The Pedagogy of Curiosity

The Co-Directors of the Pedagogy of Curiosity research are Susan Benn, Founder Artistic Director of Performing Arts Labs and Professor Kerstin Mey, Director for Research and Enterprise, University for the Creative Arts, UK.

PAL, a not-for-profit arts organisation Performing Arts Labs Ltd., was founded in England in 1989 http://www.pallabs.org. The company is a crucible for cross-fertilization of ideas and collaborative experimental practice attracting exceptional international talent in film, media and technology, the visual and performing arts and architecture, the sciences, and in education, in cross disciplinary research, and cultural and educational policy.

PAL, based in London, creates its own as well as commissioned annual Lab programmes across the UK and overseas. The company is an Arts Council England regularly funded organisation. PAL experience over the past 21 years in designing and producing 140 residential Lab programmes (as of the spring of 2010) brings with it acclaimed international talents who have experienced PAL Labs and want to contribute to the A Pedagogy of Curiosity research.

PAL’s international residencies for practitioners across the arts and sciences have inspired models for creative approaches to teaching and learning in science in the UK, including the design of imaginative games, interactive exhibitions, teaching materials and professional development for teachers. PAL’s three year Stem Fluency Lab programme, which currently brings together scientists, artists, computer programmers, engineers, mathematicians, performers and policy makers, will be published in 2011.

Susan Benn is the instigator and Co-Director, with Professor Kerstin Mey, of A Pedagogy of Curiosity research.

Susan is an American who received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in the School of Architecture and Design. She studied textile design at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan and subsequently received two MA degrees from the Royal College of Art in Textile Design and the Courtauld Institute in London after moving to London where she has lived since 1961.

Susan had three very different creative lives prior to setting up PAL; designing woven textiles in Scotland for the couture in London and Chanel in Paris in the 60’s; publishing a successful list of high quality children’s and illustrated books between London and New York in the 70’s and 80’s and as a reportage photographer and publishing consultant to the Hulton Getty photographic archive in London in the 80’s and 90’s, travelling around the world on photographic assignments.

In 1989, Susan founded PAL in response to the wishes of talented writers, directors and actors she knew working in theatre and film and composers, librettists and singers of opera in Britain who wanted a space and time for to experiment together with ideas at a very early stage. Working for a collaborative art form in small groups across a wide range of disciplines was a rare opportunity at that time.

Through Susan’s curatorial vision and choice of Lab Directors, each leading practitioners in their field, PAL has remained true to its original mission, values and independence over the past 21 years, in response to the needs of it’s clients, creating it’s own pioneering Labs despite the fact that this work falls outside most mainstream funding schemes.

Each Lab programme addresses a specific problem, the results informed the creation of the next, as Susan and her team create environments and processes for enabling trust between talented people with very different experience, skills and expectations to support each other in the making challenging work.

In 2000, in recognition of PAL’s achievements, Susan received a major four-year education award of £1m from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts.

The company is now based in the Siobhan Davies Dance Studios in London (www.siobhandavies.com) where Susan is designing ‘bespoke’ Labs on a consultancy basis for a range of academic, charitable and commercial clients, in addition the artistic direction of PAL’s annual Lab programmes.

Kerstin Mey graduated with an MA in Art, and German language and literature from Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. She obtained a Dr. phil. in art theory/aesthetics, and a PGDip in European Cultural Policy and Administration. After positions in universities in Germany and the UK, she currently heads up the Department for Research and Enterprise at the University for the Creative Arts, UK. There she also holds a Professorship in Fine Art. Her own research is concerned with the situatedness of contemporary art, models of creative practice and their hierarchies of value. Of specific interest are: art in relation to the construction of identities and ‘place making’ under the influence of digitisation and migration. Consideration has also been given to interconnections between art, documentation, archiving, memory and history writing. Kerstin Mey was Artistic Director of ISEA 2009, the 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art. She has widely published including the authored book Art and Obscenity (2006) and has edited with Kroenke and Spielmann: Kulturelle Umbrüche: Identitäten, Räume, Repräsentationen (2007); On-Site/In-Sight, special issue Journal of Visual Art Practice, Vols. 4.1/2 (2005); Art in the Making. Aesthetics Historicity and Practice (2004); with Simon Yuill: Cross-wired: Communication, Interface, Locality, (2004.

Support and participation in the research

To realise a fruitful exchange and interactions between leading scientists, scholars, artists, policy makers and the general public this unique venture requires joint initiatives and coordinated support from agencies and funders across the spectrum of research on the sensorium: from neuroscience to philosophy, the creative and performing arts to psychology, physiology and chemistry to design, architecture and urban planning.

Researchers in the humanities, natural sciences and medicine working along side public funders, private trusts, foundations and individual donors in the UK and overseas are invited to become partners with PAL and the University for the Creative Arts in this pertinent and pioneering research programme.