Art as Ontology: Transmitting Identity through Embodied Art Practice
Timo Kuzme, Maryland Institute College of Art, USA 
Break out Session 1: Thursday 24 November 14:30 - 16:00 (Helsinki Time)

Starting off with a performance by speaker Timo Kuzme, showcasing their own practice of peeling back the curtain on an art-making process, the session discusses how finding their own identity as an agender omnisexual person has affected their pedagogical approach, creating a deeper dialogue and understanding with their students. If we learn to help students access their true selves, they have the potential to blow open the doors of self-expression in their own practices.

FRUSKA workshop for empowering disadvantaged girls
Janka Csernák, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, Hungary 
Break out Session 3: Friday 25 November 9:00 - 11:00 (Helsinki Time)

FRUSKA (meaning ‘little girl’ in Hungarian) is a design education programme targeting disadvantaged and rural girls aged 10–18 that creates a multilevel learning experience through design tools. It applies a peer-to-peer, intersectional viewpoint to engage and empower girls and boost their confidence and self-worth while facilitating social mobility. The FRUSKA programme emphasises the importance of radical beginners and mutual knowledge transfer, involving design students and underprivileged girls. A multidisciplinary design process involves new communities with no former design knowledge. The method is based on self-reflection, self-assessment, and discovery.

Naked Teachers: Unpacking positionality and power in the classroom
Electa Behrens + Øystein Elle, Norwegian Theatre Academy 
Break out Session 3: Friday 25 November 9:00 - 11:00 (Helsinki Time)

How does who we are affect what and how we teach in the current climate of 2022? This is a speculative workshop for teachers in which we will ‘undress’ our own positionality and power. How do we work with and against our own intersectional identities in ways that make space for student agency and our own creativity? How can we ‘stay with the trouble’ (Harraway) of our own strengths and limitations and ‘queer use’ (Ahmed) them in productive ways? How do we stage ourselves? Presenters are looking to create a space where we as teachers can fail, ask stupid questions, and laugh at ourselves, to be vulnerable and courageous. Participants are asked to wear clothes they would wear to teach in.

The Board Meeting: Based on a True Story
Alexandra Ross, The Glasgow School of Art, United Kingdom + Christophe Alix + Savvas Lazaridis, L'ESA Le 75, Belgium; Maarten Cornel + Ingrid Grunwald + Rob van den Nieuwenhuizen, Royal Academy of Art The Hague, Netherlands; Inge Linder-Gaillard, Les Beaux-Arts de Marseille, France
Friday 25 November 14:00 - 16:00 (Helsinki Time)

In this session, participants shall constitute a board. Crucially, all in attendance will be members of this temporary board, and during the session items shall be tabled on an agenda for discussion. This workshop will allow us to consider radical reformulation of art school hierarchies and afford us a polyphonic space for engaging with examples of challenges faced by a selection of art schools and subjects. Students, lecturers, and support staff will have equal voice, and undergraduate and postgraduate concerns will be brought together and viewed holistically.