Recent activities of members
research group

 

Wilderness and Blooming Flowers Art and Botany course

Engeløya, 6-12 July, 2010

Together with biology teacher Linda Jolly and art teacher Solveig Slåttli, Jan van Boeckel presented the 7 day course "Wilderness and Blooming Flowers" on the island of Engeløya, close to the Lofoten archipelago in Northern Norway.

Click here to see more pictures

Exhibition environmental art education

Rovaniemi, Finland, June 2010

Together with art education students from Aalto University, doctorate researcher Mari von Boehm and Proffesor Pirkko Pohjakallio organized a well-attended workshop and exhibition on environmental art education on the INSEA conference in Rovaniemi, Finland.

Lecture 'The point of no return'

Falmouth, United Kingdom, 8 June 2010

One of the characteristics of arts-based environmental education is that it encourages participants to be receptive to nature in new and uncommon ways. To approach the world afresh through art, to look at a plant, an animal or even a landscape as if we see it for the first time in our life. In this, the participant is encouraged to immerse him or herself in nature, to seek a 'deep identification' (Arne Naess).
In this presentation Jan van Boeckel explored if there could be cases where such immersion may reach – or even go beyond – a point of return. A point, where the 'intertwining' with nature causes the subject to sever the 'life lines' to the world which would enable him or her to maintain the psychological, cultural and spiritual integrity of the ego. The dissolving of the ego’s boundaries through artistic practice can be seen as having certain shamanistic qualities, specifically in case when this transgression involves efforts to connect with other animal species such as Joseph Beuys famous studio encounter with a coyote in his performance I Like America and America Likes Me (1974). Such undertakings may constitute – at least in the perception of the shaman-artist – a form of 'going native', becoming 'one' with the non-human Others.
As a case history, Van Boeckel discussed the 'trespassing' from the world of culture to the world of nature by Timothy Treadwell, entering the ecosphere and live world of the grizzly bears in Alaska, for which he ultimately paid the price of the death (the tragic story was documented by Werner Herzog in his film Grizzly Man, 2005). Jan van Boeckel analyzed the phenomenon along the distinction between Apollonian versus Dionysian sensibility in cultural activity as articulated by, among others, Nietzsche and Robert J. Pirsig, and see it as an 'unchecked' Dionysian immersion in the ecstatic.
Finally he tried to formulate some pedagogical implications for teachers and facilitators encouraging an attitude of radical amazement and vulnerability in arts-based environmental education.

Jan van Boeckel: Lecture Downloadable Video and Audio Podcast

http://rane.falmouth.ac.uk/lecture_series.html
 

Children and Nature: Rediscovering a sense of wonder

Schumacher College, United Kingdom, 31 May – 4 June 2010

During this one week course with teachers Richard Louv, Kathy Louv and Jan van Boeckel, the participants looked at why nature is important for children’s development and creativity, and how the “nature gap” can be bridged. It included outdoor arts-based workshops and experiential exercises which can be used in environmental education contexts.
The course is intended for: teachers at all levels, environmental educators, childcare and family services professionals, and parents.

Other teachers:
Richard Louv is a journalist and international recognised expert on the connection between family, nature and community. His book “Last Child in the Woods” has stimulated a global debate about the relationship between children and nature. He is the chairman and co-founder of the Children & Nature Network.
Kathy Louv is a nurse practitioner whose current interest focuses on the relationship between physical exercise, health and brain development.
 

Wildpainting in Nuuksio national park

Espoo, 18 April, 2010

A full day workshop organized through The Public School Helsinki, in the early spring landscape of a lakeshore in a northern forest. The workshop was facilitated by Jan van Boeckel.

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Seminarium "Konst för ett ekologiskt hållbart samhälle"
("Art for an ecologically sustainable society")

Wij Trädgårdar, Ockelbo, Sweden, 16 February, 2010

Together with Mikael Malmaeus and Gunilla Kindstrand, Jan van Boeckel was one of the keynote speakers at this seminarium about different perspectives on ecological sustainability and the role of art in environmental engagement. The day ended with a discussion about ideas for establishing an ecological art centre at Ockelbo.

More information: www.konstochlandskap.se/sem100216.html

On 18 February, Jan presented two lectures and a clay moulding workshop for the 63 garden architecture students at the Trädgårdsmästarprogrammet of the Högskolan i Gävle.

