The Transformative Learning Hub @ WUR and the Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) invite you to join this 2nd part of our 3-part series exploring the transformative power of different forms of storytelling, creative expression and writing. In this arts-based workshop, we'll delve into various aspects of how scholars perceive the 'unknown' or 'mysterious'. How do we navigate the unknown and mysterious? What challenges arise in this exploration? Using creative writing, recording, and drawing tools, we aim to transform our thoughts into a collective artwork. No worries if you haven't dabbled in drawing, writing, or recording before - no prior experience is needed to jump in and no preparation is required. 

The workshop will be facilitated by two WUR alumni: Kristina Mau Hansen, sound artist, and Dafni Petratou, painter and illustrator. Their fascination with this topic stems from the observation that science communication often spotlights existing knowledge and that education focuses mainly on knowledge that has already been ‘produced’. Seeing the value in exploring the mysterious, the obscure, and the enigmatic within an academic multidisciplinary context, this collective journey aims to illuminate diverse perspectives, researchers' interests, and, importantly, promises to be a whole lot of fun.

Everyone is welcome! This is a Transformative Learning Hub event, and our community of practice that brings together researchers, educators, students, changemakers and activists across different disciplines and fields at Wageningen University and beyond. We're happy to have you with us! With that in mind, we are capping participation in this workshop at 25 people - so be sure to register by 1 April to secure your spot. First come, first serve. We'll be in touch by email to let you know if we can secure a spot for you. The exact location (at WUR campus) will be shared upon registration.

As is becoming tradition; CUCo will be represented at the Betweter Festival at Utrecht!

In collaboration with the University of Humanistic Studies the Centre for Unusual Collaborations is hosting a special ritual. The artist Iris Carta is inviting participants to be part of this ritual by opening up to different perspectives while co-creating together. Please find here more information on the ritual BLaUWDrUK

On top of this, the Imagining More-than-human Communities UCo team will be bringing an experiment to the playground, please find here more information on the experiment High five met een niet-mens

As a little taste, last year the Structures of Strength team organised a wonderful experiment exploring porosity. If you want to learn more about this you can look at this message we shared about this. Or just watch the video that was made here.

Block your agenda, call your colleagues: CUCo’s annual festival is there on Thursday 25 May!

This year the Centre for Unusual Collaborations wants to invite you to join us as we time travel to the future! Let’s explore, experience and imagine the potential as well as challenges of the future of collaboration.  How will these evolve, between humans, machines and more-than-human communities. Where are we now and where are we heading? Not only will we leave you with many interesting questions, your futuristic insights will help some of our projects in their (time travel…) data collection as well!

12:00 - 13:00 Lunch

13:00 - 13:45 Plenary opening

• CUCo will reflect on the present and the future of collaboration: what do we consider as collaboration? How do we approach conversations? Clemens Driessen reflects on how we evolved in thinking about collaborations and how will the future look like?

13:45 - 15:30 Workshops 

• Immerse yourself in exploring different aspects of the future of collaboration! You can choose to join one of the below workshops:

Magic-Machines-Workshop

New technologies emerge into an increasingly complex everyday life. In this workshop every participant will be challenged to build their own collaboration partner of the future. Imagine and discover how the collaboration will be with the magic machine you will create! Kristina Andersen, Associate Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology will host this session.

More-than-human-collaborations

Imagine a collaboration across more-than-human-communities: who does it include? Animals? Rocks? Microbes? How would the community communicate? What would be the needs and wants of that community? This workshop will explore these questions in an immersive experience. Join to be part of a silent conversation and reflect on the insights this brings that are needed to take more-than-human collaborations serious and give shape to their futures. 

The session is co-developed with De Denksmederij and the Imagining More-Than-Human-Communities research team.

Future collaborations across a diverse group of humans

A critical challenge for addressing urgent broad societal issues is to navigate multiple worldviews and perspectives, both within academic research contexts and at the interface of science and society. Spaces that cultivate playfulness can open up participants to express, share, question, and transform how they experience and act in the world.” The Unusual Collaborations Playing with the Trouble team will host this session in which collaborations across a diverse group of humans will be explored in playful ways, not shying away from embracing tension within groups. 

15.30 - 16.00 Break

16:00 - 17:00 Tentacular Future Show

• We will be finishing our Tentacular Future Festival with a great, art-based show giving you a never-to-be-forgotten experience of what collaboration means! Co-developed with Merlijn Twaalfhoven.

