InnovEd4TS : When Art meets Science at UCLouvain

Earlier in December, the third flagship initiative of the Strategic Partnership InnovEd4TS was hosted virtually at UCLouvain. Peer experts of five Circle U. alliance universities and the University of Lisbon attended the field mission. They learned about the “Artistes en Résidence” and Research Creation initiatives, creative and enriching programs which develop transferable skills among students.

Students with artist Françoise Schein, Artiste en Résidence in 2016-17

Since October, experts from the universities of Humboldt, Oslo, Aarhus, Paris, Louvain and Lisbon began a phase of field missions in order to share and analyse transferable skills projects. Transferable skills are now considered strategic for students, alongside traditional cognitive knowledge. 

This third field mission led peer experts to UCLouvain to discover the Artistes en Résidence programme and Research-Creation projects. Two rich and intense days awaited them.

Transferable Skills developed at the Initatives

Strategic Partnership InnovEd4TS (Innovative Education for Transferable Skills), is five member universities of Circle U. Alliance : Humboldt University, UCLouvain, University of Oslo, University of Aarhus and Université Paris Cité along with the University of Lisbon

Creativity

Interdisciplinarity

Intercultural understanding 

Drawings by Benoît Raucent

Culture at the heart of UCLouvain’s mission

At UCLouvain, culture is seen as a creative process involving students. Culture is linked to the key missions of the institution with the goal of fostering three transferable skills among students: creativity, intercultural understanding, and interdisciplinarity. Ralph Dekoninck, Senior Advisor for Culture at UCLouvain points out the benefit for students of being involved in creative processes: “Culture nourishes debate, encourages openness, contributes to understanding complexity from ideas to action, transforming reality through another angle.”

The Artistes en Résidence program launched in 2005 is a flagship initiative which aims to enable students from all disciplines to integrate a cultural and creative dimension into their bachelor’s program. An artist is invited, from a wide variety of fields such as cinema, literature, music, visual arts, theatre, dance, etc.. The artist shares knowledge and his/her experience with the students, and introduce them to an artistic practice. At the end of the course, students present to the general public the fruit of their creative work.

Research-Creation initiatives are also developed by UCLouvain Culture, the cultural department of the university, in order to encourage and support the crossing of arts and sciences, to instill a different way of thinking and innovating, not individually, but in a spirit of co-creation.

Artistes en Résidence: Combining culture and science

On the first day, the participants discovered this unique programme. Up to 40 students a year interact directly with the artist in residence, through a joint collaboration in an artistic project.  The programme combines theoretical teaching with practical workshops which emphasize artistic conception and creation.  The academic mentors propose artists to UCLouvain Culture, which selects them on the basis of their project. They ensure the link with the learning outcomes and requirements of the university. A teaching assistant also accompanies the artists and students throughout the semester. 

During the visit, artists, Luca Giacomoni and Françoise Schein explained how they introduced students from all disciplines to their artistic practice, respectively in theatre, and visual arts. They described how this experience stimulates co-creative processes and how creativity gives students confidence and an open-mindedness: “Students has actually no idea that they could actually paint, they discovered that they could do it, it created confidence” says Françoise Schein.

Christine Flamand, mentor of filmmaker Bénédict Liénard, presented the project focusing on otherness and intercultural understanding. The students collected the testimonies of asylum seekers and materialised their journey from their country of origin on maps with a final exhibition in the city. “The course helped them to be more engaged citizens and to develop their critical sense,” said Ms Flamand. 

Research Creation: Fostering Research Creativity

The second day focused on the new dynamic recently implemented at UCLouvain: research-creation. Just like teaching, research benefits from artistic creativity. Such hybridisation encourages encounters and crossovers between the arts and sciences, artists and scientists. According to Ralph Dekoninck, “Creation is essential for research innovation. There is still some resistance but more and more initiatives and ideas come from scholars and colleagues”.

Researchers and artists presented their co-creation projects to the peer experts, such as the one devoted to post-growth imaginaries (“Post-Growth”) by the artist Nicolas Maigret and eight scientists.  Scientific and artistic disciplines are working hands in hands: “In interdisciplinarity, sometimes disciplines are just next to each other, it is very impressive that you manage to actually co-create”, said Tina Bering Keiding, peer expert for Aarhus University.

A third way to approach science

At the end of the 2-day virtual tour, the peer panel experts did not hide their enthusiasm. “I like the principle of bringing scientists, students and artists together to reflect on new ways of presenting facts and ideas,” said Wolfgang Deicke from Humboldt University.  A view shared by Tina Bering Keiding from Aarhus University, for whom culture can be seen as a third way of approaching science: “It complements the scholarly approach, which is sometimes too complex, and the popularising approach, which is sometimes too simplified”.  Université Paris Cité and the University of Lisbon, for their part, said they had gained many good ideas from their visit and were eager to put them into practice at home