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Learning Cultural Literacy through
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Learning Cultural Literacy
through Creative Practices
in Schools
Cultural and Multimodal
Approaches to
Meaning-Making
Tuuli Lähdesmäki ·
Jūratė Baranova · Susanne C. Ylönen ·
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen · Katja Mäkinen ·
Vaiva Juškiene · Irena Zaleskienė
Learning Cultural Literacy through Creative
Practices in Schools
“This book takes us from what we thought cultural literacy meant, to a deeper
understanding that actually supports children experiencing learning to utilize it in
practice. Linking research and practice, it offers a guide to how utilizing creative
arts can help children become tolerant, inclusive and empathetic to the world
around them. It’s definitely a book teachers and teacher educators should read!”
—Long-time University of Patras academic, Dr. Julie Spinthourakis, researches
and writes about diversity-identity-culture-communication issues
“This book is a timely, highly articulate analysis of the relationship between

cultural literacy and pedagogical practice. Taking full account of previous research
into the multimodal processes whereby children transform culturally diverse,
mixed forms of learning material into co-created artefacts, it highlights the impor-
tance of reinterpreting cultural literacy as an instrument of social understanding
in a world marked by instability and change.”
—Dr. Robert Crawshaw, Senior Research Associate, Lancaster University &
Research Consultant, the Missenden Centre
“This book is a good example of what we can discover when children’s creativity
and art are considered from a socio-cultural perspective. The collection and
interpretation of artistic data can be challenging. Since – as the DIALLS project
shows – children can deal with abstract things in an artistic way, it is important
to develop methods for utilizing art in teaching and researching children.”
—Dr. Päivi Venäläinen, Executive Director of Art Centre for Children and
Young People, Finland
Tuuli Lähdesmäki · Jūratė Baranova ·
Susanne C. Ylönen · Aino-Kaisa Koistinen ·
Katja Mäkinen · Vaiva Juškiene ·
Irena Zaleskiene
Learning Cultural
Literacy through
Creative Practices
in Schools
Cultural and Multimodal Approaches to
Meaning-Making
Tuuli Lähdesmäki Jūratė Baranova
Department of Music, Art and Culture Philosophy Institute
Studies Vilnius University
University of Jyväskylä Vilnius, Lithuania
Jyväskylä, Finland
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen
Susanne C. Ylönen Department of Music, Art and Culture
Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies
Studies University of Jyväskylä
University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä, Finland
Vaiva Juškiene
Katja Mäkinen Institute of Educational Sciences
Department of Music, Art and Culture Vilnius University
Studies Vilnius, Lithuania
University of Jyväskylä
Irena Zaleskiene
Institute of Educational Sciences
Vilnius University
Vilnius, Lithuania
ISBN 978-3-030-89235-7 ISBN 978-3-030-89236-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89236-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022. This book is an open access publication.
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In memory of Jūratė Baranova
Preface
This book is an outcome of intensive collaboration between seven scholars

whose divergent academic backgrounds in pedagogy, civic education, art
education, art history, cultural studies, film and media studies, literary
studies, and social sciences creates a unique set of knowledge to explore
cultural literacy learning in schools through children and young people’s
creative practices. The authors were all involved in the research project
Dialogue and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools
(DIALLS), funded by the European Union from its Horizon 2020
Research and Innovation Programme. The project includes ten partner
universities from Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania,
Portugal, Spain, and the UK. This broad consortium was led by Dr. Fiona
Maine from the University of Cambridge. The project ran from 2018 to
2021.
The DIALLS project addresses the role of formal education in shaping
the knowledge, skills, and competencies needed for effective cultural
literacy learning, intercultural dialogue, and mutual understanding. It
has worked with teachers in different educational settings (preprimary,
primary, and secondary) to create cross-curricular dialogic resources and
activities. The core of these resources is the Cultural Literacy Learning
Programme (CLLP) that the project developed in 2019 in close cooper-
ation with teachers from several European countries. During the project,
the program was tested in over 250 classes in Cyprus, Germany, Israel,
Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, and the UK in 2019 and 2020. The program
vii
viii PREFACE
includes three sets of lessons targeted at different age groups. The lessons
focus on thematic discussions catalyzed by wordless picture books and
films produced in and around Europe. These were selected from a
bibliography of 145 wordless picture books and films that reflect an
increasingly multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual social landscape
of places, people, and ways of living in Europe and nearby regions.
The CLLP is based on interaction between students in their own class,
then within each country, and after that, with a class abroad. Classes
interacted in the program through an online platform developed in the
DIALLS project. During the implementation of the program, the project
researchers collected diverse data sets for further analysis. These data sets
include a broad multilingual corpus of the face-to-face discussions that
took place in the classes, files documenting the exchange of views on the
online platform, and a broad collection of visual and multimodal arti-
facts that the students created in lessons. This collection of unique data
is useful for analyzing cultural literacy learning through creative practices
in schools. This book focuses on the last data set, the multimodal arti-
facts produced by the students who participated in testing the CLLP.
The project researchers followed national ethical guidelines and regula-
tions and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation in data collection
and management, including consent from students and their parents for
using the artifacts in analyses and publications.
Besides the CLLP, the DIALLS project created comprehensive guid-
ance for developing cultural literacy in schools: A Scale of Progression for
Cultural Literacy Learning. Moreover, the project promotes children and
young people’s active participation in practicing and advancing cultural
literacy by facilitating a student-authored Manifesto for Cultural Literacy
and a Virtual Gallery, for which students selected artifacts created in the
program.
This book continues the collaboration between the DIALLS project
and Palgrave Macmillan. The project started with an analysis of education
policy documents produced by the European Union and the Council of
Europe, and how they deal with the concept of intercultural dialogue.
This study, Intercultural Dialogue in the European Education Policies:
A Conceptual Approach by Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, and
Susanne C. Ylönen, was published in Palgrave’s Pivot series in 2019. This
second book provides further research-based information for scholars,
PREFACE ix
teachers, educators, and students interested in children’s visual expres-

sion, agency and creativity, cultural literacy learning, and multimodality
in communication and education.
We want to thank our colleagues from the Centre National de
la Recherche Scientifique, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Humboldt
University of Berlin, Nova University Lisbon, University of Barcelona,
University of Cambridge, University of Münster, and University of
Nicosia for inspiring collaboration within the DIALLS project. We partic-
ularly want to thank Fiona Harrison, Dilar Cascalheira, Ana Remesal,
Benjamin Brummernhenrich, Talli Cedar, and Maria Chatzianastasi for
organizing and translating the artifact data for our analysis. We also want
to thank research assistant Jaakko Havela at the University of Jyväskylä
for preliminary data statistics. We are deeply grateful to all teachers and
students who participated in the Cultural Literacy Learning Programme
in 2020 and who were willing to share their information and creations
with us. This book has been copyedited by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson who
deserves thanks for her detailed work in language editing. We also want
to thank Editor Rebecca Wyde from Palgrave Macmillan for seamless
cooperation in the publishing process, as well as Palgrave’s anonymous
reviewers for their fruitful comments, which helped us sharpen our argu-
ments. Finally, we want to thank the core financer of the DIALLS project,
the European Commission, and its Horizon 2020 Programme, for the
project funding under grant agreement no. 770045, which made this
book possible.
Jyväskylä, Finland Tuuli Lähdesmäki

Vilnius, Lithuania Jūratė Baranova
Jyväskylä, Finland Susanne C. Ylönen
Jyväskylä, Finland Aino-Kaisa Koistinen
Jyväskylä, Finland Katja Mäkinen
Vilnius, Lithuania Vaiva Juškiene
Vilnius, Lithuania Irena Zaleskiene
March 2021
Postscript. After finishing the manuscript, we faced the devastating news

of the death of our coauthor and colleague Jūratė Baranova. We dedicate
this book to her memory and with it, we honor her philosophical and
educational work.
Acknowledgments
This book has been supported by the European Commission and its
Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agree-
ment no. 770045. Dialogue and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy
Learning in Schools (DIALLS) is a broad research consortium funded
from the Horizon call “Understanding Europe—promoting the Euro-
pean Public and Cultural Space” under the topic “Cultural Literacy of
Young Generations in Europe.” The content of this publication does not
reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Responsibility for the
information and views expressed therein lies entirely with the authors.
xi
Contents
1 Introduction: Cultural Literacy and Creativity 1

2 A Sociocultural Approach to Children’s Visual
Creations 17
3 Multimodality: Art as a Meaning-Making Process 31
4 Tolerance, Empathy, and Inclusion 45
5 Living Together 63
6 Social Responsibility 81
7 Belonging and Home 99
8 Cultural Literacy During COVID-19 117
9 Conclusions: Cultural Literacy in Action 135
Index 149
xiii
About the Authors
Tuuli Lähdesmäki (Ph.D. in Art History; D.Soc.Sc. in Sociology) is a

Docent and an Associate Professor of Art History at the Department
of Music, Art and Culture Studies, JYU, Finland. Her research interests
and publications include governance of diversity, cultural identities, iden-
tity politics, belonging, reception of art, cultural heritage, the European
Union and the Council of Europe and their cultural policies. Lähdesmäki
is currently leading a research project entitled EU Heritage Diplomacy
and the Dynamics of Inter-Heritage Dialogue (HERIDI), funded by the
Academy of Finland. She is leading JYU’s consortium partnership in the
DIALLS project. In addition, she is one of three leaders in JYU’s research
profiling area entitled Crises Redefined: Historical Continuity and Soci-
etal Change (CRISES). She has previously worked in various research
projects exploring the roles of art and culture in contemporary societal
and political contexts.
Jūratė Baranova (Rubavičienė) was a researcher in the DIALLS project

and professor of Philosophy at Vilnius University, Lithuania. She has
taught courses on didactics of ethics, didactics of philosophy, and philos-
ophy of children at the Institute of Educational Sciences and courses
on ethics, philosophy of history, and philosophy of art at the Insti-
tute of Philosophy. She was a member of the International Network of
the Philosophers of Education. Her main publications are: Multimodal
Education: Philosophy and Practice (with L. Duoblienė, 2020); Rhythm
xv
xvi ABOUT THE AUTHORS
and Refrain: In Between Philosophy and Arts (2016); Between Visual and
Literary Creation: Tarkovsky and Ivanauskaitė (with coauthors, 2015);
20th Century Moral Philosophy: Conversation with Kant (2004, 2015);
The Phenomenon of Jurga Ivanauskaitė: Between Surrealism and Existen-
tialism (2014); Cinema and Philosophy (with coauthors, 2012); Nietzsche
and Postmodernism (2007); and Philosophy and Literature: Contradic-
tions, Parallels and Intersections (2006). She has also been a member
of the Lithuanian Writers Union and published the essay collections
Meditations: Texts and Images (2004) and The Fear to Be Drawn (2009).
Susanne C. Ylönen (Ph.D. in Art Education) is a postdoctoral researcher

at the Department of Music, Arts and Culture Studies, JYU, Finland. Her
research focuses on cultural differences especially in the context of the
high/low culture divide and the valorization of children’s culture. Ylönen
has worked on the DIALLS project. She investigates children’s literature
in her project Disturbingly Funny and Freakishly Cute: Aesthetic Subla-
tion as a Mode of Pop Cultural Meaning Making, funded by the Finnish
Cultural Foundation.
Aino-Kaisa Koistinen (Ph.D. in Contemporary Culture Studies) is a

postdoctoral researcher in Contemporary Culture Studies at the Depart-
ment of Music, Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä (JYU),
Finland. She also holds the title of Docent in Media Culture (Univer-
sity of Turku, Finland). Koistinen’s expertise lies in feminist theory,
cultural and media studies, and ecocritical/posthuman theory. Currently,
Koistinen works in the DIALLS project, as well as in the JYU School of
Resource Wisdom, where she is developing online education on planetary
wellbeing. She has previously worked in projects such as TRANSMEDIA
LITERACY: Exploiting Transmedia Skills and Informal Learning Strate-
gies to Improve Formal Education (funded from the Horizon 2020
Programme); global audience research in The World Hobbit Project
(the Finnish subproject funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation); and
Abusive Sexuality and Sexual Violence in Contemporary Culture (funded
by the Finnish Kone Foundation). Her recent publications include work
on eco-centered feminist pedagogy, transmedial crime fiction, and affec-
tive representations of violence in genre TV.
Katja Mäkinen (Ph.D. in Political Science, M.A. in Art Education) is

