This project challenges traditional cognition-based research methods. While informative, they do not fully capture the complexity of economic transformation. This hinders our ability to support regenerative entrepreneurs in their journey toward a fair and sustainable economy. At AUAS Centre for Economic Transformation, our search for a more integrative approach to building new business models, led us to arts- and nature-based research. We are intrigued by art- and nature-based research as a tool to integrate cognitive, emotional and practical elements (head/ heart/ hands). Our curiosity led us to the following research question: how can innovative methodologies that focus on lessons from the arts (creativity) and nature (diversity) help to enrich the understanding of economic transformation among researchers and entrepreneurs engaged in regenerative practices. This study employs an action-oriented research approach, including progressive learning and reflective monitoring and evaluation. During workshops the researchers and entrepreneurs go outside and collect pieces of nature. With these materials they compose their own work of art. Participants, under guidance, step-by-step, 'engage in dialogue' with their artwork based on their own question, eventually experiencing (a direction to) an answer. This project brings together researchers with expertise in the diverse fields of entrepreneurship, craftsmanship, co-ownership and economic ecosystems and entrepreneurs of regenerative practices. They emerge themselves in innovative research methods aimed at integrating head, heart, and hands to enhance diversity and creativity and enrich their understanding of economic transformation. The presentation will be enriched by the works of Claudy Jongstra, a Dutch artist and regenerative entrepreneur.
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Arts in Health, also known as Arts for Health, is an umbrella term used to describe the domain of using the arts to enhance our (mental) health and well-being. It involves a heterogeneous range of professionals who use the arts in various ways, with different goals and outcomes. The practices of these professionals can be placed on a continuum based on the variety of goals and outcomes, ranging from promoting social connection or well-being to treating (mental) health conditions. Recent discussions in the Netherlands have raised questions about the position of creative arts therapists on this continuum. This opinion paper addresses this issue by providing a brief overview of the development of the profession of creative arts therapists, the working areas of creative arts therapists and the growing evidence base of creative arts therapeutic interventions. The practices of creative arts therapists are positioned on the continuum, where the emphasis on and accountability for the clients’ (mental) health increases and evidence-informed use of the arts within a more clearly delineated and legally safeguarded professional framework are present. Knowing where the practices of creative arts therapists are placed can assist in identifying when to choose creative arts therapists, other professionals combining arts and healthcare, or a combination of professionals.
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The road to science for the arts therapies requires research on the full breadths of the spectrum, from systematic case studies to RCTs. It is important that arts therapists and arts therapeutic researchers reflect on the typical characteristics of each research paradigm, research type and research method and select what is appropriate with regard to the particular research question. Questions rather differ. Finding out whether a certain intervention has a particular effect with a large group of clients differs from wanting to know which change occurs at which moment by which interventions in the treatment of an individual client. Research in practice remains close to questions encountered by arts therapists in their daily practice. It concerns questions arts therapists have about their lived experience of acting due to the complexity and variability of practice. By carrying out research in practice that links up with those questions, evidence evolves; evidence that enables the professional to proceed and that makes explicit what often remains implicit and unsaid. What is explicit can be communicated, can be criticised and tested. The professional himself does the road to science of the profession. The investment in professionals’ research in practice is the motor of knowledge-productivity that bridges the theory-practice gap. Research in the arts therapies should lead to ‘knowledge’ in which the ‘art’, nor the ‘subject’ of therapist and client have been lost.
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This paper conceptualises tourist idleness as a temporary engagement in slow, slothful and entirely unstructured holiday activities. We aim to extend the studies that prioritise the modalities of holidays in nature that encourage simplified, slower, immersive experiences, and which celebrate mindfulness, slowness and stillness as part of a tourist journey. In framing idleness as a relaxing, creative and recuperative holiday practice, we suggest that creating places of otium which encourage ‘doing nothing’ can in many ways enhance tourist wellbeing. To this end, we discuss the significance of spatial, temporal and existential elements of tourist idleness, whilst arguing that this ‘practice’ should be more celebrated in our modern, high-speed societies.
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The importance of teaching engineering students innovation development is commonly clearly understood. It is essential to achieve products which are attractive and profitable in the market. To achieve this, an institute of engineering education has to provide students with needed knowledge, skills and attitudes including both technical and business orientation. This is important especially for SME’s. Traditionally, education of engineering provides students with basic understanding how to solve common technical problems. However companies need wider view to achieve new products. Universities of applied Sciences in Oulu and Eindhoven want to research what is the today’s educational situation for this aim, to find criteria to improve the content of the educational system, and to improve the educational system. Important stakeholders are teachers and students within the institute but also key-persons in companies. The research is realized by questionnaires and interviews from which a current situation can be found. The research will also include the opinion of management who give possibilities to change the curriculum. By this research more insight will be presented about how to re-design a current curriculum. The research will act as basis for this discussion in SEFI-conference about formulating a curriculum that includes elements for wide-ranging knowledge and skills to achieve innovations especially in SME’s.
