Conference Agenda

The growing distancing of young people from representative institutions, the weakening of civic trust, and the rise of far-right rhetoric to which they are vulnerable, paint a picture that calls for exploring new pedagogical approaches capable of strengthening democratic cultures. This phenomenon reveals a profound emotional disconnect: for many young people, political and social reality is perceived as distant, alien, and irrelevant to their lives. Faced with this situation, traditional approaches to education for democracy show persistent limitations by prioritising formal knowledge (Zyngier, 2011), which often neglects the emotional and relational dimension where true commitment to eco-social issues is anchored.

Commitment arises through an emotional movement that draws us towards the collective. Involvement is rooted in a context, always political, that shapes our desire to act (Stewart, 2007). In this sense, affections, understood as forces circulating between bodies, spaces, and practices that make up both the intimate and the public (Berlant, 1998), operate as catalysts that can reorient the construction of knowledge. From this perspective, and taking up bell hooks “invitation to imagine ‘new and different ways of engaging students” (hooks, 2022), this proposal is guided by the following central research question: How can affections that promote greater social involvement among young people be mobilised through pedagogical practice?

To answer this question, we draw on a conception of affect as a force that traverses situations and bodies, modulating their capacity to affect and be affected (Massumi, 2002). It operates as a vibration that reorganises the field of experience and may or may not crystallise into recognisable emotions. It does not reside “within” individuals, but between them, shaping affective atmospheres (Quintana, 2023; Zembylas, 2022). In this sense, creative or artistic pedagogical methods can function as spaces for exposure and encounter, where the personal becomes relational, the relational political, and the political livable (Ahmed, 2014). Michalinos Zembylas (2022) points out that affective environments are inseparable from democratic education, since participatory processes are not only thought out: they are felt, inhabited and embodied (Hickey-Moody, 2013, 2016).

Within this framework, our objectives are: (1) To reflect, through the account of three pedagogical scenes from the CCLabs, on how different pedagogical methods can operate as affective triggers; (2) To analyse the translation processes through which the intensities generated in the laboratories are catalysed by pedagogical mediation towards recognisable forms of agency and involvement on the part of the students; (3) To address the need to rethink democratic education as a pedagogical practice that places the affective dimension at the centre as a condition for meaningful engagement.

To address this question, this communication builds on the Horizon Europe Democracy Meets Arts: Critical Change Labs for Building Democratic Cultures through Creative and Narrative Practices (CCLAB) project. The CCLAB project is developed by a consortium of ten European institutions. The project aims to identify the challenges of youth democratic participation and develop a pedagogical model capable of addressing them. To this end, it integrates principles of critical pedagogy (Ahmed, 2025; Freire, 2007) with the ChangeLab method (Virkkunen, 2013), incorporating creative, narrative and artistic practices throughout three cycles of Participatory Action Research (PAR).

The research questions are:

• How arts-based research can foster transforming food value systems in educational communities?

• How hands-on and place-based strategies promote a sense of belonging, and the desire for more accessible and healthy food systems?

The objectives of the research are:

- Strengthen the sense of belonging of children (and the educational community) in Salt, with special attention to the Orchards in Salt, through arts-based research.

- Strengthen the link between educational communities and the Orchards in Salt through hands-on and plase-based strategiesFood consumption in urban areas is articulated into a highly complex and specialised distribution scheme, with an almost exclusive dependence on long and distant supply chains. In the context of climate change such dependency creates unprecedented and unnecessary pressures on the resource supply, transportation, and logistics, thus challenging the resilience of a system almost exclusively dependent on external supply - with the additional ethical

and sustainability questions that arise from increasingly transferring the negative impacts of industrial food production and provision away from cities to other areas (Jensen, P. D., & Orfila, 2021). Additionally, sustainable urban food options, which include e.g., healthy eating, access to green spaces and the equal provision of climate-resilient urban infrastructures (Rutt & Gulsrud, 2016) are often inaccessible to wider portions of the urban population. This is an economic, social, and infrastructural problem, where the poor integration of the urban food system (and related green infrastructure) with the built environment is both a major source of food insecurity (Oscilowicz et al., 2022) and a barrier to the pursuit of environmental justice in cities (Penne, & Goedemé, 2021).