a Docent and a senior researcher at the Department of Music, Art and
ABOUT THE AUTHORS xvii
Culture Studies, JYU, Finland. Mäkinen’s research focuses on citizenship,

participation, identities, and cultural heritage. She has applied a concep-
tual approach to analyzing EU programs on culture and citizenship,
and examined the EU’s participatory governance through ethnographic
research. Mäkinen has worked as a junior lecturer in political science and
a senior lecturer in cultural policy at JYU. She has been a visiting fellow
at the European University Institute, Italy, and the University of Auck-
land, New Zealand, as well as the chair of the Citizenship Standing Group
in the European Political Consortium for Political Research. Mäkinen is
a coauthor of Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the Euro-
pean Union (Routledge 2020). She has worked on the projects Politics
of Participation and Democratic Legitimation in the European Union,
funded by the Kone Foundation, and Muddy Waters: Democracy and
Governance in a Multilateral State, funded by the Academy of Finland.
Vaiva Juškiene (Doctoral Student in Education, MAs in Humanitarian

and Management Sciences) is a junior researcher in the DIALLS project,
responsible for running dialogue and argumentation with Lithuanian
primary students and analyzing their argumentation. Juškiene specializes
in Literary Studies and Education Management and is a junior researcher
at the Institute of Educational Sciences at Vilnius University, Lithuania.
She has more than 20 years of teaching experience in school. Moreover,
she is the Dean of the Faculty of Pedagogy at Vilniaus kolegija, Univer-
sity of Applied Sciences that trains primary and preprimary teachers.
Her research field is at the interface of children’s literature, Lithua-
nian language and didactics of literature, communication, and dialogue
training. She has published textbooks on Lithuanian literature for primary
schools and is also a coauthor of several published texts for children at
primary school.
Irena Zaleskiene (Ph.D. in Education) is a senior researcher at the Insti-

tute of Educational Sciences, Vilnius University, Lithuania. Her research
field covers education for democratic citizenship, active participation, and
social responsibility. For many years, she advised the Lithuanian Ministry
of Education, Science, and Sport as an expert in curriculum development.
She has been involved in different national and international preser-
vice and in-service teacher training programs and projects in the field.
Zaleskienė is a local coordinator in the DIALLS project. She is a member
of the European Education Association and some other national and
xviii ABOUT THE AUTHORS
international networks. She has published articles and research books,

such as The Power of Textbook: Research on Nationality and Citizenship
(2015), Social Dimension of Citizenship Education (2013), and a textbook
for secondary students, We: Basics of Civil Society (2004).
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 A sculpture of market stalls with local products created

by a German student in the youngest age group 38
Fig. 3.2 Artifacts by Israeli (above) and Lithuanian (below)
students in the oldest age group exploring the topic
of living together 40
Fig. 4.1 The images from two different countries, Cyprus (left)
and Britain (right), exemplify the unified character
of the artifacts and their similarity with the book
that was used as a cultural text to stimulate the youngest
students’ exploration of tolerance in this lesson 48
Fig. 4.2 This drawing, titled “Save the whale,” was made
in the lesson on tolerance by a Cypriot student
from the second age group 49
Fig. 4.3 In the artifacts on tolerance made by the oldest age
group, such as this artifact by a student from Germany,
it was common to depict celebrations of the superhero’s
bravery in defending the community against danger 52
Fig. 4.4 A collage exploring empathy by students in the first age
group from Cyprus depicts a range of emotions 56
Fig. 5.1 A drawing made by a Cypriot child in the first age group
depicting a marketplace with goods from Cyprus 67
Fig. 5.2 An artifact created by a group of Spanish students
in the second age group exploring what they
do on a Saturday 69
xix
xx LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 5.3 A drawing by a group of children in the first age group

from Cyprus explores solidarity through the rescue
of a sea creature stranded on the beach 74
Fig. 5.4 A drawing by a Lithuanian student in the oldest age
group exploring the themes of living together and human
rights 78
Fig. 6.1 Drawings by two students in the first age group
from the UK exploring how to make a new classmate feel
part of the community 87
Fig. 6.2 A 3D model by a class in the second age group
from the UK explores how each person has a role to play
in the community 89
Fig. 6.3 A drawing by a student in the youngest age group
from the UK exploring the impact of rubbish on animals
and the environment 93
Fig. 6.4 A drawing by students in the oldest age group
from Lithuania depicting the journey of a plastic bottle,
exploring solutions to this nonsustainable situation 94
Fig. 7.1 A drawing on “Where I belong” by a Lithuanian student
in the second age group 104
Fig. 7.2 These artifacts from the youngest age group (the collage
by students from Cyprus and the single puzzle pieces
from Portugal) illustrate how home is often depicted
as an archetypical house, yet images of people and symbols
like hearts signify that home is more than just the building 108
Fig. 7.3 In the artifact from the oldest age group from Lithuania,
a lock with wings symbolizes home as a private place,
where one can feel free 110
Fig. 7.4 Solidarity despite differences is expressed through
differently colored figures holding hands in an artifact
by a German student in the oldest age group 112
Fig. 8.1 “The three don’ts that will make the virus disappear
at once: Don’t, don’t, don’t” by a student from Cyprus,
youngest age group 122
Fig. 8.2. Drawing by a Lithuanian student of the oldest age group
with the title “We are all responsible” 124
Fig. 8.3 Three drawings by Lithuanian students of the oldest
age group depicting the need to stand united, globally,
to fight the pandemic. The lefthand corner is titled
“All together,” the one below “Importance of unity
experiencing COVID-19,” and the righthand corner “The
good work of everybody can improve the bad situation” 128
LIST OF FIGURES xxi
Fig. 8.4 A photograph of a mask with the text invisible =

nonexistent made by a Portuguese student of the oldest
age group 130
Fig. 9.1 Two groups of students in the second age group
from the UK explore what home means for them 137
Fig. 9.2 A Lithuanian student in the second age group explores
the meaning of belonging 139
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Cultural Literacy

and Creativity
Abstract The introductory chapter explains the core concepts of the

book: Cultural literacy and creativity. Cultural literacy is defined as a
social practice that is inherently dialogic and based on learning and
gaining knowledge through emphatic, tolerant, and inclusive interaction.
Creativity is seen as stimulating cultural literacy learning through open-
ness and curiosity to test and develop something new or imaginative. The
chapter introduces the Cultural Literacy Learning Programme (CLLP)
and the research data: 1906 works created by 5–15-year-old children and
young people who participated in the program in 2019 and 2020 in
Cyprus, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, and the UK. The
authors discuss how the data is explored through data-driven content
analysis and self-reflexive and collaborative interpretation.
Keywords Cultural literacy · Creativity · Artifact · Content analysis ·

Self-reflexive interpretation
Focuses, Premises, and Objectives

Literacy is a core skill for learning and development. It enables communi-
cation and dialogue within a community and allows people to engage in
society. Since the 1990s, scholars and educators have approached literacy
© The Author(s) 2022 1

T. Lähdesmäki et al., Learning Cultural Literacy through
Creative Practices in Schools,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89236-4_1
2 T. LÄHDESMÄKI ET AL.
as more than the ability to read and write language-based texts. The
concept of multiliteracies, introduced by the New London Group in the
mid-1990s and since then broadly utilized in education policy discourses
and national curricula, stems from a wider understanding of text by
emphasizing multimodality in meaning-making: Language-based commu-
nication intertwines with visual, auditive, corporal, gestural, and spatial
patterns of meaning. The need to rethink and redefine literacy also reflects
the diversification of contemporary societies and the rapid development of
information technologies during the past two or three decades. For the
New London Group, the multiplicity of new communication channels
and increased cultural and linguistic diversity demanded a new approach
to literacy pedagogy (Cazden et al. 1996). Since the introduction of the
concept of multiliteracies, the social reality in different parts of the world
has become even more culturally plural or “super-diversified,” as Vertovec
(2007) has described this change. In super-diversified societies, diversity
itself is complex, multidimensional, fluid (Vertovec 2007; Blommaert and
Rampton 2011), and characterized by the intersection of different social
locations and positions related to culture, ethnicity, nationality, religion,
language, gender, sexuality, and ability.
Since societies are diversifying, creating new challenges to communi-
cation, we need to approach the concept of literacy in a broader context.
In this book, we explore positive responses to this context: The idea
of difference and the ability to encounter, communicate, learn, and live
together through empathic, tolerant, and inclusive interaction with others
who may be different from us. We show how the concept of cultural
literacy as a tolerant, empathic, and inclusive approach to differences can
be taught and learned in schools through creative practices. Our focus
is on meaning-making in children and young people’s visual and multi-
modal artifacts created in schools as an outcome of tasks aiming to foster
cultural literacy learning. This interdisciplinary exploration is located at
the intersection of different approaches to children’s creativity, art, and
learning: We draw on research in cultural studies, communication studies,
art education, and educational sciences.
Our approach to children and young people’s creative expression of
cultural literacy relies on two intertwined premises about living together
as cultural beings. First, in our view, creativity and imagination are essen-
tial features of humanity that particularly characterize children’s way of
grasping the world. A considerable body of literature discusses the nature
of children’s creativity and visual expression. While some scholars have
1 INTRODUCTION: CULTURAL LITERACY AND CREATIVITY 3
explained this as either children’s attempts to draw what they know or