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The importance of teaching engineering students innovation development is commonly clearly understood. It is essential to achieve products which are attractive and profitable in the market. To achieve this, an institute of engineering education has to provide students with needed knowledge, skills and attitudes including both technical and business orientation. This is important especially for SME’s. Traditionally, education of engineering provides students with basic understanding how to solve common technical problems. However companies need wider view to achieve new products. Universities of applied Sciences in Oulu and Eindhoven want to research what is the today’s educational situation for this aim, to find criteria to improve the content of the educational system, and to improve the educational system. Important stakeholders are teachers and students within the institute but also key-persons in companies. The research is realized by questionnaires and interviews from which a current situation can be found. The research will also include the opinion of management who give possibilities to change the curriculum. By this research more insight will be presented about how to re-design a current curriculum. The research will act as basis for this discussion in SEFI-conference about formulating a curriculum that includes elements for wide-ranging knowledge and skills to achieve innovations especially in SME’s.
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Based on his personal experience, the author aims to examine some of the key competencies that he considers essential for facilitators of group activities in arts-based environmental education (AEE). In this, participants are encouraged to enhance their sensibility to the environment through artistic approaches. A case in point is a workshop called “making a little me”. Its participants sculpt – while keeping their eyes closed – a clay version of their own seated body in miniature. When guiding such a workshop, it is of critical importance, according to the author, to encourage the participants to suspend their judgments on the art works of others. The facilitator should make every effort to provide a safe environment by practicing “holding space”.
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In today’s technological world, human intertwinement with the rest of nature hasbeen severely diminished. In our digital culture, many people hardly have any direct experience of and sense of connection with “the real” of the natural world. The author assumes that when we want to find ways to mend this gap, arts-based environmental education (AEE) can play a meaningful role. In AEE, artmaking is regarded as itself a way of potentially gaining new understandings about our natural environment. As a reflective practitioner, the author facilitated three different AEE activities, at several times and at diverse locations. On basis of his observations, memories, written notes, audio-visual recordings and interviews with participants, teachers and informed outsiders, he interpreted the experiences both of participants and himself. To this end he employed interpretative phenomenological analysis paired with autoethnography.The artmaking activities researched here aimed to bring about a shift in focus. Participants were encouraged to approach natural phenomena not head-on, but in an indirect way. Moreover, the artmaking process aspired to heighten their awareness to the presence of their embodied self at a certain place. The research questions that the author poses in this study are: (1) What is distinctive in the process of the AEE activities that I facilitate?; (2) Which specific competencies can be identified for a facilitator of AEE activities?; and (3) Does participating in the AEE activities that I facilitate enhance the ability of participants to have a direct experience of feeling connected to the natural world?In this explorative study, the author identifies facilitated estrangement through participating in AEE as an important catalyst when aiming to evoke such instances of transformative learning. In undergoing such moments, participants grope their way in a new liminal space. Artmaking can create favorable conditions for this to happen through its defamiliarizing effect which takes participants away from merely acting according to habit (on “autopilot”). The open-ended structure of the artmaking activities contributed to the creation of a learning arena in which emergent properties could become manifest. Thus, participants could potentially experience a sense of wonder and begin to acquire new understandings – a form of knowing that the author calls “rudimentary cognition.” The research further suggests that a facilitator should be able to bear witness to and hold the space for whatever enfolds in this encounter with artistic process in AEE. He or she must walk the tightrope between control and non-interfering.The analysis of the impacts of the AEE activities that were facilitated leads the author to conclude that it is doubtful whether these in and of themselves caused participants to experience the natural environment in demonstrable new and deep ways. He asserts that most of their awareness was focused on the internal level of their own embodied presence; engagement with place, the location where the AEE activity was performed, seemed secondary. The findings show that AEE activities first and foremost help bring about the ignition and augmentation of the participants’ fascination and curiosity, centered in an increased awareness of their own body and its interactions with the natural world. The present study can be seen as a contribution to efforts of envisaging innovative forms of sustainable education that challenge the way we have distanced ourselves from the more-than-human world.
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Twenty sixteen year old fourth-graders of the School for Young Talent (School voor Jong Talent) in The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Design, Music and Dance (Hogeschool van Beeldende Kunsten, Muziek en Dans) participated in a pilot project that combined music, dance and visual arts in a creative process. A group of six teachers from three different disciplines guided the young artists. This report shows how this process took place and indicates some of the issues that were encountered along the way.
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This overview can be regarded as an atlas or travel guide with which the reader can follow a route along the various professorships. Chapter 2 centres on the professorships that are active in the field of Service Economy. Chapter 3 is dedicated to the professorships that are focussed on the field of Vital Region. Chapter 4 describes the professorships operating in the field of Smart Sustainable Industries. Chapter 5 deals with the professorships that are active in the field of the institution-wide themes of Design Based Education and Design Based Research. Lastly, in Chapter 6 we make an attempt to discover one or more connecting themes or procedures in the approach of the various professorships. This publication is not intended to give a definitive answer to the question as to what exactly NHL Stenden means by the concept of Design Based Research. The aim of this publication is to get an idea of everything that is happening in the NHL Stenden professorships and to pique one’s curiosity to find out more.
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