Research & Topic Groups

Latvian Academy of Culture

2023-2026
National research project (Latvia) “Preconditions of authentic youth participation in formal and non-formal education (UNFRAMED)” (implemented by Latvian Academy of Culture)
The objective of the project is to create new knowledge on the factors and expressions of young people’s (13-25 years old) participation, its authenticity in formal and non-formal education settings, as well as in extracurricular activities; develop strategies and practical solutions for the promotion of authentic and meaningful participation both on individual level and in the interaction of involved stakeholders; make an epistemological and practical contribution to the development of a youth-centred participatory approach.

2023-2025
National research project “Striving Towards Participatory Engagement in Museums: Inquiry into Museum Education Practice in Latvia (MEET)” (implemented by Latvian Academy of Culture)
The study identifies determinants of the advancement of participation from museum perspective and by applying participatory action research methodology – from the perspective of communities of practice as well as reveals broader imprint to lives of engaged communities, to museums and in a wider cultural or socio-political contexts. The five case studies focus on five communities of young people participating in different Latvian museum activities.

2023-2024
Applied study (Latvia) “Evaluation of the cultural education programme “Latvian School Bag” for the period from the 2018/2019 school year to the 2022/2023 school year” (implemented by Latvian Academy of Culture, commissioned by Latvian Nation Centre for Culture).
The aim of the study is to evaluate the cultural education programme “Latvian School Bag” for the period from the school year 2018/2019 to the school year 2022/2023 in order to improve the effectiveness of the programme implementation.
Study available in Latvian!

2023
Applied study (Latvia) “Developing a concept for monitoring youth policy and youth work” (implemented by Latvian Academy of Culture, “R.Education”, ltd, and society „NEXT” in 2023, commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Science, Republic of Latvia)
The aim of the study is to develop a concept for monitoring youth policy and youth work.
Study available in Latvian!

2022
Study (Latvia) “Young people in Latvia: participation in cultural and creative activities” (implemented by Latvian Academy of Culture in the framework of the research project “CARD” in 2022).
One of the work phases of the National Research Programme project CARD was “Participatory Practices of Society and Heritage Communities. Heritage communities in the youth segment” and one of the tasks was to analyse the cultural practices of young people. Therefore, a questionnaire was developed for young people aged 18-25 to find out what cultural and creative activities young people engage in, both as spectators and as active participants; whether these activities have changed significantly since their school days and what role heritage practices play in the context of other cultural and social activities.
Study available in Latvian!

•  Edwin van Meerkerk, Radboud University: Evaluation of the Quality Cultural Education subsidy scheme on local, regional, and national levels. Quantitative and qualitative survey of the vision, competence, programme, and collaboration of primary schools in the field of arts and cultural education.
•  Melissa Bremmer, Amsterdam University of the Arts – Inclusive composing: The qualitative survey research project Inclusive composing will take a closer look at the questions: What attitude, knowledge, and skills do professional composers need to compose collaboratively with an inclusive music ensemble that includes music technology? What education do students in higher music education need to develop as professional composers in inclusive music practices?  The research project will form the basis for a new elective on inclusive composing.
•  Emiel Heijnen, Amsterdam University of the Arts – Creative citizenship: The Lesson Study Research project will explore the integration of citizenship education with arts education. Supported by experts, a group of teachers in Secondary Vocational Education will jointly design a lesson, execute this lesson in their practice, and observe how students experience the jointly designed lesson. Because the same lesson is carried out at different  Secondary Vocational schools, the participating teachers form a research group in which experiences are shared and discussed.

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) – Tone Pernille Østern

2024-26
Project leader for BalanseHub – an organisational development project with follow-up research that will take place at Department for Teacher Education, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, to develop innovative measures for gender balance, diversity and inclusion in academia. The NTNU-BalanseHub is one of 19 higher education institutions that take part in the BalanseHub network, led by NIFU Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education. Funded by Research Council Norway.

2024-27
Project leader for Danselaboratoriets historie – utviklingsarbeid for funksjonsmangfoldig dansekunst med utspring i Trondheim [The history of The Dance Laboratory – Developmental work for dance and disability originating in Trondheim]. Project owner: DansiT Choreographic Center. Funded by Arts Council Norway.

2023-26
International partner in Scenkonst med i lärande (SMIL) [ The performing arts as parts of learning].The project examines how theatre, dance and circus can be part of pre-primary education and comprehensive school education. Project owner: University of the Arts Helsinki.

