A Universities Programme of Art-Based and Art Informed Research

Recent decades have seen growing recognition of the role of artistic languages in educational and research settings. What was once an exclusive focus on the expressive production of children has now expanded to include far greater use of artistic languages in the domain of education, including with younger and older adults. Artistic production itself has become a key tool for interpreting society, and has thus been accepted into mainstream research as a language that it is no longer possible to do without. Proponents of arts-based research (ABR) and art-informed research are currently calling for a focus on «systematic use of the artistic process [...] as a primary way of understanding and examining experience» (McNiff, 2008, 29). These methods are alternative means of exploring aspects of reality that are inaccessible to traditional forms of knowledge and more conventional methods of inquiry. In a contemporary era that is different to the past and characterized by greater uncertainty, ABR offers a strategy based on a form of observation that is complex and wide-ranging, and thus more appropriate than exclusively linear and causal approaches. This paper presents a post-graduate course in ABR that takes the form of a virtual international classroom entitled Global Classroom in Arts-Based Research. This programme involves – in addition to the Human Sciences and Education Department at Milano-Bicocca University – Florida State University, Drexel University, University of Leuven, FLAMES, and Northern Illinois University. It is offered to PhD students in education, with a view to familiarizing them with the potential of artistic languages, getting them to constantly compare notes concerning their practices and documentation, and helping them to design research actions that include the use of these languages.