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Anne Pässilä

Lappeenranta University of Technology, LUT School of Engineering Science, Senior Researcher

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Anne Pässilä PhD, MA, drama & community educator and a Senior Researcher in the School of Engineering and Science at Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT), Finland and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Chester, UK RECAP, since 2013; Honorary Fellow of the University of Liverpool, department of Continuing Education 2024-2027. Anne is a pioneer in designing and applying arts-based research approaches (ABR) and arts-based methodology (ABM) in public and private communities.

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Antonio Dias de Figueiredo

Universidade de Coimbra

University of California, Santa Barbara

University of British Columbia

Christian Bueger

University of Copenhagen

Kansas State University

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology

Ariane Berthoin Antal

Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung - WZB

Brigitte Biehl (Biehl-Missal)

SRH Hochschule Berlin

Dan Eugen Ratiu

Babes-Bolyai University

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

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Papers by Anne Pässilä

Critical Reflection from a Management and Organization Perspective

Embodied Performative Approaches: When workplace and theatre innovate together for organizational sustainability

In the present introduction the editors’ team of this special issue tell the story of how this co... more In the present introduction the editors’ team of this special issue tell the story of how this collection was conceived and shaped. The narration follows the team’s initial intentions and the dramatic shift that the pandemic emergency imposed in the Spring 2020. The editors also make explicit the special issue’s structure and its content, presented in dramaturgical progression: the academic articles, the commentaries and the poetic epilogue. The purpose of the special issue is to explore possible bridgings between contemporary workplace performance and theatre performance in terms of embodied learning and innovation for sustainability. The artistic practices pervade human beings’ everyday life. The experience of pandemic crisis has revealed what is necessary: when life is stripped out of all basic freedom -freedom to move, to choose, to meetand “normal” routines, what is left? What seems to be left, is the fundamental need to be together.

Critical Reflection in Management and Organization Studies

Routledge, 2016

Designing cyberpunk characters to make urban data more accessible for citizens

Playing games through interactive data comics to explore water quality in a lake

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts

This case study explores the use of an existing data-driven storytelling method, called data comi... more This case study explores the use of an existing data-driven storytelling method, called data comic, within a co-design process, to improve the sense-making of data. Data can often support a codesign process by providing additional insight towards a problem that is being solved. A large number of methods are available to facilitate diferent aspects of a co-design process, but when it comes to embedding curated data, alternatives are limited. Not everyone has the expertise to understand raw data and co-design scenarios are typically time-limited meaning that learning new data skills is not the focus. Therefore, appropriate data curation can help to bring data into a design process while reducing time spent on data manipulation or upskilling. At the same time, it is important that participants are encouraged to think critically about the data and not simply accept a predetermined viewpoint. We have adapted an existing technique called Data Comic for curating data for use in a co-design situation by turning the comic panels into a card game so that they can be used interactively and collaboratively. In this paper, we describe and refect on its use within a workshop with participants who were mostly teenagers. We led them through a process of engaging with curated data to make sense of water pollution in a Finnish lake since the 1970s and raise awareness towards environmental pollution. We present our results from the participant's feedback and workshop to refect on how data comics played a role in sense-making.

Facilitating Data Inclusion and Empowerment through Arts-Based, Creative and Playful Approaches

C&T '21: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Communities & Technologies - Wicked Problems in the Age of Tech

Big data is a topic of growing importance in the modern world, these days our lives are shaped by... more Big data is a topic of growing importance in the modern world, these days our lives are shaped by the information we consume. As such data literacy is becoming an increasingly crucial skill to have. However, there are barriers of entry to understanding scientific data for the average person. This workshop will explore ways in which we can overcome those barriers, and attempt to engage people with scientific data through creative, playful, and fun approaches. The goal of this workshop is to promote data inclusivity and literacy, and to demystify the concept of data. This workshop will use art-based approaches as a means of communicating data. It will also involve participants making sense of the data themselves through data storytelling techniques. This workshop will also be a chance to reflect on what barriers to data inclusivity exists, and the role that data plays in building empathy towards others and the world around us.

