Narrating Me and the Discourse of Being Dealt With : Student’s democratic inclusion and execution of personalagency through the self narrative in art and media education.

Sammanfattning: This paper is about how students, specifically those who have become marginalized becauseof neuro psychological divergences, depression and one case of narcolepsy, may, by usingself narration in art and media education, promote agency in order to develop the capability ofself advocating. Children must develop a perspective of themselves within society and itssocial structures in order to participate in the discourses concerning themselves as is theirdemocratic right according to the United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child.Educators of art and media are in a position to accommodate the intellectual developmentleading towards a meta perspective, by integrating the autobiographical into the ordinarycurriculum. Learning through storytelling is a method that can be applied in both visual artsand media to this end.The artistic manifestation of this work: seven students who attended Nikeungdom, an alternative high school program which does not lead to a degree, were asked toshare their life stories offering insight into how the autobiographical, narrating the self, can beaccessed and why it can be developmentally meaningful. These stories manifested in anedited audio file in which the students told about their journey through the educational systemand their experiences of performing in ways that do not fit inside “the box”. The audio filewas played as sound graffiti from speakers hidden in a tree outside of Konstfack, theeducational institution I attended. This symbolizes divergent students’ exclusion fromrepresenting themselves within formal institutions. The graffiti, subtle and subversive, is alsomade to be played outside of the Board of Education and the psychological institutions thatare supposed to care for these peoples’ development and wellbeing; their social inclusion. Theinstitutions that are in place to form children’s lives exclude these children’s own voices, theyare not enabled to represent themselves. The fact that there was no audience prepared to takethe time and make the effort to listen to the compilation of stories told by these outsiders wasmeaningful for the work. It was also important that the audio piece was not orchestrated as anextravaganza using showmanship to attract attention. It is the job of the authorities, theinstitutions, the politicians, the teachers and psychologists to listen and hear actively,encouraging social inclusion and self-representation within the governing institutions.