“art allows us to symbolize knowledge, understanding, and feeling through image, thus making it possible to transcend a finite time and culture” Gregory Cajete, 1994

"...And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the wind longs to play with your hair."
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point dancing it.”
Isadora Duncan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Date: Friday 10 July to Wednesday 15 July, 2015 (6 days)

Location: Café Cultura Kapingbdi, Rua Principal, Barras, 3420-402 Tábua, Portugal

Cost:
300€ Early bird – Until March 24, 2015
450€ Regular (March 25 to May 15, 2015)
Price includes accommodation (communal and camping), tuition, all materials, all coffee breaks and lunches for 6 days, 3 dinners, river excursion, hike and social events.
*does not include transportation from Coimbra but ride sharing and other inexpensive options will be arranged

Participants: graduate students, community artists, anyone interested in these approaches

Language: primarily English (academic readings), with Portuguese

Contact: ces@ces.uc.pt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Objectives:

1. Engage with issues of power related to knowledge construction in research and higher education by exploring the nexus of arts and science.
2. Experiment with and discuss creative research and teaching methods for participation, collaboration and justice.

Description: The course will use performative learning and participatory, adult-education processes to engage participants in exploring the use of various arts-based methods (images, meditation, poetry, song, dance, etc.) in their work. Participants will explore the theoretical groundings of these approaches while engaging actively to learn specific facilitation skills and ways to collaborate with artists or other creative professionals when needed. The course will build a community of practice to support one another particularly where these methods challenge the norms of their disciplines, institutions and colleagues.

We will have internet, computer projectors and other technology in order to present multiple art forms but we will use the out-of-doors in much of the learning exchanges in order to be fully in the local place including walking in the mountains, and being on the water. We will learn about the local issues with Baldios (common lands) for example, and have visits from art workers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Programme (Final program will be published in June)

Thursday Evening – arrival at Quinta da Encavafala
· Registration and “check in” to quinta

Day 1 (Friday) – Café Cultura Kapingbdi
· Introductions, overview and invitation to co-construct the programme

· Coffee break

· Tastings and trials of diverse arts as investigation: participants will experiment with multiple ways to express their own narratives of their research and their specific interests and objectives for taking part in this summer school. This will begin the process of participants forming collaborations for group projects and communicating what they can share as well as what they hope others can share with them about arts and research.

· Lunch

· Afternoon on the Montego River - A “waking-up” of critical thinking and creative skills while flowing on the river by kayak and canoe.

· Dinner under the stars

· Evening bat interpretation

Day 2 (Saturday) – beginning in Oliveira do Hospital (transportation from Quinta)

· A “grounding” to the earth while walking from urban to rural and through history (Roman ruins in the civil parish of Bobadela), natural history, culture, economics and other social issues of the area including those on the baldios

· Lunch and “pool and shade” break at Quinta

· Issues of power, knowledge, empire, representation and research

· Project planning

· Open space – no dinner planned* (options include café and restaurants within walking distance, or make own dinner at quinta)

Day 3 (Sunday) - Café Cultura Kapingbdi

· Exploration of sound and lack of sight (guest instructor – to be confirmed)

· Coffee break

· More sound and lack of sight

· Lunch

· Movement and our bodies making art and meaning

· Coffee break

· University degree issues: how can dance, painting, novels and other creative formats meet the requirement of a dissertation within a social science faculty? ethical issues of arts practices (How do we evaluate the “rigor” of the scholarship? What are the implications of using normative academic measures of evaluation?)

· Dinner

Day 4 (Monday) - Café Cultura Kapingbdi and Quinta* Participant initiatives
This day will be primarily reserved for initiatives from participants. Inscription feedback will be used to set the schedule of this day

· Coffee break

· Lunch

· Coffee break

· Open space – no dinner planned* (options include café and restaurants within walking distance, or make own dinner at quinta)

Day 5 (Tuesday) - Café Cultura Kapingbdi

· Creative prose (poetry, fiction, other)

· Coffee break

· Continuation of creative prose

· Lunch

· plastic arts (painting, college, sculpture)

· Coffee break

· plastic arts (painting, college, sculpture)

· Dinner (Moroccan vegetarian feast – to be confirmed)

· Art and Community Evening - open evening session with local musicians and other artists

Day 6 (Wednesday) - Café Cultura Kapingbdi

· Research, knowledge and power: Do arts have to be “translated” into or explained by linear text to use in “academic” scholarship? Is this possible? What are the critical issues and the implications of attempts at translation and explanation? Indigenous knowledges (respecting and allying or appropriating?)

· Coffee

· Guerrilla art making and protest, activist-researchers

· Lunch

· Arts and science outside of the academy (community practices, professional and amateur artist)

· Coffee

· Evaluations, schedule for receiving written reports and project elements

· Closing and leaving

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Assignments: Participants will engage in individual or group projects based on their specific needs and interests, including refining their methodologies for their research projects, refining an arts practice, or tackling conceptual questions relating to arts and sciences. Participants will be invited to share their work with the local community during evening cafés. Participants will also be invited to co-create with facilitators and any interested community members, a collection of both creative and analytical work in the form of written text as well as audio-visual presentations.

Alison Neilson is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies in the Science, Economy and Society (NECES) group. She holds a PhD in Comparative, International and Development Education from the University of Toronto, an MSc on bat ecology and conservation (York University, Canada) and a BES in environmental studies (University of Waterloo, Canada). She conducts narrative and arts-informed research on the way sustainability is understood and manifest in education and policy. Her current research is about the ways that people who live on islands, the Azores, learn to be part of the governance system related to life on the sea. She studies the processes of education, including informal, nonformal and formal, to understand how people are enculturated into governance structures and how the issues and structures themselves are constructed.

Alison Neilson has taught creative and outdoor teaching methods and arts-informed research methodology in Canada, Portugal, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Ecuador. Her PhD dissertation and subsequent book Disrupting Privilege, Identity, and Meaning: A Reflexive Dance of Environmental Education (2006/2008) used arts-informed research to explore power and privilege, and to deal with questions of equity and social justice within environmental practice and involved educators from Iran, Tanzania, Brazil, Paraguay, Columbia, Canada and First Nations.

Maria Paula Meneses is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. She is also a member of the Centre for Social Studies Aquino de Bragança, in Mozambique. Among the research topics which she currently works on are postcolonial debates, legal pluralism, with particular emphasis on the relations between the State and the ‘traditional authorities’ in the African context, and the role of official history, memory and ‘other’ stories in the rescue of a broader sense of belonging in the field of contemporary identity processes, especially in the African geopolitical context.

Maria Paula Meneses has taught at the University Pablo Olavide (Spain), SOAS (UK), Bayreuth (Germany), Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil), among others.

Among her published works are: O Direito por fora do Direito: as instâncias extra-judiciais de resolução de conflitos em Luanda (co-edited with Julio Lopes, Almedina, 2012); Epistemologias do Sul (co-edited with Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Cortez, 2012); and Law and Justice in a Multicultural Society: The Case of Mozambique (co-edited with Boaventura de Sousa Santos and João Carlos Trindade, CODESRIA, 2006).