Arts in the Military: A theatrical Performance Exercise

Purpose-Our aim is to explore to what extent, and in what ways, can theatre be used in the learni... more

Crafting strategic thinking: Creative pedagogy for management studies

This paper presents a format from the creative arts, refocused for application in management stud... more This paper presents a format from the creative arts, refocused for application in management studies, as a method to enhance and support the development of strategic thinking. It involves the application of multi-page paper constructions (zines) within facilitated sessions to enhance imaginative strategic thinking by both management learners and practitioners. It draws on a longitudinal case study of the six-phase evolution of affordances of a zine as a method for reflective, creative and connected thinking. The focus moves from purely personal private reflections to the possibility of deploying zines for collective reflection and action. Specific examples are provided of zine workshops and events. Strategic thinking relates to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). The affordances of zines relating to tangibility, efficiency and mental processes appear well-suited to a VUCA context. The paper concludes with reflections on the nature of multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary collaborations such as this one.

Review of "Through the Reading Glasses

Troubling Mistakes: Playing with Our Assumptions

Culture, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: connecting the knowledge dots

Conflicting professional identities for artists in transprofessional contexts

This chapter investigates how the artists navigate multiple and at times conflicting identities w... more This chapter investigates how the artists navigate multiple and at times conflicting identities within the challenges of working in unfamiliar transprofessional contexts. It also investigates the expanding professionalism of artists in the transprofessional realm of artistic interventions in organisations. Ariane Berthoin Antal argues that artists’ professional identities and also responsibilities are geared towards some fundamental values in the arts, and that it is vital for artists to maintain such values as they collaborate with other professions. To exemplify expanded work in transprofessional contexts, our attention now turns to the experiences of four artists—a theatre director, a performance artist, a dancer, and a dramaturg—who took part in the pilot programme at Uniarts. It is imperative in higher arts education to discuss critically the relationship between professionalism in more traditional artistic practice and the expanding professionalism of hybrid artists in new transprofessional domains.

Play-scripting: Testing a means of accounting for social value

Paper presented at Cultural Mapping: Debating Spaces and Places; the second annual Valletta 2018 ... more

The Role of Reflection, Reflection on Roles: Practice-Based Innovation Through Theatre-Based Learning

Practice-Based Innovation: Insights, Applications and Policy Implications, 2011

A key issue for practice-based innovation is: how can organisations generate innovation in the mi... more

Creating dialogue by storytelling

Journal of Workplace Learning, 2013

PurposeThe objective of this paper is to develop practice and theory from Augusto Boal's dial... more PurposeThe objective of this paper is to develop practice and theory from Augusto Boal's dialogue technique (Image Theatre) for organisational use. The paper aims to examine how the members in an organisation create dialogue together by using a dramaturgical storytelling framework where the dialogue emerges from storytelling facilitated by symbolic representations of still images.Design/methodology/approachThe study follows the lines of participatory action and art‐based research. The data are collected from 13 dramaturgical work story storytelling sessions in four different organisations. The research design belongs to the tradition of research‐based theatre, which implies artful inquiry, scripting and performance in research.FindingsThe paper presents a model for organisational dialogue. The model illustrates the dramaturgical storytelling of work story which influences problem shifting in a positive way.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations of this study are relate...

Zines as qualitative forms of analysis

Purpose: This report brings forward the possibility of capturing creativity and human experience ... more Purpose: This report brings forward the possibility of capturing creativity and human experience through a visual ethnography approach, applying the use of ‘zines’ as a means of capturing individual engagement with a process. Zines are small (maga)zines from the do-it-yourself movement. They began as a means for fans to express their support of favourite musicians. They are a means to express collective voice from the ground up, less formal than a publication produced by an entity, but formal enough to be considered publications in their own right. Zines can be handcrafted in rough method or can be beautifully designed and produced to very high standards. Zines are presented in this paper as a method of collecting and analysing data within a framework of qualitative analysis that retains more of the shape of the complete experience (Dewey). This is done so as to maintain a more overall sense of what the experience was for an individual participating in an activity within the organis...

