Classic Expression: the effect of storytelling in a classical concert for children
(2022)
author(s): Vivian de Graaff
published in: KC Research Portal
The traditional way of classical concerts – i.e. a concert of 1,5 hour, no moving or making sounds, no interaction – is not the way to attract children to classical music. There are different inviting ways to interest children in a classical performance, for example with interaction, participation or storytelling. In this research we investigate if storytelling has an effect on children’s enthusiasm for classical music and their likeability of playing an instrument themselves. Furthermore, we assess if there is a relation between musical interest, engagement and/or emotional intensity during the concert. We do this by comparing a story-condition with a technical information-condition, in which the presenter talks about the instruments or the performance location. It is executed in the Classic Express, a concert truck in which laureates of the Prinses Christina Concours, a Dutch competition for young musicians, perform and present classical music for primary school classes. Children answer questions before, directly after and one week after the concert about how much they like the music, if they want to experience it again and if they are interested in playing a musical instrument themselves. The results can support musicians wanting to give engaging performances to children, improve the quality of concerts for this target audience and raise likeability of classical music in young generations.
"Artistic Research on Socially and Environmentally Engaged Art - Ethics of Gathering
(2020)
author(s): Katja Juhola, Maria Huhmarniemi, Kaisa Johanna Raatikainen
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Art symposiums and similar gatherings in which international artists come together to collaborate are a longstanding tradition of the global art world. In 2019, artists and environmental researchers and experts were invited to work with a local school on environmental issues to create place-specific art and scientific collaborations. Three interdisciplinary teams focused on locally current topics. In this article, we present the process of one of them: the freshwater pearl mussels sub-project. In addition, we discuss the research practice of the International Socially Engaged Art Symposium and the ethics related to the gathering. The research practice included various forms of dialogue, such as presentations, structured group discussions, reflections, mentoring and art-based practice with community members. Tight living together in a humble, small house supported the dialogue. Environmental issues, critical environmentalist thinking and the ethics of the practices were discussed in the process. The ethical elements of the symposium were considered during the processes of defining the themes and aims, curating and producing the event, respecting peer artists and researchers, interacting respectfully with the surrounding community such as school children and community members in countryside villages, and non-human nature, considering the environmental footprint of the symposium and aiming for a meaningful ecological handprint. The documentation, data collection and research reporting also considered ethical issues. The research is part of a cyclic development of art symposiums as socially and environmentally engaged events.
The Red Shoes Project Revisited
(2018)
author(s): Lise Hovik
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The author addresses various approaches to artistic research on the basis of her own artistic research project, The Red Shoes Project (2008-14), which consists of three closely related theatre performances for young children (0-3 years). The project was concerned with the development of dance theatre for the youngest children, in which opportunity was given for the children to participate actively and bodily in the performances. As a PhD project The Red Shoes Project (Hovik, 2014) explored the theatre event through three different art settings, following theories on performative aesthetics. Methods and research design are from the field of artistic research. The Red Shoes [De Røde Skoene] (2008) was a dance theatre performance for 1-year olds, Red Shoe Missing [Rød Sko Savnet] (2011) was an art installation, and Mum´s Dancing [Mamma Danser] (2011) was an improvised dance concert, both for 0-3 year-olds. All of these productions had red shoes as a connecting theme and playful artistic material. Playing and musical communication are core concepts guiding this interdisciplinary artistic research practice.
The research methodology changed during the 6 years of artistic research and theoretical studies. Henk Borgdorff’s division into an interpretative, instrumental and performative research perspective (Borgdorff, 2012) provided a comprehensive theory for the development of this research process. These research perspectives together are helpful methodologies in the artistic process of creating art for the very young, and the artworks demonstrates the possibility of creating common artistic experiences between performers and children, in which both can take part in reciprocal interaction and improvisation.
This exposition aims to give a presentation of the artistic research process as a whole, leaving out the more theoretical discussions from the PhD thesis, emphasizing the visual aspects of the artistic works .
As the initial research questions from 2008 might be outdated today - there are a multitude of interactive performances for babies in 2018 - the presentation will touch upon some new relevant works and perspectives within this topic. Looking back on the research process and outcomes, focus will be on the investigating progress and methods in this specific artistic research. The exposition will connect text and visual research material, and open some internal reflections on the development of the research questions along the way. The shifts in methodological perspectives will be highlighted as this still can be fruitful in further research on the topic, both as artistic and academic research.
Materialising the Social
(2018)
author(s): Anna Catherine Hickey-Moody
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Socially engaged arts practices make new forms of sociability. They are intra-active, diffractive methods through which we are able to craft new social faces. Quantum literacies are the modes through which socially engaged arts practices occur: they are at once critical, performative, intra-active. Quantum literacies enable us to examine generative intersections between artistic research and academic research regarding life and matter, nature and culture. Taking into account the multiple processes of material-discursive production, translation, transformation, and diffraction that constitute socially engaged arts practice, this paper considers the material-discursive space of socially engaged arts practice as a way of re-assembling and re-making multicultural urban spaces currently fractured by differences in belief. The transversal line of socially engaged art practice with interfaith youth zigzags across, and brings together, a diverse selection of bodies, beliefs, knowledges, skills, and creates a material-discursive documentation of group subjectivity. Through an excavation of my recent arts workshops with interfaith children, I will examine the ways aesthetic practices perform a group subjectivity created through collaboration. Such a bringing together of nature and culture, of different races and beliefs in urban environments, is urgently needed. The British Government spends 40 million pounds on an annual basis on The Prevent scheme. For those unfamiliar with the scheme, Prevent is just one strand of the UK government’s counter terrorism policy which has 4 strands – to Pursue, Protect, Prepare, and Prevent.
Through prevent funding, local UK police forces have specialized Prevent officers, and both teachers and children are trained to identify radicalised children. On the southern side of the Globe, between 2015-16 Australian budget committed $22 million to ‘countering violent extremism’. This financial commitment reflects the fact that the everyday atmosphere of Australian life, in addition to British life, is characterised by implicit and explicit relationships to 'terrorism' prevention. This emphasis, indeed this atmosphere, and the financial investment it requires, has not reduced the quantity or severity of terrorist threats. More than anything, increased securitization has inspired a corresponding increase in violence and anxiety. The atmosphere of Islamophobia at the heart of such national imaginings that are mobilised to justify funding ways of ‘countering violent extremism’ is increasing. Taking these nationalizing cultural atmospheres as a point of departure, I look to establish transversal strategies for changing public culture and crafting interfaith belonging in Australia, and in the UK, through arts practices and public aesthetics. This paper reports on the early stages of a trans national art project that is designed to intervene in Islamophobic cultural imaginaries through socially engaged art as a vehicle for relationship building and social cohesion.