Research Network for Arts Based Learning (n-ABLE)
What is Arts Based Learning & Education?
Arts Based Learning & Education embraces a diverse set of interests and practices, which have the arts, artistic practice and artful behaviours at their core; which offer alternative forms of knowledge production; and which seek to enable (nABLE) personal and collective transformation and emancipation.
The arts are central to our lives. For many, both producing and consuming art provides a vital form of reflexive practice, a means of understanding our selves, our relationships with others and with the ‘other’. As such, academic interest in the arts is not confined to any one discipline or field of practice, nor is it circumscribed by an interest in ‘art for art’s sake’. Various strands of research, teaching, and consultancy focus on the role of the arts, and how our engagement with, and through, them as ‘live inquiry’ might enable us to better understand the world around us in new and valuable ways.
Although the developing literature draws a distinction between research carried out by those who are also ‘artists’ in their own right, our approach to this research network is more embracing and inclusive. Arts Based Learning & Education can be undertaken by anyone who is open to the possibility of looking across traditional disciplinary boundaries – whether as artist, researcher, teacher, ‘a/r/tographer’ (Springgay et al, 2008) or ‘scholartist’ (Knowles et al, 2008).
For more information about nABLE please contact Dr Nick Wilson.