Arts-Aided Recognition of Citizens’ Perceptions for Urban Open Space Management

Sustainability, 2021

Urban open spaces of local natural environments can promote the health and well-being of both eco... more Urban open spaces of local natural environments can promote the health and well-being of both ecosystems and humans, and the management of the urban spaces can benefit from knowledge of individuals’/citizens’ perceptions of such environments. However, such knowledge is scarce and contemporary inquiries are often limited to cognitive observations and focused on built environmental elements rather than encouraged to recognize and communicate comprehensive perceptions. This paper investigates whether arts-based methods can facilitate recognition and understanding perceptions of urban open spaces. Two arts-based methods were used to capture perceptions: drifting, which is a walking method, and theatrical images, which is a still image method and three reflective methods to recognize and communicate the perceptions. The results show related sensations and perceptions enabled by arts-based methods comparing them to a sticker map method. The main findings were perceptions, which included i...

Practice-Based Innovation Pedagogy: Learning in the Middle of Action

www.lut.fi/lahti This paper makes a connection between learning, innovation and pedagogy in the c... more www.lut.fi/lahti This paper makes a connection between learning, innovation and pedagogy in the context of vocational adult education in Finland 2009-2011. The paper identifies the social dimension of organisational learning in practice-based innovation. The action planning phase of the action research process involved the Finnish association for vocational adult education and training, 43 Finnish vocational adult education centres, the companies training their employees, and research facilitators. As an outcome of the action planning phase the authors suggest a framework for constructing innovation pedagogy. The framework contains three levels, the exact contents of which will be constructed in coming action research phases of innovation pedagogy. These levels are: 1) The innovation system of the adult education organisation, 2) the innovativeness of the adult education organisation, and 3) the adult education organisation’s education service strategies, i.e., what kinds of educati...

Opening the Tide Gate to Practice-Based Innovation

This paper focuses on how people who form, participate and embody experience and practice-based c... more This paper focuses on how people who form, participate and embody experience and practice-based communities address complex issues. To improve the understanding of the social dimension of organizational learning in context of practice-based innovation, we propose an aesthetic perspective on change which draws from art and creative practices to foster innovation. The paper explores collective learning as a self-regulated emerging transformational process. A Finnish and Canadian cases are presented to support and illustrate the study.

The moral work of becoming a professional

Narrative Inquiry

In contemporary working life, art-based initiatives are increasingly used in organizational train... more In contemporary working life, art-based initiatives are increasingly used in organizational training and development. For artists, this has created new employment opportunities as creative entrepreneurs who provide specialist services for workplaces. In this article, we study the dynamics of such encounters through the narrated accounts of training professionals. Our data come from a professional mentoring program where the working pairs of artists and consultants shared stories about their customer projects. By using conversation analysis as a method, we analyze the way stories are interactionally accomplished in peer group sessions of the program. In particular, we analyze how participants produce different versions of the narrated events, and by so doing, negotiate the questions of blame and accountability with regard to professional action. In conclusion, we discuss stories and storytelling as organizational practice through which the moral order and legitimacy of the program is...

Critical Reflection from a Management and Organization Perspective

Embodied Performative Approaches: When workplace and theatre innovate together for organizational sustainability

In the present introduction the editors’ team of this special issue tell the story of how this co... more In the present introduction the editors’ team of this special issue tell the story of how this collection was conceived and shaped. The narration follows the team’s initial intentions and the dramatic shift that the pandemic emergency imposed in the Spring 2020. The editors also make explicit the special issue’s structure and its content, presented in dramaturgical progression: the academic articles, the commentaries and the poetic epilogue. The purpose of the special issue is to explore possible bridgings between contemporary workplace performance and theatre performance in terms of embodied learning and innovation for sustainability. The artistic practices pervade human beings’ everyday life. The experience of pandemic crisis has revealed what is necessary: when life is stripped out of all basic freedom -freedom to move, to choose, to meetand “normal” routines, what is left? What seems to be left, is the fundamental need to be together.

