Since 2017 I have been part of Crossing Borders; an artistic/educational cooperation between Cape Town and Copenhagen.

In 2020 we published the article It’s all about art together with Charlotte Svendler Nielsen, Gerard M. Samuel, Fabian Hartzenberg, and Liesl Hartman.

The article is published in the book Dancing Across Borders, that presents formal and non-formal settings of dance education where initiatives in different countries transcend borders: cultural and national borders, subject borders, professional borders and socio-economic borders. It includes chapters featuring different theoretical perspectives on dance and cultural diversity, alongside case narratives that show these perspectives in a specific cultural setting. In this way, each section charts the processes, change and transformation in the lives of young people through dance.Key themes include how student learning is enhanced by cultural diversity, experiential teaching and learning involving social, cross-cultural and personal dimensions. This conceptually aligns with the current UNESCO protocols that accent empathy, creativity, cooperation, collaboration alongside skills- and knowledge-based learning in an endeavour to create civic mindedness and a more harmonious world.

This volume is an invaluable resource for teachers, policy makers, artists and scholars interested in pedagogy, choreography, community dance practice, social and cultural studies, aesthetics and interdisciplinary arts. By understanding the impact of these cross-border collaborative initiatives, readers can better understand, promote and create new ways of thinking and working in the field of dance education for the benefit of new generations.

A Microtopia of Arts Education

This article is a part of the dance/visual arts project Red Apples – Green Apples.

In 2021 we published the article A Microtopia of Arts Education together with Charlotte Svendler Nielsen, Gerard M. Samuel, Liesl Hartman, Fabian Hartzenberg and Olaf Gerlach-Hansen.

Abstract: Red Apples–Green Apples is a dance/visual arts project, which was started by an intercultural group of artists, teachers and researchers with10 –11-year-old children living in Cape Town and Copenhagen in 2017. The project has since focused on the school class in Cape Town with biannual project weeks ending in 2020. The activities of the project have contributed to illuminating how arts education can promote the culture–nature dimension of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and from a more philosophical viewpoint what children can learn through artistic–educational collaborations about themselves, others and their surroundings. In this article, examples drawn from videographic material and children’s experiences expressed in multi-modal formats are discussed in relation to SDG no. 4 focusing on quality education and the implementation of the new EU strategic approach to international cultural relations.