Participatory Arts-based research for social action and educational change (2026)
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Welcome to Participatory Arts-based research for social action and educational change
Descriptio...
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
Teaching methods:
Lectures, parallel aesthetic presentation workshops, plenary discussions, reflexive exercises.
Response-ability in the care of the “Other” in arts-based research by Tatiana Chemi:
Participatory arts-based practices in educational and social change connect all participants by means of relational and sensory exchanges. Recognizing this relational and sensory character can influence the ways in which our educational utopias come to life and the purpose of pedagogical actions. Learning environments that take care of their members in caring and compassionate ways are generous (Turner & Campbell), hospitable (Derrida) and poetic. Poetic communities are brought together by/through sustained practice(s) that are embodied and rely on poetic meaning-making and sense-making. These practices are poetic in the Haraway sense of collective creation: sympoiesis. Poiesis is the action that transforms by means of aesthetic experiences and actions. These experiences are brought about by metaphorical, associative, relational, affective practices. For this reason, the arts uniquely shape and perform communities as poetic encounters where “showing up” (Haraway) is a matter of (micro)democratic ability to respond to social, cultural, environmental challenges. Poetic communities operate by means of embodied laboratory approaches and their pedagogy of freedom and love.
Collective crafts and arts in action research for social and democratic deliberation by Julie Borup Jensen:
Recently, action research has moved towards new and creative approaches to knowledge production in order to follow the radical social justice and change heritage from traditional emancipatory action research. This involves arts-based approaches to knowledge and exploration, and contemporary calls in international journals and conferences concern questions of action research as craft or even research practices that are fundamentally artistic. For instance, the Action Research Journal sent out a call for papers in 2020 with the title Artfulness in the Organizational Playground. Global climate change, the grand transformation, sustainability and the like play a role this movement. The assumption behind this lecture is that the arts inspire and thematize inclusive, participatory, socially just, and co-creational energies in research that aspires to engage participants in democratic change as well as creating new and inspiring knowledge in the process.
This lecture gives an insight in my perspectives on creative and artistic approaches that aims at inspiring the course participants to reflect on their own research practice and its artistic aspects.
Critical Learning through Arts-Based Research Practices by Allan Owens and Anne Pässilä:
The workshop is concerned with the ways in which critical creativity, in both theory and practice, is put to work in education research and learning situations across a range of settings and international contexts. Critical creativity is a term coined to reflect contextual engagements of creative practice in social, aesthetic and political contexts within the broader sphere of learning and education. The criticality alluded to is the means by which creative acts and practices reveal and expose configurations of power and influence that might otherwise remain concealed, providing deep analytical insights into the apparently anarchic worlds of subjective and imaginative learning environments. The workshop is based on the book Critical Learning through Creative Research Practices, 2026, Palgrave.
Description of paper requirements:
The Ph.D.-student is obliged to send an abstract as guidance for their own work in the course, which can be either 1) an outline for a research paper or 2) a project description of their Ph.D.-project.
Either way, the abstract should be delivered no later than September 15th, and be max. 1000 words, containing:
- Short cv (max 100 words)
- Purpose of the paper / project
- Method considerations and methodological reflections
- Tentative literature and theoretical considerations
- Artistic expression of project or parts of the project
Organiser:
Tatiana Chemi, tch@ikk.aau.dk, Department of Culture and Communication, CO-LEARN
Julie Borup Jensen, jbjen@ikk.aau.dk, Department of Culture and Communication, CO-LEARN
Lecturers:
Tatiana Chemi
Julie Borup Jensen
Allan Owens
Anne Pässilä
Stephan Vernier
ECTS:
4 ECTS
Date:
7, 8, 9 December 2026
Place:
Aalborg University (AAU)
City:
Aalborg, Denmark
Number of seats:
25
Deadline for enrolment:
15 September 2026
Important information concerning PhD courses:
There is a no-show fee of DKK 3,000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before the start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days.
We cannot ensure any seats before the deadline for enrolment; all participants will be informed after the deadline, approximately 3 weeks before the start of the course.
You may find more information in our FAQ: https://phd.moodle.aau.dk/local/page/faq
For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration at phdcourses@adm.aau.dk. When contacting us please state the course title and course period. Thank you.