Teaching Artistry
TEACHING ARTISTRY: ACTING LOCALLY, SHARING GLOBALLY
One year research project
Promoter: CORPoREAL
In cooperation with: Fontys Academy of the Arts Tilburg
Image: Colin Czerwinski
In a world where the role of arts and culture is increasingly important in shaping societies and promoting social well-being, teaching artists can be central in creating bridges between artistic practices and diverse communities. However, teaching artistry remains “largely invisible. Even within the arts, lots of people don’t know there is such a vocation. There are few good pathways into the field and few reliable ways to build a career that recognizes and rewards increasing skill" (Booth, 2023).
This research project focuses on professionalizing teaching artists - in an international context – and on their ability to integrate imagination and embodied learning in diverse society as a distinctive artistic practice. The project also aims to engage in the continuity of this professionalization by creating a local Lowlands hub in a collaboration between Royal Conservatoire Antwerp and Fontys Academy of the Arts Tilburg.
Operating from a Teacher Development Team (TDT), the research aims to inspire teaching artists in Flanders and the Netherlands and allow them to innovate constructively. The TDT serves as a professional learning and research community in which participants jointly professionalize and research both artistically and pedagogically-didactically in practicums, lectures, and Learning Labs. The central question is: What professionalization do teaching artists achieve through an international hybrid learning community, and how can this learning community take on a sustainable form?
Output is foreseen in the form of a book publication, the creation of a knowledge center (ITAC Hub Lowlands) and a lecture-performance highlighting the impact of teaching artists worldwide on society and the arts.
Bob Selderslaghs
lead researcher
Bob Selderslaghs (1973) is a Doctor of Arts and works as a teaching artist and researcher in drama and education. He graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp in 1996 as Master of Drama and started working as an actor in theatre and television. He always combined his artistic work with artistic-educational activities: he taught in part-time art education, art secondary education and the arts education sector. In 2001, he obtained his teaching certificate at the University College of Antwerp. From 2008 to 2018, Bob was coordinator of the Teacher Training Programme in Drama at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, where he taught various subject courses. He currently coordinates the Master projects of the Educational Master of Music and Performing Arts and teaches ‘Research’ in the Bachelor of Drama. Bob published several articles and books on (cross-domain) initiation and on Mantle of the Expert: a dramatic inquiry approach to learning and teaching that he has been researching intensively since 2016. In 2022, he obtained his PhD with the thesis ‘MoE 2.0 - Mantle of the Expert: from dramatic inquiry towards an artistic result in arts education’. He is currently (2022-2024) conducting postdoctoral research on professionalizing teaching artists. Bob is chair of the research group CORPoREAL.