About the AECED Project
AECED (Aesthetic and Embodied Learning for Democracy) is a three-year Horizon Europe and UKRI funded research project (2023–2026).
Our ambition is to enhance and transform education for democracy by strengthening the role of aesthetic and embodied learning. We are developing and testing an innovative, research-based pedagogical framework and phase-specific Guides for Practice that support responsive, participatory approaches to democratic learning.
Through participatory action research across multiple European contexts, we are co-creating resources that inspire and activate new ways of educating for democracy.
Project Aims
The project will:
- Design an innovative, evidence-based pedagogical Framework which has an impact on the practice of education for democracy through associated guides to practice (toolkits) that support responsive, participatory pedagogies which incorporate aesthetic and embodied approaches
- test, through participatory action research, a prototype of the Framework and Guides in differing phases of education and national contexts
- refine the Framework and Guides
- disseminate and activate use of the pedagogical Framework and Guides by ‘trailblazer users’.
Impact
The project’s scientific impact will be achieved through groundbreaking, transdisciplinary research. This will show how aesthetic and embodied learning and responsive pedagogies for democracy facilitate new ways of ‘seeing’ and exploring self and others, enabling truly democratic relations, fostering democratic attitudes and values, and nurturing predispositions, capabilities and feelings for active democratic citizenship.
Societal impact will be achieved through new pedagogical approaches that engage learners’ and educators’ hearts as well as minds, increase capacity for democratic citizenship that connects and evolves locally, and strengthen affective predispositions for challenging social injustices, engaging with conflict and seeking mutual understanding.