about arts summer school
Part of Aalto University’s strategy, the ARTS Summer School was initiated as a platform for students and faculty from universities around the globe to reflect and confront current global sustainability-related issues. The Summer School received a 3-year sponsorship from Jane & Aatos Erkko Foundation to showcase the importance of strengthening societal impact and strategic international collaboration, targeting plans for the future in the fields of art, design, and architecture.
Societal impact
School of Arts, Design and Architecture emphasises the significant impact in renewing societal and institutional practices through sustainable, creative, radical, and ethical design and arts-based innovations.
ARTS’s solutions for sustainability are:
- encouraging engagement in societal discussions and even policy making;
- showing the power of creative practices in leading and supporting sustainable transformations and future orientation;
- initiating new collaborations with different external stakeholders.
To achieve these targets it’s essential to develop mechanisms for understanding the needs of the society and interact with stakeholders. Only then we can construct new ways and develop our offering to strengthen impact through collaboration between education and research.
Strengthening international collaboration
The central challenge and goal of higher education is to strengthen internationality in teaching and research. Statistics show that international mobility has come to a standstill and the numbers have even started to diminish.
Aalto University’s new strategy aims to increase the internationality: “Jointly with our partners, we build our innovation, creative and entrepreneurial ecosystem as a prominent node in global networks.” The goal is to develop the university’s international competence and create within Aalto University a tempting place to study and work.
ARTS implements the university’s strategic objectives by active collaboration with international partners in the field of teaching, research and artistic activities.
ARTS Summer School is organized to encourage the exchange of teaching and learning experience and development of strategies for co-operation in the creative fields. With the wide use of active methods and creative techniques, including group projects, excursions, discussions, interactive lectures and case studies it is possible to achieve new ways of learning and knowing in the urgent situation that touches the entire globe. The adoption of principles of sustainability globally are more important than ever. Summer school wanted to invite students and professors from a geographically wide area. Since the threat our planet is facing is global, the solutions to slow down climate warming must be found in an international co-operation.
