We demonstrate the ways an improvisational dance workshop provided the opportunity for university students to be autonomous actors and engage in embodied sense-making through dance--two key parts of the conceptualization of enactive cognition. As part of a Design-Based Research project, we use Interaction Analysis to present examples of using…

For many music students studying classical piano in tertiary institutions, techniques in improvisation are not included in their undergraduate curriculum. Despite the acknowledged musical benefits of improvisation, piano pedagogy curricula remain firmly rooted in the nineteenth century, focusing on the performance of the familiar canon of…

Spatial skills are crucial to STEM disciplines and involve a variety of cognitive processes and skills related to visualising, reasoning and communicating about spatial relations. Particularly in the primary school years, attaining 'spatial literacy' gives children a valuable set of skills and knowledge that can aid them in successful…

Traditional music education has prioritised external over internal performance aims, leading some learners to prioritise external motivations. I facilitated a workshop series for participants who experienced music performance anxiety when improvising, to examine if free improvisation coupled with expressive art response could cultivate…

The role of flow experience in a group creativity task, contemporary dance improvisation, was explored through qualitative content analysis. Our focus was upon the creative process itself, rather than upon creative outcomes. Six dancers took part in an improvisation workshop, reflecting on their creative practice and any associated flow. We…

Strong mentoring relationships improve the success of students in academia and must be the foundation for increasing diversity in STEM. We developed an innovative skills-based training workshop to teach effective communication in mentoring and build awareness of diversity issues in STEM. The workshop was interactive and included open discussions,…

Defining categories of musical actions in improvisation with young children is challenging due to the spontaneous, creative and emergent nature of interactions. Following a literature review, two new constructs were proposed to circumscribe and classify different types of events in improvisation, Creative Musical Agency (CMA) and Socio-Musical…

This study sheds light on dance as democracy among people 65+. The article presents a study that is part of the project Age on Stage, in which elderly people were offered to express themselves through dance as an aesthetic form of expression. Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir are applied as philosophical lenses. Elderly people's participation…

This paper reports on a project designed to promote the understanding of the World Heritage site of Old Rauma, Finland, with the help of craft activities. Through fieldwork and an analysis of the data collected from two craft interventions, the paper examines how craft making can serve as a medium to celebrate a sense of place and inspire people…

Contributions: This study examined the effectiveness of making activities in fostering the competency development of school-age children engaged in a making program. The findings suggest that community-based makerspaces can provide autonomous and informal learning experiences, facilitating their competence development. When integrated with formal…

This paper presents a pilot study of creative movement workshops that enriched the school life of fourth graders at a primary school in Slovenia during the closure of educational institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project involved a dancer who met with students via the Zoom platform for four months, preparing, leading, and facilitating…

Ecotherapy-based experiences have been shown to provide multiple benefits such as improved cognitive functioning, increased overall well-being and improved mental and physical health. Few, if any studies have considered the benefits of providing these types of experiences for urban community college students. This pilot study introduces an eco-art…

This paper investigated how puppetry could be used to improve the standards of early childhood science education. This study determined the effect of a puppet-making and puppetry workshop on preservice preschool teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards science education and looked into their experiences during and after puppet-making. Although…

This paper focuses on an innovative transdisciplinary educational arts-based learning project, LangScape Curators, which links to and leads from research conducted for the AHRC-funded "Translation and Translanguaging" project. Here, we describe how we work collaboratively with creative practitioners to use a variety of creative arts…

This paper discusses the information literacy requirements of art and design students, and how traditional approaches to information literacy education are not always appropriate for these particular students. The paper argues that different, creative, and innovative approaches to information literacy training need to be developed with the…