The Change Lab was designed as a model of practice to embed concepts of Global Citizenship Education (GCE).

Since its inception, in 2016, the Change Lab has evolved as a pedagogical site to challenge and question the role and significance of the student teacher’s art and design practice as a conduit to critically reflect upon local and global inequalities and injustices of our time.

The Change Lab was designed as a model of practice to embed concepts of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) into the heart of learning within the National College of Art and Design Professional Master of Education (PME) artist – teachers programme in the School of Education in a way that instils in the student artist-teachers a strong commitment and motivation to teach for social justice, climate change and sustainability.

This year the student artist-teachers are asked to — pause … for thought — to critically reflect on, inquire into, and make sense of the things that occur during the Lab experience. How the student artist-teacher engages with the creation of art forms is in essence a reflective practice that necessitates a process that requires a slower pace, a rhythm bound by patterns of thought, the physical touch of the medium, to move us to care about and encounter a deep sensory dialogue with our social and material world (Biesta, 2020).

With this in mind, we ask you too, the viewer, to pause for thought, it is perhaps a quiet message, to be still, to be attentive to one another, to think beyond the self and consider how we live our lives amongst each other.

The Change Lab is designed and led by School of Education staff members in NCAD. Fiona King, Course Leader of the Professional Master of Education (PME) programme & Tony Murphy Lecturer in Art & Design Education. The Change Lab project is supported and funded by the Ubuntu Network.

Biesta, G. (2020) Letting Art Teach Art Education ‘After’ Joseph Beuys. ArtEZ Press.