17:00 Drinks

Interdisciplinary collaborations are easier said than done! In this new documentary we take you along on a 1-year journey of interdisciplinary collaboration, presented by our Centre for Unusual Collaborations. The Structures of Strength project team encounters the challenges, pitfalls and the great joys of exploring an out-of-the-box collaboration. Discover which tools, methods and approaches are out there to foster interdisciplinary ways of working together. Prepare for a unique insight of what it means to be a young academic longing to think unusually!

This documentary will be shown during the annual conference of the alliance TU/e, WUR, UU, UMC Utrecht - please find here more information about the Conference Programme.

Just like last year one of the Unusual Collaboratons teams will be doing an experiment at the Betweter Festival! This time the Structures of Strength team has decided to take their experimentation to the Festival spheres!

But not only CUCo will be there, the Betweter Festival is a very interesting an fun festival of Science that will see many interesting people from academia explain interesting, complicated topics to us! One of those is Dr. Jessica Duncan, one of our old board members! We hope to see you there!

Please join us at the CUCo’s Nest for a workshop on the insightful and fun New Metaphors game! Working across disciplinary boundaries often involves adopting new perspectives on previously familiar topics—putting ourselves in a position to see things differently, or to see patterns linking fields which otherwise would seem unrelated. Many of the unusual collaborations which CUCo supports involve just such reframings, pattern recognition, and moments of the familiar becoming unfamiliar before re-forming into new, broadened, ways of understanding and working together, building on each other's expertise and specialisms. In this workshop, Dr Dan Lockton (TU/e) will introduce New Metaphors, a game-like creative method for reframing problems and generating ideas, with a series of activities designed to apply the method to interdisciplinary collaborations and thinking about futures. We'll explore finding unexpected connections across disciplines, and how a diversion into metaphorical thinking relates to more systemic ways of viewing the world. The aim is that you leave with at least one novel perspective on your own discipline, and the confidence to apply a similar method in your own collaborations, if you find it useful.   

This workshop will be given by Dan Lockton. He is an assistant professor in TU Eindhoven's Department of Industrial Design, with climate futures and design research methods as his focus, including working on the CUCo project Playing With The Trouble with colleagues at UU, WUR, and UMCU. Dan also runs the Imaginaries Lab, an independent research-through-design studio, based in Amsterdam.    

This event has been cancelled, as part of our process to re-evaluate our granting scheme. Do, however, keep an eye for the coming new call for SPARK applicants/applications. More information will follow shortly!

Questions? Contact us at cuco@wur.nl

CUCo will organise a workshop during the 2022 Conference of the strategic alliance between Eindhoven University of Technology, Wageningen University & Research, Utrecht University and University Medical Centre Utrecht will take place in Eindhoven.

To learn more about this event click here.

This workshop will be held in person at the CUCo’s Nest (Princetonlaan 8, Utrecht Science Park)

This workshop will introduce the Living Labs approach and how it can be helpful to your project! The workshop is interactive where participants will be asked to actively engage in the exercises. In this exercise, a project is analysed using the core attributes of a Living Lab. During the exercise, core attributes are recognized and described, and the group understands how the project can be enhanced by incorporating missing attributes. Each participant should bring a case that they think is suitable as a living lab. We provide a template that should be pre-filled as homework. We work in groups of 5 to 8 (presential). The group selects the most interesting case to be analysed.

Workshop leaders

Claudia Stuckrath

I’m a curious person, deeply passionate about sustainable solutions and innovations. I studied engineering to solve problems with optimal technical solutions and specialised in sustainable innovations to create a systemic change and work towards a better future. I’ve worked as an innovation consultant, and for the past eight years, I have strived to bring Academia and Industry together, transforming research into applied industry innovations. My goal to constantly seek new knowledge has enabled me to publish in recognised peer-reviewed journals and actively participate in innovations within the construction, food and fashion industries. I began working at UULabs following my passion for interdisciplinary projects that accelerate the transformation towards sustainable development. In UULabs, I work as a specialist providing advice about innovation processes. I also devise and manage the capacity building for UULabs with a user-centred approach.

