As Public Relationship Application Countinability Of Participated Art Projects Via Distance Education Method: A Case Of “Women’s Are Meeting With Literature Project”

Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE January 2013 ISSN 1302-6488 Volume: 14 Number: 1 Article 30 AS PUBLIC RELATIONSHIP APPLICATION COUNTINABILITY OF PARTICIPATED ART PROJECTS VIA DISTANCE EDUCATION METHOD: A Case of “Women’s are Meeting with Literature Project” Assistant Professor Merih TASKAYA Akdeniz University, Faculty of Communication Public Relations and Publicity Department Antalya, TURKEY ABSTRACT Observations of artistic activities’ transformative influence in social sphere by social scientists have played an essential role in the rise of “participative art” works worldwide. Within the scope of the public relations practices performed by municipal administrations particularly in order to promote the cultural development of society, noteworthy examples of works to enable citizen’s active participation in artistic activities occur in Turkey as well. Within these practices, the project carried out by Antalya Municipality in 2009, namely “Women Meet Literature” has been designed with a view to help women who are living in disadvantageous districts build solution-driven behavior patterns instead of perceiving the difficulties in their social life particularly in their family life, as “irresolvable”. In the wake of the workshops carried out with the participation of Turkey’s famous authoresses and poetesses, it has been observed that the act of writing has a stimulating effect on women’s courage to diagnose problems. This study evaluates, through the case of “Women Meets Literature” project as a public relations practice, the project realization process and outputs of the case regarding the use of “participative art” in mass education, within the context of ‘participative art’, ‘mass education’ and ‘public relations practices’; and it discusses the contributions of distant education to sustainability of project based public relations practices. Keywords: Public relations, participative art, distant education, women, mass education. INTRODUCTION No one shall be deprived of the right of learning and education, as stated in article 42th of Turkish Constitution. The Constitution holds the state primarily responsible with the protection of this right and availability of it for all citizens. Even so, the gender discrimination reflects also in education field and women’s disadvantageous situation in enjoyment of education opportunities continues in Turkey as in many other countries worldwide. The contribution of the efforts made to eliminate the said disparity to the reproduction of traditional patterns of behavior and perception is generally questioned within women’s studies. 351 Educational institutions which are regarded as part of ideological state apparatuses by Althusser (2003), should be freed from the contents reproducing traditional roles especially in mass education with a view to go beyond an ordinary literacy education. The scope and contents of mass education activities for women should be designed not in reference to the given traditional roles that is ‘predisposition’, but oriented to the fields in which women are already under-represented. Although unlikely to be achieved at short notice through education policies at the macro level carried out by national/international institutional bodies, this target can more easily be achieved at a micro level especially through projects for women education and cultural development carried out by local administrations. Municipal administrations are formally institutional bodies as well. Women commissions mainly organized within the bodies of metropolitan municipalities are carrying out some educational projects and programs aiming at women’s active participation (Demiray, 2010, 53). The success of educational projects and programs is directly proportional to their sustainability. EDUCATION AND WOMEN’S ACCESS TO EDUCATION FACLITIES Education, in the most general sense, is the sum of all processes to create behavioral change in line with specific goals. It is specified in two main categories, formal and informal, according to whether it is preplanned or not. Informal education does not employ any plan or predetermined place, method, technique, but occurs spontaneously in everyday life. Formal education, on the other hand, is performed by educators according to a plan, at a predetermined place with predetermined methods and techniques. Formal education is divided into two categories, namely, organized education and mass education. Organized education is carried out regularly at schools in line with education programs which are graded for specific age groups and prepared accordingly to national education policies. Mass education, however, is intended for the needs and interests of those who either have never been covered by organized education system or are already enrolled in any level of this system or have left it at any level (Fidan, 2012). Literacy courses, theatre courses, language courses and in-house trainings fall under mass education category. The concept of education had been limited with ‘school age’ and ‘school roof’ for long years. However, since the scientific discoveries suggesting the fact that personal development continues lifelong, the said limiting approach to education has been abandoned, and education and training began to be regarded as a lifelong process. Thanks to the developing technologic means, distant education practices have become widespread; people are provided with a lifelong opportunity to receive education on their topics of interests at any time and place and to progress in their pursuits, to the extent that these technologic means are available (Demiray, 2010). Distance education is an education method in which, “in the impossibility of in-class activities and interactions due to the boundaries of traditional teaching-learning methods, the communication and interaction between the planners and performers of the training activity and the learners are maintained via specially designed teaching units and various medias” (Alkan, 1981, 59, cited by Demiray, 2010, 66). There is not sufficient information to determine the onset of distant education. Yet, it is known that an advert about a correspondence course of stenography was published in Boston Newspaper, in 1782. 352 However, organized efforts for distant education were initiated during the second half of 19th century with a distant language course and a distant school for university entrance exams in Germany, and an open high school in Sweden (Kaya, 2002,27,28). In Turkey, the idea of distant education was first brought forward during an assembly on the questions of education in 1927, the first distant education practice, however, was initiated with a correspondence course for bank officers at The Research Institute of Banking and Commercial Law of Ankara University School of Law in 1956. The Center of Correspondence Training was established in 1974 and was followed by Non-formal Higher Education Institution (Yaygın (...truncated)