Doing things differently through the lenses of Gestalt philosophy and practice-based learning: A hopeful outlook on the benefits of co-creating with students to support wellbeing for the HE community

TY - CHAP

T1 - Doing things differently through the lenses of Gestalt philosophy and practice-based learning

T2 - A hopeful outlook on the benefits of co-creating with students to support wellbeing for the HE community

AU - Ouzia, Julia

AU - Sendra, Estrella

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Narelle Lemon.

PY - 2024/7/1

Y1 - 2024/7/1

N2 - In 2003, bell hooks suggested that hope is a liberating and empowering tool for social justice in education. This chapter draws on hooks’ pedagogy of hope and further adds a Gestalt philosophical lens in order to reflect on ways in which student-led creative practice can contribute to sustained wellbeing in Higher Education. Specifically, we seek to share our pedagogic practices of hope here, using the example of the final-year undergraduate module ‘Events and Festivals: From Conception to Realization’ in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries (CMCI) at King’s College London, where students co-curate and co-produce the multidisciplinary CMCI Winter Festival. The practice-led learning and assessment method used in this module offers a way of doing things differently, breaking the boundaries of the classroom, and understanding students as co-curators with the potential of creatively transforming the world. The inherent trust in this approach comes from a place of hope and optimism concerning the human capacity to take charge of one’s own experience of being in the world and to shape it through creativity. This philosophical outlook towards pedagogy is aligned with the theoretical and practical considerations underlying Gestalt Therapy. This humanistic form of talking therapy places experience, commitment to dialogue, phenomenology, and field theory at the heart of its approach to supporting psychological wellbeing (Perls et al., 1951/1994). Surprisingly, although Gestalt philosophy has informed a wealth of literature on organisational development, only very few have commented on its applicability for Higher Education practice (e.g., Bourgault du Coudray, 2020). In this chapter, we aim to examine the student-led co-curated CMCI Winter Festival as an example of practice-based learning and assessment through the lens of Gestalt philosophy in order to reflect on how such hopeful pedagogy can contribute to sustained wellbeing in Higher Education. In fact, the idea of this interdisciplinary co-authored chapter emerged from the festival itself, where one of us, Julia Ouzia, was invited as a guest speaker to deliver a presentation on what Gestalt philosophy has to offer to student wellbeing. This was followed by a screening of a documentary film made by students on mental health, as part of the ‘Events and Festivals’ module led by Estrella Sendra. It is our hope that, by sharing this pedagogic practice, we can shed light on the ways in which self-reflection on pedagogy can be enhanced through an interdisciplinary focus. Furthermore, we wish to encourage educators to adopt a creative Gestalt-informed pedagogy of hope that can foster wellbeing for the entire Higher Education community, inside the classroom and beyond.

AB - In 2003, bell hooks suggested that hope is a liberating and empowering tool for social justice in education. This chapter draws on hooks’ pedagogy of hope and further adds a Gestalt philosophical lens in order to reflect on ways in which student-led creative practice can contribute to sustained wellbeing in Higher Education. Specifically, we seek to share our pedagogic practices of hope here, using the example of the final-year undergraduate module ‘Events and Festivals: From Conception to Realization’ in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries (CMCI) at King’s College London, where students co-curate and co-produce the multidisciplinary CMCI Winter Festival. The practice-led learning and assessment method used in this module offers a way of doing things differently, breaking the boundaries of the classroom, and understanding students as co-curators with the potential of creatively transforming the world. The inherent trust in this approach comes from a place of hope and optimism concerning the human capacity to take charge of one’s own experience of being in the world and to shape it through creativity. This philosophical outlook towards pedagogy is aligned with the theoretical and practical considerations underlying Gestalt Therapy. This humanistic form of talking therapy places experience, commitment to dialogue, phenomenology, and field theory at the heart of its approach to supporting psychological wellbeing (Perls et al., 1951/1994). Surprisingly, although Gestalt philosophy has informed a wealth of literature on organisational development, only very few have commented on its applicability for Higher Education practice (e.g., Bourgault du Coudray, 2020). In this chapter, we aim to examine the student-led co-curated CMCI Winter Festival as an example of practice-based learning and assessment through the lens of Gestalt philosophy in order to reflect on how such hopeful pedagogy can contribute to sustained wellbeing in Higher Education. In fact, the idea of this interdisciplinary co-authored chapter emerged from the festival itself, where one of us, Julia Ouzia, was invited as a guest speaker to deliver a presentation on what Gestalt philosophy has to offer to student wellbeing. This was followed by a screening of a documentary film made by students on mental health, as part of the ‘Events and Festivals’ module led by Estrella Sendra. It is our hope that, by sharing this pedagogic practice, we can shed light on the ways in which self-reflection on pedagogy can be enhanced through an interdisciplinary focus. Furthermore, we wish to encourage educators to adopt a creative Gestalt-informed pedagogy of hope that can foster wellbeing for the entire Higher Education community, inside the classroom and beyond.

KW - Learning

KW - Teaching

KW - Education

KW - Hope

KW - Gestalt

KW - Psychology

KW - Pedagogy

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85197026621&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.4324/9781003457510-11

DO - 10.4324/9781003457510-11

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85197026621

SN - 9781032600888

T3 - Wellbeing and Self-care in Higher Education: Embracing Positive Solutions

SP - 106

EP - 118

BT - Prioritising wellbeing and self-care in Higher Education

A2 - Lemon, Narelle

PB - Routledge

ER -