This website uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some of these cookies are used for visitor analysis, others are essential to making our site function properly and improve the user experience. By using this site, you consent to the placement of these cookies. Click Accept to consent and dismiss this message or Deny to leave this website. Read our Privacy Statement for more.
Create opportunity in the face of uncertainty, explore changing power dynamics and re-configuration. Experience online education through experimentation, active participation, and provocation. Extend your own skillset and transfer new knowledge to your students.
ELIA Academy’s online workshop series gives you the opportunity to experiment and explore evolving concepts and ideas influencing higher arts education today. With a host of arts education tools & resources, and opportunities to connect with your peers around the world, this interactive online programme provides a space to address the key issues affecting the future arts education across different digital paradigms. See you on Wednesdays!
Join us for the grand online kick-off of the ELIA Academy 2021/2022 featuring a keynote by Kai Syng Tan, performance by Ão and intervention by slam poet Lisette Ma Neza! Learn how you will be put through your paces during this uniquely designed arts education bootcamp. Be part of this collaborative and dialogical digital space exploring the idea of <the extended art student>. Let’s shape the future together.
Kai Syng Tan FRSA SFHEA is a UK-based artist, academic and busybody. Kai seeks to catalyse conversations and actions for a more equitable and creative future, through mobilising artistic and artful processes to gather diverse/divergent ideas and people together, and trespass disciplinary/cultural/geopolitical boundaries.
Lisette Ma Neza is a slam poet, filmmaker and musician. She is known for her sharp pen, soft voice and Slam Poetry performances. Her performances balance between painfully direct and amorous naivety, and they often grab the audience by the throat. She describes herself as “Experienced Poet with a demonstrated history of working in the performing arts industry. Skilled in Public Speaking, Songwriting, Poetry, Workshops, and First Aid. Main-subjects: gender, decolonisation, sexual abuse, (huge and intimate) violence, love, emotions and Black lives. Strong media and communication professional graduated from LUCA School of Arts.”
Ão was born from an encounter of Brenda Corijn and Siebe Chau at the LUCA Campus in Leuven.
In late 2020, they released their first, self-titled EP with music written and recorded during lockdown as musical pen pals 2000 km apart.
Now joined by Jolan Decaestecker and Bert Peyffers they intertwine southern traditional sounds and rhythms with an ambient-universe of pedals and cassettes, groovy percussion and imploring vocal lines in Portuguese and English.
10:00 – 12:00 CET 14:00 – 16:00 CET
Workshop 1: <the extended art school>
Get acquainted with working across borders and transdisciplinary teaching approaches
Pick up tools & resources you can apply to your own work practice
Share your experiences with international peers
Be inspired by illuminating stories and ground-breaking artistic works
Intro & community check-in
Resilience and creative arts higher education
Tara Winters, The University of Auckland, New Zealand The concept of resilience has renewed relevance in an increasingly unstable and uncertain world. What might “academic resilience” for
artists look like? Is resilience for creative arts students a special case due to the psycho-social factors underlying art-making? What aspects of resilience are relevant to the creative intelligence
and skills of students who will work in precarious careers? This workshop facilitates the discussion and sharing of ideas to questions of resilience and higher arts education.
Transdisciplinary futures
Laura Bissell, Josh Armstrong, Ashanti Harris, Thulani Rachia, Jiaxi Wang, Sarah Hopfinger, Gary Gardiner, Laura Bradshaw, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, United Kingdom This digital collaborative
co-authored performance lecture explores approaches to learning and teaching contemporary performance practices. The BA (Hons) Contemporary Performance Practice programme at the Royal Conservatoire
of Scotland is an interdisciplinary performance-making degree focused on the generation of new and original performance. In this performance lecture, researching artists teaching on the programme
will investigate how performance exists as an active space for transdisciplinary creativity and prepares students for a future beyond borders. How can education enact the borderlines between artistic
practice and other fields?