what they see, recent studies give a more nuanced view of children’s
creative processes in image-making and its various possible functions.
For Deguara (2015), drawing can function as a constructor of chil-
dren’s identity, communicator of the child’s self, processor of children’s
knowledge, and a play process. In this book, we approach image-making
and other artistic practices as modes of expression that allow children
to develop their imagination, personality, dialogic relationship to others,
and emotional responses in a creative way (see Lähdesmäki and Koistinen
2021); these practices help children to deal with and shape their mental
images and understanding of the world in a constructive process of
thinking in action (see Cox 2005; Deguara 2015). For many children,
image-making and artistic creation are acts that connect their inner
thoughts, emotions, and imaginings to the external world by intertwining
their events and experiences that are personal to them with real-life
episodes (Jolley 2010; Wright 2010; Deguara 2015). These entangle-
ments of the inner and external worlds are impacted by the culture of
the environment in which children create their images as well as by the
imageries of contemporary popular culture (Toku 2001; Jolley 2010;
Wright 2010). Image-making and nonlanguage-based artistic practices
enable children to process what can be difficult to express in words
through oral or written communication (Clark 2005; Deguara 2015). As
an instrument, it is, thus, suitable for the teaching and learning of abstract
topics such as cultural literacy.
The second premise of the book stems from an increasing need
for respectful cultural encounter, mutual understanding, and construc-
tive dialogue in today’s super-diversified, but polarized, societies (see
Lähdesmäki et al. 2020). While many societies have become increas-
ingly diverse social spaces where people can simultaneously identify
with multiple different cultural and social groups, monoculturalist views
and cultural purism have struck back. Western societies have faced a
rise in populist, nationalist, and extremist movements that have incited
xenophobic, anti-immigration, misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic, and Islam-
ophobic political attitudes and actions. Western societies have commonly
recognized cultural pluralization as a richness that, however, entails
diverse challenges when the cultural encounter is not based on mutual
respect and an interest in understanding differences. Cultural literacy
learning is a key to advance tolerant, empathetic, and inclusive attitudes
toward diversity.
For our book, we have four core objectives. First, we seek to strengthen
a sociocultural approach to children’s expression moving away from devel-
opmental and cognitive approaches that have long dominated the research
on children’s art to understanding children as active cultural agents.
Therefore, we do not take a psychological approach (using art to discover
the child’s inner conflicts), a behavioral approach (using art to examine
the child’s thinking processes), a developmental approach (exploring the
child’s visual expression at a particular age level), or an art pedagogical
approach (helping children develop visual expression) (Nikoltsos 2001).
In the 2000s, scholars (e.g., Anning 2003; Ivashkevich 2009; Atkinson
2009; Coates and Coates 2011; Deguara 2015) have noted a paradigm
shift toward researching children’s art as a process of communication
influenced by various sociocultural contexts. This research has shown how
children are influenced by the culture(s) and societies surrounding them
and how these influences can be perceived from their visual expression.
Toku (2001, 46) notes how the influence of culture and technology
emerges in children’s drawings when they start primary school. While
children and young people—as all people—feel the impact of their social
and cultural contexts, they are not only passive receivers but also active
creators of culture. The recent participatory approach to children’s art and
culture has emphasized children as “social beings who are able, competent
agents and active constructors of their knowledge and understanding”
(Deguara 2015, 12) and agents of their own learning, “actively defining
reality, rather than passively reflecting a ‘given reality’” (Cox 2005, 12)
in their creative practices. Our research for this book is grounded in a
contextual and sociocultural approach to children’s visual creation, seeing
it as a valuable contribution to culture and cultural heritage (Venäläinen
2019).
Second, we seek to determine the potential and limitations of chil-
dren’s creations as research material. Some of these limitations stem from
the power relations involved whenever adults research children. We thus
critically explore the setting in which the children produced our research
material, and the position of the (adult) researcher, as an interpreter of
children’s visual expression and as a knowledge producer based on the
analysis of such data.
Third, we apply theoretical discussions on multimodality to explore
children and young people’s creative practices. We follow Kress’s notion
of multimodality as a “normal state of human communication” (Kress
2010, 1) that is based on a “multiplicity of ways in which children make
meaning, and the multiplicity of modes, means, and materials which they
employ in doing so” (Kress 1997, 96). In our research, we emphasize how
different modes in meaning-making interact and impact on each other in a
multimodal synthesis (Jewitt 2008; Walsh 2009). Due to this interaction,
all meaning-making can be perceived as multimodal (Cazden et al. 1996).
Fourth, we seek to explore the role of dialogue and creativity in
cultural literacy learning and to share new knowledge about how, through
dialogic creative processes, children and young people can construct and
deepen their understanding of a contemporary world filled with difficult
challenges such as exclusion, intolerance, and climate change.
Concepts: Cultural Literacy and Creativity

The key concept of our research, cultural literacy, is a social practice
that is inherently dialogic and based on learning and gaining knowledge
through empathic, tolerant, and inclusive interaction. It has been defined
as a process of engaging with cultures and a cocreation and expression
of cultural identities and values (Maine et al. 2019; Maine and Vrikki
2021). Cultural literacy as such is not a new concept: It has been discussed
in academia since the end of the 1980s. The first scholars (e.g., Hirsch
1988, 1989; Hirsch et al. 1993, 2002) of cultural literacy often perceived
it narrowly, as knowledge gained through the exploration of cultural
products, such as literature and art, and learning canonical cultural and
historical facts and narratives. Hirsch (1989), who utilized the concept
to argue what students need to fully engage in contemporary society,
even lists 5000 “essential names, phrases, dates and concepts” that “every
American needs to know,” as the cover of his book claims.
The idea of becoming culturally literate by learning selected facts
and features of one’s own and/or others’ culture, history, and heritage
has serious limitations. First, it does not recognize culture within a
society as an inherently plural, constantly transforming, and fluid social
construction based on interaction between diverse people (Otten 2003;
Abdallah-Pretceille 2006). Second, the emphasis on factual knowledge
of culture, history, and heritage as a key element for cultural encoun-
ters may direct people to perceive others as stable representatives of their
culture or community. This may lead to cultural stereotyping, making it
more difficult to see people as individuals, and even bring about prej-
udices (Abdallah-Pretceille 2006; Portera 2008). Third, learning facts
and features is not cocreation of knowledge: It does not encourage
learning with or from others who may be different from us. As Messelink
and ten Thije (2012, 81) note: “The ability to gain knowledge in
interaction allows individuals to search for similarities and successfully
operate in intercultural (…) contexts, regardless of the cultural back-
grounds present.” Cultural literacy teachers should seek to promote this
tolerant, empathic, and inclusive attitude in social interaction and gaining
knowledge with others (Maine et al. 2019).
The concept of creativity is embedded in our approach to cultural
literacy. In our view, cultural literacy is learned in a process that allows
new ideas and views to emerge, as well as knowledge of differences and
similarities, one’s own and others’ cultural values, and how to encounter,
interact, and live together with others. For us, cultural literacy learning is
about dialogic cocreation of (or attempts to cocreate) knowledge that can
be stimulated by concrete creative practices, such as making an artwork
together.
In our approach, creativity, the act of creating, and its outcome,
creation, are linked but not equivalent concepts. Dictionaries often define
creativity as an individual’s ability. It is seen for instance: “The ability
to produce original and unusual ideas, or to make something new or
imaginative” (Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary 2020) or “the
faculty of being creative; ability or power to create” (Oxford English
Dictionary 2020). In scholarly literature, the concept has been discussed
in a more nuanced manner, emphasizing the complexity of its conno-
tations in different historical periods and in scholarly contexts ranging
from aesthetics to philosophy and from psychology to logic, to mention
just a few (Pope 2005). The scholars have often concluded that creativity
involves the production of novel, useful, or valuable ideas and/or prod-
ucts (Mumford et al. 2002; Mumford 2003; Pope 2005). These views
home in on the act of creating. Taking this act as a point of departure for
creativity, Mumford et al. (2002) have listed two sets of processes that are
involved in creative work: Activities leading to idea generation (ideation)
and activities needed to implement ideas (implementation). More recent
scholars have criticized the views that equate creativity with creative work
and its outcome. This “dynamic definition of creativity” (Corazza 2016;
Walia 2019) focuses on ongoing processes in which individuals seek to
produce novel and useful ideas or products but may not always succeed.
Hence, Corazza (2016, 265) has claimed that “the dynamic interplay
between inconclusiveness and achievement must be subsumed by the defi-
nition of creativity.” Walia (2019, 239) continues this idea by noting how
“creation can be judged only when it has concluded, whereas creativity is

active throughout the process and may not even end after having led to
creation.”
Many adults consider children’s art as an example of fascinating
self-expression and genuine and spontaneous creativity uninfluenced by
cultural norms (Nikoltsos 2001). This imagined genuineness and spon-
taneousness has found its way into discourses of modern art. Since the
beginning of the twentieth century, various artists and artistic groups have
been inspired by children’s visual expression and admired its creativity
(Fineberg 1997). In this book, we acknowledge the creative ability of all
people, including children, and understand children’s visual and multi-
modal expression as a way to process, seek, and possibly find novel and
useful ideas and outcomes. We do not seek to evaluate the creativity of the
children’s visual and multimodal artifacts that form the core of our data.
For us, creativity is not a feature of a person or a product but a dynamic
process that stimulates cultural literacy learning through curiosity and
openness to something new or imaginative. Artistic creation provides chil-
dren and young people an arena to practice creativity, meaning-making,
and “engage their minds, hearts and bodies” (Wright 2010, 2). This
engagement itself may be the new outcome. Indeed, various researchers
have connected creativity and empathy, to emphasize that art can evoke
empathetic responses and understanding of other people’s points of view
(Lähdesmäki and Koistinen 2021).
The Cultural Literacy Learning

Programme, Data and Methods
As a response to the increasing need for respectful cultural encoun-
ters, mutual understanding, and constructive dialogue in today’s super-
diversified societies, the DIalogue and Argumentation for cultural Literacy
Learning in Schools (DIALLS) project developed a Cultural Literacy
Learning Programme (CLLP), that was implemented in over 250 classes
in Cyprus, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, and the UK in the
school year 2019–2020. The program was built by an international group
of scholars and teachers and it was aimed at three age groups: students
aged 5–6, 8–9, and 14–15. In the implementation of the program, the
age span in the groups was a year or two wider in some classes. The
program and its pedagogy was based on the concept of cultural literacy
defined above: Its builders saw dialogue, argumentation, and interactive
creative practices as tools for encountering differences, expressing one’s

own cultural features and values, and learning cultural literacy. In each
age group, the CLLP included 15 lessons addressing different themes,
ranging from one’s cultural attachments to being part of a commu-
nity and engaging more broadly in society. These themes fell into four
groups: Living together (explored by talking about celebrating diversity,
solidarity, equality, human rights, democracy, and globalization); social
responsibility (focusing on social and civic competences, sustainable devel-
opment, and active participation); belonging (discussion on home); and
the core attitudes for cultural literacy learning (tolerance, empathy, and
inclusion). These themes were selected for the CLLP through a clustering
exercise of a broad array of concepts and terms highlighted in schol-
arly literature and education policy documents on cultural literacy and
intercultural dialogue (see DIALLS 2018; Lähdesmäki et al. 2020).
The lessons in the CLLP were based on classroom and small group
discussions that were stimulated by wordless picture books and films.
These books and films had been selected by the project researchers in
an attempt to promote the tolerant, empathic, and inclusive encounter
of differences and to reflect multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual
social landscape of places, people, and ways of living in Europe and its
neighboring regions. Using the books and films in the CLLP enabled
“an exploration of the critical and creative thinking processes involved in
meaning-making, which is viewed as a dialogic process between readers
together and between text and readers” (Maine 2015, 5). Moreover, each
lesson in the CLLP included a creative task in which the students were
encouraged to explore with visual or multimodal means the ideas devel-
oped during classroom and small group discussions, and to explain the
content of their creation in a caption.
The learning process in the CLLP was based on multimodal commu-
nication in which one mode of communication became interpreted and
explored through another. The wordless picture books and films were
given meaning through words in oral classroom and small group discus-
sions. The students then explored these meanings through creating
(mostly) visual artifacts (which often included written text), for which the
students (or their teachers as mediators of the students’ voice within the
youngest age group) wrote a brief separate explanation, a caption. These
artifacts and their captions form the core of our data.
The intertwinement of visual and linguistic modes in our data reflects
the central feature of children’s creative practices: They are typically based
on the interplay of two or more semiotic resources (Deguara 2015, 4).