Mark Kauw

I’m a geographer, triathlete, tour guide and active as Project Manager Sustainability at Utrecht University. Previously I collaborated on the book The Hidden Impact, aimed at helping people make effective choices to live more sustainably. I developed hidden impact training with author Babette Porcelijn enabling participants to become Hidden Impact ambassadors. At social enterprise Moyee Coffee, I battled inequality in the coffee chain according to the FairChain principles. At UU, I co-created the Travel Differently campaign and the Sustainability Monitor. Since 2021, my work has focused mainly on living labs for sustainable development. I believe that academic-operational collaborations are the most meaningful way for a university to contribute to sustainable development with its own campus operations.

Tom McDevitt

I’ve enjoyed an academic focus on the environment, having completed a BSc in Geology and Physical Geography and an MSc in Earth Surface and Water. Beyond my studies, I have a broad interest in the natural sciences, sport, humanities and music, leading me to research and write about the intersections between society and nature. Working with Living Labs provides a unique opportunity to apply these broad interests to experiments that are based in real-world settings and address pertinent sustainability challenges. My role in UULabs is to maintain our network, support established labs and lead the monitoring and evaluation of these labs. Further, I am responsible for organising events, workshops, and the maintenance of the UULab website, database and map.

This event is a collaboration with UULabs, which aims to create sustainability-related testing grounds in Utrecht Science Park in which teaching, research and operational management co-create. Claudia Stuckrath is one of UULabs’ living lab experts, she will present to you the living labs approach.

We would like to invite all researchers that are part of the alliance to the First Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) symposium of 2022. Our symposia are a platform for pitching new ideas, meeting new people, and taking the first steps into forming unusual collaborations that can lead to a SPARK application.

During the symposium we will update you on ongoing CUCo activities. You will also have the opportunity to meet two SPARK teams, who will share their experiences of starting their unusual collaborations. They will introduce their projects and provide insights in their process, best practices, and the challenges they encountered.

If you already have an unusual collaboration idea and want to pitch it, please indicate so at the registration form (see below). If you want ideas on how to shape your pitch, we have a pitch guide available here.

For those of you seeking inspiration and looking for new and unusual conversation partners, we will introduce the Serendipity Room!. Here you can chat with other participants and share thoughts and ideas. If these conversations spark ideas for a possible collaboration, there is room at the end of the symposium for Pop-up Pitches, where you can pitch newly formed ideas with those you have met! These pitches will make you and your collaborators eligible for the subsequent SPARK Grant applications. For further details about the SPARK Grant, you can read the ‘21 call here.

When? 22nd of February 2022, 15:00-17:00 (3-5 pm)

What? CUCo Symposium

Who? All (Alliance researchers + invited colleagues)

How? Online (MS Teams)

You can register for the symposium here: 

Program:

15:00 - 15:15 Opening

15:15 - 15:25 Interview with Spark team

15:25 - 15:35 Presentation on interdisciplinary brainstorming

Speaker: Hannie van den Bergh (www.studio-hb.nl)

Hannie van den Bergh is a visual artist, filmmaker and graphic designer. She has over twenty-five years of experience in making science accessible to a wide audience and facilitating meaningful collaborations between scientists and various stakeholders. In her artistic practise she creates products - such as games and videos - and interventions - such as pop-up stores and co-creation sessions. She was the creative communication partner In several EU funded projects, under FP7 and Horizon 2020, She is also a lecturer of Visual Communication at the University Twente.

15:35 - 15:45 Explanation Spark procedure

15:45 - 16:00 Pitches

16:00 - 16:40 Break-out rooms (Using Gather)

16:40 - 16:50 Report from break-out rooms

16:50 - 17:00 Pop-up pitches

We are looking forward to your new ideas/ pitches.

Questions? Contact us at cuco@wur.nl

CUCo supports research in unusual collaborations, in which rather distinct disciplines are brough together. In such collaborations data, evidence and knowledge are approached in entirely different manners on the various sides of disciplinary walls. How to navigate those differences and move beyond multidisciplinary research towards truly interdisciplinary research, in which research methods are integrated? This workshop will shed light on the epistemological questions this brings along, as well as on examples of specific methods – for data gathering and analysis as well as for complex collaborations.

Speakers:

Anke de Vrieze (WUR)

Anke works at the Rural Sociology Group in Wageningen University and coordinates the Centre for Space, Place and Society. Her main interest lies in creating ‘spaces of possibilities’ for regenerative and inclusive futures through the use of arts-based and creative methods. She’s co-founder of Re.Imaginary and the WUR Transformative Learning Hub.

Her interests are in sustainable place-shaping, food, urban agriculture and urban-rural linkages.

