Learning, Listening, and Leading: ELIA in Motion this June

Photo: Maria Hansen, ELIA Executive Director, member visit to Berklee Valencia

ELIA Executive Director Maria Hansen reflects on a month filled with meaningful encounters, impactful events in Barcelona, Torino and Oslo, and promising opportunities for collaboration.

What a whirlwind month it has been. It started with the conference of our internationalisation community, PIE Annual Meeting 2025 in Barcelona, kindly hosted by Llotja Art School, ESDAPC - Escola Superior de Disseny i d’Arts Plàstiques de Catalunya. The gatherings of this community always impress by being so thoroughly prepared and reaching a great depth of discourse. Many thanks to the PIE working group and the ELIA team, as well as our hosts, for producing such an impactful gathering for the ELIA community.

I had the opportunity to combine this event with visiting five Higher Arts Education institutions in Valencia and Barcelona: Berklee Valencia, Barreira Arte + Diseño, ELISAVA, School of Design & Engineering, Conservatori Superior de Música "Joaquín Rodrigo" de València, and LCI Barcelona. This felt ‘whirlwind’ on one hand, but also like a huge opportunity to reconnect and learn about everything going on. Some of these encounters were meant to interest institutions in the ELIA membership, and I was pleased with the resonance that my input produced.  

Following the excellent conference of Culture Action Europe BEYOND 2025 in Torino and a few days back at the ELIA office in Amsterdam, it was time for Norway. I started with a visit at NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, ELIA member and coordinator of the CrAFt Horizon Europe project which we just completed. You can read more about the many impressive deliverables further on in this newsletter.  

Photo: ELIA Academy 2025

And on to Oslo we went for the ELIA Academy 2025 on Teaching and Learning at Kristiania University of Applied Sciences. The Academy is one of our signature events and this time, it had the theme ‘Life-Integrated Learning’. This term derives from Kristiania’s own ambition to deliver ‘Work-Integrated Learning’. For the ELIA gathering, we decided to take this concept further and include all of life into what that which happens at the art school.  

You will hear much more about this further in the newsletter, but I want to say a big thanks to everyone who made this possible: our wonderful hosts, the steering group, the ELIA Team, and the students who not only shared their research and artistic practices but played a vital role in actively shaping the space and reminding us that meaningful transformation must come from within. We thank ELIA's Supporting Members for making these contributions possible. 

Finally, it is my honour to let you know that last week, I was elected to the Executive Committee/Board of Culture Action Europe. ELIA is a founding member of Culture Action Europe which advocates on behalf of the cultural sector in Europe. It will be my privilege to represent the ELIA Community and higher arts education in this new role.