Image 3.0: Raising questions through art: UZH/ZHdK Summer School “Art as a Means of Historical Inquiry, 2024.
Art as a Means of Academic Teaching
Artistic assignments make abstract intellectual problems relatable in an experimental manner. Creative writing, graphical narrative curation, or the telling of history as an interactive encounter sharpen observative and analytic skills. They bring the power of design choices in historical writing to the fore.
The exercises below can be used as teaching moments for historians and artists, or adapted as creative assignments at high school, college and adult education levels. They are prompts to examine the power of different media and categories of analysis to deepen intellectual inquiry and stimulate conceptual cognition.
Participants reflect on how creative techniques and processes can be transferred between artistic work and academic research and how the ways of observing, asking and analyzing differ between the arts and academia. Such exercises help recognize concretely applicable skills such as design thinking, public outreach and audience-specific storytelling.