Critical Reflection in Management and Organization Studies

Routledge, 2016

Designing cyberpunk characters to make urban data more accessible for citizens

Playing games through interactive data comics to explore water quality in a lake

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts

This case study explores the use of an existing data-driven storytelling method, called data comi... more This case study explores the use of an existing data-driven storytelling method, called data comic, within a co-design process, to improve the sense-making of data. Data can often support a codesign process by providing additional insight towards a problem that is being solved. A large number of methods are available to facilitate diferent aspects of a co-design process, but when it comes to embedding curated data, alternatives are limited. Not everyone has the expertise to understand raw data and co-design scenarios are typically time-limited meaning that learning new data skills is not the focus. Therefore, appropriate data curation can help to bring data into a design process while reducing time spent on data manipulation or upskilling. At the same time, it is important that participants are encouraged to think critically about the data and not simply accept a predetermined viewpoint. We have adapted an existing technique called Data Comic for curating data for use in a co-design situation by turning the comic panels into a card game so that they can be used interactively and collaboratively. In this paper, we describe and refect on its use within a workshop with participants who were mostly teenagers. We led them through a process of engaging with curated data to make sense of water pollution in a Finnish lake since the 1970s and raise awareness towards environmental pollution. We present our results from the participant's feedback and workshop to refect on how data comics played a role in sense-making.

Facilitating Data Inclusion and Empowerment through Arts-Based, Creative and Playful Approaches

C&T '21: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Communities & Technologies - Wicked Problems in the Age of Tech

Big data is a topic of growing importance in the modern world, these days our lives are shaped by... more Big data is a topic of growing importance in the modern world, these days our lives are shaped by the information we consume. As such data literacy is becoming an increasingly crucial skill to have. However, there are barriers of entry to understanding scientific data for the average person. This workshop will explore ways in which we can overcome those barriers, and attempt to engage people with scientific data through creative, playful, and fun approaches. The goal of this workshop is to promote data inclusivity and literacy, and to demystify the concept of data. This workshop will use art-based approaches as a means of communicating data. It will also involve participants making sense of the data themselves through data storytelling techniques. This workshop will also be a chance to reflect on what barriers to data inclusivity exists, and the role that data plays in building empathy towards others and the world around us.

Arts in the Military: A theatrical Performance Exercise

Purpose-Our aim is to explore to what extent, and in what ways, can theatre be used in the learni... more

Crafting strategic thinking: Creative pedagogy for management studies

This paper presents a format from the creative arts, refocused for application in management stud... more This paper presents a format from the creative arts, refocused for application in management studies, as a method to enhance and support the development of strategic thinking. It involves the application of multi-page paper constructions (zines) within facilitated sessions to enhance imaginative strategic thinking by both management learners and practitioners. It draws on a longitudinal case study of the six-phase evolution of affordances of a zine as a method for reflective, creative and connected thinking. The focus moves from purely personal private reflections to the possibility of deploying zines for collective reflection and action. Specific examples are provided of zine workshops and events. Strategic thinking relates to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). The affordances of zines relating to tangibility, efficiency and mental processes appear well-suited to a VUCA context. The paper concludes with reflections on the nature of multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary collaborations such as this one.

