van Boeckel, Jan

Current job: Research assistant, Department of Art, Aalto University School of Art and Design Helsinki

http://www.naturearteducation.org

Interest in art, interest in research: In my research I want to understand what a process of “connecting to nature through art” fundamentally entails and requires, as an element of practices of arts-based environmental education.

Jan van Boeckel is a Dutch anthropologist, visual artist, art teacher and filmmaker. One of Jan’s areas of interest and concern are the worldviews and environmental philosophies of indigenous peoples. Together with filmmaking group  ReRun Productions, he produced a series of documentaries on this subject, as well as films on philosophers such as Jacques Ellul and Arne Naess, who provide a critical analysis of the Western way of life. These films include, among others: The Earth is Crying (1987), It’s Killing the Clouds (1992), The Betrayal by Technology (1992), and  The Call of the Mountain (1997).

Jan has lived for several years in Hällefors, in the forests of central Sweden, where he was an art teacher to both children and adults, and consultant on international cultural projects. He established the Cloudberry Dreams network with partners in Latvia, England, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The mission of this partnership is to share ideas and to explore new ways to interpret landscapes through art and creativity. Another project he took part in conceptualizing is called Clearings in the Forest, which focuses on the cultural and mythical significance of open spaces in the woodlands.

Between 2004 and 2006 Jan has worked as Head of Communications at the Netherlands Centre for Indigenous Peoples in Amsterdam.

Currently Jan van Boeckel is research assistant at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, where he is focusing on the added value of art practice in the context of nature and environmental education. Inspired by indigenous peoples’ cultures, his own engagement in art and art teaching practices, and his experiences of living close to wilderness areas of Sweden, Jan’s interest has moved to art as a means to connect to what David Abram aptly called ‘the more-than-human-world’.

One of Jan’s research interests is the tension between trying to ‘open the senses’ whilst coping with the current ecological crisis. An issue all the more pressing when working with children.

Recent research work: Presentations at conferences and seminars, mainly in the Nordic countries. facilitation of art workshops for groups in nature (so-called “Wildpainting” and making of clay figures of the human body) teaching of courses on art in environmental education. Publication of two papers “Forget your botany. Developing children’s sensibility to nature through arts-based environmental education,” and “Arts-based environmental education and the ecological crisis: Between opening the senses and coping with psychic numbing.”