Notice: Due to unforeseen circumstances, the upcoming Creative Education Festival has been postponed. Attendees have been notified via email. Stay tuned for updates on the new date!

When does participation begin?

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Abstract

For lecturers who want to: – strengthen students’ sense of belonging; – extend the creativity and activism emerging from their courses beyond the university walls; and – rethink how their course shows up online beyond formal university channels. Drawing on Slavi’s experience as both a student and a Changemaker, this session invites you to rethink participation not as a single moment, but as something that builds across multiple touchpoints over time. Together, we’ll explore when students actually start engaging with course ideas, and how shared online spaces can extend the creativity, activism, and community of a course into the wider world.

Session and activities

This session invites you to rethink where part of your course already lives.
We’ll look at social media spaces that are often overlooked because they sit outside the university ecosystem and feel harder to coordinate. Yet this is where a lot of student activity is already happening, as students share lived experiences, backgrounds, and challenges while making sense of course ideas through their work.
The session suggests a shift in mindset away from producing a “perfect portfolio” (often high effort, low return) towards contributing to collective discourse through personal perspective, practice, and story. In this context, shared online spaces can help students feel seen more consistently and make publishing their work feel more meaningful, supporting them in forming themselves as creative practitioners in a world of increasing AI-generated content.

Slavi Kaloferov
Digital Content Designer Research
Digital Public Platforms