From The Hague to Terschelling: how playing games at Oerol transforms education
Can playing games at the Oerol Festival enhance education? Anthropologist Caroline Archambault introduces playful innovation in her course, ArtWorks for Sustainable Livelihoods, exploring how art offers insights into and advocates for sustainable living.
Can you explain what this course entails and how it engages students with sustainable livelihoods?
'I teach a semester-long course at Leiden University College called “Searching for Sustainable Livelihoods”. A central starting question is to understand what kind of lives people want to live and what kind of relationship to our environments that entails. The course engages students with the concept of sustainable livelihoods, defined broadly to encompass financial security and other key aspects of well-being like identity and belonging. It examines how these elements relate to environmental interaction and whether they are sustainable for future generations of people and other species.'
How does the course help students understand livelihood systems and human-environment relationships?
'It’s increasingly complex to think about how we carve out livelihoods in such a dynamic environment. So, I train students to understand the livelihood systems and the human-environment relationship by exploring this through people's lives and day-to-day living. The course starts in The Hague and culminates in a 10-day field course on Terschelling, one of the Wadden Islands, where the sustainable livelihood struggles are very different than in the city.
In teaching this course, I focus on helping students understand people’s wants, how they interact with their environment, and how they adapt to challenges. While I initially taught this course in East Africa, you don’t need to go far away to see a diversity in livelihoods. My teaching assistant, Sebastiaan Grosscurt, who is a former LUC student, is an expert on Terschelling and together we moved it there. Fortuitously, the timing was such that the wonderful Oerol festival was taking place-which is dedicated to art that explores the human-environment relationship.'
How does this project showcase the innovative education at LUC?
'The innovation lies in the festival fieldwork itself. The festival environment creates a playful community where students can explore through methods like games, drawing, observation, and conversation, moving away from standard methods of surveys and interviews. It's about learning in a fun, interactive way. We use techniques such as playful drawing exercises, which allow students to relax, slow down, and be open to new experiences through all their senses. It brings a sense of curiosity and excitement back into learning and reduces the intimidation of the objective observer idea.'
How do students immerse themselves in art installations and use interactive methods to understand and analyse audience reactions?
'Each student is assigned an art installation to experience fully, without preconceived ideas. They go through it as participants, draw upon their experiences, and later speak with the artists. Then, they engage with the audience using playful methods like word associations or drawings to understand their reactions. So, students are trained in fieldwork and field methods, with a strong emphasis on artistic and playful methods of learning (Insights), and, by the end of the course, produce an artwork (a game or magazine) that showcases and advocates for peoples' visions of sustainable livelihoods (Artivism).' Find the artworks on this website.
What was the student response to such a hands-on, different approach?
'They loved it. Many of them were third-year students for whom this was their final LUC experience, and they said there was no better way to end it. The strong sense of community that developed during the 10-day field course was incredible. Even though we faced tough weather, the students came out more confident in their fieldwork abilities and more comfortable with independent research.'
Do you plan to expand this approach or offer it to other universities?
'Yes, I have worked on a website to offer this method as a curriculum that others can take up. This approach could work in many festivals, not just Oerol.
I plan to keep offering it because the connections we've built on Terschelling are invaluable, but I’d love to see others adopt this method as well. Experiential learning can lead to deep, lasting understanding. I’m a strong advocate for integrating these kinds of methods across education, particularly when addressing complex problems like environmental sustainability.'