The Loneliness Room: Creative Practice as Critical Pedagogy

Loneliness has become one of the most pressing research issues of the contemporary age, with a vast literature emerging from health, education, the social sciences, and cultural studies to better understand this "crisis" that has been created by the unequal and alienating forces of neo-liberal capitalism. Very rarely has creative practice been drawn upon to both access the way people feel, experience and understand loneliness, and to translate it into artistic modes/forms that better represent and embody the "pedagogy" of its everydayness. The loneliness room project, a four-year empirical study of loneliness, addressed this gap, inviting participants to submit creative responses and artworks that best captured what loneliness meant to them.