The Pedagogical Impulse’s Three Minute Launch

On the evening of Jan­u­ary 19th, The Ped­a­gog­i­cal Impulse a, research-cre­ation SSHRC fund­ed study on the inter­sec­tions between art edu­ca­tion, art prac­tice, and ped­a­gogy, launched at the Ontario Insti­tute for Stud­ies in Edu­ca­tion. Draw­ing on the pre­sen­ta­tion form “Pecha Kucha” The Ped­a­gog­i­cal Impulse Researchers and Artists-in-Res­i­dence pre­sent­ed fif­teen, three minute “per­for­mance lec­tures” on a wide range of top­ics cap­tured in the pic­ture on the left.  Those who attend­ed were giv­en a strict sched­ule with three min­utes to lis­ten to a lec­ture and three min­utes to social­ize between each presentation.

Per­for­mance lec­tures by Stephanie Spring­gay, Han­nah Jick­ling, Helen Reed, Hazel Mey­er, Rodri­go Her­nan­dez-Gomez, Andrea Yeung, and Arden Hage­dorn cov­ered top­ics such as The Cin­na­mon Chal­lenge, Hap­pi­ness, Yarn Bomb­ing, Artis­tic Hyper­tro­phy, Parei­do­lia, Decen­tre, and Nerd Hier­ar­chy.  The lounge out­side The Ped­a­gog­i­cal Impulse Lab pro­vid­ed the stage for the launch audi­ence to watch and par­tic­i­pate as the researchers and artist-in-res­i­dence asked them to adjust while the screen, pro­jec­tor and chairs were moved to three dif­fer­ent loca­tions in lounge, allow­ing the pre­sen­ta­tors to use all the space avail­able to them.  Pre­sen­ters were timed metic­u­lous­ly in order to keep their pre­sen­ta­tions to the three minute lim­it and though the three minute socilaiz­ing time between pre­sen­ta­tions felt awk­ward ini­tial­ly, by the end of the launch the audi­ence and pre­sen­ters had much to dis­cuss and had to be inter­rupt­ed to start the final lec­tures.  We would like to thank all those who came and par­tic­i­pat­ed in The Three Minute Launch.

The Ped­a­gog­i­cal Impulse is a plat­form for research-cre­ation con­cerned with con­tem­po­rary art’s par­a­dig­mat­ic re-ori­en­ta­tion towards the edu­ca­tion­al. The project will ori­ent itself around a series of artist res­i­den­cies that will take place across a num­ber of edu­ca­tion­al sites (K‑12 class­rooms, teacher edu­ca­tion pro­grams, grad­u­ate pro­grams, and com­mu­ni­ty spaces) in order to exam­ine how artists are engag­ing with edu­ca­tion­al con­cepts as spaces for the devel­op­ment of new crit­i­cal prac­tices, and the poten­tial trans­for­ma­tive engage­ments that occur when such art prac­tices are locat­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with schools.

The lead project space is housed at the Ontario Insti­tute for Stud­ies in Edu­ca­tion, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and will func­tion as a cre­ative lab­o­ra­to­ry, library, and archival space. Through­out the project the lab space will host dis­cur­sive and per­for­ma­tive events that will bring togeth­er artists, teach­ers, stu­dents, and the Toron­to arts community.

Pho­tos by Acme Art & Design