Famke Sinninghe Damsté

Head Art Based Learning Centre

Drs Famke Sinninghe Damsté, head of Art Based Learning Center at ArtEZ, has been combining educational practice with creative practice in art education and the arts for 20 years. After her studies in Light Music and Dutch language, she started working as an editor in the world of radio, culminating in her VPRO series "I could write a book" about Dutch writers and jazz. In 2011, she founded Maanstrand, under which she produces CDs, books and art education projects. In 2017 she obtained a master's degree in Art Education at the Amsterdam School of the Arts. There she did research into the relationship between art education and Bildung, which brought her into contact with the Art Based Learning method of Jeroen Lutters and Janeke Wienk.

"How can I get my pupils to become intrinsically immersed in a work of art, not from a cognitive, school-like attitude, but from a personal connection? Is there a method of art appreciation through which art can really mean something to them? In search of the answer to that question, I came into contact with the Art Based Learning of Jeroen Lutters. My mission as head of the ABL Center ArtEZ is to now bring ABL to as many educators, coaches, artists and art lovers as possible as a connecting factor and as a driver of creativity."