2022-26
Advisory Board Member in STEAM-undervisning i förskolan – en möjlighet att överskrida könsnormer med koppling till estetiska uttrycksformer, naturvetenskap, teknik och matematik? [Advisory Board Member in STEAM education in preschool – an opportunity to transcend gender norms related to aesthetic expression, science, technology, engineering and maths?]. Project owner: Stockholm University, Department for Child and Youth Sciences. Funded by Research Council Sweden.

MetaKubi – Metavorhaben zur Kulturellen Bildung in gesellschaftlichen Transformationen – Meta-project on Culture and Arts Education in Societal Transformation (funded by BMBF – Federal Ministry of Eduction and Research; 2024-ongoing)
The meta project supports the funding projects and deals with overarching questions of research on Arts and Cultural Education in social transformations. It makes an independent contribution to their consolidation and further development as well as to the interaction between research and practice. It relies on communicative formats of stakeholder exchange to promote visibility and sustainability beyond the project. To this end, we record, aggregate and contextualise research topics, designs and results of the funded projects in the perspective of the transformation of Arts and Cultural Education against the background of societal transformation dynamics. From an overall view of the funding projects, we classify them in national and international (a) academic discourses on cultural education, (b) discourses on educational research and (c) dialogues with practitioners in cultural education. We communicate these internally with the funded projects as well as with other actors in practice and science in target group-specific formats. At the same time, we fundamentally reflect on the interaction between research projects and educational practice in order to further develop formats of this cooperation. The project partners are united by their interest in developing meta-theoretical, methodological and methodological questions for the further development of research on Arts and Cultural Education. This concerns questions of the interaction of research and practice in the research process, the methodological design of research syntheses and their theoretical framing.

AI4ArtsEd – Artificial Intelligence for Arts Education (funded by BMBF – Federal Ministry of Eduction and Research; 2024-ongoing)
AI is transforming society and the world of work; it is becoming an increasingly important topic in education. This project explores the opportunities, conditions, and limitations of using artificial intelligence (AI) in culturally diverse and diversity-sensitive settings of cultural education (KuBi). In three subprojects – General Education (TPap), Computer Science (TPinf), and Art Education (TPkp) – creativity-oriented pedagogical AI practice research and computer science AI conception and programming closely cooperate. The project systematically involves artistic-pedagogical practitioners in the design process from the beginning, acting as a bridge between professional (quality-related, aesthetic, ethical, and value-based) pedagogical-practical implementation on the one hand and the implementation and training process of the computer science subproject on the other. The result of an approximately two-year participatory design process should be an open-source AI technology that explores the extent to which AI systems can already include artisticpedagogical specifications at their structural level under favorable real conditions. The focus is on a) the future applicability and added value of highly innovative technologies for cultural education, b) the range and limits of AI literacy of teachers and learners, and c) the overarching question of assessing and evaluating the transformation of pedagogical settings by complex non-human actors in the sense of pedagogical ethics and technology impact assessment.

ComeArts – fortbilden durch vernetzen:vernetzen durch fortbilden. Gelingensbedingungen diversitätssensibler, digitalisierungs- und digitalitätsbezogener Fortbildungsmodule für die Fächer Kunst und Musik in Community Networks – Training through networking: networking through training. Conditions for success of diversity-sensitive, digitalization and digitality-related training modules for the subjects of art and music in Community Networks (funded by BMBF – Federal Ministry of Eduction and Research; 2023-ongoing)
The “Come Arts” project aims at the research-based development and refinement of adaptive, subject-specific, diversity-sensitive, and digitalization-related (d3) professionalization concepts for teachers and multipliers in the fields of art and music, considering evidence-based criteria for effective training (including long-term effectiveness). The project systematically supports d3 competencies for designing learning-enhancing, challenging teaching-learning scenarios in primary and secondary education.
The initiative utilizes the cross-phase cooperation and exploitation structures of the Come In consortium (https://comein.nrw/portal/), but focuses more intensively on iteratively adapted development research through Design-Based Research (DBR) in subject-specific local, regional, and national community networks (Come Nets). This approach includes a broad science-practice-administration transfer: Each participating sub-project provides at least one comprehensive, adaptable, and diversity-sensitive training module suitable for various learning scenarios and needs. At the consortium level, the results are systematically integrated in an interdisciplinary manner.
The development research is based on existing, standardized assessments adaptable to other subjects and includes systematic peer reviews with experts from all functional areas of teacher training. The research explores the specific conditions for success relevant to the target group and content; it also analyzes the effectiveness of various transfer approaches within the complex multi-level system (usage scenarios). A focus is placed on North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), where differentiated governance ensures dense, cross-state transfer that connects to nationwide developments. The documentation of project results as Open Educational Resources (OER) via a Come Arts portal also contributes to this.
The Erlangen UNESCO Chair is responsible for two part of the ComeArts project, both managed by Friederike Schmiedl as postdoctoral research associate:
The “ComeNet Across” project, in collaboration with Cologne, organizes interdisciplinary networking between music, art, and youth research. Its objective is to generate synergistic effects and transfer possibilities across the disciplines of art and music within the thematic complex of digitalization, digitality, diversity, and participation.
The “ComeNet Youth Culture” project, drawing on insights from post-digital youth culture research, develops a training module that addresses cross-disciplinary foundations and adaptation/scaling possibilities to/on other subjects in the context of formal and non-formal aesthetic education. The interdisciplinary aspects of the training modules are adapted for other school-relevant creative subjects (dramatic arts/school theater, dance/movement, crafts, and design), focusing not only on the scope and limits of adaptability but also on potential synergies.