Particularly in young children’s creative practices, visual and oral modes
may be difficult to distinguish. As Kinnunen (2015) notes, drawing can
be perceived as a kind of dialogue between the marks made on paper
and orally narrated thoughts. Some scholars (Siim 2019) have empha-
sized that children’s visual creations cannot be interpreted outside the
narrative context and explanation of the artifacts given by the children
themselves. We analyze our data based on our understanding that chil-
dren’s creative practices are multimodal. The captions in our data function
as a key to the meanings that the children themselves have affixed to
their artifacts. In interpreting them, our aim is not to trace the children’s
thoughts: We believe this is impossible. Following common communica-
tion theories, we interpret the data based on “decoding” the signs which
the students have “coded” to the artifacts within the various contexts in
with they participated in the CLLP (see Rose 2001, 16). This decoding
can, however, only occur between us as interpreters and the artifacts as a
complex sign.
The lesson plans in the CLLP represent the pedagogical ideal for
cultural literacy learning. Respectively, its implementation represents the
pedagogical reality, in which the aims and ideals of cultural literacy
learning were put into practice in various social and cultural contexts
that differ between countries, regions, schools, and classes. The teachers
received at least 18 hours of face-to-face professional development on
the core ideas of the CLLP. We expected teachers would need 30 hours
of working time to prepare and reflect on the lessons. The teachers
were encouraged to creatively implement the lesson plans in their classes.
Some of them applied the lesson plans more freely, while others closely
followed the guidelines. The CLLP pedagogy was based on dialogic
teaching emphasizing the co-construction of meanings among students
and between them and their teachers: The teachers modeled how to
engage democratically in the dialogue (Maine and Čermáková 2021).
As in all teaching and learning, this pedagogy included distinct roles
for teachers and learners. In the CLLP, the teachers were expected to
model the discussion on the themes in the lesson plans and give students
instructions for the tasks; the students were expected to participate in the
discussions and follow the instructions. The implementation of the CLLP
was, thus, intertwined with various issues of power that impacted on what
was expressed, how, and why in the artifacts.
Various scholars have explored the impact of school on children’s

communication and creative expression. These studies argue that the
school context effectively unifies the children’s cultural and communica-
tive resources by moving them from being communicative agents of
their own worlds alone to also become communicative agents of their
society and culture (Kress 1997, 2000; Deguara 2015). The school
context—including teachers, peers, classroom practices, and curricula—
either explicitly or implicitly emphasizes certain values, perceptions, and
expectations that influence children’s visual expression (Einarsdottir et al.
2009; Deguara 2015). Some scholars (Fargas-Malet et al. 2010) have
seen this “acculturation to school” as the main shortcoming of research
utilizing children’s drawings as data: Children may create images that they
think will please the teacher or researcher.
Our data includes hundreds of artifacts, mainly multicolored draw-
ings but also a small number of collages, three-dimensional sculptures,
short films, and photographs of roleplaying. Most of the artifacts were
created individually, but many were made in small groups of 3–6 students,
and some by the whole class connecting individually created pieces as
a collage. When counting these individual pieces as separate works, the
number of artifacts in our data increases to 1906 (Table 1.1). The
CLLP teachers photographed the artifacts and sent the photographs and
captions to the researchers. The teachers also completed a brief survey
including some background information indicating the country, students’
ages and genders within the groups, and teachers’ description of the
progress of the lesson, particularly if some changes to the lesson plan
were made. These forms are included in our data. The spread of the
COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020 impacted on the implementation of
Table 1.1 Quantity of individual creative works per country in the CLLP
Cyprus Germany Israel Lithuania Portugal Spain UK
age 5–6 265 9 222 16 199 8 149

age 8–9 134 48 93 36 97 18 94
age 14–15 0 103 117 90 97 48 2
COVID-19 works 25 0 0 23 13 0 0
(all age groups)
country total 424 160 432 165 406 74 245
Total number of individual creative works: 1906
the CLLP and thus our data collection. Due to the exceptional condi-
tions, not all teachers were able to implement each lesson. Some of
our data was created during lockdown when students were learning at
home. In this book, some artifacts arising from the subthemes of democ-
racy, globalization, and active participation are not analyzed separately
but within the broader themes of living together and social responsi-
bility. Due to the exceptional conditions caused by the pandemic, the
CLLP was extended in some countries with an additional lesson in which
the students reflected on how COVID-19 had impacted on their social
environment and explored ways of practicing empathy, tolerance, and
inclusiveness in pandemic conditions.
Our research is based on data-driven content analysis utilizing both
qualitative categorizing of the data and quantification of its core features
and visual elements (see Rose 2001) and a self-reflexive and collabora-
tive interpretation of what the artifacts mean within their context in the
lesson. By self-reflexive interpretation, we mean acknowledging our posi-
tion as researchers and considering our cultural and social contexts, from
which we look at and interpret images (Rose 2001, 15–16; Passerini
2018). Besides, our interpretations have been formed in close collabo-
ration, open dialogue, and sharing of views within our team during the
research process.
After this introductory chapter, we proceed to the core theoretical
aspects of our analysis. We start by exploring a sociocultural approach
to the research on children’s visual expression, including the issue of
power. Next, we move to multimodality as a way in which students
make meanings in our data. The subsequent four chapters each focus
on different thematic aspects of cultural literacy learning: Attitudes of
tolerance, empathy, and inclusion; living together; social responsibility;
belonging; and practicing tolerance, empathy, and inclusion during the
pandemic. We start these chapters with a critical discussion of their themes
and core concepts—and, in the last chapter, an overview of the pandemic
conditions—followed by the data-driven content analysis and interpreta-
tion of meaning-making around the themes in the artifacts. When the
data allows it, we also compare how the different themes are dealt with in
different countries and age groups. To avoid methodological nationalism
(creating artificial national categories), we do not systematically pinpoint
the home country of students unless we consider this information rele-
vant to the discussion. In our analysis, we also pay attention to how the
artifacts are influenced by global popular culture and imageries of chil-

dren’s culture that circulate symbols and images from cartoons, films,
storybooks, games, or digital environments (see Toku 2001, 52; Coates
and Coates 2011; Deguara 2015, 83). We end with a chapter summa-
rizing our core results and showing how they expand the understanding
of children’s creative and multimodal meaning-making processes. In the
concluding chapter, we suggest avenues for future research and ways to
improve cultural literacy learning through creative practices.
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CHAPTER 2
A Sociocultural Approach to Children’s

Visual Creations
Abstract This chapter locates the book within the research on children’s
art. It explores interpretations of children’s visual creations throughout
the twentieth century and situates the approach of the book within the
research landscape. The authors take developmental psychological, educa-
tional, and aesthetic approaches to form a sociocultural view of children’s
art, challenging many of the previous research assumptions. Through
adopting the paradigm of the sociocultural approach, the authors embrace
its view of children as competent cultural actors and active participants in
cultural production. Thus, the discussion focuses on meaning-making: the
authors analyze visual artifacts made by students to understand how they
engage with the idea of the difference.
Keywords Sociocultural approach · Visual creations · Power ·

Participation · Voice
Different Strands of Research

on Child Art and children’s Drawings
Child art has generated much research since it was defined as a field of
interest in the late nineteenth century. At that point, following a romantic
© The Author(s) 2022 17

T. Lähdesmäki et al., Learning Cultural Literacy through
Creative Practices in Schools,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89236-4_2
view of childhood as a time of innocence separated from adulthood, chil-

dren’s drawings came to be seen as valuable illuminations of the inner
life of children as well as proof of a primitive state preceding adult intel-
lectual enlightenment (Golomb 1993, 11). One of the first to research
child art was the Italian archeologist and art historian Corrado Ricci. In
the 1880s he collected and analyzed child art, which he found crude and
inaccurate, but striving for a sort of “literal completeness” that mani-
fested itself in, for example, the depiction of a horse with both the rider’s
legs visible from one side. Earl Barnes, an American teacher educator and
early contributor to the child study movement similarly contributed to
the formation of the field by arguing that children’s art was a language of
its own, with symbols expressing ideas (French 1956, 327–329). In the
twentieth century a plethora of researchers followed these early initiatives
and studied children’s drawings from an artistic, educational, or psycho-
logical point of view. Most of them instrumentalized children’s drawings
and saw them as expressions of artistic or cognitive development, or, as
a means to discover mental issues. For a long time, child study has been
dominated by a developmentalist frame, which still influences much of
the research on art made by children.
Research on child art can be roughly divided into psychoana-
lytic/psychological, pedagogical, aesthetic, and sociocultural approaches.
For psychoanalysts, art has been a therapeutic practice as well as a means
to discover the “inner conflicts” and “disturbing influences” of the child’s
development (Nikoltsos 2001, 3). Psychological perspectives generally
adhere to a developmental frame and use children’s drawings to trace how
a child matures from a less differentiated “scribble” phase toward more
skilled, more realistic expression, also known as visual realism. This strand
of research was greatly influenced by the work of the Swiss psychologist
Jean Piaget: In 1936 he postulated a correspondence between children’s
drawings and their spatial-mathematical reasoning. Before this, the US
psychologist Florence Goodenough had already created her well-known
“draw a man test,” which was used to measure children’s intellectual abili-
ties (Golomb 1993, 12). Newer studies on developmental and geographic
biases about children’s drawings attest to the continuing dominance of
such universalist, developmental views. For instance, Justin Ostrofsky
(2015, 3) states that face drawings produced by children aged 3–11 all
around the world show the same “representational flaws” depicting the
head “too round” and the eyes “too high up in the head.”
2 A SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH TO CHILDREN’S VISUAL CREATIONS 19
Developmental psychology has influenced many pedagogues, although

some have tried to shift the emphasis from lack and deficit to recogni-
tion of representational efforts. Viktor Lowenfeld, an Austrian American
art educator, saw art as a means to further intellectual and emotional
growth. In Creative and Mental Growth (1957), Lowenfeld character-
ized child art following developmental stages and promoted educational
approaches tailored to the individual child’s needs. He advocated the use
of different kinds of art and artistic activities to support children’s growth
and favored free expression. His focus on the therapeutic aspects of art
education also reveals an adherence to psychoanalytic approaches. Rudolf
Arnheim, a German-born art theorist and perceptual psychologist likewise
promoted an art educational view and criticized views that saw artistic
activity “mainly as an instrument for exploration of the human personal-
ity” (Arnheim 1954, 3). He argued that children seek creative solutions
to difficult graphic problems and proposed that drawing develops by its
own intrinsic logic that does not merely mirror other intellectual domains.
In Arnheim’s view, even very young children’s drawings reveal percep-
tion, creative intelligence, and sensitivity to form (a sensitivity found at
all developmental levels). All in all, these educational approaches, which
may also be termed art based or aesthetic, seek to develop the child’s
artistic skill. In such a view the creative process is more important than
the result (Nikoltsos 2001, 6–8).
Members of the modernist art movement saw child art as a catalyst for
creativity. Many modern artists such as Klee, Kandinsky, Miro, and Picasso
were inspired by child art and sought to copy its innocent, instinctive
expressiveness. To them, child art provided a point of view uncondi-
tioned by cultural influences (Leeds 1989; Fineberg 1998). Intrigued
by this idea of the innocent eye, the Austrian artist and teacher Franz
Cižek, who coined the term “child art,” lamented the “alien influences”
of cinemas and theaters on the authenticity and creativity of the child
(Coates and Coates 2011, 86–87). The idea of the innocent eye still mani-
fests itself in contemporary debates about what proper media content is
like (Ivashkevich 2009, 52–54).
In our study, we discard ideas about corrupting cultural influences to
maintain that even very young children know how to decode and reuse
the signs and symbols circulating within their respective cultural land-
scapes. This view is based on a rather new trend within research on child
art. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the developmentalist frame-
work became increasingly criticized for its focus on skill and its alignment
with dominant Western cultural expectations (i.e., realism as the highest

