“Using the Arts to Flip Understanding” Workshop Featured on i2Insights Blog

Jun 20, 2023

“Using the Arts to Flip Understanding,” one of a2ru’s signature workshops, was featured on Integration and Implementation Insights (i2Insights), a blog on interdisciplinary practice hosted by the Australian National University. i2Insights is a “community blog and repository of resources for improving research impact on complex real-world problems” featuring contributions from researchers around the world.

The blog post, “Using the arts to flip understanding: An arts intervention for non-arts researchers,” was co-authored by Margot Greenlee, an independent artist/scholar; Martina Jerant, a program manager for the Ronald Weiser Center for Prostate Cancer at the University of Michigan, and Veronica Stanich, a2ru’s Research Program Manager and the Managing Editor of a2ru Ground Works. The authors co-designed the workshop and have been piloting the workshop in a variety of settings over the past few years, refining the instructional design with each offering.

The article describes how the workshop was designed to help researchers gain new perspectives on their work that may get them “unstuck” from a problem that has been impeding their progress. The authors wrote, “We—a choreographer-and-professional-facilitator (Margot), a scientist-athlete-facilitator-entrepreneur (Martina), and a dancer-turned-arts-researcher (Veronica)—had a hunch that the arts have something to offer STEMM researchers: a different understanding of their own work. We posited that thoughts are intertwined with actions, and when there is no opportunity to do things differently, it’s hard to think differently—to get a fresh perspective.”

Click here to read the full article, which discusses the workshop design in detail as well as participant feedback, and to join the conversation.

Are you interesting in booking “Using the Arts to Flip Understanding” for your own department or group, either in-person or virtually? Click here for more information.