Minha Lee (TU/e)

Minha Lee's research interests include moral conflicts and emotions in relation to technology; she conducts mixed, qualitative, and quantitative research, in a multidisciplinary manner. How do we intertwine our developments with technology that functions as our moral mirror?

Janny de Grauw (UMCU)

Janny de Grauw works as a European board certified specialist in veterinary anesthesiology (Dipl. ECVAA) and senior post-doc researcher at the Utrecht University Department of Clinical Sciences. As such, she provides clinical sedation, anesthesia and analgesia on a daily basis for all possible surgical and diagnostic procedures in horses and companion animals (dogs, cats). Since January 1st 2020, she is the managing head of the small animal anesthesia team. Also, as one of the equine emergency and intensive care veterinarians, she provides critical care to (surgical and post-operative) patients in the equine ICU. Janny is also proficient in farm animal anaesthesia and has gained ample experience with exotic and zoo animal immobilization and anesthesia. As a post-doc researcher within the Utrecht University Regenerative Medicine Stem cells and Cancer focus area, she takes a special interest in joint inflammation, pain and pharmacological management thereof in human and animal patients. Recently, the recognition, neurobiology and management of chronic pain in animals has become a focus of research.

This event will be held online via MS Teams.

Speaker: Dr. Anna Poletti

Researching Literature Beyond the Book

When they began researching young people’s subcultural life writing in 2002, Anna Poletti also began self-publishing life writing in order to communicate their research to the community of writers whose texts they were studying. This practice of making small scale ephemeral publications to speak to non-scholarly audiences about their work has become a permanent part of their research practice. In this talk, they will outline how the feminist methodology of situated knowledges can be applied in the study of contemporary life writing, and the importance of inventive, and ethical, approaches to research methods in literary studies. They will distribute some of their publications to the audience for discussion.

Speaker: Dr. Lenneke Kuijer

Triggering fictions: research and engagement through design

Designing is commonly associated with generating solutions. But design can also be used as a method for research. This function of design has long been acknowledged (notably Cross’ seminal paper on Designerly ways of knowing, 1982), but has only recently become recognized as a valid form of research within NWO. Marrying Research through Design with critical design approaches, Lenneke Kuijer’s VENI project explores possible futures of summer comfort in Dutch households through triggering fictions. While learning about alternative future directions and novel methods for engaging with future everyday life, the fictions – such as Urbicamp depicted here – also function as fruitful means to engage wider audiences in the research.

Speaker: Dr. Dan Hassler-Forest CANCELLED

Science fiction in research: reaching your audience through impactful storytelling

Most people associate science fiction with rocket ships, laser guns, and alien invasions. But the genre also offers a rich archive of imaginative resources that help us imagine sustainable futures. From the utopian post-capitalism of Star Trek to the post-climate crisis wasteland of Mad Max, Dan Hassler-Forest will guide us through the many ways in which the genre has shaped our imagination of the future. We will then reflect on the ways in which he presented his research, and how we can explore creative ways of communicating our research stories to audiences both within and outside our field.

Due to personal circumstances, Dan Hassler-Forest will be unable to speak during this event.

- MOVED ONLINE -

This event is offered online due to current Covid measures. In four weekly sessions of one hour. You can choose between a morning or an afternoon slot. Scroll down for the timeslots.

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To speak clearly is an art. 

And to get your message across to team members of different disciplines, even more so. 

How do you achieve your audience will get your message, in other words, how do you speak in a comprehensible way? 

Whether you look at the speeches of Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Brené Brown, Barack Obama; they all use the same techniques. . During this Masterclass you ‘ll learn how these techniques to create understanding work, and how you can use these to your advantage. Besides that, we ‘ll teach you the skills of rhetorics, charisma and non-verbal communication.

- MOVED ONLINE -

This event was planned to be held in our physical location, however, due to the current lockdown measures it is now offered online. In four weekly sessions of one hour. You can choose between a morning or an afternoon slot:

Morning slot (09:00 - 10:00):

Please note that the last session is on a Thursday instead of Tuesday.

• Tuesday 23 November

• Tuesday 30 November

• Tuesday 7 December

• Thursday 16 December

Please register here for the morning slot

Afternoon slot (16:00 - 17:00):

• Tuesday 23 November

• Tuesday 30 November

• Tuesday 7 December

• Tuesday 14 December

Please register here for the afternoon slot