Learning and Creativity Through a Curatorial Practice Using Virtual Reality

Abstract

This paper intends to reflect on a practical pedagogical research, in the framing and communication of the presentations of creative works as a process of teaching innovation. Challenges felt by the Department of Arts and Multimedia of the Douro Higher Institute of Educational Sciences, in Portugal, triggered the basic research. The curatorial practice has been increasingly framed in academia and society as an integral method and strategy to produce knowledge, propelling of creativity and socio-cultural and economic innovation. We question how this value should be communicated within the context of multimedia teaching/learning, which is more commonly rooted in a tradition centered on concepts and techniques. We claim that many presentations of artistic/multimedia outputs fail to reveal the complexity of the teaching/learning activity that underpins them (e.g. interdisciplinarity, collaborative practices, multimodal intellectual processes and materials that drive creativity and innovation). This practice limits interpretation and represses the opportunity to broaden the understanding of the knowledge generated. We intend to explore concepts of cooperation, innovation, curation, exhibition, audience, distance learning, that constitute the communication/exhibitions of and in the academy. We had to adapt to the pandemic scenario using a Virtual Reality approach, still we concluded that there is an original contribution to pedagogical knowledge in the delineation of a curatorial practice e-learning strategy; that in researching, framing and communicating teaching/learning narratives offers a conceptualization of the development of concepts in practice, shown as the continuous exploration of a space of teaching and cooperation.