"School gave me refuge": artistic practices, queer pedagogies, and struggles for trans recognition in times of moral panic.

Abstract

This article presents a pedagogical experience of arts-based research developed in an Argentine state secondary school, in which students, teachers, and administrators problematized the current conditions of the struggles of transgender communities in the country. Objective. To analyze how queer pedagogies, intertwined with artistic practices, generate spaces of resonance and critical affectivity that activate processes of political empathy and bodily alliances in the school environment. Methodology. A creative arts-based research design was implemented during the 2024 school year, through weekly workshops, audiovisual production, and life history interviews with 31 fifth- and sixth-grade students. Results. The work culminated in an audiovisual production that narrates the life story of "Pitu," a trans student graduating from the same school, and in which various social and political aspects are problematized. The findings show how the arts, when integrated with queer pedagogies, enable collective creation that dismantles narratives of anti-gender moral panic and opens up possibilities for political imagination. Conclusions. Queer pedagogies, empowered by artistic experimentation, transform political dissent into a strategy for challenging adult-centric perspectives that restrict the agency of children and young people, consolidating the school as a space for hospitality, resonance, reparation of rights, and production of aesthetic-political knowledge.