Liminality: Thinking Through Creative Practice, Unpredictability and Pedagogy of Collaboration. Arts-Based Knowledge Translation Frameworks

Abstract

The pedagogical frameworks outlined in this paper are based in student learning at the intersection of academic knowledge acquisition and research, with discipline expert teaching. They centre on the cultivation of liminal spaces in which a student finds multiple entry points to a topic/s and multiple ways of generating outcomes. The examples provided demonstrate how thinking through creative practice and material culture research can cultivate the higher order critical and flexible thinking skills students require to engage with creative practice and collaborations which ‘support human life and learning’ (Tudor, Creativity: a higher order capability. Doctoral dissertation, University of Technology, Sydney, 2005). Experimentation is championed, and the learner engages with the senses though the sensual body; research, creative and innovative ideas-generation; place, identity and time. Thinking elastically through the capacity to ‘re-imagine’ established discourse is pivotal, to challenge existing prejudices, test and create new theories, challenge norms and embrace the ‘new’ to establish contemporary dialogues and narratives. The paper examines workshops that re-imagine historical memory, translate research through arts-based practices, innovate using tangible and ephemeral stimuli, develop collaborative entrepreneurial relationships and promote ‘doing’ by ‘becoming’ through the senses, in a unique community of creative practice (Dewey, Art as experience. Capricorn Books, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1934).