Digital Media Art

The Link between School and Active Citizenship

Resumen

In the 21st century, Digital Media Art is an integral part of the integral education of young people. Online access through portable equipment facilitates fast, immediate and live access, in any space, formal or informal, to various contents. In Portuguese schools, the contents inherent to the digital era are learning contexts for the curricula where students develop digital skills that stimulate creativity and artistic practice, enabling them to handle and create knowledge through digital tools. Currently, technological knowledge, problem-solving, critical thinking, aesthetic sensitivity and about 10 other skills areas are defined in the Profile of Students Leaving Required Education (PSLRE) as one of the values to be considered for Citizenship and Participation.
On social networks, young people communicate and establish personal and social connections. However, this free consumption outside schools is not always allied to physical or digital spaces of access to artistic creation, individual or collective, as a stimulus for art and intervention in the active practice of citizenship. Are young people mere followers of technology in an informal context? This paper focuses on the relationship between Digital Media Art and School in the practice of active citizenship and its absence outside school.
The cultural poles of local communities are generally organised according to programmes, festivities and school breaks, not always with temporal continuity or with socio-educational goals. Young people do not find in local society the sociocultural and digital structure fostered in schools that respond to their skills and objectives. In the arts field, Digital Media Art is looking for a public space for creation and sharing, a structured and accessible meeting place for young people.
As a stimulus to the aesthetic and artistic sensibility of young people, the national projects that are being encouraged in Portuguese schools, the National Cinema Plan (NCP), the National Arts Plan (NAP), and others, are the basis on which Digital Media Art develops and inhabits the students´ creativity. Therefore, Digital Media Art can give continuity to these projects in society, locally and nationally, and allow access and inclusion of younger people in more interventive and creative citizenship, establishing the link between School and Active Citizenship.