Encounters in and beyond the room

This strand of research will investigate the extent to which specificity and immediacy can be ‘coathooks’ in digital environments, particularly for young people.

Dr Jen Ross, School of Education, University of Edinburgh

The work explores the different sorts of learning encounters that become possible when spaces are seen as hybrids of the digital and the material, for example through augmented reality, coding and tagging of objects, and the incursions of the social and the relational into such hybrid spaces. Fruitful connections could be made with social media research within the partnership.

Another aspect of this theme would involve an ethnographic exploration of what young people are making with, and of, their encounters with ARTIST ROOMS. This strand would aim to help the partner museums develop practices that support the ARTIST ROOMS vision by understanding and drawing from the ways that inspiration is playing out in the practices of community groups, young artists and art-lovers, both online and offline. This would essentially be a study of informal learning - inherently difficult to pin down, and so will be explored though relevant ethnographic case studies.