糖心传媒

We鈥檝e had a long wait for the 糖心传媒 Conference at Edinburgh after 糖心传媒 2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic. But 糖心传媒 2022 is coming back with style and lots of innovative ideas to make the conference more diverse, inclusive and inspiring than ever.

糖心传媒 has a tradition of surprising audiences through its annual Presidential Keynote Address (given alternately at the 糖心传媒 and UKFIET conferences). You may remember Professor Pauline Rose鈥檚 keynote in 2017 which included a dance workshop followed by a led by the amazing Kenyan dancer Michael Wamaya, or Professor Anna Robinson-Pant鈥檚 in 2019 in which actors, planted around the room, popped up to tell stories of educational inclusion.

This year we are handing the creative baton to our participants by including a call for proposals for 鈥渃reative spaces鈥�. These ask for 鈥榓ny format or structure鈥� that encourages people to come together to 鈥榗ommunicate, reflect and learn鈥�. But what does this mean? It might feel intimidating to submit something too far away from the more formal sessions one might expect at a conference, and the idea of creativity might assume that it requires some sort of artistic aptitude鈥� you may be worrying: what if my idea isn鈥檛 what the conference committee had in mind?

Well, to reassure any potential creative session proposers, this really is as open to interpretation as the call for abstracts suggests. Dancing flash-mobs and acted stories are still an option! But it could also be something much more low key. The intention is to create spaces for people to come together to make learning experiential, for us to employ our hearts and our hands as well (or instead of) our heads. This could take any form. For example, it might incorporate sound, craft, storytelling, music, movement, games, visual activities, or just alternative ways of talking to each other that encourages us to collectively reflect on the conference theme of education partnerships from different angles and in new ways. Sessions could be examples of embodied practices, reflections on artistic forms, artivism, or spaces to ground ourselves. The scope is huge, and we are genuinely open to interesting and novel ideas that people, far more creative than us, might dream up.

Eleanor Brown (University of York) and Alison Buckler (The Open University)