INTERACTIVE DESIGN OF COLLABORATIVE ART PROJECT FOR 21ST CENTURY LEARNING

While many of us researchers dream about the opportunity to design a collaborative art project that would connect our youth with big, mainstream cultural and educational institutions, we seldom analyse the challenges of such collaborations. This paper presents the user-centered, interdisciplinary interaction design (ID) of the collaborative digital art project. The project design is made in collaboration with the young participants of the Meet the Ministry project run by the Dance Company of the Opera House (DCOH) in Gothenburg, and the members of The Swedish School of Library and Information Science Social Media Studies (TSLIS) research group. Using the research through design approach to augment the outreach of the collaborative digital art project, enhance youth engagement with the contemporary dance, and learn from the young participants, we analyze the implications introduced by inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration. This paper proposes a view which suggests that learning can be effective and pure joy, while at the same time delivering 21st-century skills to those who learn, and new conditions for social inclusion and sustainable society. One argument is that we need new teaching approaches to successfully prepare our youngest for the 21st century. The other reason is that we would be better off if the investments in our public institutions could positively influence a larger society, which would result in a more sustainable society. Drawing from the different scientific research experiences this paper calls for interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaborative art projects as learning tools, and tools to leverage social sustainability.