achievement of visual art, see Einarsdottir et al. 2009, 218). Researchers
have, for example, criticized the subordinate status of drawing and play
to reading and writing in school curricula: Drawing, in their view, is
“an intrinsically valuable form of abstraction and communication, as a
social practice, and as a symbolic means of bridging home and school
contexts” (Wood and Hall 2011, 270). Recently, socioculturally oriented
researchers have begun to examine the contexts of drawing, the narratives
around it, and the manner in which drawings, embedded in talk, express
meaning (e.g., Cox 2005; Einarsdottir et al. 2009; Deguara 2015). In this
strand of research, drawing is used to gain access to children’s lived expe-
riences and the ways that they make meaning. This sociocultural strand
of research provides an alternative, context-specific, and process-centered
approach that takes into consideration the power struggles influencing the
production and analysis of children’s drawings (see Ivashkevich 2009).
Furthermore, it regards drawing as a stage in active identity formation
and play (Wood and Hall 2011).
In what follows, we clarify our sociocultural approach to artifacts
created by students around Europe and in Israel, which we use to capture
children’s views on cultural differences and their dialogic navigation.
To conclude we discuss the power relations that influence this research
constellation.
Before we move on, we need to include some notes on terms. Unlike
children’s literature, which is created for children, child art is made
by children. Yet, this term poses multiple conceptual problems. The
first one is the concept of the “child.” All humans under 18 could
generally be defined as children, yet there is a significant difference
between the visual creations of 4-year-olds and 15-year-olds. Develop-
mental psychologists and modern artists alike have observed that “loud
and gaudy” childish freedom (terms by French 1956) tends to give
way to more norm-bound, “correct” representation as a person grows.
Second, conceptualizations of art itself vary from institutional to natural-
istic ones (Venäläinen 2019). Since most research on child art has focused
on drawings, many researchers have adopted the term “children’s draw-
ings” to avoid any conceptual haziness related to the term child art. In
this study, we have chosen to speak about students’ visual creations or
artifacts (following e.g., Deguara and Nutbrown 2018). Sometimes we
also refer to them as data. One reason for this terminological choice is
the fact that the visual items we examine have been produced in school
contexts. Hence, the makers were creating their artifacts in the role of
students, as part of school work, following certain guidelines or tasks.
That is, the artifacts were not created in a purely aesthetic noninstru-
mental sense (naturalistic view of art). Nor were they created by educated
artists (institutional view; see Venäläinen 2019). Talking about “draw-
ings” alone would also not be accurate as various media were used,
including audiovisual expression, 3D installation, and text. By calling the
creations artifacts, we position them as objects of special interest, worth
displaying and studying. By talking about them as data, we refer to them
as instruments of research, valuable mostly as a bulk or corpus, as items
whose makers remain anonymous. In what comes to the makers of these
artifacts, we use the terms “students,” “children,” “young people,” and
“age groups.” Whenever necessary, we also refer to the country in which
the student made the artifact.
A Sociocultural Approach
to Student-made Artifacts
The past 30 years have seen a rise in sociologically oriented research on
children and childhood (James and Prout 1997; Mayall 2002; Tisdall
and Punch 2012). This “new” branch of childhood studies emphasizes
children’s agency and social roles and promotes an understanding of
children as beings instead of becomings, that is, as subjects in their
own right instead of merely individuals in the process of growing up
(Qvortrup 1994). This branch of research challenges developmentalist
and educational views in an attempt to understand children’s experiences
of and effects on the social realities that they live in. Methods used in it
include observation, interview, questionnaires, structured activities (such
as our reading and discussing picture books/short films), and multisen-
sory approaches such as drawing (Clark 2005). Studies that use drawings
as a means to access children’s experiences cover topics such as children’s
reflections on how they have changed during their first year at school,
or what they like or dislike in school (Einarsdottir et al. 2009). In these
studies, the focus is often on narratives and meaning-making (Cox 2005;
Coates and Coates 2011; Deguara 2015).
We emphasize the cultural aspects of such meaning-making. Following
William Corsaro’s (1992) idea of interpretive reproduction, we main-
tain that children creatively appropriate information from the adult world
through their participation in cultural routines. They do not passively
repeat or reflect the culture around them. Rather, they borrow, recycle, or
reinterpret familiar representations and ideas in a creative manner. In this
sense, children’s art is connected to broader codes of cultural representa-
tion and signification. In cultural studies, representation is understood as
a process, in which meanings are created and assigned to images, objects,
and people (see e.g., Kellner 1995; Hall 1997). Children’s artifacts
contribute to the process of cultural representation, recycling culturally
acknowledged symbols and meanings while producing new ones. The
aesthetic choices made in a drawing can thus be compared to rhetorical
choices in speech. As Neil Cohn (2014, 103) states, drawing “provides
a method to communicate our thoughts in the visual-graphic modality.”
As such, a drawing—or, in our case a visual artifact—reflects the cultural
frames that surround it.
If semiotics is concerned with tracing how marks on paper become
signs that represent meaning, social semiotics considers the social settings
of such meaning-making events (see e.g., Kress and van Leeuwen 2006;
Hopperstad 2008; Deguara and Nutbrown 2018). Our study adheres
to this approach in that we look at how the artifacts represent things
and communicate ideas in the specific social/cultural settings of schools,
classrooms, and peer groups. Specifically, we trace how the students who
participated in the Cultural Literacy Learning Programme (CLLP) use
signs, symbols, and schemas to communicate their knowledge and under-
standing of cultural literacy themes such as empathy and tolerance. In
this, we assume that drawing (among other visual means of expression)
may be used to graphically convey concepts and ideas.
Similarities in the drawings may be traced back to the influence of peers
and teachers. Noting these similarities is important, as peers and possible
play frames may sometimes be more influential than the pedagogical
frames presented by the teacher and the task. In these cases, the resulting
artifact communicates the student’s other interests or play, instead of their
ideas on the given task (i.e., the teacher’s or the project’s interests). As our
analysis establishes, children in a specific class have created their artifacts
or described them in strikingly similar ways. We do not see such copying
or direct referencing of the cultural texts (short films and picture books)
or other students’ work as problematic. Rather, it is a sign of dialogic
interactions and proof of learning (Cohn 2014; Mavers 2011).
Below, we consider how the classroom context places possible limits
on the students’ expressive freedom. This is partly related to how semi-
otic resources are acquired. Children in their early, preschool years enjoy
both a greater and lesser freedom of expression: Greater in that “they

have not yet learned to confine the making of signs to the culturally and
socially facilitated media” and lesser, in that “they do not have such rich
cultural semiotic resources available as do adults” (Kress and van Leeuwen
2006, 9). Another significant factor that could inhibit creativity is the
influence of classroom hierarchies and the power relations that determine
each individual’s role in a project such as this. As such, our approach can
be described as a critical approach to reading images, “an approach that
thinks about the visual in terms of the cultural significance, social practices
and power relations in which it is embedded” (Rose 2001, 3).
As we trace how the students navigate the ground of cultural differ-
ence (broadly understood as encompassing different points of view and
distinctions between an “us” and a “them”) it is worth noting what earlier
researchers have said about the role of drawing in identity formation.
Children create and explore a range of alternative identities (past, present,
and future) through their drawings (Deguara 2015, 380). Transitions and
achievements in identity are common themes of children’s drawings next
to the pop cultural influences visible in depictions of cartoons, popstars,
and superheroes (Clark 2005, 497–498; Coates and Coates 2011, 97–
98). Many researchers have observed variations “specific and typical of
the children’s lives and the social, historical and cultural local context”
(see Gernhardt et al. 2013; Senzaki et al. 2014; Deguara 2015, quote
by Deguara 2015, 379). For example, some found that children who
live near mountains are more likely to draw mountains (Ahmad 2018)
and that boys are more likely to represent violence than girls (Kiil 2009).
Scholars who compared cultural variations in cognitive processes between
Japanese and US children’s artwork state “the members of a given culture
produce cultural products – tangible, public, shared representations of
culture – that convey dominant cultural ideologies” (Senzaki et al. 2014,
1298).
Our approach both builds on and deviates from these sociocultural
or culturally sensitive approaches and the research on cultural differences
in children’s drawings. We draw on these approaches, in that we focus
on the context in which the artifacts were made and in that we regard
them as means to access the children’s ideas. We deviate from the research
on cultural differences as we do not distinguish between the different
nationalities (or genders etc., though we mention these when relevant)
of children who participated in the project. Rather, we are interested in
how the students express their ideas on cultural difference and the dialogic
engagement that helps them to navigate these differences.
Our Approach to Power Relations

As many of the sociologically oriented researchers of children and child-
hood have noted, accessing children’s ideas is not easy. Even the most
sensitive participatory methods cannot overcome the power relations that
determine children’s marginalized roles in today’s sociocultural land-
scapes. Hence, it is appropriate to discuss some of the problems that our
project faces in trying to uncover the student’s ideas via visual expressions.
Donna Haraway (1991) and others have argued that all knowledge is
limited by the social, cultural, and historical context of its production.
This context includes the disciplinary practices and theoretical framework
of each study and the positions of power that govern the object–subject
relations of empirical research. To put it simply, it is only possible to
gain objective scientific knowledge by recognizing the limits or “partial
visions” of knowledge production (Haraway 1991, 190–191). This does
not denote relativism, but critical scrutiny of the researcher’s own posi-
tionality in the research process (ibid.). It is essential to be explicit about
the reasoning behind choices made, which is why we take into account
the contexts in which our participants produce their artifacts and in which
we analyze them.
First, the students made their artifacts in a lesson planned and imple-
mented within the broader framework of a research project. The Dialogue
and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools (DIALLS)
project is funded by the European Union. Hence, its objective is to
solve problems related to cultural encounters within Europe, using educa-
tional practices designed to further the EU’s agenda on cultural diversity.
Second, the artifacts are framed by the school context, including the influ-
ence of teachers and peers. As Pohjakallio and Pusa (2019, 22) note,
children’s school art is framed by the expectations of adults. Karolina Kiil
(2009), who has researched forbidden images in adolescent’s art classes in
Estonia and Finland, lists some of the themes that were considered inap-
propriate in the school contexts that she studied. These themes included
signs of ideology (such as symbols of Nazism or religion), race, ethnic
violence, bullying, and negative stereotypes (Kiil 2009, 200–212). Third,
and lastly, the artifacts are framed by the researchers’ respective gazes.
The researchers analyzing the student-made artifacts in this book take
approaches common to their fields of expertise, education, and cultural

studies. They use power when deciding which signs are relevant and how
to interpret them.
Whose voice is heard is an important aspect of power relations. As
Allison James (2007, 262) notes, the idea of listening to children’s
voices has become a “powerful and pervasive mantra for activists and
policy makers worldwide” since the UN declaration on the Rights of
the Child. Yet it is not easy to uncover children’s ideas (as stated in
their own voice) and doing so does not necessarily contribute to sharing
power or furthering equality. Like Haraway, James thus urges childhood
researchers to practice “awareness of the power differentials involved in
the researcher–researched relationship,” including an awareness of the
fact that children’s voices do not represent another kind of “truth” or
“authenticity” (ibid.). Researchers should, for instance, pay attention to
how often they ask the children leading questions.
The uneven power relations in our project are also visible in how the
data has been presented to the researchers. For example, a teacher of the
youngest age group of children in Israel reported the outcomes of the
home and belonging lesson of the CLLP as follows:
The kids tell us: At first, we painted what a house was for us, we thought
and we knew that a house was where we lived.
Then we watched a video about Baboon living on the moon and found
out that he misses the earth and whoever is in it. Thanks to the video and
seeing that the Baboon is sad we understood that home is a good place to
miss.
If we are not with our family they will miss us and we will [miss them].
Talking to friends helped us understand what a home is for them and
also better understand what a home is for us.
Our second painting was different from the first one because we under-
stood well what a home is for us. Home is not always the place itself, but
it’s where the family and people make us feel comfortable and good.
According to the teacher, the program helped the children develop an

understanding of the concepts of home and belonging. In particular, it
helped the students move from an understanding of home as a house that
they live in, to an understanding of home as more than a place. While this
development could have occurred, the coherence in the teacher’s narrative
raises questions of agency. The voice we hear is the teacher’s, or at best the
student’s voices filtered through the teacher. This excerpt clearly narrates
the children’s progress as fulfilling a task. As such it paints a picture of

good students doing what they were told. Moreover, the text provides an
image of the teacher and the project excelling in their tasks. It can, thus,
be understood as the teacher’s voice reporting the desired progress to the
project designers and researchers.
In the school context, the students’ visual creations cannot be consid-
ered spontaneous or not goal-oriented, as in the romantic view of the
innocent eye. As Einarsdottir et al. (2009, 221–222) note in their article
on drawings as a means to tap into children’s perspectives:
Teachers and the classroom context are influential factors in the generation
of drawings and conversations. When the teacher introduces the task to
the whole class, children clearly identify it as an academic task, potentially
open to correction or assessment [...] We should not be surprised then, if
children completing the activity with their teacher may be constrained by
regarding it as a work sample.
In the light of this, researchers should be careful when using artifacts

