Learning Unlearning: The Start of a Journey

By: Jeff M. Poulin

Throughout my career, I have always sought to gain as much knowledge as possible, as fast as possible.

From a young age, I worked to achieve a version of myself that was professional, knowledgeable, and with the credentials to do the types of things I wanted to achieve in my life and career. What I didn’t realize at the time – and I what I am starting to come to grips with now – is that the many systems within which I engaged to learn and achieve my aspirations are actually perpetuating the many challenges I seek to eradicate from the world.

Investigating Leadership

As a result of my early achievements, I have often been categorized as a leader: first a student-leader, then a thought-leader, and so on. Yet, I’ve never quite understood “leadership,” no matter how much I studied the topic.  That’s why, in 2020, when the opportunity presented itself to conduct a global study on leadership within the field of arts and cultural education, I was absolutely thrilled.

This project brought together over 20 partners, ranging from institutions of higher education to community cultural networks, to convene leaders of all types in dialogues. Some of these individuals are leaders with a capital L (like CEO’s executive directors, or government officials), others were leaders with a little l (those with influence, knowledge, and experience). They came from diverse backgrounds, all ages, and brought numerous perspectives to the nine virtual tables we constructed.

You can learn more about the process and its outcomes in my presentation at the 2020 Young & Emerging Leaders Forum as part of the world Alliance for Arts Educations Virtual Seminar. 

In short, a final outcome of this research was a journey one can take through the four inquiry-based processes: introspective processes based in critical reflection which allow an individual to realize a vision of distributed collective leadership.  These are:

  • Unlearning

  • Bridging

  • Navigating

  • Holding Tension

Let’s Unpack “Unlearning”

From this research project, we understood a bit about processes of unlearning in the context of arts and cultural education. This had to do with employing critical reflection to interrogate our own histories in arts education, our own learning experiences, and our own teaching the arts to others. Through critical reflection, we seek to understand the multiple facts of our experiences which need to not be perpetuated, and to identify the ones which must live on.

In order to better understand how we unlearn in the field of arts and cultural education, we, at Creative Generation, have begun a further exploration. Naturally, we are beginning with ourselves and will collaborate with others to contribute as well.

Check out the call for submissions here.

I look forward to being on this journey with my colleagues and our co-conspirators around the world and to unlearn the things I must. If we want to enable the circumstances for young creatives to thrive – especially those who are out there changing the world – we must unlearn the habits which can inhibit them.

It is up to us. Let’s unlearn together!