Funds of identity and self-exploration through artistic creation: addressing the voices of youth

The school system is permeated by systems of social exclusion and discrimination in ways that are usually invisible. This neglected symbolic violence reproduced in our educational system reflects some weak points within the Catalan intercultural paradigm, which lead to the reproduction of systemic violence to many young racialized people. Educational regimes which prioritize the adult agenda and the curriculum, urge teachers to impose control and directionality. In this circumstance, students’ acts and statements may be seen as merely disruptive, and hence their voice is delegitimized. The educational system, thus, fails in its duty to provide these young learners with the space to explore themselves and to foster self-reflection of their histories, interests and knowledges. In response to this perception, we developed “Who am I?”, an educational program based on Funds of Identity to enact self-exploration through art creation. Two secondary classrooms participated in this program. The results reflect dialogic events in which students talk about daily violence, their strategies to resist it, cultural negotiation and identity-construction processes. By means of a narrative-based analysis, we provide both a critical revision of our intercultural educational system and an enrichment to the Funds of Identity framework through the subjectivity theory lenses.