This study aims to explore how art-based learning processes at the primary school level shape children’s understanding of culture as a space of participation and as a fundamental right. Through classroom practices designed around children’s literature, the study addresses the following research question: How do art-based learning processes influence students’ understandings of cultural participation, equality, and expression? Rather than transmitting cultural rights through didactic instruction, the study seeks to examine how experiencing culture through artistic processes affects children’s subjective meaning-making. Drama and thinking strategies are positioned as pedagogical tools that enable children to develop interpretations, engage in non-verbal expression, and make their cultural experiences visible. The purpose of this study is to investigate how art-based classroom activities developed based on Alain Serres' children's book Tous les enfants ont le droit d’être cultivés (Every Child Has the Right to Be Cultured) reflect primary school students' definitions of culture, their perception of culture as a right, and the ways in which they relate artistic and cultural participation to their daily lives. Based on an experiential approach to cultural rights, the study highlights children's meaning-making processes expressed through verbal, non-verbal, visual, and bodily forms, emphasizing learning through experience rather than transmission. Conceptual Framework The study is structured within the framework of Art-Based Learning, which recognizes knowledge production as not only cognitive but also sensory, embodied, and emotional (Anderson, 2004; Eisner, 2002). Children’s literature is conceptualized as a pedagogical gateway to abstract notions of cultural rights, while drama and visual thinking strategies are employed to support multiple interpretations, non-verbal expression, and the articulation of subjective experience. Within this framework, culture is not treated as a normative body of content to be transferred, but as a rights-based domain constructed through children’s experiences, interpretations, and participation.

Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative case study design (Yin, 2018). The drama process functions simultaneously as a learning environment and a site of data generation. The study group consists of third-grade students attending a public primary school, selected through purposive sampling. To ensure data triangulation, multiple data sources are used, including drama process observations (researcher field notes, verbal and non-verbal expressions, and participation patterns), student artifacts (post-drama drawings, collages, and visual productions), and semi-structured group interviews conducted before and after the intervention with small groups of four to five students. The collected data are analyzed through qualitative content analysis.

Expected Outcomes The findings of this study are expected to show that primary school students' understanding of culture and cultural rights has shifted from a didactic knowledge level to an experiential and subjective one. The idea, highlighted in Alain Serres's book, that "culture is not a privilege but a right of every child," is likely to be expressed in students' discourse and artistic productions through personal meanings rather than definitions.In this context, drama is envisioned as enabling students to define cultural participation not only through access to museums, books, or art events, but also through actions such as playing, imagining, creating, and sharing. It is particularly expected that nonverbal expressions (drawing, body language, role-playing) will open up more inclusive and free spaces for children to express concepts of culture and rights; and that some students will make visible, through visual and dramatic means, thoughts they cannot articulate verbally. The findings are expected to enable students to concretize the concept of cultural equality and discuss it through awareness of who has access to culture and who is excluded. This study is important because it shows that art-based approaches in teaching cultural rights at the primary school level offer alternative pedagogical possibilities that center on children's subjective experiences.

Anderson, T. (2004). Why and how we make art, with implications for art education. Arts Education Policy Review, 105(5), 31-38. Eisner, E. W. (2002). What Can Education Learn from the Arts About the Practice of Education?.Journal of curriculum and supervision,18(1), 4-16. Yin, R. K. (2018). Case study research and applications: Design and methods (6th ed.). Sage.