age groups do not

tend to group together, dressing the collectives they form with their own signiﬁcance.

Since contemporary times, childhood has been considered vulnerable, creating

imaginaries where children are perceived as beings incapable of having an active and

autonomous participation, so the spaces for participation are usually adult-centric,

therefore, they pursue objectives that are far from the reality they live, creating tensions,

as stated by Fernández in (Brussino, Imhoff, 2013, p. 206).

There is evidence of the emergence of two positions regarding the social role and socio-

political participation of children: the Paradigm of Integral Child Protection and what

has come to be called the Paradigm of Child Protagonism. Both positions criticize the

ideas of the Social Control Paradigm, in the framework of which children are conceived

as incapable, immature and incomplete beings. That is, children are seen as passive [...],

there is no participation of children in the social sphere since they are not considered

citizens [...], while there is a hierarchical and asymmetrical relationship in terms of power

with adults [...]. At the same time, through the various socialization agencies, the aim is

to homogenize, discipline and prevent deviations, with the main goal being adaptation

rather than problematization and the development of a critical spirit on the part of the

children.

A phrase attributed to Phylicia Rashad says "before speaking, children sing; before

writing, they draw; as soon as they stand up, they dance..."; therefore, it could be

assured that expression, self-knowledge and abstraction are an innate part of the human

being and, if they are enhanced, it would be possible to achieve an optimal

Technological innovations in the textile sector in the canton of Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 6, No. 40

January - March 2022. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 47-56.

biopsychosocial development, where self-awareness is achieved in order to have an

impact on society.

Childhood has been deﬁned from the vision of other age groups, although acculturation

is necessary, it may tend to make speciﬁc perceptions invisible, this is evident in

academic production, where an effort has been made to "translate" children's

experiences or reproduce models of consultation, participation and expression that are

functional for other age groups. Regarding participation spaces, the INE carries out the

children and youth consultation, where children express what they would like the

government to do in favor of the population; another space is the Children's Parliament

of the girls and boys of Mexico, which is held annually, where elementary school children

compete to become children's deputies. Even with events of this type, the aim is for

participation to be transformed and occupy a leading role as proposed in the work

"From participation to child protagonism" Alfageme, Cantos, Martínez (2003), on the

other hand appeal to the fact that, in the globalized context, it is necessary for

participation to be based on culture, since this can establish a respectful and tolerant

dialogue with the different people with whom we interact on a daily basis. It would be

impossible to link all the chosen concepts without taking into account the

neurosciences, which link organic development with the inﬂuence generated by the

feelings of the individual around their cognitive, academic and sensory processes and

how, by taking experience to the limit, it is possible to learn, to know and to know

oneself, to regulate and manage for the common good.

Finally, it is necessary to mention that there are references of children's collectives, but

their main goal has not been the development of children's participation based on art;

there is only coincidence in the detection of a need to allow the use of categories

coming from children, an example of this is the work around the images of childhood in

an urban and indigenous context, to see how the context influences the signiﬁcations.

What has been addressed in this brief review, indicates that, even if childhood has

already been addressed, it has not been completely exhausted.

Materials and methods

Educational practice tries to respond to current needs; globalization and

communication opportunities have made it possible to learn about techniques,

strategies, processes and results obtained in other parts of the world, enriching

teachers; however, it can also happen that, since they are not contextualized, they lose

their effectiveness and do not have the expected impact. This is due to the fact that

education maintains a relationship with the contexts and their respective cultures.

Therefore, this proposal is based on the methodology of action research, whose ﬁnality

is "to solve daily and immediate problems and improve concrete practices. Its

María del Carmen López Cuevas

Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 6, No. 40

January - March 2022. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 47-56.

fundamental purpose is focused on providing information to guide decision-making for

programs, processes and reforms" (Baptista, Fernández, and Hernández, 2006, p.706),

which implies that the results obtained will be used to modiﬁcate elements present in

the reality of individuals. It should be noted that by its type, it has a humanistic and

heuristic approach, since it is intended that participants contribute to their integral

development from self-management, not only for a personal good, but to channel it

towards a common good. Thus, under these guidelines "Cocotón: Children's Cultural

Collective" is born.

