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research: practicing curiosity

On June 7th, researchers and teachers from Cuba, Ecuador, Columbia and Germany joined seekicks to explore empathy for non-human living-beings through nature journaling.

weißensee school of art and design is research partner in a DAAD funded project which aims at co-creating SDG-related education in universities from different systemic perspectives.

For this purpose, our partners from universities in Cuba, Ecuador, Columbia and Germany, visited the campus of the art school. We spent the morning walking through the workshops, to give our guests an impression of how ,studio-practice’ is applied as a way of project-based learning in art schools.

In the afternoon we used Nature Journaling as a method and an experiment to relate to and learn with plants as active, living beings. We asked: How can we learn an ecological sensitivity that includes all living beings? What happens when we (have to) expand our capacity for empathy to the more-than-human? In what ways can a »Practice of Curiosity« contribute to a more caring world? In doing so, we explored how this mindset changes the way we think about sustainable futures.

It was a real pleasure to experience many different perspectives and we are very much looking forward to future exchanges with our project partners!