ACCELERATE: Accessible Immersive Learning for Art and Design
May 2023: Live events happened simultaneously in Bath, London, Ireland, Ukraine, and Poland for the Launch of Accelerate outputs.
ACCELERATE was a strategic partnership project (2021–2023) funded by Erasmus+ to develop innovative methodologies, tools, platforms, and resources for accessible immersive learning in art and design education.
ACCELERATE has a simple but ambitious aim: to improve the teaching of art and design at higher education in a post-pandemic Europe through the development of innovative methodologies, tools, platforms, and resources for accessible immersive learning. It does so by bringing together art and design lecturers, educational researchers, and learning technologists from the UK, Ireland, Poland, and Ukraine to reflect on the impact of COVID-19 and war, to explore new possibilities for pedagogy and digital innovation
At its heart, ACCELERATE is about digital innovation in response to the impact that COVID-19 has had—and continues to have—on university teaching. It is fundamentally a practice-based project in its investment in the agency of technology and follows a ‘thinking through making’ approach. It seeks to address the particular challenges in the teaching of art, design and related practice-based creative subjects where materiality, embodiment, and experientially are central to the learning experience and where, consequently, the transition to online and distance learning has presented acute difficulties.
Bath Spa University led the project with University of Arts London (UK), Institute of Art, Design and Technology (Ireland), SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Poland), Sumy State University (Ukraine) and Chernivtsi National University (Ukraine).
Results and resources are published on the project website: www.immersiveartdesign.net
Image credit: SWPS Sara Bos 2023