Review of "Through the Reading Glasses

Troubling Mistakes: Playing with Our Assumptions

Culture, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: connecting the knowledge dots

Conflicting professional identities for artists in transprofessional contexts

This chapter investigates how the artists navigate multiple and at times conflicting identities w... more This chapter investigates how the artists navigate multiple and at times conflicting identities within the challenges of working in unfamiliar transprofessional contexts. It also investigates the expanding professionalism of artists in the transprofessional realm of artistic interventions in organisations. Ariane Berthoin Antal argues that artists’ professional identities and also responsibilities are geared towards some fundamental values in the arts, and that it is vital for artists to maintain such values as they collaborate with other professions. To exemplify expanded work in transprofessional contexts, our attention now turns to the experiences of four artists—a theatre director, a performance artist, a dancer, and a dramaturg—who took part in the pilot programme at Uniarts. It is imperative in higher arts education to discuss critically the relationship between professionalism in more traditional artistic practice and the expanding professionalism of hybrid artists in new transprofessional domains.

Play-scripting: Testing a means of accounting for social value

Paper presented at Cultural Mapping: Debating Spaces and Places; the second annual Valletta 2018 ... more

The Role of Reflection, Reflection on Roles: Practice-Based Innovation Through Theatre-Based Learning

Practice-Based Innovation: Insights, Applications and Policy Implications, 2011

A key issue for practice-based innovation is: how can organisations generate innovation in the mi... more

Creating dialogue by storytelling

Journal of Workplace Learning, 2013

PurposeThe objective of this paper is to develop practice and theory from Augusto Boal's dial... more PurposeThe objective of this paper is to develop practice and theory from Augusto Boal's dialogue technique (Image Theatre) for organisational use. The paper aims to examine how the members in an organisation create dialogue together by using a dramaturgical storytelling framework where the dialogue emerges from storytelling facilitated by symbolic representations of still images.Design/methodology/approachThe study follows the lines of participatory action and art‐based research. The data are collected from 13 dramaturgical work story storytelling sessions in four different organisations. The research design belongs to the tradition of research‐based theatre, which implies artful inquiry, scripting and performance in research.FindingsThe paper presents a model for organisational dialogue. The model illustrates the dramaturgical storytelling of work story which influences problem shifting in a positive way.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations of this study are relate...

Zines as qualitative forms of analysis

Purpose: This report brings forward the possibility of capturing creativity and human experience ... more Purpose: This report brings forward the possibility of capturing creativity and human experience through a visual ethnography approach, applying the use of ‘zines’ as a means of capturing individual engagement with a process. Zines are small (maga)zines from the do-it-yourself movement. They began as a means for fans to express their support of favourite musicians. They are a means to express collective voice from the ground up, less formal than a publication produced by an entity, but formal enough to be considered publications in their own right. Zines can be handcrafted in rough method or can be beautifully designed and produced to very high standards. Zines are presented in this paper as a method of collecting and analysing data within a framework of qualitative analysis that retains more of the shape of the complete experience (Dewey). This is done so as to maintain a more overall sense of what the experience was for an individual participating in an activity within the organis...

Arts-Aided Recognition of Citizens’ Perceptions for Urban Open Space Management

Sustainability, 2021

Urban open spaces of local natural environments can promote the health and well-being of both eco... more Urban open spaces of local natural environments can promote the health and well-being of both ecosystems and humans, and the management of the urban spaces can benefit from knowledge of individuals’/citizens’ perceptions of such environments. However, such knowledge is scarce and contemporary inquiries are often limited to cognitive observations and focused on built environmental elements rather than encouraged to recognize and communicate comprehensive perceptions. This paper investigates whether arts-based methods can facilitate recognition and understanding perceptions of urban open spaces. Two arts-based methods were used to capture perceptions: drifting, which is a walking method, and theatrical images, which is a still image method and three reflective methods to recognize and communicate the perceptions. The results show related sensations and perceptions enabled by arts-based methods comparing them to a sticker map method. The main findings were perceptions, which included i...