Maria Drăgoi, University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale”, Romania Envision a world where future-centred education is not a myth. Adapt the concept of customisable curricula
to the artistic fields. For example, create a curriculum focused on film, and study how the skills film production requires, can be transferred to careers without any direct connection
to the arts e.g. medicine, law and business.
Christopher Kaczmarek, Montclair State University, USA One skill that will serve students in every aspect of their lives is the ability to envision something greater than what
they can achieve as an individual, and to effectively work within a collective to make that vision a reality. This boils down to committee work. Often thought of as antithetical to creativity,
this session outlines a case study of how Kaczmarek has brought committee work into the visual arts classroom and have found ways for students to not just understand the structures and
importance of it, but to actually have them enjoy and value it.
Daria Filardo, Jacopo Manganiello, IED - Istituto Europeo di Design, Italy NOT AN ARTIST is an investigation project involving professionals of the world of contemporary art
and culture. The concept arises from the observation of the contemporary art and culture scenario, which is evolving and opening up the market for new opportunities. This project aims
at the constant updating of IED academic offer and at the inclusion in IED faculty of new lecturers in order to provide the most effective education experience to those interested in
entering the world of contemporary art and culture. Learn more about the project and its discoveries.
Radical-Viral-Pedagogy-Model
Natalie Weinmann, Coburg University of Applied Science, Germany; Kristian Jones, Birmingham City University, United Kingdom Be introduced to "Radical-Viral-Pedagogy-Model" and
take part in a short "Infection-Experiment", providing a discussion about what relevance this model could have on higher arts education. Arts education needs to change, to prepare students
for a future not restricted by disciplinary boarders, and open towards a constantly changing and unpredictable environment. What role do educators, the institution and the curricula play
in this? Imagine... Our students are like living cells, embodied in an education space that allows adaptation and mutation. Now, for a moment re-imagine higher education under the paradigm
of infection. Students will explore how to manipulate, adapt, resist or even create their own complex systems. They are not "the artist" or "the designer" as we knew them, they are new
kind of student.
Tools & resources for teaching arts online
Community moments
14:00 – 18:00 CET
Workshop 3: <expect the unexpected>
Experiment with hybrid teaching methods
Analyse ‘switch to online’ case studies for festivals and exhibitions
Investigate teaching scenarios for an uncertain future
Shape up for our in-person Workout in Brussels
Intro & community check-in
MERGING MINDS: The next step in design thinking
Fabienne Beernaert, Michaël Van Damme, LUCA School of Arts, Belgium Discover the power of multidisciplinary co-creation, with this new approach to design thinking. Apply it with a hands-on
soft skill exercises. Beernaert and Van Damme collaborated with behavioral scientists from Ghent University to enhance a multidisciplinary design process with exercises on soft skills. They turned
to evidence-based principles behind personality, team composition and group dynamics. That way the design thinking methodology becomes more flexible and adapted to group dynamics, leading to more
creative outcomes.
Mervi Rankila-Källström, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland "What are you standing on - what are you reaching for?" The idea of this method is to perceive one's own
professional competence extensively by doing, experiencing and reflecting. The participant makes an installation of the given materials, which helps to identify both personal skills and
goals, and dreams that deviate from the conventions. The reflection method does not require special artistic or creative skills but is suitable for everyone.
Eva Gartnerova, Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Czech Republic This case study of the international online conference called Exhibition Design Lab, explores new innovational approaches
to exhibition design in a digital environment. Focused on the realisation of a new concept of flexible education (reacting to a current need) but mostly the impact of international and
interdisciplinary cooperation of students.
Jovana Karaulic, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia Focusing on the Festival of International Student Theatre – FIST as a digital teaching method. The final preparations
for the festival were being realised during the growing Covid-19 pandemic. With their mentor, the FIST team recognised the opportunity for risk management training and reached a decision
to redefine the concept into the digital environment. Explore new learning design models in educational practices and policies, through this hybrid educational concept. This model proposes
collaborative student-oriented educational practices with the aim of creating online communities of students in the cultural field.