produced by children to gain insights into children’s understandings and
perspectives. Contextual factors such as the teacher’s influence, existing
curricula, and institutional practices in general should not be overlooked
in analyses of such artifacts. Recordings of what students were saying
or doing while drawing provide valuable background information for
researchers in this regard (Ivashkevich 2009). Yet even the process of
asking children to explain their drawings cannot avoid adult interpreta-
tion as “children can become quite adept at giving information that is
required to complete the task” (Einarsdottir et al. 2009, 219).
In our research, we see the students as creators of artistic content and
as social actors driven by their own interests. As creators of the artifacts,
they retained the intellectual property of their work. They also collab-
orated together to choose artifacts that could be shared in the project
website’s gallery. This reflects the fact that listening to the student’s voices
has been a central aim of the project all along. Students were, for example,
also consulted in the selection of cultural texts to determine which ones
might be suitable to be discussed in classrooms.
Yet in our analysis we present the artifacts without reference to the
individual maker’s identity. In this, we adhere to confidentiality and
data protection principles that seek to protect the identities of individual
research subjects. This dual role of the students as both active partici-
pants, whose voices should be heard, and research subjects or children to
be protected embodies an ethical problem faced by researchers studying
child art in general (Kairavuori 2019; Pennanen 2019). As creators, chil-
dren should be able to take credit for their work by being named. As
research subjects and children, they should, however, be treated as vulner-
able and in need of protection. Hence we, as adult researchers, use
different “lenses” to navigate the two roles of the students. In general,
we treat them as competent producers of the artifacts, but when it comes
to reporting the study outcomes, we approach them as vulnerable and use
protective measures such as anonymization (Clark 2005, 489).
Our sociocultural approach, then, is to consider the sociocultural
contexts of both the creative activity and the analysis of the resulting
artifacts. We acknowledge children’s agency and look at the cultural influ-
ences and ideas transmitted via their visual expressions. In the end, the
freedom of self-governed drawing or drawing as play is easily subordinated
to the use of drawing as a tool to fulfil a preordained task. The result is a
somewhat biased image of the thoughts and ideas of the child participants
in this study. As Wood and Hall (2011, 280) put it “children’s exercise of
power, agency, risk and subversion sits uncomfortably with the normative
and socially approved developmental goals in curriculum frameworks.”
This is the case in research projects that have a pedagogical orientation.
As Clark (2005, 491) reminds us, “participation […] implies a sharing of
power.”
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Another random document with
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Some sausage and coarse bread was brought to me on an
earthenware platter, and my arms were unbound that I might eat, the
sentries sitting down close to me with loaded pistols in their hands.
As the reader may suppose, I ate ravenously and without stopping to
consider what the sausage was made of; but I was very disappointed
to see that Ned Burton was not disposing of his supper also. I quickly
guessed the reason of this, however. It was evident that we were not
all to be allowed to take our meals at the same time for fear of our
making some desperate attempt at escape whilst our arms were
free. Perhaps on the whole this was a wise precaution.
When my hunger was satisfied I took another pull at the water
pannikin, and began to feel more myself again. Inferior as the food
was, it instilled new life into my veins and raised my spirits
wonderfully. My head still ached painfully, and the muscles of my
arms were terribly stiff and sore; but I felt convinced that no serious
harm had accrued from the blow I had received on the head, and
that was something to be very thankful for.
I should have liked to prolong my meal as much as possible so as
to allow of the muscles and sinews of my arms regaining some of
their ordinary elasticity; but I was afraid that my doing so would still
further postpone my coxswain’s supper hour, so I finished off as
quickly as possible, and submitted quietly to the indignity of having
my arms bound again.
I had the great satisfaction a minute or two later of seeing Ned peg
into his prison allowance as if he had not had anything to eat for a
month. It was really a great relief to me, for I could not help feeling
anxious as to the effect of the severe flogging he had so lately
received at the hands of the mule-driver, for severe no doubt it had
been. I could not see Ned’s face at all distinctly, as he was so much
in the deep shadow, but I augured favourably from his apparently
prodigious appetite.
My brief conversation with Mr. Triggs recurred to my memory as I
lay ruminating upon the floor of the cave. The gunner had pooh-
poohed the idea that the chief had effected our capture with the
notion of making away with us, founding his belief on the length of
time that had elapsed since we had been taken prisoners. It
appeared to me doubtful whether much importance could be
attached to that. I knew that the gunner was considered a man of
sound judgment; but it also occurred to me that he had already made
one fatal mistake in endeavouring to make a reconnaissance in a
hostile country with an inadequate force, and he might even now be
making mistake number two, and deceiving himself egregiously.
Yet it seemed the most plausible explanation of our capture, that a
demand for a heavy ransom would be made to the Spanish or the
British Government—that is, supposing that the chief and his
followers were simple bandits and nothing more; and for all I knew to
the contrary, they might be. But then it occurred to me that even if a
ransom were paid and we were released, the subsequent
extermination of the whole band by the Spanish troops and an
English naval brigade would be a comparatively easy matter. Would
bandits allow themselves to run this terrible risk? Had their
stronghold been situated in the midst of inaccessible mountains far
from the haunts of man, the case would have been different; but this
cave—
My ruminations were suddenly cut short at this point by the loud
baying of the Cuban bloodhound, which had arisen from its
crouching position and was alternately sniffing the air and glancing at
its master. The next moment a messenger arrived in a breathless
condition and handed a note to the chief.
The latter took the missive without uttering a word, tore it open,
and quickly mastered the contents. Then he gave one or two short
sharp words of command, in response to which all his followers leapt
to their feet and busied themselves in preparations for an immediate
departure.
I was thunderstruck at this sudden resolve on the part of the chief,
and wondered what it portended. I calculated that it must now be
somewhere about midnight, though I could not tell for certain.
My thoughts were suddenly turned into a still more disagreeable
channel; for the chief stalked up to me, in company with his ferocious
four-footed satellite, and made the latter deliberately smell me all
over. This repellent couple then crossed over and went through the
same performance with Ned Burton. Then they disappeared around
a corner of the cavern, doubtless in search of Mr. Triggs. I am
ashamed to say that I felt in mortal terror when that fierce-looking
dog came and poked his great jowl and snout against me, as if in
search of a nice tender place in which to bury his fangs. There could
be no doubt as to the reason of this strange procedure. The dog was
to be familiarized with our scent, so that in the event of his being put
upon our trail he would follow it up with more bloodthirsty zest.
It gave one a “creepy” feeling to think of it!
The chief now came hurriedly striding back into the main part of
the cavern again, and pointing first at me and then at Ned Burton,
issued some order in his usual domineering manner.
Immediately we were seized, lifted upon our feet, and blindfolded.
It was evident that we were going to set off on a journey
somewhere, and my heart sank within me at the thought; for not only
was my poor head still racked with pain, but I felt terribly fatigued as
well, and almost overcome with a strong desire to sleep.
In rasping tones the chief marshalled his men and enjoined silence
upon them. Every voice was hushed, but I could clearly distinguish
the heavy breathing of my bête noire, the Cuban bloodhound, as it
followed its master about.
One hope animated me at this moment, and that was that the chief
was about to beat a retreat in consequence of the advance of the
naval brigade, and therefore that there was a chance of our being
succoured ere long.
“Jim Beddoes must have given the alarm before this,” I muttered
to myself, “and we shall soon be free again.”
We moved off almost at once, and I quite expected, from what Mr.
Triggs had said, that we should immediately emerge into the open
air; but to my surprise this was not so. No fresh air of heaven fanned
my heated brows, and I did not stumble over stones and inequalities
in the ground. I was impelled forward at a rapid pace, but it was quite
evident that we were still underground. It was equally evident to me
that we were following some narrow, dark, and tortuous passage.
The flickering light of torches penetrated, to a certain extent, the
bandage over my eyes, and I was gifted with a keen sense of smell,
which revealed to me the fact that I was breathing the noxious
atmosphere of an ill-ventilated subterranean tunnel charged with
mephitic vapours. The footfalls of the men, as they trooped along,
sounded hollow and unreal, as also did the occasional ring or clang
of their weapons. Now and again the sound of water dripping over
rocks smote upon my ears, and I heard the rush and gurgle of a
stream—no doubt the one that had fed the cavern cascade—as it
forced its way through some underground aqueduct of nature’s own
making.
It was terribly tantalizing to be blindfolded.
The way seemed to me interminable. Once or twice I began to feel
my head swim round; but I managed to pull myself together with a
great effort, hoping every moment that we should emerge from the
subterranean passage and be enabled to breathe pure air.
The idea occurred to me that it might be difficult, indeed, to
discover the main entrance to the cavern if it was by such an
approach as this, and one could hardly blame Jim Beddoes for not
having discovered our prison. I felt sure that the gunner had been
mistaken in thinking that he saw the mouth of the cave from where
he lay, and I concluded that he had probably been deceived by the
descent of the flood of light from some orifice overhead.
At length I began to breathe more freely. The mephitic vapours
were gradually giving place to a purer atmosphere. It was like new
life to me, and the feeling of faintness passed away. Still we seemed
to wind along the tortuous tunnel. Still the measured tramp, and the
reverberating echoes upon the rocky vault.
A low word of command issued by the chief; a halt; a whispered
conference which appeared to last some time; a few hurried footfalls,
and then a sound of some heavy obstruction being rolled back. I felt
a sudden rush of cold night air. With what ecstatic delight did I draw
it into my lungs, and feel it playing over my face and hair. My nerves
were instantly braced up, and my head ached with less intensity.
Another order came from the chief, still in a low tone, as if he were
fearful of being overheard.
Once more we moved forward, and then a strange thing
happened. I was bent almost double by the men who were
conducting me, and pushed through what seemed to be a small
square orifice in the rocks.
CHAPTER XV.
A MARCH TO THE COAST.
I WAS in the open air. Of course I knew that at once.

