Last week, ELIA members came together at the ELIA Academy 2023 in Évora, Portugal. This years’ Academy focused on teaching and learning and brought together a community of arts educators to actively share good practice with each other. To me, the Academy is a place of mutual learning, and I was deeply grateful for the generosity of the colleagues who presented their work. ‘Exploring Situatedness’ was our theme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From experience, I know that a theme really works when it starts to sing. Perhaps not literally, but it somehow starts to reverberate around. Participants pause, and they say to each other: I can really feel in this place what is meant by ‘situatedness’. 

As we walked (a lot!) through the streets of Évora, from one location to the other, from presentations to workshops to performances, we explored and enjoyed together. For many of us an encounter with protesting students stirred a different kind of reflection. “It feels like home”, said one delegate before engaging in conversation with the students, embracing this dialogue as a guest but also contributing to the conversation. Our hosts were graceful, tireless, generous and unique – we especially thank Ana Telles and her team from the bottom of our heart for their commitment to the ELIA community. 

At the end of the Academy, we acknowledged the chair of the Academy steering group, Susan Orr from De Montfort University, for whom this was the last Academy in a steering group role. Susan has been involved in four Academies since 2017, chairing the last two. We celebrated the tremendous contribution she has made to ELIA, bringing her creative pedagogy expertise to our Academy. 

In this newsletter, you may read about the other activities which took place in Évora – for instance, almost 50 students from universities in Portugal and Spain worked together in a CrAFt think/do tank, developing a sustainable solution to a challenge posed to them by the City of Évora. They presented this at the end of the day to the mayor of Évora and other stakeholders. At the same time, ten colleagues from Ukraine came to Évora for the Academy, but also to work together on UAx Day, with their sister schools from outside of Ukraine. Two of our Ukrainian colleagues were part of the Academy programme, sharing stories about the situatedness of running an art school in times of war. We learned so much and I hope we helped to recharge the batteries of all those in need of it. 

No rest for the wicked though – next week our internationalisation platform (PIE) meets in Timișoara, Romania, for their annual meeting. I will be happy to join them there, in this year’s Capital of Culture which with 36 parks and much Art Nouveau will present me with another kind of ‘situatedness’ that I will be ever more curious to explore. I hope you will join us there!