Creative Focus: How Encounters with Nature Encourage Student Attentiveness. A University Teaching Fellowship Research Project.

Olczak, Susie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9615-5514 and Fisher, James ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0800-5175 (2022) Creative Focus: How Encounters with Nature Encourage Student Attentiveness. A University Teaching Fellowship Research Project. In: Arts and Health Forum, 2022, University of Gloucestershire.

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Abstract

Creative Focus: How Encounters with Nature Encourage Student Attentiveness. A University Teaching Fellowship Research Project led in collaboration with James Fisher. This project was intended to support research-led teaching to develop academic challenge for Fine Art undergraduates. By seeking connections between staff research interests in relation to curriculum development, the project focused on promoting transferable attributes. Through building partnerships which create opportunity, innovation and mutual benefit for these creative communities, the project enhanced students’ abilities to tell stories and communicate their experiences. The principal focus of this project was on encounters with nature and with making artworks, and the impact this might have on learning and, more widely, wellbeing. The project grew out of experiences in learning and teaching developed though the Fine Art course team’s response to teaching a practical subject online. We believe that the adaptations made to support learning in situations where learners were separated from the benefits of haptic connection in Fine Art have a wider application in other subject areas and for wellbeing more broadly. This project directly compared phenomenological experiences and encounters with nature firsthand with imaginative experiences with nature encountered virtually by undergraduate students. The project was structured in two iterations: Spring 2022: (Supported by the ADU Teaching Fellowship) A residential event over 4 days at the FoDST, with students from UoG in Fine Art and Performing Arts. The students attended the forest initially for one day to record their experiences digitally and put on a digital showcase of works made using video projection, augmented and virtual reality, installation, and performance. The Fine Art students then attended the forest for a further 3 days on a residential with guest artists including practitioners from the Royal College of Art. This event invited participants to share, host, engage in discussions and to collaborate through encounters with nature – and to be offered tools through which they might compare firsthand experiences with their previous virtual encounters. Spring 2023: A second residential in the mountains of the Brecon Beacons. (Supported by Kate and Tom’s travel agency) The first stages of the project were so successful it was decided that the Fine Art BA course would allocate the travel budget usually used by a select few students to take all first-year students away to a landscape in the second semester to form a tighter community and to help them with their focus on their studies. It was also decided that the project team would do a focus group before the residential and two after to better analyse the impact it has had. At a presentation about Arts and Health at the University of Gloucestershire- the project team presented this research project and its findings, the feedback received was positive and colleagues from Gloucestershire NHS Trust and ArtLift/ Art Shape were encouraging and informative.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Other)
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > School of Arts, Culture and Environment
Depositing User:	Susie Olczak
Date Deposited:	07 May 2026 13:46
Last Modified:	07 May 2026 14:00
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/16186

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