There was very little delay. Another whispered conference, and
we moved on again. The ground was now broken and rough, and
from the woodland scents which were wafted to my nostrils I came to
the conclusion that we were in the depths of one of the Cuban
forests. Occasionally, too, I stumbled, in spite of my guards’
precautions, over rocks and tree-roots.
No one spoke. The route was one evidently well known to the
chief and his myrmidons, for they seemed to me to glide on
unerringly. At times we climbed the sides of low hills, but as a rule
we followed a downward gradient. I felt sure that there was no path,
and that we were simply striking a bee-line across country. As there
was no moon, some of the men carried torches. Judging from the
smell, I should say they were made of some resinous wood.
It occurred to me that our captors were running a great risk in thus
marching across country by the light of torches; but I concluded that
they knew their own business best.
One thing was certain—the affair was a very urgent one.
There was a mystery about the whole business which puzzled me
much. To unravel it seemed impossible.
I cannot tell how far we travelled on this dreary journey, but I think
a couple of hours or so must have elapsed when I was astonished to
hear the distant sound of waves breaking upon a rocky shore.
We were approaching the sea.
My mind immediately became filled with gloomy forebodings, for I
conjectured that our captors were about to embark in some vessel
and take us away from the island of Cuba altogether.
This was a terrible thought, and one that in my most dejected hour
had never occurred to me. All trace of us might be lost if once we
were forcibly removed from Spanish soil. And whither were these
villains going to take us?
Whilst I was oppressed with these sombre thoughts, a little
incident occurred which cheered me somewhat. The bandage which
was around my eyes had slipped a little, and I was enabled to see to
a certain extent what was going on around me. It was very dark, but
the flare of the torches enabled me to see objects close at hand. As
far as I could tell, we had just emerged from the forest, and were
now following a stony track leading down to the sea-coast. The latter
was not visible in the intense gloom that prevailed; but every
moment the roar of the waves became more distinctly audible, and
the briny breath of the ocean came sweeping up on the wings of the
night breeze.
At the head of the party, I could just discern the chief, who was
evidently acting as guide; and I could also see the gunner and Ned
Burton, who were only a few paces in front of me. My coxswain, I
thought, seemed to walk with some difficulty, and I attributed this to
the effects of the flogging he had received.
In about ten minutes’ time we were near enough to the sea to
enable me to make out the white surf of the breakers as they dashed
on some outlying rocks that seemed to act as a natural breakwater
to the little bay we were approaching. The booming noise of the
waves breaking upon the beach was mild compared to the roar
caused by this buffeting of the great boulders. The storm clouds we
had observed in the sky during the afternoon had all vanished, and
the celestial star-gems, flashing and twinkling, shone down brilliantly
from their setting of dark lapis lazuli. Not a vapour obscured the clear
radiance of heaven’s vaulted dome, with its ghostly light from a
myriad distant worlds.
Was that a dark-hulled, rakish-looking vessel I saw riding upon the
sombre waters of the bay?
It looked uncommonly like it, but the faint starlight was so
deceptive, and the glare of the torches so distracting, that I really
could not tell for certain. That it was a genuine little bay we were fast
descending into seemed beyond all question, for I could now make
out the dark irregular line of the coast as it reared itself against the
starlit sky.
My thoughts were now concentrated upon the vessel I thought I
had seen anchored in the bay. Had she been a genuine trader, she
would surely have had a light burning as a signal to other vessels to
give her a wide berth.
Ah, there she was! Yes, I saw her indistinctly, it is true; but still that
hasty glance was enough to satisfy a sailor’s keen eye.
What was this mysterious craft?
There was no time to ruminate further on this head, for we had
now arrived upon the beach, which was composed of patches of firm
sand and shingle, interspersed here and there with a few slab rocks,
and terminated at either end by low but precipitous dark cliffs.
I peered about me intently, fully expecting to see boats drawn up
on the beach, and attendant crews waiting close at hand. Nothing of
the kind, however, was visible.
“The chief will send up a rocket,” I muttered to myself, “and then
boats will be dispatched from the vessel in the bay.”
How earnestly I hoped that the bandage over my eyes would not
be examined by any of my meddlesome jailers! I considered it of
great importance that I should continue to see, even to a limited
extent, what was going on.
My conjecture as to the firing of a rocket was falsified. No such
fiery messenger clove through the darkness, nor did we halt for a
moment. Without uttering a word, the chief led the way along the
beach in the direction of the cliffs at the northern extremity of the bay.
I glanced again and again at the dusky outline of the vessel, fully
expecting to see the flashing of lights, or to detect the sound of
voices. All, however, remained still, silent, and dark, as if every one
on board was buried in slumber. Once, indeed, I thought a signal
rocket had soared up into the air from her upper deck, but it turned
out to be a bright and beautiful meteor which shot across the sky just
above her masts.
As we neared the cliffs, I saw that there were many lofty detached
rocks on the sands close to them, and others jutting out into the sea
in every direction. On these latter the waves were breaking in
showers of foaming spray. It was not at all rough, but the tide was
evidently flowing.
Suddenly my eye fell upon a natural archway amid some of the
loftiest rocks, and as I gazed the chief disappeared through it,
followed closely by the leading files. The next moment I had passed
through the aperture myself; and so surprised was I at the scene that
burst upon my view that I almost gave vent to a cry of astonishment.
Fortunately I restrained myself just in time, or the consequences
might have been fatal to my seeing anything more.
We were advancing along the shores of a miniature almost land-
locked cove, the beach of which was composed of extraordinarily
fine white sand, quite free from pebbles and rocks. Drawn up on the
strand were two black boats, the crews of which were lounging about
close at hand. The instant, however, that we appeared upon the
scene, these men were on the alert, and began making preparations
for launching the boats. A slight tall man, however, who was
enveloped in a Spanish cloak, detached himself from the crowd, and
advanced to meet us with hasty strides. I was alarmed to see that he
had in close attendance on him a Cuban bloodhound, of much the
same aspect and dimensions as the one with which I had already
made acquaintance. As this individual approached, we were ordered
by the chief to halt, and the latter took the stranger aside and held a
private conference with him. The two dogs took the opportunity to
greet each other, and judging by their whimpers of delight seemed to
be very old friends.
The cove was very sheltered, and its waters lay in almost a stark
calm, reflecting as in a gigantic mirror the gorgeous stars which
strewed the firmament. Now and again a fish rose to the surface
amid a burst of phosphorescent light which disturbed its tranquillity.
The beach was somewhat steep and the sand firm. A better landing-
place for boats could not have been found in the island of Cuba, I am
certain.
As far as I could tell in the dim light—the torches had now been
extinguished—the boats were of a good size, but certainly not
capable of embarking us all.
The conference the chief had been holding with his mysterious
friend had now terminated, and the latter issued some order to the
boats’ crews, the effect of which was that the two craft were run
down the steep beach with great speed into the water. Three or four
men jumped into each and seized their oars. Then the chief gave his
satellites the word of command, and before I knew where I was I
found myself forcibly seized by four men, carried down to the water’s
edge, and then unceremoniously bundled into the stern-sheets of
one of the boats. Anxiously I peered out to see what would become
of my fellow-prisoners, and was relieved to see that they had both
been placed in the other boat.
It made me despondent indeed to find that my fears were realized,
and that we were to be forcibly removed from Cuba; but had I—
through some nefarious scheme of the chief—been separated from
my shipmates altogether, the blow would naturally have been far
more severe.
The chief got into the boat in which I had been placed, and my
bête noire came and threw himself down close to me, his fangs
being within an inch or so of my face. Feeling his hot breath quite
distinctly, I tried to shift my position, but I found that I was effectually
wedged in by my jailers. The remaining dog got into the other boat.
To my surprise, a number of the men who had accompanied us
from the cavern remained on shore, evidently having received orders
of some kind from their chieftain. I thought it possible that the boats
might be going to return for them after we had been safely disposed
of on board the vessel.
In an instant, and in dead silence, the two craft were pushed off
into deep water, and their noses were turned in the direction of the
open sea. The oars were muffled, and gave out little or no sound; but
the blades appeared to be plunging in and out of liquid fire, so full of
phosphorescent light were the star-begemmed waters of the little
cove.
I had little doubt that we were being taken on board the vessel I
had seen in the larger bay, and this conjecture proved quite correct.
In spite of the tide being against us, we spun along at a very rapid
pace; for the men pulled with tremendous energy, although with
quick, jerky strokes. In a minute or two we had passed through the
narrow, rock-guarded entrance of the little cove, and were in the
rougher water outside.
From my position in the boat I could only partially see the vessel
we were steering for, and the light was very deceptive; but I took her
to be a small brig of foreign build and rig.
Our boat outstripped the other, and we got alongside first.
Two minutes later I was securely manacled in irons on the
starboard side of the lower deck, just amidships, my bandage and
lashings having been removed.
It was degradation indeed, but I determined to try to face my fate
manfully. “Never say die!” should be my motto; and somehow the
saying of the heroic Sir Humphrey Gilbert came into my mind,
“Heaven is as near to us on the sea as on the land.”
CHAPTER XVI.
IN IRONS.
F IVE minutes after I had been put in irons, Mr. Triggs and Ned
Burton, under a strong guard, were brought down a hatchway
ladder just over my head. I was overjoyed to find that they were
going to be manacled close to me, for I had not in the least expected
such good fortune. As soon as my shipmates’ legs had been
secured, and their arms and eyes set free, our guards hung a lantern
to the beams, went away, and left us alone.
It was evident that the vessel was going to get under way at once,
for there was a great hubbub on deck, and I thought I could
distinguish the noise of a windlass and of a cable coming in at the
hawse-hole. I knew, too, that the land wind was blowing, and felt
sure that the chief would wish to take advantage of it to get clear of
the coast before dawn.
Mr. Triggs and Ned were as delighted to see me as I was to see
them.
“They didn’t mean to put us together, I suspect,” said the gunner;
“but it so happens they’ve got irons only in this part of the ship, and
can’t well help themselves.”
“This is an armed vessel,” said I, watching my shipmates’ faces
keenly, “and must be a privateer, or perhaps a piratical craft of some
kind.”
The gunner started.
“How did you gain that information, youngster?” he asked.
“Weren’t you blindfolded?”
Ned was watching me curiously. I was grieved to see by the light
of the flickering lantern that his face looked haggard and drawn.
I told them how my bandage had slipped down, and had enabled
me to spy to a certain extent upon the doings of our captors.
“That was a slice of luck, and no mistake,” said the gunner,
rubbing his hands; “and if ever we succeed in circumventing these
villains, your knowledge may prove to be most important.”
“What do you think they’re going to do with us, Mr. Triggs?” I
asked.
“I’m just as much puzzled as ever,” answered the gunner. “They
want to get a ransom for us, I s’pose, but ’tis the most mysterious
business I was ever mixed up in.”
“The owdacious swabs!” put in Ned angrily. “I only hope that our
skipper will make a clean sweep of ’em when he hears tell of their
little game.”
I condoled with my coxswain as to the vile treatment he had
received at the instigation of the mule-driver.
Ned thanked me warmly for my sympathy.
“Of course, I knew you’d feel for me, sir,” he said; “but don’t you
trouble your head any more about the matter, but try to forget it. I’d
do the same myself, but my back is that stiff and sore I’m blowed if I
can.”
“Now just a word or two of advice, if you’ll excuse it,” observed the
gunner, “and then we must try to get forty winks, for it’s no good
blinking the matter we’re all as tired out and exhausted as we can
be. The advice is this: We had better not be seen talking by any one.
If any member of the crew comes down on this deck, mum’s the
word! Take no notice of any insults or bad treatment. Try to look as if
you liked it. Keep your weather eyes lifting, and your ears open, but
look as stupid as owls. Now, good-night, and God bless you both!”
Ten minutes later the gunner and Ned Burton were actually fast
asleep. Sailors who have seen as many years of service as they had
seem to be able to fall into the arms of Morpheus at a moment’s
notice, even under extraordinary conditions.
How I envied my companions in misfortune!
For a long while—or so it seemed to me—sleep would not seal my
eyes. The hurried rushing to and fro of men on deck, the creaking
and clanking of spars and cables, the subdued shouts of those in
command, and the answering hails from the crew—all combined to
keep my senses on the alert and to banish slumber. Besides all this,
my brain was in a whirl. All the strange adventures of the last twelve
hours recurred again and again to my memory, and my anxious
thoughts kept dwelling also upon the deadly perils of our present
situation, and of the utterly unknown future looming like a gloomy
cloud upon the horizon of our lives. I was especially oppressed with
the dark foreboding that our shipmates would be unable to discover
that we had been torn away from the shores of Cuba. I pictured them
anxiously and energetically searching every nook and cranny of the
valleys and hills in a vain search for us, and utterly ignorant of our
real whereabouts.
It was weak and foolish of me to take this pessimistic view of
matters, but the reader must kindly remember that I was in a very
exhausted and overwrought state.
The waves were dashing against the vessel’s sides; she heeled
over slightly under the influence of the land breeze; the noises on
deck had ceased. We were under way.
The gentle, almost imperceptible motion of the little craft seemed
to lull me to rest, and in a few minutes, in spite of the hard deck, my
heavy iron manacles, and still heavier forebodings, I fell into a
feverish, restless sleep—rocked in the cradle of the deep.
I was awoke some hours later by feeling a heavy hand upon my
chest, and hearing a loud, fierce voice in my ear.
CHAPTER XVII.
ON BOARD THE PIRATE BRIG.
I STARTED up. It was broad daylight. The ill-favoured countenance

