Report from Turku - 2007

This year, 2007, there were 16 planned presentations in the network (One was withdrawn because of illness). This is a doubling compared to last year 2006, which is very hopeful for the development of the network in future. According to the list of participants, all together 235 listeners visited the sessions and that makes an average of about 15 - 16 listeners at each presentation. The members were listening to each other and asked questions about the very interesting papers and presentations. This opinion was mentioned and we really had a good time. Many participants even expressed how well organised they found the congress.

Arts Culture and Education deals with learning through art, play, music, drama and creativity; art as a resource for learning, learning about and with dementia by means of poetry, orientation to picture - based communication and explication, play and flow in children's musical activities, visual art and craft education, integrating arts and culture in childhood education, an ethical dimension of dialogue by aesthetic means, transcending learning frames through art, metaphors and models in research on conceptual change, art history and culture intertextuality, the culture of place and human identity, meta - communication between sociology students and art students, educational art partnership programs.

In the network meeting there were about ten people present. We had a discussion about the functioning of the network and made an e- mail address list to make the member list more complete. I have unfortunately not yet found out how to make this work but I will. And as we decided to use our homepage for abstracts and other activities between congresses it is of special interest and it is my wish that I will even work out were I can find the homepage and use it. Participants of the network meeting also expressed a wish to organise a symposium on the aim theme of the network, Aesthetics and Learning and we discussed a structure that focused on inviting commentators who would make inquiry about aspects of the subject matter. The network has not had any activities since the last congress in Turku. That means that we have not carried out our thought about a symposium yet, but it will come.

In time, before next congress in Copenhagen 2008, we decided to send out our written paper to everybody in the session and that each of us will read a specific paper from another member of the session to make interesting ideas and results possible to be even better discussed from different points of views. We discussed that a structure like this might make the sessions even more informative and that deeper knowledge might come out of this cooperation. We hopefully work this out for Copenhagen.

Thank You for a well organised congress!

Bästekille backar 2007-11-23
Elisabet Malmström
Coordinator of NERA network Arts Culture and Education