Digital story "ABOUT ARTHEWE"

Throughout the ARTHEWE project we reflected our experiences in the project using creative approaches. We wrote diary notes, and made self-figure drawings during the project regular online meetings. In the end of the project we also reflected our journey together by answering some specific reflective questions based on the diary notes. Based on the answers to these questions Turku UAS compiled the reflective digital story “ABOUT ARTHEWE”.

You can watch the digital story here: Digital Story “ABOUT ARTHEWE”. (duration: 8:27 minutes).

The manuscript of the digital story:

About ARTHEWE – reflective notes about our journey 2020-2023 

When we started the ARTHEWE project… 

The unexpected kick-off situation was challenging: How ever would it be possible to implement co-working with a totally new group of persons from diverse backgrounds, without meeting them “in real life”…!?

We had to figure out, what this kind of an ErasmusPlus project really is in practice and how the visions and goals in the project plan are to be carried on during the project years.

We were excited of the new opportunities arts and creativity will bring to our students’ learning processes but also to ourselves.

We understood that there was a lot of preparatory work for the different IOs. But it was exciting to start collaborating on various IOs and get involved with different perspectives of arts & health.

The most important goal in ARTHEWE was…   

The most important goal in ARTHEWE was the collaboration and co-creating itself, across our various universities, learning from each other in order to experiment with new pedagogical approaches and improve all our various students’ learning experiences.

At first, we had to tackle productively the hybrid working environments: how to be creative in front of the screen and practice embodied and arts-based approaches in the two-dimensional interaction online? Then we started to explore how to find a way to balance the international partner input and our individual work in each Intellectual Output. After that it was time to apply research knowledge and practical understanding for cocreating methods and practices together in the shared knowledge formation.

What was motivating and empowering us in the work after the beginning? 

After the “pandemic shock” it was most empowering when we realized that we really can do it!

The trust in the importance of our work carried us on, inspired and encouraged us.

There was such a lot of knowledge and skills, experience, cultures, personalities around the same core interest, curiously exploring the unknown together.

Working together as a team grew to be an essential element in the development process and it enhanced fruitful cross pollination of ideas.

What kind of challenges did we meet? 

Our working environments, contexts and students differed from each other very much – the understanding and integration of the needs and expectations of each organization demanded much of us everybody.

We needed to balance our somewhat different approaches, various ways of working and executive resources, practices, and methodologies. There were different phases of working processes going on at the same time. A challenge in a long project like this is when some key members of the group are not able to work in the project during the whole span of it.

We also realized that interest in the same theme arts & health, which is still new and professionally unstructured, is not enough. We needed to become a team – that was a whole project-long journey.

The pandemic was the biggest challenge as most of our interaction was online. Finally, we had the chance to meet each other! What a joy!

In ARTHEWE, we like to highlight… 

The fruitful, multi-dimensional learning process of us involved was facilitated by the cohesiveness of the project management and the functional structure and regularity of working as a group.

The group-focused type of leadership we applied was essential for this kind of co-creative development. The diversity of knowledge and creative initiatives was acknowledged and facilitated.

Arts and creativity could be seen and applied from various perspectives and in various landscapes! And there are so many ways to share experiences and promote wellbeing; focus on human interaction and community development.

What was surprising? 

The results and fruitfulness of working together, when we really met each other, was inspiring and empowering. We used and learned all kinds of creative methods and approaches. Some were familiar, some new and challenging. We really grew in understanding the depth and significance of human interaction. We came together and created meaningful and valuable outputs through our transdisciplinary diversity of working methods, and we delivered something unique.

The impact of the project on our organizations goes far beyond the intellectual outputs completed in the project. The project created a greater understanding of the value of the arts practice in the learning-teaching process, and thus also a greater respect and openness towards it.

Now, in the end of this project, we see… 

Now, in the end of this project, we deeply see and emphasize the value of international interprofessional co-creation and diverse possibilities to apply arts-based approaches in HE pedagogy.  We have scratched the surface of something interesting and worthwhile to explore further. We hope that we can carry on co-creating and learning from each other.  Every organization gained new knowledge and capability to go towards the direction the project opened.

The project encouraged integrating creative activities in our teaching and learning processes within different settings. This kind of creative pedagogy is having a positive impact in the academic community.

We see that there is an urgent need for further research and development collaboration in creative well-being in higher education in Europe. Innovative pedagogical solutions interact with promoting wellbeing and health through arts in our communities.