DiäS – Digital-ästhetische Souveränität von Lehrkräften als Basis kultureller, künstlerischer, musikalischer, poetischer und sportlicher Bildung in der digitalen Welt – Digital-aesthetic sovereignty of teachers as the foundation of cultural, artistic, musical, poetic, and sports education in the digital world (funded by BMBF – Federal Ministry of Eduction and Research; 2023-ongoing)
The DiäS project aims, with a digital-aesthetic focus, at the research-based and evidence-oriented further development, evaluation, and optimization of prototypical approaches for promoting and deepening teachers’ professional knowledge in cultural, artistic, musical, poetic, and sports education in the context of digital transformation.
The foundation is a sustainable networking of education research, practice, and administration. This envisages a consortium structure that is intended to be integrated into the ‘Competence Centre for Digital and Digitally Supported Teaching in Schools and Further Education’ at the federal level. The concepts, approaches, and transfer structures developed and successfully evaluated here are adapted in the DiäS project for the development and deepening of general and subject-specific digital competencies, dispositions, and attitudes of teachers.
In the spirit of the DPACK approach (Döbeli-Honegger, 2021), this involves addressing and critically developing a theoretical framework of ‘digital sovereignty’ (Blossfeld et al., 2018), which links the level of application-oriented digital competencies with the development of reflective attitudes in the context of (post-)digital structures and cultures. This approach forms the basis for conceptual developments in terms of digital global citizenship (UNESCO 2015, 2022) and digital cultural resilience (Jörissen, 2022; Jörissen et al., 2023).
DiäS “Cultural Education TPa”: The sub-project “Global Digital Citizenship Education” (Stephanie Leupert) focuses on reinterpreting “Global Citizenship” through a cultural studies lens, contextualizing it within a (post-)digital society, and translating it into a modular concept for teacher education. This concept aims to foster participation in and contribution to a (post-)digital global society as a foundation for sustainable and democratic societal development. Participation is understood in the light of Jacques Rancière’s concept of the ‘distribution of the sensible’ by the ‘part who has no part’. Here, Global Citizenship is conceived as ‘terrestrial’, active, relational, and post- or decolonial.
DiäS “Cultural Education TPb”: The sub-project “Post-Digital Cultural Resilience” (Teresa Dehling), building upon current theoretical work at the Erlangen UNESCO Chair, develops a modular concept for teacher education that conveys cultural resilience as a sustainability-oriented collective transformative educational process. The focus is on transformations in the relationship between Rooting, Resourcefulness, and Resistance under digital and post-digital conditions, with special attention to the opportunities and challenges of post-migration society.

Chairpersons: Baiba Tjarve, Charlotte Blanche Myrvold & Edwin van Meerkerk

The topic group Research/Policy explores and exchanges both experience with the dynamics of research and policy and research practices. The topic group meets regularly, often around the presentation of a case study by one of its members or by an invited guest. The aim of the topic group is to get a better understanding of the dynamics of commissioned research in the fields of arts and cultural education.