As previously detailed, art offers qualities for cognitive, emotional and motor

development; it has been considered in basic education in our country; however, it has

been left aside. After a brief questionnaire applied to a sample of parents and students

in the city of Tehuacán, the panorama of the imaginary around art education,

accompaniment and the spaces offered by the city for children to have contact with

artistic and cultural production was known.

In the results obtained, it was expressed the need for children to have a deeper

approach to art, since most of them only have contact with it at school; parents

recognize the qualities that art offers to their children; they also identify that

most children are interested in the practice; in addition to the above, the

spaces for art and culture in the city are scarce, have little diffusion, are usually

expensive and are not conditioned so that children can be inserted in them;

Finally, parents recognize that children have the potential to generate their own

artistic and cultural production, as long as they are accompanied to discover the

discipline that most attracts their attention, the techniques, materials, and processes,

and they are given the necessary support at home so that they can put it fully into

practice.

For the first stage of development of the Cocoton Collective (to which the results

presented in this text belong), agents who served as instructors were invited and

selected based on the needs and interests of the children, so that the collective could

fulfill its objective; therefore, surveys, interviews, informal talks and agreements with

those involved were applied.

Once these data and agreements were in place, it was possible to select the

workshops (dance, plasticine modeling, guitar, singing, storytelling, watercolor and

photography), draw up schedules, plan activities and logistics. Thus, by inviting

potential members, the dynamics to be followed in the development of the project

were made clear. The climax of this development was when the sessions got

Technological innovations in the textile sector in the canton of Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 6, No. 40

January - March 2022. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 47-56.

underway. Initially, the possibility of carrying out the workshops in a face-to-face or

hybrid modality was considered, however, the conditions derived from the pandemic

prevented this from happening. Each of the phases was evaluated to improve the

conditions of the service. Efforts were made to reduce costs and it is expected that,

in other stages, external funding will be obtained to make the project more solid and

sustainable. Once the workshops were completed, a sample was made for the

community according to each of the disciplines, in addition to maintaining a constant

dialogue and follow-up with both children and parents, which allowed for a qualitative

evaluation of the results.

Results

In the different phases of this first stage, the interest that children and parents have

in artistic education was evident; in some cases, it was strange that the workshops

were given free of charge; however, when they learned about the conditions in depth,

they were happy to participate. While it is true that it is possible to polish the work to

fully achieve the objectives set, each workshop contributed from its field of action so

that these were achieved as far as possible. We intend to give continuity to these

courses and according to the testimonies collected, we have the support of children

and parents, based on the degree of satisfaction with what was offered; therefore, we

will proceed to design new stages of the project, events, lectures, etc. to keep the

Cocotón collective alive. On the other hand, favorable changes in the perceptions of

art are perceived in both children and parents, and an advance in personal, social and

technical skills was noted in the participants of the workshops, which indicates that

continuity and improvement in the results is possible.

Conclusions

In the city of Tehuacán, there is interest in the existence of spaces for creation,

promotion and cultural management, especially those that are open to children,

because, in the acculturation of societies, the transmission of knowledge, techniques,

codes and symbols that imply a permanence of local and regional identity is

perceived as necessary; To detach art from the academic environment, closes

opportunities to achieve the integral development of individuals and to form

signiﬁcant and situated learning according to the reality of the contexts in which

children develop, without forgetting the possibility of interacting with other realities,

knowing other symbolic systems and fostering tolerant and respectful intercultural

relations so pressing for the globalization of which we are a part.

In the same sense, forming awareness of the exercise of responsible and informed

citizenship from an early age would point to useful and practical improvements that

María del Carmen López Cuevas

Espirales. Revista multidisciplinaria de investigación científica, Vol. 6, No. 40

January - March 2022. e-ISSN 2550-6862. pp 47-56.

seek the common good. Therefore, Cocoton Collective has become a space for

artistic expression, cultural management and intercultural experience; being a project

with incidence and social participation, it is exposed to multiple changes and even

adaptations in other environments, so that, it is expected that from the foundations

laid in this work, more spaces of this type in favor of children will be formed.

..........................................................................................................

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