Beyond The Cool is a digital platform that centers around (global) perspectives within art education. This art educative product is the result of researching the discours the Other, especially Cultural identity from a black perspective. According scholar Stuart Hall is cultural identity from a Caribbean perspective is an identity that has no past and has a non-integrated future.

The students at my internship at Zadkine Fashion College (secondary vocational education) have been the inspiration for the platform. They have this feeling that people assume that they aren’t interested in art. It is actually the opposite. And as community in a multi-cultural city as Rotterdam the arts with these young people starts with their interests into music, fashion and subcultures. Which have a great connection with their culture and rituals.

I didn’t ask tutors, teachers or lecturers of my internship for any input for the platform. The only ones that had any to say what they missed in art education were these students. With this platform I hope that their interests and curiosity for art and design can get more attention via the platform.

Next to the desk research and interviews with my students I spoke to name a few with a curator of Boijmans van Beuningen museum, curator of het Rijksmuseum and my former lecturer of AMFI (a South African woman: one of the few art educators of color I have meet in during my studies).