Frederiek Bennema introduces foraging as a strategy for learning and research within higher art education, and as a practice and an attitude focused on ecological thinking, care and dialogue. This article aims to offer insights into foraging and how it helps students navigate the landscape of art education. It further discusses how foraging relates to artistic research and how it can help position artistic research in relation to more established forms of research.
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How can further insight into the relationship between artistic and socially added values of arts and culture initiatives result in new ways of working together? Collaborating with the KultuurLoket of VRIJDAG Groningen and contributing to the Artistic Platform currently being set up in Veendam, researchers from the professorship Image in Context of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences have composed a visual method to develop a ‘Social Artistic Values Canvas’. This method initiates a ‘feedback flow’, which allows researchers and participants to work together, arrive at new insights, and trigger new forms of social artistic action. Measuring impact thereby creates impact: an emergent approach which allows a new ecosystem to arise.
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This article presents and discusses an extracurricular, co-constructed programme: “The Catalyst Club” as a form of Artistic Educational Commoning (AEC). Having been developed as part of a PhD research at Minerva Art Academy (Groningen, TheNetherlands), The Catalyst Club (TCC) explored new perspectives on the education of artists and designers in a globalized world and created alternative modes of operating in higher art education. It brought together students, alumni, teachers from a range of disciplines, and external participants. During developing TCC, the author occupied a dual role as researcher and participant, working together with others in an artistic co-creative process. TCC drew on and developed the methods relating to Collaborative Autoethnography, Participatory Action Research and Artistic Research. This study presents AEC as a communal effort to build spaces for learning and experimentation. They are created through interaction and cooperation, based on social relations and the production of shared values. As such it can offer a counterbalance to the extensive individualisation, instrumentalization, and commodification of communities in higher art education. The article formulates some recommendations on how AEC can reconnect the education of artists and designers with the role of the arts in wider technological, societal, and political contexts.
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This project develops a European network for transdisciplinary innovation in artistic engagement as a catalyst for societal transformation, focusing on immersive art. It responds to the professionals in the field’s call for research into immersive art’s unique capacity to ‘move’ people through its multisensory, technosocial qualities towards collective change. The project brings together experts leading state-of-the-art research and practice in related fields with an aim to develop trajectories for artistic, methodological, and conceptual innovation for societal transformation. The nascent field of immersive art, including its potential impact on society, has been identified as a priority research area on all local-to-EU levels, but often suffers from the common (mis)perception as being technological spectacle prioritising entertainment values. Many practitioners create immersive art to enable novel forms of creative engagement to address societal issues and enact change, but have difficulty gaining recognition and support for this endeavour. A critical challenge is the lack of knowledge about how their predominantly sensuous and aesthetic experience actually lead to collective change, which remains unrecognised in the current systems of impact evaluation predicated on quantitative analysis. Recent psychological insights on awe as a profoundly transformative emotion signals a possibility to address this challenge, offering a new way to make sense of the transformational effect of directly interacting with such affective qualities of immersive art. In parallel, there is a renewed interest in the practice of cultural mediation, which brings together different stakeholders to facilitate negotiation towards collective change in diverse domains of civic life, often through creative engagements. Our project forms strategic grounds for transdisciplinary research at the intersection between these two developments. We bring together experts in immersive art, psychology, cultural mediation, digital humanities, and design across Europe to explore: How can awe-experiences be enacted in immersive art and be extended towards societal transformation?
The objective of this PD-pathway is pioneering an interdisciplinary composition practice in societal contexts, informed by the scientific field of psychology. Three immersive multi-medium, music-centered compositions involving music and choreography will be created within an existing interdisciplinary practice. The PD's contribution to knowledge lies in the (new) ways of merging music and choreography, the bridging of human psychology and the arts as well as its artistic research approach.
Inside Out is an innovative research project that translates cutting-edge microbiome science into immersive, multisensory experiences aimed at long-term behavioral and mental health transformation. Combining extended reality (XR), speculative gastronomy, and narrative therapy, the project enables participants to explore their inner microbiome landscape through taste, smell, touch, and interactive storytelling. This pioneering methodology connects gut-brain science with emotional and sensory engagement. Participants experience their bodies from the inside out, cultivating a visceral understanding of the symbiotic microbial worlds within us. The project includes AI-generated "drinkable memories," microbiome-inspired food designs, haptic-olfactory VR environments, and robotic interactions that choreograph the body as terrain. Developed in collaboration with designers from Polymorf, producer Studio Biarritz, psychiatrist-researcher Anja Lok, and microbiome scientists from Amsterdam UMC and the Amsterdam Microbiome Expertise Center, Inside Out bridges scientific rigor with artistic expression. The project seeks to: • Increase embodied understanding of the microbiome’s role in health and well-being • Shift public perception from hygiene-based fear to ecological thinking • Inspire behavioral change related to food, gut health, and mental resilience The outcomes are designed to reach a large audience and implementation in science museums, art-science festivals, and educational programs, with a view toward future clinical applications in preventive healthcare and mental well-being. By making the invisible microbiome tangible, Inside Out aims not only to inform, but to transform—redefining how we relate to the ecosystems within us.
