Sensitive cartography and territorial resignification: An arts-based pedagogical experience in Secondary Education

Abstract

This arts-based pedagogical experience analyzes the implementation of a “sensitive cartography” within a Visual Arts elective course in secondary education in Puente Alto, a territory historically shaped by processes of urban segregation and territorial stigmatization, which affect both external social perceptions and the self-perception of its inhabitants. In this context, the objective is to explore how a situated arts-education practice can foster new social and affective bonds with the territory, while contributing to the transformation of students’ communal imaginaries. To this end, the proposal brings together arts education, spatial theory, and the affective turn through three pedagogical moments: a collective cartographic intervention in the classroom, a sensory walk through public space, and an artistic production phase based on molds and rubbings collected in the field. The results reveal significant shifts in the teacher’s role, in group relational dynamics, and in ways of perceiving and making sense of the territory. Thus, sensitive cartography emerges as a device for memory and symbolic reappropriation that challenges institutionalized representations of space, enabling a transition toward an embodied, collaborative, and situated experience. This process gives rise to new ways of representing Puente Alto, opening a space for reflection on its scope, tensions, and future projections in school contexts shaped by stigmatized territorial narratives.