Art as transformative education: Starting the conversation

This chapter documents the journey of the authors, two Australian artists and arts educators as they explore the current and entrenched rationales for art education. These popular and pervasive global narratives offer an often unchallenged justification for engaging in art in educational contexts. Delivered through an unusual yet progressive form of narrative inquiry, this article is framed by emails shared between the authors over a four year period. They serve as an archive of stories, thoughts, and ideas, one which facilitates frank discussion, interpretation, and reflection. The authors explore reasons for art education at a fundamental level; a critical reflection that evolves to become transformative, and which places the 'common good' of humanity at its centre. Using the popular rhetoric as a starting point for their investigation, the authors seek to contribute to a global conversation about a 'counter-curriculum' for teaching art. They invite others to provide their perspectives and ideas with a view to looking outwards to a potential infinity, and a transformed approach to learning in visual arts.