Between sky and sea! Research days at Notodden Campus

Image: Lovise Søyland’s whole body drawings done at site in a freezing forest with charcoal, exhibited at the USN Notodden campus gallery “Foajégalleriet”. Photo by Lovise Søyland.

This year’s open research seminar was held on the 26 of September in collaboration with the Centre for kindergarten research, development and innovation (SEBUTI)

Additionally, the theme for the whole research day initiative this year was “The Sea”.

We therefore called the seminar: Between sky and sea! Material and bodily learning processes in early childhood and school environment (Mellom himmel og hav! Materielle og kroppslige læreprosesser i barnehagens og skolens miljø).

While we aimed to share the research done during the year to participants invited from the practice field and outside the academia, we also aimed to share our research perspectives between researchers who are interested in materially and bodily mediated creative processes from early childhood to adult age and discover what we have in common.

The program was thus filled with interesting presentations ranging from kindergarten contexts to autoethnographic studies of drawing in a freezing forest, from programming in arts and crafts in schools to materially mediated processes of experiential learning in cultural heritage contexts.

From EMAL we heard the following presentations:

Marte S. Gulliksen: Authenticity in Reenactment practice,

Sondre Storeggen: Programming in arts and crafts,

Kirstine Riis & Anne-Louise Bang: Textile crafts in an sustainable perspective (Tekstilhåndverk i bærekraftsperspektiv),

Camilla Groth: Presentation of the new book Craft Sciences,

Ann-Hege Lorvik Waterhouse: Keynote: Material poetic moments – An artographic study of young children’s experimental material processes in kindergarten (Materialpoetiske øyeblikk – En artografisk studie av små barns eksperimentelle materialprosesser i barnehagen),

Trude Iversen & Ann-Hege Lorvik Waterhouse: Material (exploration) research in the marginal zone. An investigation of children’s traces of action in the exploration of textile invitations in the beach zone, (Materielle (ut)forskninger i randsonen. En undersøkelse av barns spor av handling i utforsking av tekstile invitasjoner i strandsonen),

Lovise Søyland: Embodied Drawing: Why Manual Drawing Matters in our Digital Age,

Alison Clark, Kari Carlsen & Solveig Nordtømme: Taking time back – pedagogical documentation as a tool in slow pedagogies,

Per Ola Juusola: Deep learning technology within the visually creative subjects, opportunities and challenges. (Deep learning teknologi innen de visuelt skapende fagene, muligheter og utfordringer).

About 45 participants came to the event and joined in the discussions.