Coexisting without erasure: challenges of diversity for arts-based education projects

The PULSE-ART project is developed in seven territories, where partner entities will carry out case studies* aimed at exploring the potential of arts education to strengthen Cultural Awareness and Expression (CAE). We will develop educational itineraries where different artistic disciplines will contribute to young participants identifying, appreciating, and manifesting the diversity of worldviews, cultural practices, and symbolic forms. We do not seek a mere acceptance of difference, but rather an active intercultural interaction that cultivates openness to the unknown, a critical attitude towards plurality, and conscious participation in cultural practices, sustained by an ethical reflection on the senses of belonging.

Each of these pilot projects is embedded in a complex and diverse cultural ecology, traversed by historical, linguistic, and sociopolitical tensions that directly impact the design, implementation, and learning experiences. This is why it is necessary to rethink how, from European theoretical and institutional frameworks, we understand diversity; this reflection must be at the center of everyone who designs and implements educational experiences. Likewise, there must be a situated reflection on the challenges of diversity in each of the specific contexts of the projects.

To support this challenge, and without aiming for an exhaustive theoretical review, we find it relevant to highlight the contributions of Catherine Walsh and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, two Latin American authors who question hegemonic approaches to diversity.

Catherine Walsh distinguishes between functional interculturality and critical interculturality as two profoundly different ways of addressing cultural diversity. Functional interculturality, she argues, “is inscribed within the neoliberal multicultural project of recognizing diversity, but without questioning the colonial matrix of power”** (Walsh, 2009, p. 43). That is, it recognizes difference and promotes mechanisms of inclusion or adaptation, but does so within the existing institutional order, without altering the social, racial, and epistemic hierarchies that produce inequality. In contrast, critical interculturality is conceived as “a political, social, ethical, and epistemic project that aims at the transformation of power structures and relations” (Walsh, 2009, p. 45). From this perspective, it is not simply about including the “other” within previously defined frameworks, but about interrogating the very structures that determine who that “other” is, what knowledge is legitimate, and how the coloniality of power and knowledge (Quijano 2000) operates in the contemporary organization of cultural hierarchies.

On the other hand, in contrast to narratives of multicultural harmony, mestizaje, and hybridization, Rivera Cusicanqui develops the concept of ch’ixi. This refers to a condition in which “multiple cultural differences coexist in parallel that do not merge, but rather antagonize or complement each other” (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2010). The metaphor of speckled gray, composed of black and white dots that do not mix even when appearing together, disarms the modern expectation of harmonious resolution and questions the promise of a reconciled unity. Transferred to the artistic field, this implies rejecting the expectation that art produces consensus in contexts traversed by linguistic conflicts, political disputes, and irreconcilable historical memories. For the author, diversity is not resolved in harmony without epistemic violence. A ch’ixi approach, therefore, does not seek to fully integrate or translate differences, but to sustain their friction without erasing them, as an explicitly decolonizing gesture.

These perspectives allow for a critical review of some of the diversity challenges presented by projects in territories marked by plurilingualism, migrations, geopolitical tensions, socioeconomic inequalities, and disputes around gender, religion, and artistic legitimacy.

One of the major concerns that emerges is the question of language. In plurilingual contexts, there is a tendency to translate materials and simplify evaluation tools as a technical solution. From Catherine Walsh’s distinction, it should be noted that there is a risk that the linguistic approach may be limited to functional interculturality: linguistic difference is recognized and an attempt is made to include it, but without questioning the power relations that hierarchize some languages over others. Choosing an official language for a workshop, deciding in which language a tool is designed, or determining which register is considered “appropriate” are not neutral decisions, but political acts that distribute epistemic legitimacy. For Walsh, the challenge is not only to facilitate understanding, but to interrogate the colonial matrix of power that defines which languages are central and which are subordinate. For her part, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui allows for further complicating this discussion, as we can think of languages as carriers of worlds that do not fully merge or translate without friction. In this sense, linguistic diversity in the pilot projects does not constitute merely a logistical challenge, but a field where tensions between State and territory, center and periphery, standard language and subaltern language are expressed.

The discussion about evaluation processes is another tension. The project needs methodological coherence and comparability across territories, but contexts present profoundly dissimilar linguistic, digital, and educational realities. Standardization can, without explicit intent, become a mechanism of homogenization. From this perspective, the challenge is not only to adapt instruments, but to ask whether the pursuit of full equivalence between diverse experiences does not reproduce a subtle form of coloniality of knowledge.

In the same way, we can rethink the more relational aspects within educational activities, such as when we aim to build “safe spaces,” questioning the usual understanding of this concept. Is a safe space one where conflict is minimized, or one where it can be expressed without exclusion and violence? Confusing safety with the neutralization of disagreement can conceal asymmetries and preserve structural hierarchies. In this sense, the challenge would be to generate conditions for collectively elaborating these differences, recognizing the unequal positions from which we speak and learn.

Finally, it is important to consider that diversities in access to technology, cultural resources, or educational capital directly impact participation possibilities. If cultural plurality is addressed without considering these material dimensions, inclusion may be restricted to a representational plane. Critical interculturality demands articulating the cultural dimension with the economic and political, understanding that artistic practices do not develop in a vacuum, but in ecologies marked by an unequal distribution of resources.

The list of diversity challenges in educational projects is enormous; however, these examples already allow us to assume that promoting Cultural Awareness and Expression implies addressing great complexity. It becomes necessary to recognize historical tensions, question epistemic hierarchies, and accept that not all differences are fully translatable. “Coexisting Without Erasure” implies sustaining plurality without demanding synthesis and understanding that diversity is not a resource to be managed, but a structural condition that challenges our conception of education, culture, and power in contemporary Europe.

But thinking about diversity from this position is, at the very least, uncomfortable, because it confronts us with our own position in the world and the way we relate to those we identify as “the others.” Not everything will be resolved methodologically or through the definition of competencies; there is a deeper dimension, linked to our capacity to analyze our own position, our frames of reference, prejudices, and privileges. The invitation, then, is to undertake this analysis as a permanent exercise on our educational practices, in dialogue with theoretical perspectives that allow us to think, increasingly, a little outside the box.