This conversation began with a community arts project initiated in a poor area of Leuven, Belgium, and inspired by Paul Klee's "taking the line for a walk" (Couchez, 2012, p. 104). As educators committed to deepening democracy and believing that art can play an important role in the creation of new perspectives on how to deal with matters of public concern, we embarked on a conversation based on an initiative that aimed at change through arts education. Our commonality resides in a commitment to research and critical pedagogy in the tradition of education for social justice, yet we came to the conversation from different backgrounds: the South African author of this article (Astrid von Kotze) draws on experiences rooted in educational practices in South Africa. Both her academic and community development activism are rooted within the Freirean notion of praxis: community education practice and theory are closely aligned so that learning experiences translate into transformative action. The European author (Danny Wildemeersch) is located in a research tradition where a direct, activist link to educational practice is not so obvious. The academy demands a rigorous theoretical framework as a starting point for research and he works abductively, using theory to make sense of practice and vice versa.