Chairperson: Tanja Klepacki

The European Network of Observatories in the Field of Arts and Cultural Education and ACEnet work against the background of the profound insight that we live in a deeply crisis-ridden and globalized world in which Eurocentric or Occidentocentric perspectives are outdated and insufficient to find answers to the pressing questions of our time. These questions force us to reflect on both the content and purpose of arts and cultural education, its target groups, and on the way we organize these processes, as well as on the political choices and the coalitions and interests that inform these choices.

The aim of this working group is therefore, on the one hand, to critically analyze the field of arts and cultural education in Europe in its current state of formation, and on the other hand, to also reflect on ENO’s and ACEnet’s own work against the background of transcultural and post-colonial perspectives.

It goes without saying that a corresponding project cannot be carried out solely from within the networks themselves. In the coming years, it will therefore be important to connect both networks even more strongly than before with experts of different professions from all over the world. We seek to enter into an equal polylogue of the most diverse global voices to explore the questions mentioned above as well as the language and discourse in which such a polylogue can take place. This is not designed to harmonize the debate, but to open a space for dissensus and thus for “true” discourse.

Given these assumptions, the working group aims to:

• better understand and get an overview of the state of the arts in Europe regarding issues of globalization and intercultural developments, as well as the blindspots in the field;
• promote international, multidirectional collaboration at a global/planetary level;
• critically reflect on the assumptions in policy and research on arts and cultural education regarding postcolonialism, globalization, etc.;
• explore different, non-European perspectives on arts and cultural education policy and research for the benefit of policymakers, practitioners, and researchers;
• invite scholars, policy makers and practitioners from all over the world to reflect on the practices, perspectives, and values that underpin policy, practice, and research on arts and cultural education.

References:
Akuno, E., Klepacki, L., Lin, M.-C., O’Toole, J., Reihana, T., Wagner, E., & Zapata Restrepo, G. (2015): Whose arts education? International and intercultural dialogue, in: Mike Fleming, Liora Bresler, & John O’Toole (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of the Arts and Education. London: Routledge, pp.79–105.
Brumlik, M. (17. Oktober 2016): Denken der Stunde. Achille Mbembe befragt im Rekurs auf seine Lebensgeschichte die afrikanischen Council of the European Union. (2019).
Council conclusions on an EU strategic approach to international cultural relations and a framework for action (2019/C 192/04). Official Journal of the European Union, 62, 7. Accessed 12 May 2020 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.C_.2019.192.01.0006.01.ENG&toc=OJ:C:2019:192:FULL
Jörissen, B. (2019). Territorien der Theorie: Post-koloniale Irritationen meiner bildungs- theoretischen Praxis. In U. Stadler-Altmann & B. Gross (Eds.), Beyond erziehungswissenschaftlicher Grenzen. Diskurse zu Entgrenzungen der Disziplin. (pp. 57–62). Opladen: Barbara Budrich. See for English translation: https://joerissen.name/en/territories-of-theory-post-colonial-irritations-of-my-educational-theoretical-practice/ (19.10.2022)
Martin, R., Skjøstad Hovde, S., Chanunkha, R. ., & Hiroti, P. (2021). Decolonizing perspectives of arts education. Journal for Research in Arts and Sports Education, 5(4), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.23865/jased.v5.3620
Østern, T. P., Reppen, C., Lion, K., Lundmark, K. ., & Sjöstedt Edelholm , E. (2021). Future designs of tertiary dance education: Scanning the field for decolonizing potentials in a major change project at the Department for Dance Pedagogy at Stockholm University of the Arts. Journal for Research in Arts and Sports Education, 5(4), 62-78. https://doi.org/10.23865/jased.v5.2982
Ulrichsen, G. O., Eriksen, H. ., & Bayati, Z. (2021). Struggling to decolonise ourselves as an antiracist act within the field of Nordic Community School of Music and Arts. Journal for Research in Arts and Sports Education, 5(4), 19-38. https://doi.org/10.23865/jased.v5.2978
Wu, Jinting, Paul William Eaton, David W. Robinson-Morris, Maria F. G. Wallace and Shaofei Han. “Perturbing Possibilities in the Postqualitative turn: Lessons from Taoism and Ubuntu.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, vol. 31, nr. 6, 2018, pp. 504-519.
Zajda, Joseph , and Yvonne Vissing (2022)Discourses of Globalisation, Ideology, and Human Rights. Cham: Springer Nature.

Chairperson: Ronald Kox

More information will follow soon!

Chairperson: Aleksi Valta

More information will follow soon!