Learning Partners

How can students gain experience with artistic working methods? How can art open up new opportunities for learning?

Learning Partners is Deep Forest Art Land’s development project for art, nature, and learning. Here, artists, teachers, and students collaborate to develop new ways of engaging with art—using the forest as a learning space and art as a springboard for curiosity, exploration, and reflection.

The project draws on the artists’ own practices and explores how artistic approaches can create meaningful learning experiences for children and young people.

At Deep Forest Art Land, we aim to develop high-quality artistic learning programs where students can meet professional artists and explore their approaches to understanding the world.

At the same time, we want to create programs that teachers, educators, and students find relevant and meaningful.

Learning Partners is therefore a shared space for development where diverse experiences are brought into play. The artists contribute their artistic practices and explorations. The teachers contribute their pedagogical experience and knowledge of the students’ daily lives. The students contribute their curiosity, questions, and experiences.

Together, we are constantly developing new learning programs in which art retains its unique character while also creating value in a school setting. In this way, the methods and experiences gained through the project become accessible to more students—without art losing what makes it art.

In Learning Partners, students meet professional artists and have the opportunity to explore the questions, materials, and methods that the artists themselves work with.

A program can be based on stories, landscapes, materials, communities, natural phenomena, or works of art found in the forest.

Students are invited to participate in processes where curiosity, experimentation, and reflection are more important than finding the right answer.

The goal is not for students to learn about art through answer keys. The goal is for them to gain experience with artistic ways of engaging with and exploring the world.

Through Learning Partners, schools have the opportunity to:

• working with art as an exploratory practice

• foster students' curiosity, creativity, and reflection

• create connections between art, nature, and learning

• meet professional artists and learn about their working methods

• actively contribute to the development of future learning programs

At the same time, Deep Forest Art Land gains valuable insights into how we can bring meaning to everyday school life.

Learning Partners is being developed in close collaboration with schools in the Municipality of Herning. This collaboration is based on a shared curiosity to explore how artistic working methods can create meaningful learning experiences for children and young people. Teachers, educators, and students regularly contribute their experiences, reflections, and perspectives, which help shape the project.

Partner Schools

Skarrild School, Skarrild.

Vestervang School, Herning.

Learning Partners is a project currently in development.

Along the way, we gather experiences, reflections, and examples from the collaboration between artists, teachers, and students. These experiences help shape the future learning programs at Deep Forest Art Land.