During the art workshop, through painting, drawing, and collage, we explored the concept of educational knowledge and its aspects we find meaningful. The artistic expression enabled us to visualise our understandings but also to deepen our approach to our interdisciplinary research inquiry. The discussions around the produced works were particularly insightful, deepening our shared meaning-making around the abstract concepts and relations between knowledge, students, and higher education. We talked about fields, paths, lines, threads, as well as objects, frames, signs, and structures of knowledge. Our works featured representations of growth, complexity, and diachronic aspects of different forms of knowledge: formed, digital, vague, and erased. Connections, transitions, relations, disruptions were also highlighted in our reflections.
Through playful use of watercolours, acrylic paints, and newspaper cutouts, the art workshop proved to be a refreshing way to reflect on our academic and personal understandings related to this joint research project. We were inspired by previous research as well as the scenic surrounding of the Saari Residence located near the Mietoistenlahti Nature Reserve in the southwest of Finland.
Our project will organise similar art workshops in combination with focus group interviews with university students to explore their reflections on knowledge. The works produced by students will be presented in an exhibition which will inspire new insights for the participants and our research.
Gallery: Works produced during the art workshop
Text: Vesna Holubek