The Center for Art-based Research and Change
The Center for Art-based Research and Change was established in order to study and broaden the integration of art as a tool to enhance complex problem solving and thinking in research, therapy, social change projects and daily life.
Western society has prioritized logical thinking and the sciences as sources of knowledge and excluded the arts and the imagination. However, in our world’s accelerating pace of change and complexity, logic alone is not enough. Art enables us to reach additional levels of understanding, helps retrieve tacit and unconscious knowledge that is not easily accessible to our conscious mind, and encourages innovative and creative thinking in problem solving.
Everybody can use art as an aid in thinking and problem solving. Artistic skill or talent is not necessary. Children make art naturally, until arriving at a certain stage when most of them internalize criticism from their surroundings and refrain from creating art. In fact, everyone can doodle and sketch, at least simple things like circles or triangles. Everyone creates images, even if only in their dreams. The goal here is not to create fancy works of art but rather to facilitate additional ways of thinking.
In addition to international collaborations with researchers and professionals from various disciplines, the center offers workshops, lectures and guidance on projects, as well as personal supervision regarding subjects related to the use of art as a means of reaching new insights and additional knowledge that is not easily accessible to us using words, for the general public, professionals from various disciplines, art therapists and art-based researchers.