of the mule-driver was the first thing that met my gaze. The fellow
was kneeling on the deck beside me, and there was a sardonic grin
upon his swarthy visage as he stared at me.
“No can possible wake them mans,” he said, indicating my still
slumbering shipmates with a jerk of one of his skinny fingers; “dare
say you can do him.”
I started violently.
This rascal, then, spoke English, or a rude smattering of it, at any
rate!
The mule-driver noted my surprise, and gave a guffaw. Then he
pointed to three basins of some kind of porridge which stood upon
the deck close beside him. In each reposed a wooden spoon of very
ample dimensions.
“Brokefast!” he ejaculated. “Englishmans get plenty fat on him,”
and before I had recovered from my astonishment he had glided
away and disappeared swiftly and silently up the hatchway.
“An evil spirit!” I muttered to myself with an involuntary shudder,
and then I aroused my shipmates by calling them by their names. At
first they seemed greatly startled, but they quickly realized their
position, and asked me how I had slept.
I told them of the mule-driver’s appearance, and of his knowledge
of English; and then I pointed to the three basins of porridge, which
were just within my reach.
“Understands our lingo, does he?” remarked Mr. Triggs
thoughtfully. “Then he’s a smart fellow in his way, you may depend,
and knows a doosid sight more about us than he ought to.”
“He wouldn’t have been of much use to his mates as a spy if he
hadn’t ferreted out summat or another,” said Ned. “Will you be so
kind, Mr. Darcy, as to give me up one of them basins of skilly, for I’m
mortal empty and mortal dry?”
I glanced at my coxswain, and was pleased to see that he was
looking better and cheerier.
In a moment we each had a basin of porridge in our hands, and
were assiduously stirring the not very appetizing compound
contained therein.
The gunner sniffed scornfully at his.
“Hominy stirabout, as I’m a living sinner!” he ejaculated; “and
flavoured with rancid butter.”
“A villanous compound, but not bad at the price,” I said, trying to
put a good face upon the matter.
Ned made no observations, but was already half-way through his
portion.
When he had completely emptied his basin, he placed it carefully
on the deck beside him, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jumper,
and remarked sententiously,—
“Must keep body and soul together somehow. Don’t you sniff at
yer wittles, Mr. Triggs, or maybe the swabs’ll put you on half-rations!”
I managed to swallow a few mouthfuls; but it really was a villanous
compound, and I could get no further.
“I suppose there ain’t no chance of getting soap and water out of
these thunderin’ thieves,” said Ned, glancing at his grimy hands;
“’tain’t in their line, as you may say.”
“I’m afraid not,” said I; “but we can ask the mule-driver next time
we see him.”
At this very moment the subject of our conversation came down
the ladder, and approached us with the object of removing our
porridge-basins. I noticed that he glanced in a furtive, underhand
manner at Ned Burton.
“No,” he growled out in answer to my request that we might have
some soap and water; “we no wash ourself, why you do him?” Then
he slouched off whistling.
“No soap and no baccy!” said Ned plaintively, as soon as the
fellow was out of hearing. “’Tis hard upon a chap, and no mistake.”
At Mr. Triggs’s suggestion, we exercised our arms gently, so as to
get the stiffness out of them; and the good effect it had was
wonderful. I am afraid my coxswain found it rather a painful
operation, but he made no complaint.
“I’d like to practise fisticuffs on some of these rascals’ heads,”
observed Ned after we had finished. “A lesson or two in boxing
’twould be, and nothing to pay for the larnin’.”
The deck on which we were confined was rather dark even in
broad daylight, being illuminated only by the rays of light which came
down the small adjacent hatchway, and by three or four remarkably
dirty scuttles in the ship’s side. Amidships, I noticed that there were a
good many casks and cases securely fastened to stanchions by
stout rope; but what they contained I had no means of ascertaining.
Close to my left hand was a row of bulkheads, and these stretched
athwartships right across the deck, and had a door in the middle,
which I fancied opened into the crew’s sleeping-quarters.
The little craft was evidently going through the water at a slashing
pace. She was almost on an even keel, but we could plainly hear the
water rushing and gurgling past under her counter. The gunner gave
it as his opinion that she was running before the wind at eight or nine
knots an hour. Silence seemed to prevail fore and aft, and we could
not even hear the flapping of canvas, the cheeping of spars, or the
rattle of a rope through a block.
Once I heard the melancholy bay of a bloodhound, and could not
help thinking that it was a sound of evil omen.
The morning wore on, and we saw nothing of the chief. Every half-
hour or so the mule-driver crept down the hatchway ladder to see
that we were safe. He had pistols stuck ostentatiously into his belt
upon these occasions, but always resolutely and sullenly refused to
answer any questions we addressed to him, so at last we gave it up
as a hopeless job.
It was really a great relief to us that the chief did not put in an
appearance, for we felt strongly that no appeal for mercy, or demand
for release, would have the slightest effect upon him; nor was he
likely to proffer any explanation as to his reasons for kidnapping us.
Again, we none of us wished to renew our acquaintance with his
ferocious-looking bloodhound, nor to be introduced to the latter’s
compatriot, which doubtless was also on board.
The morning passed away wearily. It was a great boon to be able
to converse with one another, but we were a melancholy trio, as the
reader may suppose, for at present we saw no chance of being able
to free ourselves from a terribly irksome and even cruel captivity.
No bells were struck on board the brig—for such I believed the
little craft to be—and we had no means of telling the time. I think,
however, it must have been about noon that the mule-driver, whose
name I had discovered was Miguel, brought us a mess of dried fish
and rice for our mid-day meal. From the ancient smell which seemed
to hover about the former article of food, we did not anticipate much
enjoyment from eating it; but, to our surprise, it did not prove at all
unpalatable, and we finished every morsel of it with great gusto, Ned
declaring that he had not had such a “tuck-in” for months, and that
fighting-cocks weren’t in the running with us at all.
In the afternoon we slept long and heavily, but we awoke—all
confessed to it—feeling feverish and irritable. If Miguel had
inadvertently put his ugly visage at this moment within reach of Ned
Burton’s prodigious fist, I fancy he would quickly have retired from
whence he came, a wiser and an uglier man, and have made tracks
for the galley to try to coax the ship’s cook out of a raw beefsteak.
Happily for us no such fearful contretemps occurred; and, as the
effects of our afternoon snooze wore off, we began to feel more
amicably inclined towards our fellow-creatures.
“Ned,” said Mr. Triggs abruptly, “where’s your knife?”
“My knife!” ejaculated the seaman. “Well, that’s a good un anyhow.
Why, it’s where your ticker and t’other gimcrack vallables is—up the
spout!”
“My ticker up the spout!” said the gunner with a sudden
assumption of dignity; “I don’t quite follow your meaning.”
“Well, I was speaking in a sort of parrydox or conundrum, I take it,
Mr. Triggs,” answered Ned, floundering, as was sometimes his wont,
into expressions of which he did not know the meaning. “What I just
meant to say was that these blooming highwaymen, or pirates, or
whatever scum they are, have pouched the whole bag of tricks. My
knife and lanyard, my baccy-box, and a ring my great-aunt give me
just afore we sailed from England, have gone the same way as your
watch, and trinkets, and such like.”
“I’m sorry for it,” said Mr. Triggs; “a knife would have been worth its
weight in gold to us.”
“Likely enough,” assented Ned, looking at his superior a little
curiously. “I reckon you’d have liked it handy to eat bread and
cheese with if the pirates give you a chance.”
“No, I like whittling to amuse myself,” said the gunner with a sly
wink; “though it’s very useful too sometimes to cut one’s stick.”
“That’s as true as gospel,” answered the seaman with a grin; “but I
tell you what, you might sit there and whittle and whittle till the crack
o’ doom, but you wouldn’t cut no sticks while them young cables is
riveted to your blessed feet. That’s a conundrum if ever there was
one.”
“Ah, I keep a brighter look-out ahead than you do, Ned. I should
like to have a knife handy for operations ashore a little later on.”
My coxswain stared.
“How do you know they’re going to put us ashore?” he asked.
“They may keep at sea for a long time to come.”
“Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Triggs, that we might be
marooned?” I put in anxiously.
“Pooh!” answered the gunner, “maroon your grandmother. What
possible benefit would it be to them to put us ashore on a desert
island, I should like to know?”
“Some spite against our government, or naval authorities,” I
answered.
“Ah, there’s something more than mere spite at the bottom of this
business, my lad, don’t you make any mistake. Now, shall I tell you
what I think these kidnapping fellows are?”
“Fire away!” I said laconically.
“Well, I think they’re out-and-out pirates—that’s what I think they
are,” said the gunner emphatically; “and I’m under the impression
that their headquarters are on some almost unknown island a
considerable distance from Cuba, and that they prey upon the
shipping that passes to and fro in these seas. I also think that they
are mixed up in the smuggling business, and that, owing to the laxity
of the Spanish navy, they have managed to form a depôt in those
caves which we—”
“Ha, ha! I see zat you know all that am posshible to tell about him!”
exclaimed a high-pitched voice from the hatchway, and the next
moment, to our great dismay, the crafty sallow visage of Miguel
appeared, glaring at us through the steps of the ladder.
“What a mean spy-cat!” exclaimed Ned indignantly.
The gunner felt very much nonplussed.
“’Tain’t much use my giving you fellows good advice,” he said sotto
voce, “when I let my own tongue wag and run away with me like that.
The chief will have a down upon me now, that you may depend
upon.”
I watched Miguel curiously to see what he would do next, fully
expecting that he would come and insult us in some way, for I knew
quite well what a mean and petty nature the man had. To my
surprise, however, he only gave one of his sardonic grins, and then
disappeared in his stealthy fashion up the companion ladder.

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Learning Cultural Literacy through

Creative Practices in Schools Tuuli

“This book is a timely, highly articulate analysis of the relationship between

ISBN 978-3-030-89235-7 ISBN 978-3-030-89236-4 (eBook)

Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan

This book is an outcome of intensive collaboration between seven scholars

teachers, educators, and students interested in children’s visual expres-

Jyväskylä, Finland Tuuli Lähdesmäki

Postscript. After finishing the manuscript, we faced the devastating news

1 Introduction: Cultural Literacy and Creativity 1

Tuuli Lähdesmäki (Ph.D. in Art History; D.Soc.Sc. in Sociology) is a

Jūratė Baranova (Rubavičienė) was a researcher in the DIALLS project

Susanne C. Ylönen (Ph.D. in Art Education) is a postdoctoral researcher

Aino-Kaisa Koistinen (Ph.D. in Contemporary Culture Studies) is a

Katja Mäkinen (Ph.D. in Political Science, M.A. in Art Education) is

Culture Studies, JYU, Finland. Mäkinen’s research focuses on citizenship,

Vaiva Juškiene (Doctoral Student in Education, MAs in Humanitarian

Irena Zaleskiene (Ph.D. in Education) is a senior researcher at the Insti-

international networks. She has published articles and research books,

Fig. 3.1 A sculpture of market stalls with local products created

Fig. 5.3 A drawing by a group of children in the first age group

Fig. 8.4 A photograph of a mask with the text invisible =

Introduction: Cultural Literacy

Abstract The introductory chapter explains the core concepts of the

Keywords Cultural literacy · Creativity · Artifact · Content analysis ·

Focuses, Premises, and Objectives

© The Author(s) 2022 1

explained this as either children’s attempts to draw what they know or

Concepts: Cultural Literacy and Creativity

“creation can be judged only when it has concluded, whereas creativity is

The Cultural Literacy Learning

creative practices as tools for encountering differences, expressing one’s

on the interplay of two or more semiotic resources (Deguara 2015, 4).

Various scholars have explored the impact of school on children’s

Cyprus Germany Israel Lithuania Portugal Spain UK

age 5–6 265 9 222 16 199 8 149

artifacts are influenced by global popular culture and imageries of chil-

Einarsdottir, J., S. Dockett, and B. Perry. 2009. “Making Meaning: Children’s

Vertovec, S. 2007. New Complexities of Cohesion in Britain: Super-diversity,

A Sociocultural Approach to Children’s

Keywords Sociocultural approach · Visual creations · Power ·

Different Strands of Research

© The Author(s) 2022 17

view of childhood as a time of innocence separated from adulthood, chil-

Developmental psychology has influenced many pedagogues, although

with dominant Western cultural expectations (i.e., realism as the highest

both a greater and lesser freedom of expression: Greater in that “they

Our Approach to Power Relations

approaches common to their fields of expertise, education, and cultural

According to the teacher, the program helped the children develop an

the children’s progress as fulfilling a task. As such it paints a picture of

In the light of this, researchers should be careful when using artifacts

Cohn, N. 2014. “Framing ‘I Can’t Draw’’: The Influence of Cultural Frames on

P., J. Lindholm, S. Kairavuori, and S. Ylönen, 39–62. Helsinki: Nuoriso-

I WAS in the open air. Of course I knew that at once.

I STARTED up. It was broad daylight. The ill-favoured countenance

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