Exploring the practice of education for democracy through an arts-based and embodied professional learning activity – learning from the AECED project

This workshop provides an opportunity to think differently about everyday practices of democracy within education and educational settings and to engage in an arts-based and embodied activity to support your professional learning. Democracy isn’t simply a technical process focussed on history, principles, rules and institutions; democracy is a way of governing and a way of relating to each other that is a here-and-now experience. To protect and strengthen democracy, education that supports democratic values and sensibilities, known as 'education for democracy', is vital. However, education for democracy often omits the role that sensory experience, emotion, and physical engagement plays - or in other words, the aesthetic and embodied nature of learning. This session will briefly introduce AECED, a 3-year projected funded by funded by Horizon Europe and UKRI, where the University of Hertfordshire is working with five other European partners to enhance and transform the role of aesthetic and embodied learning in education for democracy at all phases of education, including professional learning. Then we’ll share a short overview of our UH-led professional learning case, which has focussed on the development of democratic supervisory practices. Most of the session will involve an arts-based and embodied activity, where you’ll use collage to explore your own understandings democracy, and education for democracy in your own practice. There will be opportunity to discuss your collages, and the thinking behind them. The session will end with an open discussion about the use of arts-based and embodied approaches to support reflection and professional learning.