I will presents the on-going research project Culture Lab (2015-2016), which is involving nine partnerships between artists and schools in the Fyn region in Denmark. This research leans on a previous study carried on in several Danish Public Schools in 2009-2011, a study where I looked at how the arts can be integrated with other school subjects throughout the curriculum (Chemi, 2014). Findings from this former project show that  arts-integration is able to generate emotional and cognitive benefits. Against the background of this study’s empirical data, I designed the Culture Lab project, specifically looking at artist-school partnerships. In Denmark, recent changes in the public school system (K16) have brought about the debate on the role of the arts in education. One of the changes actualised is the “Open School”, which attempts to implement stronger relationships and collaborations between schools and cultural institutions or initiatives. This context is hosting a number of school/artist partnerships but also a warm debate whether the arts should be instrumental to learning. The Culture Lab project emerges from the needs of the “Open School” with the ambition of experimenting with collaborative and participatory forms for partnerships and documentation/evaluation forms. At ECER 2016 I will be able to present the first tentative findings about these partnerships and to describe research design, theoretical perspectives and cases. I look at these partnerships as communities where shared learning is at the same time means for co-creation and output and practical examples on how schools can understand arts-integration. As a novelty for the current project I will describe how different roles negotiate learning and how they participate in the artistic project. Studies on arts integration have focused on the teachers’ and the students’ perspectives, as if the learning achieved is exclusively involving these subjects. Systematic studies on the learning of artists in school partnerships are still too few, with some exceptions regarding the practices of teaching artists (Chemi, 2015).In artistic partnerships, both students and teachers might feel challenged by the tasks at hand and at the same time might report a wide range of positive emotions, going from enjoyment to excitement, feeling of meaningfulness and positive social relationships (Donahue & Stuart, 2010). A challenging cognitive task and a positive emotional response, when in balance resemble a flow experience, and strengthen each other in a learning perspective. Children who are able to crack the nuts of at challenging task, and have fun with it at the same time, are able to develop a sort of “learning resilience”, in the sense that the more they enjoy the learning task, the more they are motivated to stay concentrated even thought the task is complex or difficult. The cracked nut results in a positive experience of achievement, and therefore more positive emotions related to learning experiences.This positive self-strengthening synergy is at the core of the interplay of the arts in learning, and I will argue that the arts, the artists involved and the artistic tasks are what can make a difference in the participant’s experience.

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