The Centre for Teaching and Learning wants the Queen’s community to delve into their creative process for a new exhibition that aims to highlight the artistic side of teaching and learning.

The creative expressions of teaching and learning exhibition, planned for October, will display and celebrate the creativity that is essential to the process of teaching and learning.

“Much of what we do at Queen’s to enhance teaching and learning takes a methodological approach, such as looking at course design or learning outcomes,” says Peter Wolf, Associate Vice-Provost (Teaching and Learning) and Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning, who is spearheading the project along with a committee of dedicated volunteers. “This exhibition takes a different approach that hopes to engage students, staff and faculty in reflecting on the creative and sometimes artistic elements that contribute to learning.”

Submissions are invited from faculty, staff, students and alumni in two categories. The first is for existing artifacts, the products and processes of teaching and learning from current or past courses. This may include student projects, drawings, schematics, notes or other items. The second category is a call for proposals for new creative artworks, by individuals or groups, which need not be related to a specific course. These new works should be inspired by teaching and learning, and successful proposals will receive up to $750 to create the work.

“Transforming thought into art and artifact allows the knowledge culled from research and academic pursuits to incubate and emerge in a new form,” says Aynne Johnston, Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts Education, Co-coordinator of the Artist-in-Community Education program, and a member of the volunteer committee. “An artifact represents the end or the process of inquiry and has the ability to incite the curiosity of the public to learn, acquire and grasp connections between theory and possible application.”

Tricia Baldwin, Director of the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts and another member of the exhibition’s volunteer committee, says the exhibition will highlight the importance of imagination in discovery and learning.

“Here at the Isabel we celebrate the creative journey of discovery through the arts, and this Creative Expressions of Teaching and Learning project will demonstrate the parallel process of discovery and learning through imagination,” says Ms. Baldwin. “This project will involve both creators and the Queen’s community in this creative fusion of imaginative pedagogy and art itself.”

The deadline for submissions of existing artifacts of teaching and learning is May 2 and the deadline for proposals for new works is March 18. Ownership and copyright for all works submitted will remain with the artists.

More information about the creative expressions of teaching and learning exhibit, including submission forms, is available on the website of the Centre for Teaching and Learning.