The aim of Freedom to Make Sense (MakeSense) is to establish a research and training center that connects mindful methods of philosophical and artistic practice to respond in depth to a multifaceted and rapidly growing crisis within and outside academia which craves for new ways of thinking. Drawing on research within philosophy, psychology and the cognitive sciences on the embodied, experiential mind that has renewing and empowering potentials for the practice of critical and creative thinking, the project undertakes a leap into the critical and research-based enactment of these transformative potentials. The project strives to explore and generate spaces and conditions in which students, researchers and professionals have the freedom to face and make sense of current developments and challenges.
During the funding period, MakeSense will function as the umbrella for five different training modules in which different methods will be taught, accompanied by five pilot studies and online think-tank meetings, a final five-day on-site think-tank meeting, and one three-day training workshop on embodied methods of art research, in which all interdisciplinary partners will take part as practitioners and researchers. During the grant period, this multi-disciplinary team will learn different methods from each other, and test, reflect on and establish feasible and relevant research approaches in the form of pilot studies, to examine the effects of these methods on learning, thinking and development. The outcome will be a training program containing five different modules, based on empirical, qualitative and theoretical research on the effects and implications of the different methods carried out in the funded period, as well as a MOOC introduction. By bringing together inter-disciplinary approaches to support and understand the benefits and limitations of embodied-experiential and mindful research practices, MakeSense is a pioneer in the comparative research of the methodologies at stake and of their theoretical-scientific basis that will yield groundbreaking discoveries for the theory and practice of embodied thinking in research and learning.