New Ways of Knowing in Times of Crisis
We live in a time when traditional ways of producing knowledge alone cannot meet the ecological and social challenges we face. Our project invites you to discover embodied, caring, and imaginative ways of knowing through play, dance, and the forest.
What We Do? Our project brings researchers, dance artists, teachers, children, and forests into multispecies dialogue. We organize open dance and nature workshops, seminars, philosophical discussions, and lectures for everyone interested in new ways of learning and being.
Why It Matters? We need new ways of knowing and being together—rooted in embodiment, care, and imagination. This means listening to those who are rarely heard, such as children and forests. These practices help us respond to today’s ecological and social challenges and create a more sustainable future.
What Comes Out of This? The project culminates in a unique dance performance and research contributions in the fields of early childhood education and philosophy.
Uusia tietämisen tapoja kriisien keskellä
Elämme aikaa, jossa perinteiset tiedon tuottamisen tavat eivät yksin riitä vastaamaan ekologisiin ja sosiaalisiin haasteisiin. Hankkeemme kutsuu sinut mukaan etsimään kehollisia, hoivaavia ja mielikuvitukseen perustuvia tietämisen muotoja leikin, tanssin ja metsän kautta.
Mitä teemme? Hankkeessa tutkijat, tanssitaiteilijat, lapset ja metsä kohtaavat monilajisessa vuorovaikutuksessa. Järjestämme kaikille avoimia tanssi- ja luontotyöpajoja, seminaareja, filosofisia keskusteluja ja luentoja.
Miksi tämä on tärkeää? Tarvitsemme uusia tapoja tietää ja olla yhdessä – sellaisia, jotka perustuvat kehollisuuteen, hoivaan ja mielikuvitukseen. Tämä edellyttää, että kuuntelemme myös niitä, joita ei yleensä kuulla, kuten lapsia ja metsiä. Näin voimme vastata aikamme ekologisiin ja sosiaalisiin haasteisiin ja luoda kestävämpää tulevaisuutta.
Mitä syntyy? Hanke huipentuu esitettävään tanssiteokseen sekä kasvatustieteen ja filosofian tutkimustuloksiin.
Summary of the project
Developing and practicing new ways of knowing is critically needed in our time of eco-social polycrisis. Our transdisciplinary explorative project investigates the art of deep knowing through collaboratively and reflectively (un)learning with researchers, dance artists, teachers, children and forests.
The project develops artistic and scientific research methodology through putting in dialogue three ways of doing: a) artistic practice and research through dance b) educational ethnography and c) philosophical reflection.
The goal is to expand our sense of hope and agency by developing alternative ways of being and knowing which can empower us to decelerate, pause, listen to and protect ourselves and non-human beings that protect us. This requires that we develop our sense of time and how we experience time. To do this we need to widen our dominantly Western, adult-led, human-centered scientific and artistic approaches to knowledge production, and include more embodied, intuitive, imaginative and caring ways of exploring and listening. These include playing with children or learning to play as adults with the help of children as experts and following of non-human participants such as trees.
We ask: How can we develop a truly transdisciplinary, participatory and democratic methodology that illuminates the play process of the playing subjects and the environment (forests) as a way of knowing?
We invite inclusive groups of participants to develop these ways of being together with us in a series of artistic dance workshops and philosophical inquiry workshops that we organize both in urban settings in New York City and in Helsinki. The dance and philosophical workshops act both as a method and as data for us. As a result of these workshops we produce both scientific and artistic outcomes: Dance performance and scientific contributions including the fields of early childhood education and philosophy of scientific methods.