Marta Wieckowska, Anna Kamieniak, Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, Poland What are the invisible elements of education in design that should be more visible online? How to increase
engagement when distance and zoom fatigue are inevitable? How to teach interaction design when that is linked heavily with technology and students feel tired from long hours spent learning
online? Students from the Academy of Fine Arts at Katowice looked for answers, designing solutions, to overcome these obstacles. Experience follows discovery. Join this interactive workshop
and feel their inventions within your own skill/skin.
Opening: Uncertain Art School
Matt Hawthorn, University of Derby, United Kingdom In this participatory exhibit and workshop we will speculatively and collectively propose an Art Institution for an Uncertain
City (past, present, future) where practices, industries and identities are no longer certain. The workshop will solicit contributions from participants to engage with both a fictional
city and also the real city space of the Academy. In doing so we will re-consider the historical assumptions of Art Education and its connectivity to place, industry and identity; and
propose new strategies to investigate the pedagogies of the future.
Tools & resources for hybrid learning
Community moments
14:00 – 18:00 CET
Workshop 2: <changing power dynamics>
Tackle questions on diversity, racism and anti-discrimination in higher arts education
Challenge your own practices in terms of inclusivity
Learn about anti-discriminatory teaching and learning practices
Intro & community check-in
Encounters in orbit: Social justice education as intergalactic space travel
Annabel Crowley, University of the Arts London, United Kingdom In 2021, we find many arts institutions and universities concerned about social justice education. But how can we teach and
learn about social justice while differentiating between our varied learning and communication needs? Encounters in Orbit has emerged as a pedagogy of neurodivergence: educational design that embeds
choice and flexibility in modes of engagement, according to participants’ needs. Citing research on themes such as accessibility, anti-colonialism and marginalised knowledge production, this session
will provide all participants with an opportunity to design their own orbit(s) and think critically about how they best engage in challenging conversations.
Birgit Huebener, Guilherme Maggessi, Ela Posch, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria What matters in the process of creating a webtool for anti-discriminatory
teaching and learning practices that serves both teachers and students? How to listen to experiences and contextualise single moments while finding structural inequalities? How to critically
analyse positions, hierarchies and contexts, in order to unpack the university’s goal of international peak level? How to create spaces for anti-racist, gender-sensitive and diversity-reflected
teaching and learning? In this project, Huebener, Maggessi and Posch try to find the very tricky moments that take place within the university’s classrooms. The project is part of the diversity-strategy
that is implemented at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
Alexandra Ross, Glasgow School of Art, Gayle Meikle, Newcastle University, United Kingdom This participatory lecture performance explores the 'Polyphonic Essay on...' as a method
and tool for accessing and presenting multitudinous perspectives, histories and approaches. It’s considered as pedagogical methodology for destabilising the hegemony in the (art) canon and
far beyond. This is done through a strategy of scaffolding artworks and artists’ practices with participants and situations, to generate enmeshed, complex, intimate and polyphonic encounters.
We seek to expand modes of encounter with artworks and art practices from a curatorial position, through live interrogation of and engagement with artworks, literature and interlocutors.
We 'essay'/ 'write' into the canon; riffing off the context of expanded essaying. However, we move away from the dominance of the textual, and value the aural, literal and oral. In a contingent
and polyphonic manner; challenging the ocular-centric dominance of the art history canon.
Reflection & Action: Towards anti-racist pedagogies in college art and design
Stacey Salazar, Maryland Institute College of Art, USA As Paulo Freire argued, reflection alone is insufficient, individuals must also act on their environment in order to transform
it. In this live online workshop – developed specifically for arts professors – participants will be guided through a research-based and human-centred reflective practice that will open up
space to consider actionable anti-racist pedagogical innovations in their college art or design studio classrooms.
