Activating alchemy: becoming curriculum through art, research and teaching

In this keynote, I explore the transformative and speculative potentials of curriculum as a living, relational, and alchemical practice. Drawing on the entangled methodology of a/r/tography; where art, research, and teaching co-emerge I position curriculum not as a fixed document but as a becoming: situated, embodied, and co-composed in the shimmering, messy realities of classrooms, communities, and conversations. I invite us to rethink curriculum through the shimmer of lived experience, the slash of the a/r/tographer, and the speculative impulse to ask what if?

Framed by the HUMANIFESTO for this conference, I trace how curriculum can be activated through inner and relational alchemy where learning becomes living inquiry, process becomes pedagogy, and knowledge becomes story. I share examples from studioFive, where young people and teachers co-design future curricula as speculative artefacts, card games, and poetic provocations. I highlight six artists whose practices model curriculum as care, resistance, and futurity.

Ultimately, I argue that becoming curriculum means stepping into uncertainty, relationality, and transformation. It means holding space for mourning and magic, shadow and shimmer. It is not something we deliver, but something we become. This keynote is a call to activate curriculum as alchemy not metaphorically, but materially and methodologically through resonant, artful, and radical acts of pedagogy.

This keynote was developed to attune to the VADEA ALCHEMYHUMANIFESTO

Empowering students and teachers
Through transformative processes
Distilling the essence of Practice and pedagogy
To transmit meanings and significance
Attuning to creative and critical thinking
Framing new and re-emerging Viewpoints
Exploring the potential and possibilities
Of Artworld Concepts and interrelations
Responding to a constantly changing world
With resonance and resilience
Inspiring and informing lifelong learning
Activating alchemy