“Critical Making in Collaboration with Nature”, discusses the outcomes of the Making Sustainability Work project from Fall 2020. With support of CoECI Zaaigelden scheme, the Critical Making learning community put together a group of makers from research, education and industry to explore the implications of designing with natural materials and biological processes, such as biopolymers, fungal composites and bacteria dye. By following a selection of modules from the Fabricademy global training program, participants explored hands-on techniques to create their own design materials and colours from renewable and biodegradable resources and documented their journeys. The shared experience was reflected upon in a series of interviews and essays touching on the following questions: • In what way do unruly natural materials challenge ways of doing and teaching design? • How do grown materials fit into or challenge makers’ goals of sustainability?• What is needed to bring biological processes into communities of practice in the field of design, art and making?• How and when does criticality emerge in the making process? • How do processes of thinking and doing intersect and what is the role of social interactions and collaboration?
“Critical Making in Collaboration with Nature”, discusses the outcomes of the Making Sustainability Work project from Fall 2020. With support of CoECI Zaaigelden scheme, the Critical Making learning community put together a group of makers from research, education and industry to explore the implications of designing with natural materials and biological processes, such as biopolymers, fungal composites and bacteria dye. By following a selection of modules from the Fabricademy global training program, participants explored hands-on techniques to create their own design materials and colours from renewable and biodegradable resources and documented their journeys. The shared experience was reflected upon in a series of interviews and essays touching on the following questions: • In what way do unruly natural materials challenge ways of doing and teaching design? • How do grown materials fit into or challenge makers’ goals of sustainability?• What is needed to bring biological processes into communities of practice in the field of design, art and making?• How and when does criticality emerge in the making process? • How do processes of thinking and doing intersect and what is the role of social interactions and collaboration?
The purpose of this study was to determine how knowledge sources, ready knowledge, and disposition toward critical thinking and reasoning skills influence the accuracy of student nurses' diagnoses. A randomized controlled trial was conducted to determine the influence of knowledge sources. We used the following questionnaires: (a) knowledge inventory, (b) California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory, and (c) Health Science Reasoning Test (HSRT). The use of knowledge sources had very little influence on the accuracy of nursing diagnoses. Accuracy was significantly related to the analysis domain of the HSRT. Students were unable to operationalize knowledge sources to derive accurate diagnoses and did not effectively use reasoning skills.
“Empowering learners to create a sustainable future” This is the mission of Centre of Expertise Mission-Zero at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS). The postdoc candidate will expand the existing knowledge on biomimicry, which she teaches and researches, as a strategy to fulfil the mission of Mission-Zero. We know when tackling a design challenge, teams have difficulties sifting through the mass of information they encounter. The candidate aims to recognize the value of systematic biomimicry, leading the way towards the ecosystems services we need tomorrow (Pedersen Zari, 2017). Globally, biomimicry demonstrates strategies contributing to solving global challenges such as Urban Heat Islands (UHI) and human interferences, rethinking how climate and circular challenges are approached. Examples like Eastgate building (Pearce, 2016) have demonstrated successes in the field. While biomimicry offers guidelines and methodology, there is insufficient research on complex problem solving that systems-thinking requires. Our research question: Which factors are needed to help (novice) professionals initiate systems-thinking methods as part of their strategy? A solution should enable them to approach challenges in a systems-thinking manner just like nature does, to regenerate and resume projects. Our focus lies with challenges in two industries with many unsustainable practices and where a sizeable impact is possible: the built environment (Circularity Gap, 2021) and fashion (Joung, 2014). Mission Zero has identified a high demand for Biomimicry in these industries. This critical approach: 1) studies existing biomimetic tools, testing and defining gaps; 2) identifies needs of educators and professionals during and after an inter-disciplinary minor at The Hague University; and, 3) translates findings into shareable best practices through publications of results. Findings will be implemented into tangible engaging tools for educational and professional settings. Knowledge will be inclusive and disseminated to large audiences by focusing on communication through social media and intervention conferences.
The project Decolonising Education: from Teachers to Leading Learners (DETeLL) aims to develop a multi-site approach for interventions towards inclusion and decolonisation in order to change the hierarchical nature of higher education in the Netherlands. DETeLL identifies the model of the ‘traditional teacher’ as embodying the structural exclusions and discriminations built into the classroom and proposes the figure of a ‘Leading Learner’ as a first step towards a radical change in the educational system. In collaboration with the education departments in the Theatre and Dance Academy at ArtEZ, the post-doc will build up a research and teaching programme that engages with students and teachers in the faculty to create a prototype of an inclusive and diverse educational practice. RELEVANCE: Education should be the critical space in which changes occur in order to shape best possible futures. In DETeLL’s acceptation, decolonisation refers to a complete change in the way of thinking and behaving. It does not refer only to the urgency of dealing with historical colonial legacies embedded in society, but also to the subversion of the deeply oppressive colonial culture that (also unconsciously) regulates public and private living, whether this is related to gender, race, class or sexuality issues. RESULTS: 1) Create a theory and practice-based scientific base-line of decolonisation and art education; 2) Provide a definition of ‘Artist educator as Leading Learner’ following a practice- based methodology of intervention; 3) Design and Pilot a new teaching programme for theatre education at ArtEZ to be then upscaled to all educational departments in a follow-up project); 4) Produce a strong interdisciplinary and international output plan: 3 academic publications, 2 conferences, 4 expert group workshops. NETWORK: ArtEZ; University of Amsterdam (UvA); Ghent University; UCHRI; Hildesheim University; Cape Town University. The partners will serve as steering committee through planned expert group meetings.
Fashion has become inextricably linked with digital culture. Digital media have opened up new spaces of fashion consumption that are unprecedented in their levels of ubiquity, immersion, fluidity, and interactivity. The virtual realm continuously needs us to design and communicate our identity online. Unfortunately, the current landscape of digitised fashion practices seems to lack the type of self-governing attitude and urgency that is needed to move beyond commercially mandated platforms and systems that effectively diminish our digital agency. As transformative power seems to be the promise of the virtual, there is an inherent need to critically assess how digital representation of fashion manifests online, especially when these representations become key mediators within our collective and individual public construction of self. A number of collectives and practitioners that actively shape a counter movement, organized bottom up rather than through capital, are questioning this interdependence, applying inverted thinking and experimenting with alternative modes of engagement. Starting from the research question ‘How can critical fashion practitioners introduce and amplify digital agency within fashion’s virtual landscape through new strategies of aesthetic engagement?’, this project investigates the implications of fashion’s increasing shift towards the virtual realm and the ramifications created for digital agency. It centers on how identity is understood in the digital era, whether subjects have full agency while expected to construct multiple selves, and how online environments that enact as playgrounds for our identities might attribute to a distorted sense of self. By using the field of critical fashion as its site, and the rapidly expanding frontier of digital counter practices as a lens, the aim of this project is to contribute to larger changes within an increasingly global and digital society, such as new modes of consumerism, capital and cultural value.