Practice-Based Innovation Pedagogy: Learning in the Middle of Action

www.lut.fi/lahti This paper makes a connection between learning, innovation and pedagogy in the c... more www.lut.fi/lahti This paper makes a connection between learning, innovation and pedagogy in the context of vocational adult education in Finland 2009-2011. The paper identifies the social dimension of organisational learning in practice-based innovation. The action planning phase of the action research process involved the Finnish association for vocational adult education and training, 43 Finnish vocational adult education centres, the companies training their employees, and research facilitators. As an outcome of the action planning phase the authors suggest a framework for constructing innovation pedagogy. The framework contains three levels, the exact contents of which will be constructed in coming action research phases of innovation pedagogy. These levels are: 1) The innovation system of the adult education organisation, 2) the innovativeness of the adult education organisation, and 3) the adult education organisation’s education service strategies, i.e., what kinds of educati...

Opening the Tide Gate to Practice-Based Innovation

This paper focuses on how people who form, participate and embody experience and practice-based c... more This paper focuses on how people who form, participate and embody experience and practice-based communities address complex issues. To improve the understanding of the social dimension of organizational learning in context of practice-based innovation, we propose an aesthetic perspective on change which draws from art and creative practices to foster innovation. The paper explores collective learning as a self-regulated emerging transformational process. A Finnish and Canadian cases are presented to support and illustrate the study.

The moral work of becoming a professional

Narrative Inquiry

In contemporary working life, art-based initiatives are increasingly used in organizational train... more In contemporary working life, art-based initiatives are increasingly used in organizational training and development. For artists, this has created new employment opportunities as creative entrepreneurs who provide specialist services for workplaces. In this article, we study the dynamics of such encounters through the narrated accounts of training professionals. Our data come from a professional mentoring program where the working pairs of artists and consultants shared stories about their customer projects. By using conversation analysis as a method, we analyze the way stories are interactionally accomplished in peer group sessions of the program. In particular, we analyze how participants produce different versions of the narrated events, and by so doing, negotiate the questions of blame and accountability with regard to professional action. In conclusion, we discuss stories and storytelling as organizational practice through which the moral order and legitimacy of the program is...

Co-imagining the Museum of the Future: Meaningful Interactions Among Art(efacts), Visitors and Technology in Museum Spaces

by Priscilla Van Even, Anne Pässilä, and Kevin Vanhaelewijn

Propositions for Museum Education: International Art Educators in Conversation, 2024

Museums are exploring the potential of digital technologies and tools for, among other things, vi... more Museums are exploring the potential of digital technologies and tools for, among other things, visual literacy education, visitor engagement and exhibition curation. In this chapter, we will inquire about the different functions and roles of technology in the museum space, and we will examine how to establish a meaningful interaction between art(efacts), people and tools to improve curation, visual literacy practices and visitor experiences. Experiences from the RETINA project in 2018 have shown us that interactions without this element of meaningfulness can easily lead to the development of tools and technologies that are distractive rather than supportive. Based on a co-creation workshop in 2021 with different museum stakeholders and on former museum research experiences in museum settings, we will discuss barriers and enablers to good technology uses in the museum, and supportive and distractive characteristics of technology. Furthermore, we will introduce scenarios of what future museums could look like from the perspective of technology through the eyes of youth and museum professionals and researchers.

Conflicting professional identities for artists in transprofessional contexts. Insights from a pilot programme initiating artistic interventions in organisations

by Kai G Lehikoinen and Anne Pässilä

Expanding Professionalism in Music and Higher Music Education. A Changing Game., 2021

This chapter investigates how the artists navigate multiple and at times conflicting identities w... more This chapter investigates how the artists navigate multiple and at times conflicting identities within the challenges of working in unfamiliar transprofessional contexts. It also investigates the expanding professionalism of artists in the transprofessional realm of artistic interventions in organisations. Ariane Berthoin Antal argues that artists’ professional identities and also responsibilities are geared towards some fundamental values in the arts, and that it is vital for artists to maintain such values as they collaborate with other professions. To exemplify expanded work in transprofessional contexts, our attention now turns to the experiences of four artists—a theatre director, a performance artist, a dancer, and a dramaturg—who took part in the pilot programme at Uniarts. It is imperative in higher arts education to discuss critically the relationship between professionalism in more traditional artistic practice and the expanding professionalism of hybrid artists in new transprofessional domains.