A Partnership of Time and Depth: Jamaica’s and America’s Art Education Connections

Abstract

This article presents a personal narrative of my critical engagement and partnership role in a longstanding international relationship between two higher education institutions that has deepened understandings of art education in both Jamaica and America and broadened understandings of cultural identities of each across and within the countries. As such, this article suggests that time and depth of a relationship across countries has significant impact to the learning and growing as well the variety of individuals involved in educationally giving and receiving, which has supported the duration of the partnership through developing multiple sustainable relationships. The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica is the premier arts college in the English-speaking Caribbean and has retained a fifteen-year partnership with the Art Education Department at The Ohio State University, which came out of the work of Ohio State doctoral students who were from Jamaica beginning in the 1980s. The budding relationship turned-partnership led to the development of a “mostly” online Master’s degree program in Art Education for art teachers in Jamaica and eventually to a study abroad program for Ohio State students to travel to Kingston. Sharing expertise across the countries and through a variety of social and cultural lenses has allowed participants to complicate notions and understandings of each country, and therefore reflect on their own cultural identities, realities and limitations as artists and art educators.