PD Arts + Creative Symposium 2025 Report: The Resonance of PD
On June 20, 2025, the Professional Doctorate in Arts + Creative hosted its annual symposium, this time at LocHal in Tilburg. This gathering brought together PD candidates, professors, and respondents from the professional field to reflect on where, how, and with whom their work resonates.
Throughout the afternoon, the symposium explored how third-cycle applied artistic and design research connects with societal urgencies and professional contexts through dialogue, interviews, thematic sessions, and shared reflections.
Welcoming the New PD Candidates
Moderated by Linda Duits, the symposium opened with an introduction to the theme of Resonance, the schedule for the afternoon, and a welcome to our newest cohort of PD researchers, who shared short introductions to their projects now starting, both live on stage and from previously recorded interviews with Linda.
Information about all PD Arts + Creative candidates can be found on our Research Catalogue page: Candidate Overview
Nan Wang
Envisioning Alternative Futures
Nan Wang is challenging passive attitudes in the art community towards media and technology in her project Envisioning Alternative Futures. She’s working with analog film communities to reimagine technologies for artistic use, emphasizing the importance of understanding the tools we use.
Ecological Response-ability
In this session, PD candidates Risk Hazekamp and S†ëfan Schäfer addressed how we relate to the more-than-human world, by centring the question: How to enter a landscape?
Risk explored microbial collaboration and analog photography’s chemical impact, weaving together ecology and care. Stefan’s work with the Hochvogel mountain investigates ecological grief and how rituals can help us process the slow disappearance of landscapes.
The room was filled with evocative materials: drawings, ponchos, and poetry that invited attendees to reflect deeply. Respondents highlighted the links between environmental justice, grief, and the wisdom of marginalized and Indigenous communities in caring for nature.
Mountain costumes by Carly Everaert
Community & Commoning Practices
This session explored how artists work within and for communities. PD candidate Nadja van der Weide presented her community-led methods in vulnerable neighborhoods, reinaartvanhoe examined institutional structures that shape cultural expression, and Taka Taka energized the room with a collective reading performance.
Respondents emphasized the value of research that emerges directly from lived experience and centres collective action. They acknowledged the necessity of maintaining reflexivity and authenticity in community-based work.
Embodied Knowledge
This session invited participants to literally step into a performative space. PD candidates Sophia Badoutsou, Emily Huurdeman, and Philippine Hoegen led a session grounded in physical movement and affective knowledge.
Using a marked arena, prompts, and performance, they demonstrated how the body can be both a site and method of inquiry, as seen in their exposition: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/3753164/3775117
The session blurred lines between audience and presenter, encouraging everyone to explore how knowledge is held in movement, silence, emotion, and gesture.
Mediatized Encounters
This session took the form of a live-action role-playing game aboard a fictional spaceship. PD candidates Jonas Pastoors, Raymond Vermeulen, and Agustín Martinez Caram presented their work through interactive scenarios within the game itself. Participants created a symbolic creature that absorbed their collective knowledge.
This playful format sparked critical reflection on how we project meaning onto machines and how artistic research can challenge dominant tech narratives.
Reflections and Closing
The symposium concluded with closing reflections from Ingrid van Engelshoven, former Dutch Minister of Education, Culture, and Science. Having supported the launch of the PD pilot during her time in office, she attended the full afternoon to reconnect with its current development. In her conversation with moderator Linda Duits, she expressed how impressed she was by the breadth and maturity of the programme.
Van Engelshoven praised the diversity of artistic fields represented and the multiplicity of approaches taken by the PD researchers. What stood out to her was not only the thematic range but also the depth of the conversations: demonstrating how third-cycle artistic research opens up space for different kinds of knowing and making.
At the same time, she offered a word of caution. In her current role as advisor in the cultural sector, she observes how often artistic work is pushed to justify itself through narrow frameworks of impact or efficiency. Against this backdrop, she emphasized the importance of defending the intrinsic value of the arts and the space they offer for complexity, imagination, and hope. Her words were a fitting close to a symposium shaped by resonance, responsiveness, and a shared commitment to sustaining the transformative capacity of art and design.
Moderator Linda Duits closed by revisiting the question: where, how, and with whom does artistic research resonate? The symposium made it clear that resonance is found across fields and bodies, within diverse communities, and through modes of working that are collaborative, critical, and caring.
As attendees shared final drinks and reflections, the atmosphere was one of inspiration, curiosity, and a sense of shared commitment to shaping a more imaginative and inclusive future through art and research.
For any questions about the symposium, the report, or the Professional Doctorate Arts + Creative programme, feel free to contact us at:
Photography
Pictures are taken by Barbara Medo: https://www.barbaramedo.com/
PD Arts + Creative is a joint effort by Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU), Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (AHK), Hogeschool van Amsterdam, University of the Arts The Hague, Hogeschool Rotterdam, Codarts Rotterdam, Hanze UAS, Avans Hogeschool, Buas Breda Universit of Applied Science, Fontys Academy of the Arts, Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), Zuyd Maastricht Institute of Arts, Artez University of the Arts and Hogeschool InHolland.