(2017–Present) An artistic exploration of how we move between safe and challenging spaces – and how art can create connections, reflection, and new understandings.
About the Project
Crossing Borders is an ongoing artistic and educational project that explores how individuals, communities, and societies navigate the tension between safe and challenging spaces – such as home, school, and public institutions. Through artistic methods, we examine the roles we play in different relationships and how we communicate and influence one another. The project investigates how art can help us understand, challenge, and redefine the spaces that shape us.
Originally, Crossing Borders focused on how children and young people learn through artistic processes, particularly in collaboration with schools in Copenhagen and Cape Town. However, the project has since expanded to include parallel explorations, such as Refugiets Poetik (The Poetics of Refuge) on Bornholm. Here, we explore how refuges – temporary homes or free spaces – can create safety and reflection for people of all ages. While Crossing Borders in Copenhagen maintains a pedagogical focus on children, Refugiets Poetik extends this inquiry to all who seek safety, connection, and new ways of being together.
Artistic Methods and Themes
We use a variety of artistic methods, including choreography, dance, landscape architecture, and graphic expression, to investigate how different art forms communicate and influence one another. For example:
- How can dance and movement express emotions, senses, and relationships to our surroundings?
- How can visual art and photography capture the connections between people and their environments?
- How do static and dynamic art forms (such as drawings vs. dance) interact and evolve together?
In our work, we have collaborated with schoolchildren in Athlone, Cape Town, and Copenhagen, using exercises like photography to explore themes such as relations between home and school. Before taking photos, we embodied concepts like crossing, opening, closing, border, obstacle, exit, entrance, threshold, frame, gate, and connection – asking how these ideas shape our understanding of the spaces we inhabit.
In December 2021 we released a peer reviewed article “A Microtopia of Arts Education” in the book Arts, Sustainability and Education.
In December 2020 we released a peer reviewed article “It’s all about art” in the book “Dancing Across Borders”. See the book here
The Role of Research
Researcher Charlotte Svendler Nielsen leads the pedagogical research within Crossing Borders. Her work explores questions such as:
- What can children learn about themselves, others, and their surroundings through artistic-educational collaborations?
- How can connections be created through children’s experiences and expressions as artistic forms and alternative ways of reflection?
- How can the methodological considerations of this research be shared with a broader range of professionals?
Parallel Project:
Refugiets Poetik (The Poetics of Refuge) is a sister project under the Crossing Borders umbrella. While Crossing Borders in Copenhagen focuses on children and pedagogical settings, Refugiets Poetik on Bornholm explores how art can create poetic refuges for people of all ages and backgrounds. These refuges act as temporary safe spaces – places for daydreaming, reflection, and connection, free from the constraints of normative structures.
In Refugiets Poetik, we ask:
- How can we create and experience safe spaces across worldviews?
- How can art help us reimagine safety, belonging, and community?
- How do refuges differ from traditional notions of home, and what new possibilities do they offer?
Collaborators and Partners Crossing Borders is a collaboration between:
- Norma Road Primary School (Athlone, Cape Town)
- Peder Lykke Skole (Copenhagen)
- Peter Clarke Art Centre (Cape Town)
- University of Copenhagen
The project builds on the foundation of Red Apples – Green Apples and is supported by the University of Copenhagen and the Danish Cultural Institute.
The others involved are: Liesl Hartman, Fabian Hartzenberg, Charlotte Svendler Nielsen, Gerard Samual, Melissa Simpson and the school children.
Supported by University of Copenhagen and Danish Cultural Institute.