Creativity and arts-based expression: Building resilience in the pandemic and beyond

This poster reports on our continuing work with arts-based pedagogy. Though our work in this area began long before the 2020-2021 pandemic, we discovered during the early stages of the pandemic that “providing students with opportunities for creativity and arts-based expression lead to a welcome and positive disruption of traditional teaching and learning; increased student engagement, meaning-making, and real-word connections; and collaborative risk-taking that decenters traditional pedagogical systems” (blinded for review). In such abnormal circumstances, this creative decentering was a welcome change for students who were often struggling to keep up in classes with more traditional pedagogical strategies. The continuation of the pandemic and the need for alternative modes of instructional delivery support the need to foster and maintain resilience in our pedagogy and in our students. Creativity and arts-based expression offer a way to do just that by focusing attention not only on the curriculum, but also on students’ affective processes. Students bring their whole selves to the classroom (whether virtual or in-person) and creative activities offer them the opportunity to engage fully with course content. Our poster will offer examples of how we have incorporated creativity and arts-based practices into our courses