Re-membering: restoring embodied arts to experiential learning

Abstract

Framed by John Dewey’s theories of education and art as embodied experience, this session invokes the authors’ backgrounds as arts practitioners and educators to stimulate exploration of the potential for embodied arts activities to enliven student learning experiences across the disciplines, beyond the primary contemporary focus on graduate employability. The session comprises four sequential collaborative experiential activities: 1) Warm-up with brief small-group hands-on artistic activity; 2) Distribution of the authors’ case studies; 3) Scaffolded of key elements of the case studies into a generic arts-influenced experiential framework; 4) Sharing and comparison of experiential frameworks, with full group discussion of applicability of arts-influenced frameworks to participants’ own teaching and learning contexts.