Research in Arts and Education

Socially Engaged Arts (SEA) Practices

Kai Lehikoinen — 2023-12-19

Socially engaged arts (SEA) have evolved in multiple directions, creating new competence needs for practitioners. This article investigates SEA as a professional practice to enhance it as a field of study in higher arts education. An inductive
qualitative approach is applied to analyze extant curricula, literature, and interviews to grasp how the key competences are discussed in the practitioner, educational, and scholarly contexts to identify and structure eight competence areas
practitioners can benefit from. The article contributes to a deeper understanding of the changing landscape of artists’ professionalism and the potential of higher arts education in supporting artists in SEA.

The Value of Sexuality

Katri Kauppala — 2023-12-19

Relying upon feminist and queer theory, this article explores feminist pedagogy in art education practices. More specifically, the research investigates how engaging with sexuality and gender in education relates to the uncovering of social structures, power dynamics, and normativity. This arts-based action research dives into the praxis of the three-day course entitled Sexuality and Art with university student participants from degree programs in art education, graphic design, applied visual arts, and industrial design. By integrating values from feminist pedagogy, such as ethics, agency, contextuality, and the interconnectedness of individuals, art education can create equitable environments that challenge dominant societal narratives.

Contributing to Social Change in Higher Education by Using Arts-Informed Inquiry to Expand Thinking about Assessment Identity

Michelle Searle — 2023-12-19

This essay describes an art-informed inquiry to develop inclusive spaces and advance critical thinking about identity where artist-researcher-educator/researcher collaborations are enacted through oil pastels, collages, and an exhibit as a catalyst for expanding thinking about assessment identity. Those involved considered how assessment identity is a complex construct that influences pedagogy by artfully reflecting their knowledge, beliefs, feelings, confidence, and role. A library exhibit engaged broader audiences as an act of disrupting and expanding traditional expectations about educators/ researchers. This project makes space to embrace diversity and multiple ways of knowing with a commitment to inclusion that interweaves imagination and dialogue

On The Search for a More Sustainable Stage – Mapping the Perspectives of a Performance Designer

Raisa Kilpeläinen — 2023-12-19

This article outlines the concept of performance design, dealing with the transformative work of performance designers and exploring it through contemporary concepts and artistic means. The article considers where the performance designer has an updated place in the geography of performing arts, what kind of encounters the designer experiences, and what kind of socio-cultural adaptation and learning the work may require and offer. The article discusses the topic with the photographs from the author’s site-sensitive memos and proposes an alternative method of performance design.

Finding the Missing Link

Fiona Quill — 2023-12-19

In art and design education, engaging students as partners in practice is a pedagogical necessity. Research shows that it is also an ethical necessity. However, art and design education are deeply entrenched in traditional modes of assessment that are sometimes counterintuitive to the landscape of progressive and innovative learning. There is evidence that assessments are based on subjective values in disciplines where objectivity is difficult to ascertain. Is there a link between the deceleration or arrest of the learner’s participation in communities of practice and lifelong learning because of ambiguous assessment methods? Can these deficits be addressed by educational interventions?

Animated Video-Making

Annie Hung — 2023-12-19

This visual essay describes how we as artist-scholars used arts-based research (ABR) to examine seniors’ experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to consider ways of fostering social inclusion and integration through an ABR approach to public engagement with research. Central to this inquiry is how ABR, as visual storytelling that combines a narrative with digital content, allows us to capture these seniors’ complex lived experiences while serving as public-friendly research output accessible to a wide range of community members.

Higher Arts Education

Mike Fox — 2023-12-19

Marginalized groups within any dominant culture find engagement with higher education challenging. Partially to blame is the compensatory paradigm within which they are situated and the resulting denigration of their culture and cultural capital. This attitude reinforces the deficit model, where socio-cultural diversity is seen pathologically rather than as a treasured asset. To contest this model, and empower marginalized learners, it is necessary to credentialize the capital, which they possess. Contemporary arts education, liberated from any generalized form of a priori aesthetic, moral imperative, or referential loyalties, provides a learning environment where individuals, once considered outsiders, can achieve such validation.

User Experience (UX) in the Cultural Field

Heidi Schaaf — 2023-12-19

This commentary paper aims to pro-mote the acknowledgment of user experience (UX) research principles in the cultural field. As discussed in the preceding dissertation, The Meaning of Participation: Detecting the space for inclusive strategies in the Finnish and German museum context (2022), efforts to get to know one’s audience (or users) should not be ignored. What is the meaning of UX research, why should it be used sustainably, and how can it be ben-eficial? This paper aims to answer these questions by explaining and unfolding the reasons for conducting such research and proposing it to the cultural audience development work.

Art Education for Social Inclusion and Diverse Communities

Maria Huhmarniemi — 2023-12-19

Since the 1990s, the exploration of dialogic and educational approaches within the realm of international contemporary art has spurred art educators and scholars to devise strategies that extend beyond the confines of the classroom, and formal education. This direction of art and art education emphasizes a keen awareness of the strengths inherent in communities and localities, encompassing their unique cultures, histories, and meaningful encounters between community members, generations, and diverse cultural minorities (Hiltunen, 2009; Huhmarniemi et al., 2021). Socially engaged art and community-based art education align with dialogic aesthetics, a framework in which art unfolds through an internal dialogue within a community.