This strategic partnership will employ the specific resources that are available within the field of art education to develop a pedagogy of imaginative dialogues. Such dialogues allow pupils/students to recognize both experientially and reflectively that values, however strongly felt, are never given, but result from an act of valuing that is shared by all. The partnership has a threefold focus: 1) A new pedagogy: the pedagogy of imaginative dialogues (PIMDI) 2) A new approach: zooming in on the act of valuing 3) Tackling an underlying problem: the paradox of democratization 1. Drawing on the resources available in the field of arts education, the strategic partnership will develop a new mode of education: the pedagogy of imaginative dialogues. This new pedagogy takes the (potential) tension between seemingly incompatible cultural values as a productive and engaging starting point in order to open up a dialogical space between them. The pedagogy is imaginative in the sense that it employs artistic forms and strategies, already available in the field of the arts (education), to play out the contrast between cultural values in a fruitful and non-violent manner. Once the contrasts have been properly drawn out, experimental variations will be developed in which the consequences of valuing one thing over another are explored in various settings. 2. By taking the (radical) differences between cultural values seriously without immediately trying to overcome or mediate them, the pedagogy of imaginative dialogues will allow students and pupils to get a better insight in the process of valuing as such, highlighting its historical and social conditions. On the one hand, this reveals a shared investment in giving value to the world around us, opening up a rich potential of possible ways of doing this. On the other, it will instil a critical attitude in participants and enable them to evaluate the mechanisms of value formations as well as the unarticulated inconsistencies and contradictions that lie therein. 3. The underlying problem thus tackled is the waning of a collective, shared system of values, which is, among other things, due to democratization. The simultaneous presence, in the public sphere, of widely divergent perspectives, has led to what could be coined as the paradox of democratization: stimulating diversity, democracy runs the risk of losing the common ground that allows for an interaction between perspectives. The pedagogy of imaginative dialogues aims at re-establishing such a common ground – not in terms of a shared system of values, but through a shared insight into the process of valuing as such. The project involves five partners from four European countries: 1) The Master of Education in Arts at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, a joint degree with NHL Stenden University at Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. (Hanzehogeschool Groningen & NHL Stenden Hogeschool) 2) The Master track in Arts Education at the department of Arts, Culture, and Media of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) 3) The Master Arts Education at the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik in Iceland. (Listahaskoli Island) 4) The Master Fine Arts at the University of Agder in Norway. (UiA) 5) The Master Theatre pedagogy and Dance pedagogy at Uniarts Helsinki in Finland. (Taideyliopisto) The project involves four different target groups as shareholders: a) the Master students of the five partners, all of whom are (prospective) teachers; b) their professors and lecturers; c) their pupils/participants in formal and informal educational settings (e.g., primary and secondary education, art academies, cultural institutions); d) local educational and cultural institutions involved in arts education. In line with this, the following initiatives will be taken: - Establishing a Northern European learning community (involving the staff and Master students of the six partner institutes), the aim of which is to develop, explore and try out a joint pedagogical approach: the pedagogy of imaginative dialogues. - Intensive study weeks for Master students with a virtual kick-off and blended preparation in which PIMDI will be developed, explored and tried out. - Dialogical sessions on PIMDI with local partners that work in formal and informal educational settings. - Five intellectual outputs: (1) a course curriculum, (2) a pedagogical methodology, (3) a teaching toolkit, (4) reflecting documentation, (5) a series of peer-reviewed academic papers. - Setting up a Sounding Board in which representatives from arts educational institutes in eastern and southern Europe will reflect on the results and broaden the learning community for further collaboration.
We said in the application that we wanted to develop an innovative, interdisciplinary, and art-inspired pedagogical framework along three lines: 1. Framing the problem of finding unity in diversity. 2. Shifting the search for a common ground from the level of values to that of the act of valuing. 3. Developing a particular pedagogy in which this approach is made fruitful in an arts educational setting. The problem of the paradox of democratization was embodied by the group of participants. It was exactly at this micro-level, where the problem of unity in diversity was already fully at play, that the paradox of democratization can be made fruitful. Instead of taking up the big discussions (e.g., racism, gender, climate change) in which positions are pre-defined, the imaginative dialogue shifts the attention to the defining smaller differences that lay at the core of these big discussions and that remain unseen within them (e.g., responses to bodily proximity, more and less direct forms of communication). Here a shift could be made from the levels of values to that of the act of valuing.
As expressed in its motto (“in varietate concordia”), the EU aimed from the beginning to find unity in diversity. This motto does not express a ready-made solution, but a problem. This strategic partnership took this problem as a starting point and reframed it in terms of a paradox that threatens to undermine the EU from within. The more inclusive a society becomes (diversity), the harder it is to find shared values and common ideals with which that society can imagine itself as a whole (unity). We coined this the paradox of democratization. To address this paradox, we proposed to develop a pedagogy of imaginative dialogues. The guiding question was: how can the imaginative tools that are already available within the domain of the arts/ arts education be used to make this paradox fruitful? To achieve this, we designed a series of experimental contexts (during a set of intensive weeks) to try out different versions of the ‘imaginative dialogue’. Based on these try outs we then articulated the outline for a pedagogical framework (e.g., theoretical principles, pedagogical concepts, a teaching toolkit, a method for reflective documentation, a blueprint for a curriculum).