Innovative examples of urban strategies for sustainable and healthy food already exist (e.g., the De Cunto et al. “Food in cities” report provided evidence from the Eurocities network in 2017). Cities have demonstrated their central role during the pandemic in ensuring access to food for citizens and supporting retailers (Eurocities, 2021). Local food production and food security has also been on the EU’s agenda, which has - among others - facilitated knowledge

exchange between cities on sustainable local food systems through its URBACT network (n.d.). However, consolidated best practices and emerging experimentations remain sporadic, and lack an overarching forum as well as a systemic framework for learning, knowledge exchange, and innovation transfer.

Upon this framework, the European Research project "REDESIGN - transformative food value systems that remodel resilient urban landscapes" (https://horizon-redesign.eu ) aims to identify and develop strategies to transform urban food systems, incorporating local, social, and cultural values, specially to make the local food system inclusive and accessible, fostering environmental justice and food justice in cities through participatory approaches that include vulnerable communities. One of the project’s lines of research focuses on creating three Living Labs in three different European cities. One Living Lab is developed in Salt (Spain), and one of the vulnerable target groups is children.

Being aware of the potential of the arts for enhancing understanding (Barone and Eisner, 2012); fostering awareness of ethical dimensions in food production and consumption in communities (Juhola et al., 2024; Roe & Buser, 2016) and children’s engagement and commitment to the current ecological crisis (Bentz & O’Brian, 2019). This paper focuses on the part of the research project developed with schools, and how children and, by extension, the whole educational community can transform their food value systems through developing an arts-educational project.

- Raise awareness about healthy habits linked to food systems, addressing the processes of production, transport and consumption.

- Influence the transformation of the values ​​of the food systems of the educational community, incorporating criteria of health, sustainability and roots in the territory.

This study examines the reflections of an arts-based and researcher-designed interactive learning design on students’ environmental awareness within the context of environmental education in the Life Studies course at the third-grade primary school level. In the study, a TouchDesigner-based audio-visual learning environment was designed in order to raise awareness of endangered species. Students’ interaction with this environment was supported through art activities. The research addresses a holistic learning process in which digital interaction, sensory experience, and arts-based learning are brought together. The main research question of this study is “How does an arts-based and interactive digital learning environment influence third-grade primary school students’ awareness of endangered species and the human–nature relationship?” The purpose of this study is to design an innovative digital learning environment for environmental education within the Life Studies course at the primary school level and to examine the reflections of this environment on students’ environmental awareness. The study aims to foster students’ connection with nature through arts-based activities, to create an interactive learning experience through the use of TouchDesigner. This study also aims to present an applicable example of environmental education at the primary school level through a low-code/no-code approach, thereby providing teachers with practical ideas for enriching classroom teaching and learning practices. Conceptual Framework Duncum (2004) states that meaning does not emerge from a single sign but rather from the relationships between signs. In other words, the meaning of an image is not produced solely by the image itself; it is constructed together with the accompanying sound, context, and interaction. In this study, students’ environmental awareness is therefore structured holistically not only through visual images, but also through animal sounds, digital movement, and arts-based activities. Duncum (2004) discusses how sound or text can “anchor” the meaning of an image. For example, cheerful music can render an image joyful, whereas melancholic music has the power to dramatize the same image. The classroom environment designed in this study provides an opportunity to examine how a particular animal sound or digital movement can guide students’ visual perceptions of that animal in this way. Duncum (2004) further argues that the aim of multimodal education is not merely to “experience” different modes, but to “analyze” how these modes influence us. For instance, one may become aware of how music manipulates the viewer’s emotions in a film scene. Building on this perspective, the study goes beyond simply enabling students to experience nature and instead seeks to address questions such as, “When this sound is added, does nature feel more frightening or more friendly?” In this way, it is considered possible to explore how primary school students construct meaning in relation to endangered species. With Duncum’s (2004) understanding of multimodality, this study aims to move art education beyond the purely visual, while simultaneously adapting the Reggio Emilia principle of “the environment as the third teacher” to the digital realm (Aden & Theodotou, 2019; Danko-McGhee & Slutsky, 2017). The designed TouchDesigner environment functions as a “Third Space,” as defined by Aung (2025), creating a setting in which children hybridize scientific environmental knowledge with artistic expression. As emphasized by Narey (2017) and Brooks (2017), art in this study is positioned not as a final product but as a process through which children think and make meaning. Moreover, as noted by Davidson et al. (2017), the multimodal dialogues and embodied responses that emerge during digital interaction demonstrate that environmental awareness is constructed not only cognitively, but also affectively and relationally.

