Curatorial Programme 2015. Node Center

Juan Canela participates in the Innovators Programme at Node Center for Curatorial Studies Berlin. A two-month long program to explore the potential of art-thinking as a useful tool in other fields The Innovators Grant is a programme for investigating how thinking and strategies used in the arts can be applied for innovation in other sectors. It brings together a group of 7 ‘innovators’ from different fields to collaborate during an 8 week funded programme that runs once per year. Within the programme Node Center seek to research the potential of art practice beyond artworks and exhibition-making, asking the core question: how could art be used as a beneficial tool in other fields? Each year the topic will be centered on a specific theme. In 2015 it focuses on how art-thinking can be used to create a learning tool for non-formal education settings. By art-thinking they are referring to all of the strategies that an artist undertakes prior to creating a work, such as divergent thinking, questioning the everyday, using intuitive approaches and finding different access points or pathways to known topics. Through researching and adapting these strategies we aim to develop a learning tool that can be used practically and also adapted and modified to different subjects or fields for non-formal educational situations.

Node Center is an art organization focused on curatorial practice. They divide their center into two key parts:

Research – Innovators Grant
Believing that there is a great potential in art practice beyond artworks and exhibition-making, they investigate how thinking and strategies used in the arts can be applied for innovation in other fields. With this in mind, they have created the Innovators Grant, an 8 week funded program running once a year. They collaborate with ‘innovators’ from different fields (art, neuroscience, education, physics, etc) to develop collaboratively a practical outcome to the question: how can art be used as a beneficial tool in other fields?

This year’s research will focus on how these methods can be used to create a learning tool for non-formal education settings.

Learn – Online Platform
Formal education is often missing the practical tools needed for curators – from how to make a contract, assemble an art publication, write critically about art etc. Through an ever-expanding series of online courses, Node Center aim to provide this practical knowledge that may not be available in many curators’ local contexts or not addressed by the art establishment and academy. They give the richest learning experience for participants. Therefore they provide real-time interactive sessions with our lecturers as well as exercises and personalized feedback, so that participants can truly benefit from what is taught in the courses.The Online Platform today comes in two languages: Spanish and English.