Estonian Academy of the Arts

van Boeckel, J. (Visiting researcher)

Art & Sustainability

Activiteit: Visiting an external academic institution

Description

‘Art and Sustainability Education’
A course on fostering attention through arts-based open-ended approaches
in an age of ecological emergency and radical uncertainty
7-9 October 2021
Intensive three day course offered by Department of Art Education at the Estonian Academy of the Arts, in Arbavere Centre, Lahemaa National Park. Credit points: 3 ECTS, 24h.
This course, which involves intensive engagement of participating students, is about fostering attention through arts-based open-ended approaches in an age of ecological emergency and radical uncertainty. If we are to respond adequately to the rapid and deep changes taking place in the world in our current times, we may need to envisage a very different type of (art) education. In more open-ended modalities of education, learners tend not to know on forehand what the outcomes and expected deliverables will be. Such approaches may cause a sense of unease because of a presumed lack of control, of missing framing guidelines and clear target objectives. It is exactly in this space of vulnerability that it is essential that learners feel that their educational experience is safely contained and held by teachers and facilitators. A way of achieving this may be through employing arts-based approaches. Through such practices of artful exploring, a sense of excitement, of curiosity and wonder may be prompted. By what Tim Ingold calls “thinking through making”, a feeling of being fully present may come forth among participants as they are attentive in and to the unfolding open-ended process. In such occasions, a new field of potentiality may open up, in which things are possible which were considered simply unattainable previously.