Contribution short abstract

“Digging for Diversity” is a teaching experiment that uses inter-, transdisciplinary and arts-based methods to empower students. It attempts to implement pedagogies of hope by facilitating experience in real world problem solving and giving the students a sense of agency.

Contribution long abstract

This short talk is about how arts-based, transdisciplinary and embodied teaching and learning can explore our current crises’ while empowering the students. It draws a connection to the idea of “pedagogies of hope” by highlighting how real world problem-solving can restore a sense of agency. The course was structured around three phases: "digging," "sowing," and "harvesting & composting”. The first phase was designed to facilitate self-reflection on the own positionality of the students and their role in these challenging times. The second was focused on getting to know the idea of “regeneration” through reading, engaging with researchers from different disciplines and artistic exercises that offered space for cognitive and emotional processes. In the last phase the students put the idea of regeneration into practice in projects in various civil society contexts (e.g. elementary school, international development cooperation, adults with special needs, activism). The students reflected on their learning processes in these projects extensively. It became apparent that the students felt empowered and could recognize their own agency through the projects. The focus on “regeneration” created a sense of hope among the students because the concept acknowledges the crises, the losses and the challenges but offers hope that new forms of community, human-non-human relationships are possible.