PhD Courses in Denmark

Welcome to Participatory Arts-based research for social action and educational change

Description:

This course offers an in-depth exploration into participatory arts-based approaches to education, social work, radical participation, social activism, and learning with focus on theatre, drama and performance. Arts-related methods are employed by many researchers within social work, health and health care, education, community building and they are practiced in both public and private organizations. Arts-based approaches are associated with diverse concepts like sensory aware practices, aesthetic (learning) processes, micro-democracy, deliberation, and radical organizational change just to mention a few. However, for young researchers, questions about the workings of arts-based approaches to knowledge creation often arise – such as: 

• can I engage in arts-based research without being artist or having specific arts competences and training (spoiler: the answer is yes!)
• what can research gain from involving artistic practices and artists? 
• how are the relationships between the researcher, the craftsmanship of research, and the contexts in which arts-based approaches are employed? 
• how do the arts affect research, participants and context? 
• what competences are necessary to engage in arts-based approaches to research?

There is no doubt that arts-based approaches involve the researcher in a cross-fields of basic questions that may be experienced as paradoxical and problematic, especially concerning relationships between knowledge, personal and collective experience, theory, method, action and learning. Even more so, it is actual for participatory instances. Growing artistic practices since the postmodern challenges to “canon”, tradition and establishment, have developed tools, tactics and strategies to work collaboratively with their participants (citizens, patients, learners, practitioners, organisations). What are the consequences for research in this field? How is it possible to document and make sense of the complexity in participatory artistic practices?

Two Aalborg University researchers with knowledge and experience in participatory arts-based approaches to knowledge creation and learning are present throughout the course as well as providing talks with each of their perspective on arts in research and change with the aim of securing coherence in the course. The acknowledged professors Allan Owens and Anne Pässilä will be holding vibrant workshops in the course and support the participants’ engagement with lived and imagined experiences in aesthetic forms.

The purpose of the course is to pass along knowledge and produce new experiences with and understanding of arts-based approaches to change. Target group are Ph.D.-students who are interested in creative approaches to participatory and/or educational research or who already employ methodologies and approaches that operate in this field. No requirement for previous experience with arts-based research or artistic practices is needed, but only curiosity about alternative methodologies. We operate with the criteria of “low skills and high sensitivity”.

In line with this, the course activities will aim at maximum involvement of the Ph.D.-students’ own resources with the purpose of building concrete, hands-on competence and experimentation with own research practice during the course. To meet this end, the course participants will work with a facilitated participatory and arts-based mission throughout the course.

Learning goals of the course:

• build up knowledge and understanding of arts-based approaches and their diversity, potentials, and dynamics in research 
• widening methodological and methodological opportunities for reflection and action within their own Ph.D.-project
• getting inspiration and new perspectives on their own Ph.D.-project
• learning how to challenge/trouble/question their arts-based methods and/or participatory practices
• engage in practice with arts-based methodologies

For additional information, updates, and registration, please refer to AAU PhD Moodle via the link provided on the right side of this page.