Tag Archives: research

Right to Culture – a Resource Package by Arts Council Malta

12 Apr

Last month ACM launched ‘Right to Culture’. I had the pleasure to be involved in the process for the focus groups and the interviews, just before and during the first lockdown in 2020.

It was an eyeopening experience for me.  The sessions and the interviews proved how important this commitment of the arts council and the national policy is. Even for cultural institutions outside Malta this resource package offers interesting tools and insights.

You can read more here and access the English version of the document here

 

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Publication Meeting of Minds on Placemaking, Co-creation and Storytelling now available

11 Jul

Placemaking is about people, about living together, about a sense of belonging and carving spaces together, about co- creation and sharing stories. And it is crucial for society, especially now as it enters a new dimension in times of a global pandemic that affects us all. What will placemaking look like after COVID-19? What did we learn and what can we take with us to the future? How will we socialise, move from one place to another, (inter)act with and in public spaces after the pandemic?

These questions guided a series of four online sessions which were held between the 7th and 30th of April (2020), connecting placemaking with the future of cities, tourism, the arts, urban design and digital storytelling. Experts and other interested persons were brought together across borders to discuss possible ways forward by learning from good practices. The response was overwhelming, both from the speakers that were contacted to take part, and from the diverse participants eager to share and exchange ideas.

The discussions were rich, intense and generated much food for thought. This publication is the result of an inclusive thinking process with all participants, offering a reflective and critical lens on placemaking. It works as a toolkit, gathering the presentations and giving insight in the main topics and strong examples that emerged from the discussions. It also lists key points to consider whilst working with communities and involving people in a co-creation process. This series ends with a non-exhaustive reading list as there are many interesting papers, reports and links to learn from.

Thank you to all the speakers and participants, because without them there would have been no publication. A special thank you goes to Nika for helping Stefan and myself with proofreading.

We hope you will enjoy wandering through this publication and get inspired. You can access the publication here.

And you can have an impression of the meetings thanks to this nice feature by Maltarti.

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Our article ‘Collaborative Design Thinking (CoDeT: A Co-design Approach for High Child-to-adult Ratio” has been published!

28 Jun

Delighted and honoured to have been able to contribute as a co-autor to this paper, which presents the 

Collaborative Design Thinking (CoDeT) co-design approach, its theoretical framework, and its application in a case study with 49 children aged 9 to 10 in two schools.  

CoDeT can be applied  in co-design settings characterized by high child-to-adult ratios (ca.1 adult for 15 to 20 children), such as schools, museums and maker spaces. In these settings, children have to work relatively independent from adults who become guides on the side. This can be challenging due to children’s limited understanding of the design process and their lack of skills to collaborate productively towards a shared design goal. CoDeT addresses these challenges by integrating principles of Social Interdependence Theory (SIT) and Design Thinking (DT), which together form the theoretical backbone of the approach. CoDeT was first applied in a case study and yielded promising results in terms of children’s collaboration and design thinking skills, yet possible improvements were found. The insights of this case study informed the revised version of CoDeT presented at the end of the article, in a what-why-how structure, allowing researchers and practitioners to apply the co-design approach in a wide variety of contexts characterised by high child-to-adult ratios.

You can find the article here (full text free accessible and downloadable for 50 days). 

CoDeT outcomes can be interpreted with the GLID method; a multimodal approach for integrating verbal, material and other co-design outcomes in a structured and coherent analysis. For more information, see the IJHCS article “The GLID method: Moving from design features to underlying values in co-design”.

With Maarten Van Mechelen, Bieke Zamman, Bert Willems and Vero Vanden Abeele.

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So glad to see this …

28 Apr

Screenshot 2019-04-28 at 09.21.13In 2017 I had the pleasure to work with the great team of the Erasmus Hogeschool (EhB)  – Department of Design and Technology  – in Brussels on a new curriculum called Digital Design & Development. Design Thinking is at its core. The course trains young people to become critical digital experience designers and is completely based on project-based learning, combining play, creativity, technology, human-centred design, societal challenges and art.  It is so nice to see now that this is actually happening and that the gender balance is getting in the right direction, because technology is not just a male thing 😉

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Challenging Times

3 Dec

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During the parallel session Challenging Times of the Valletta 2018 conference Living Cities, Liveable Spaces: Placemaking & Identity, Colleagues Pamela Baldacchino and Dr. Benna Chase gave insight of our ongoing research linked with the Deep Shelter Project at the Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre. Honoured to be part of this research.

Together with the other presentations during that session, it was an inspiring and rich morning at the conference. Thanks go also to Prof. Franco Bianchini for moderating it so well and to the conference committee for bringing such interesting papers together in this session.

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Lecture on Arts Education for the MRER

18 Dec

AECSim

The lecture was part of the MRER (Malta Review of Educational Research) Lecture Series in collaboration with Edukarti (Art Education organisation based at Department of Arts, Open Communities and Adult Education, Faculty of Education, University of Malta). It focused on the role of Arts Educators in a changing society and their influence on Higher Arts Education.  This is in fact a topic that continuously offers debate between arts educators and art practitioners. Artists are becoming educators, facilitators, researchers and inspirers not just in schools but also in socio-cultural, business and community settings. So which challenges lie ahead of us as lecturers and what implications do these challenges have on the training of Arts Educators as we prepare them for these new roles?

The topic is analysed starting from this year’s winner of the Turner prize since for me this nicely sums up what it is about. From there the reflections tapped into my  own challenges and experiences in higher arts education over the last couple of years.

You can find the slides of the presentation AECS

 

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New Course, New Place — started yesterday

29 Sep

12019938_10153691678216289_313438978359216208_nActive Design Processes – Collaborative Practice – A course for the 3rd years Digital Design at the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences at the University of Malta . Nice group of students. Loving it!

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sound & image happening in Museum M

25 Jan

ImageMost welcome at M in the evening. Entrance is free, no reservation needed:

16.30 Introduction by Peter Jacquemyn (LUCA – Sint-Lukas Brussels)

17.00 Jeroen D’hoe: Creative ear-sight. (LUCA – Lemmensinstituut Leuven) A composer’s inquiry into cross-artistic research

17.30 Wim Lambrecht: ‘Suite Traced in Light’, sound fragments by Peter Maxwell Davies, Dmitri Sjostakovitsj and Wolfgang A. Mozart (LUCA – Sint-Lucas Visual Arts Ghent)

18.00 Robin Hayward: States of Rushing – lecture (TU Berlin, DE)

18.30 Pause

19.30 States of Rushing, performance by Robin Hayward (TU Berlin, DE)

20.30 2 x 2 performance by Peter Jacquemyn, Klaas Verpoest, Jan Pillaert (LUCA – Sint-Lukas Brussels) and Sigrid Tanghe.

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