Arts and Aesthetic Education in the Fostering of a Common Place

Aesthetic education through art or nature makes us human beings more sensitive (sensible) to the world. Art and aesthetics develop human sensibility towards the diversity of the real world. Thus, it makes human beings to be better aware of life self-experience and others’ life, instead of being anesthetised to their inner self or the surrounding outside. Aesthetic education makes a difference in life experience by endowing it with qualities such as intense perception, attachment, creativity, singularity, authenticity. In this sense, the need of an art education (in this extended meaning of an aesthetic education) is crucial for citizenship education as well, because it widens the horizon of perception, interpretation and involvement in the existent world. Furthermore, art education brings people together and fosters a sense of community and understanding. Attention to the arts and aesthetic education in the English, Spanish, and Italian pedagogical contexts is paid so that a kind of comparison among them may bring us, at the same time of a multicultural dialogue, a sense of unity with a common insight.