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News & Press: ELIA NEWS & EVENTS

Life-Integrated Learning at ELIA Academy 2025

Monday 23 June 2025  



We wrapped up ELIA Academy 2025 with a collective reflection on reimagining higher arts education through the lens of Life-Integrated Learning. Over three days at Kristiania University of Applied Sciences in Oslo, the ELIA community came together in an event defined by community, vulnerability, movement – and life itself.

Throughout the Academy, one message rang clear: learning is not separate from life. Our identities, lived experiences, the spaces we inhabit, and the people around us all shape how we teach, learn, and create. Across discussions, workshops, and personal exchanges, participants explored how arts education can embrace the emotional, the personal, the uncertain, and the human.

In today’s global context, where conflict, climate crisis, and economic precarity dominate the headlines, the role of arts and culture is more urgent than ever. “Art and culture help us build resilience, facilitate dialogue, and create hope,” said Silke Lange in the closing plenary. The need for transformation in higher arts education is real. It must become more integrated with life, more empathetic, and more human.


Themes of co-creation, care, radical vulnerability, and shared responsibility echoed throughout the Academy. Students played a vital role: not only sharing their research and practices, but actively shaping the space, reminding us that meaningful transformation must come from within. Educators, leaders, and institutions carry the responsibility to create open, brave spaces where such change is possible.

Together, we explored how to encourage curiosity and risk-taking in our teaching and learning, especially in uncertain times, and how to guide students in navigating a future full of unknowns. While uncertainty can feel overwhelming, it’s also a space of potential. In the face of global turbulence, being together gave us something increasingly rare: community. And with it, hope.

In an era defined by technological acceleration and social fragmentation, the Academy reminded us that connection to each other, to our histories and to our work is at the heart of it all. Teachers and students alike opened up, offering trust and vulnerability in a space that felt safe, brave, and deeply alive.

As we return to our daily lives, let us remember: Life-Integrated Learning doesn’t end here. It continues in our classrooms, institutions, communities, and through ELIA’s very own Community Hubs.

We want to express our heartfelt thanks to everyone who made this year’s Academy possible:
Our hosts Kristiania University College, ELIA Steering Group Members, speakers, facilitators, volunteers, ELIA's Supporting Members for making student participation possible, our corporate sponsors Royal Talens, and every participant who brought honesty, care, and presence.

View the photo album>

ELIA is looking for its next host for the 13th ELIA Academy, in 2027! Position your institution at the forefront of international knowledge exchange in higher arts education. Read the Call for Nominations here>

 
  

 

 Photos by Theodor Haugen