NL

New research project: TOWARDS A PLURIVERSITY OF THE ARTS

  • 19 september 2023
HKU professor dr. Els Cornelis has initiated the artistic design research TOWARDS A PLURIVERSITY OF THE ARTS, thanks to the support of a Comelius Grant. Her research has just started and will continue up to December 2025.
New research project: TOWARDS A PLURIVERSITY OF THE ARTS
How can we educate students in preparation for a world full of challenges that are getting more urgent by the day? A world in which growing diversity and complexity confront us with larger and larger issues?

And how can we make art education more accessible, with more inclusive learning and teaching practices within this education? How can we work and learn (together) so that the multiple perspectives and voices are not only heard, but also stimulated?

These are the research questions that will be explored in the coming years.

Multiple perspectives

Thanks to the Senior Fellow Grant of the Comenius Programme, Cornelis can now go explore a new blueprint for art academies through artistic and practice-oriented design research. The key aspect here is that not one perspective takes centre stage, but multiple perspectives can coexist within a PLURIVERSITY[1] OF THE ARTS.


For this goal, a collective of students and teachers has taken on a kind of ‘guerrilla movement’. One that is peaceful, of course, but still disruptive and activating, in an artistic way. As ‘artist educator’ this collective is developing collective creative strategies and interventions for the purpose of decolonising (learning) processes within the art education and multi-voiced (co-)learning and (co-)working.

Comenius programme

The Comenius programme contributes to innovation and improvement of Dutch higher education. Since 2017, over 2000 enthusiastic educational professionals have received a Comenius grant. This grant helps them put their vision on educational innovation into practice, to the direct benefit of students. It also helps educational professionals to further advance themselves in their careers.

[1] Inspired by Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse. Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018.