Learning an aesthetic subject is a sensory endeavour. In the school subject food education, senses are continuously engaged: the students are touching the earthy potato as they peel it under running cold water, looking at onions soften in the pot, inhaling the aroma of bread baking in the oven, and tasting the warm prepared dishes alongside their classmates. Existing educational research in the school subject food education (also called home economics) has primarily focused on teacher practices and syllabus requirements (see, for example (Benn, 2009; Makumbe & Nyevera, 2021; Veka & Djupegot, 2025). But the kitchen classroom is inhabited by a swarm of young people with moving bodies, kitchen tables, stoves, sinks, cutlery, and food - vegetables, legumes, grains, dairy products, meats, and spices.

Creative and aesthetic school subjects, such as food education, have historically received limited attention within compulsory schooling. In many countries, food education is often a voluntary after-school activity, particularly in the upper grades (Benn, 2009). In the Danish school system, however, this positioning has begun to shift, as what may be described as a practical turn. For the first time in several decades, the Danish government in 2018 decided to increase the number of lessons allocated to aesthetic subjects in compulsory schooling (Ministry of Education, 2018). As a response to what may be described as a unilateral emphasis on academic skills in literacy and numeracy, greater curricular space has been given to subjects such as sloyd, visual arts, music, and food education. This turn has been articulated in Danish school policy discourse through the concept of practiacy (praksisfaglighed in Danish), which has, since the 2018 initiative, begun to develop as a new pedagogical phenomenon. Practiacy encompasses ambitions for more practical and varied teaching across school subjects, as well as a renewed focus on craft, craftwork, and vocational pathways beyond compulsory schooling (Ravn, 2024). With this new situatedness of the aesthetic school subjects, this paper is based on my PhD project exploring learning with things.

The aim of this paper is to explore research creation practices to trace learning processes with things, drawing on posthuman understandings of classroom assemblages as emergent becomings of human and non-human forces and relations (Lenz-Taguchi, 2009; Bennett, 2010; de Freitas, 2012; Deleuze et al., 1987). This paper takes shape through a posthuman and postqualitative inspiration to research, understood as an open-ended process of research creations (Taylor & Hughes, 2016). Rather than approaching knowledge as representation or outcome, inquiry is practiced as something that unfolds through experimental, relational, and more-than-human encounters. Grounded on postfoundational approaches (Gunnarsson & Bodén, 2021; Mazzei & Jackson, 2024), and Deleuzian notions of becoming (Deleuze et al., 1987), research is approached as practices that come into being alongside the worlds it engages. Knowledge is thus understood as situated and emergent, and is becoming through shifting relations among bodies, things, discourses, and affects. Postapproaches challenge human exceptionalism and foreground the significance of more-than-human participants in educational practices (Haraway, 2016). Through this perspective, teaching and learning processes are not pre-given phenomena but are continually made and remade within classroom assemblages as fluid configurations of students, teachers, things, buildings, curricular intentions, and discursive forces (Lenz-Taguchi, 2009; de Freitas, 2012; Murris, 2020). This approach invites attention to how matter comes to matter in school learning. The research question addressed is: How might learning processes with things be explored as classroom assemblages, emerging through shifting relations and affects among human and non-human participants?