Images of the students' works:

http://utbdb.hig.se/webkat/program.php?program_id=60083

Images of the 'mini-me' clay moulding  workshop:

Introduction to Wildpainting workshop

Helsinki, Finland, 18 October, 2009

On Sunday 18 October, Jan van Boeckel presented an "Introduction to wildpainting" workshop
at TaiK (University for Art and Design Helsinki).

Click here for images of the session

Oslo, 20 September, 2009, in the forest outside Soria Moria conference centre

In September 2009 the conference "Ecology and Forests for Public Health" of Nature-Culture-Health International took place. Its aim was to focus on environmental, climatic and cultural changes that threaten the public’s health today, and to analyze the importance of forests for people on our planet. One of the presentations was by Jan van Boeckel. His theme was "Connecting through art with trees." He discussed arts-based ways to connect to nature, and he took as point of departure a eco-phenomenologically inspired orientation. Part of this was the notion that a tree may " reveal" its being more fully to one who tries to increase his or her receptivity to its expressions. His presentation had as its motto, a line of painter Paul Cézanne: "The landscape thinks itself in me, and I am its consciousness."
Jan tried to compare this sensibility and state of mindfulness to the way people in traditional indigenous cultures seem to relate to the land, and, more specifically, to the forest, and discuss the challenges of reconnecting to the tree when we try to do this whilst living in and being part of a "disenchanted" (post)modern world.
The talk included the making of a painting of a fir tree – or, if one wills, allowing the tree to express herself through the painting.
The title of the session ("Smiling birches, weeping firs") was inspired on the chapter "From the opaque to the concrete: The poetic side of Arne Naess," by David Rothenberg, in his book Always the mountains.

Website of conference

Wildpainting summer art courses in the Norwegian fjords

At Jølster, 6-10 July, 2009 and at Skarstein gård, Kandal, 27-31 July, 2009

At these painting courses, which were taught by Jan van Boeckel, participants drew and painted the rough and breathtaking landscape along the steep slopes of Fjord-Norway. WILDPAINTING means two things: to paint wilderness and wild landscapes, and to paint in a different, surprising way. The aim was to open up to the aesthetics and the energies of the landscape through trying to see (and smell, know etc.) as if one perceives it for the first time. It meant basically to dare to draw and paint in quite a different way than we are accustomed to: leaves don't always have to be green and the sky not eternally blue. Instead the participants tried to observe afresh, deeper and deeper, letting the motive come to them as they experienced it there and then. In that way, the artistic process became something between meditation and perceiving the world in the way a child does. We used acrylic paints and heavy paper, charcoal and pencils.
The courses lasted five hours each day, for five days with regular breaks for tea and coffee, for lunch, or for taking some time to talk about what had happened to that point. Every participant got also personal comments and advice from the course facilitator.
There was no demand of having prior artistic skills. What was needed was the enthusiasm to participate and a desire to learn something new, and to dare to participate in this process. The inspiration to the Wildpainting courses comes from painter Paul Cézanne, who wrote: "The landscape thinks itself in me, and I am its consciousness."

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Location of Jølster      Location of Kandal (Google maps)
 

Wind an Water Intensive course on the Baltic Sea

From 19 until 29 April 2009, the Wind and Water expedition took place on the schooner Helena, from Kiel - via Gotland - to Uusikaupunki (Finland).

This EDDA Norden intensive course entailed a distant learning period (17-31 March 2009); a sailing and working period (19-29 April 2009); and a period for preparation of a temporary exhibition and evaluation (30 April - 3 May 2009). Participation on the course required taking part in all three parts of the course.
The participants were students from Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden, at EDDA Norden institutions that offer teacher training in art, media and design. Teachers were Mari von Boehm and Jan van Boeckel  of the TaiK Research group on arts-based environmental education.
The core of the course was the voyage on the sailing vessel through the seas that are connecting us, the Nordic and Baltic people. The schooner Helena sailed from Kiel – via Gotland – to Uusikaupunki (Finland).

During the course the participants investigated the ways in which art can be of added value in the context of environmental education on marine ecosystems and climate change. The participants travelled the natural slow way by wind-power, and concentrated on the basic experience and appreciation of the small size of humans in the whole, on engagement with the environment, and on what the preconditions are for creating art in extraordinary circumstances.
It was the first time that it is carried out on this basis and with this structure as a pan-Nordic project. It built further upon the established tradition within EDDA Norden of using nature as a resource in art education (Snow and Ice Sculpting at Laino Snow Village, Finland, in 2007; and the Light and Fire workshop in Notodden, Norway, in 2008).

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