Developing capabilities for democracy and critical exploration of practices of democracy in educational organisations requires not only fostering democratic knowledge, attitudes and skills, but also nurturing aesthetic and embodied qualities and capabilities. This paper explores the transformative potential of aesthetic and embodied collaborative learning (AECL) for education for democracy in digital spaces in educational organisations. The paper explains our conception of AECL and concepts integral to it, such as aesthetic qualities and affective capabilities. In summary, AECL involves growth in feelings for democracy and sensitivity towards the aesthetics of democratic practice, enhancement of empathic sensibilities towards others and affective capabilities for democratic collaboration, and greater willingness to move beyond habitual worldviews and towards more reflexive modes of knowing that reconnect with the body as a source of learning. Facilitated by arts-based and embodied (ABE) methods (Culshaw 2019, Woods et al 2021), what are the issues and challenges for AECL in digital spaces and the affordances of digitally-mediated ABE practices in such spaces for education for democracy? To address this question, theory explored includes: aesthetic/affective scaffolding (factors in the person’s environment and within the person that condition and amplify their affective and aesthetic awareness and expressions) (Candiotto & Dreon 2021, Maiese 2016); critical posthumanism on becoming human (Floridi 2015, Postma 2020) and how it affects our understanding of co-agency, scaffolding environments and democracy as a process of becoming in digital spaces; challenges of digitally entangled subjectivities and social practices and what it means to be a de-centred human in the digital age; and critical ‘post-digital’ aesthetics (Ferreira and Ribas 2020) and how these can aid our understanding of digitally-mediated democratic participation. We use reported findings from our research in digitally-mediated workshops in the Erasmus+ funded ENABLES (European Arts-Based Development of Distributed Leadership and Innovation in Schools) project (Woods et al 2021). The workshops sought to create a safe aesthetic environment in which educators could explore their experience and assumptions concerning leadership and leading change with others. These findings provide examples of collaborative learning using ABE methods in digital contexts and insights into how, for example, aesthetic awareness and awareness of self and others are thereby nurtured. The paper explores implications for AECL and education for democracy, contributing also to filling the theoretical gap concerning learning through digital interaction (Smith and Hill 2019). It concludes by highlighting critical questions and challenges in designing pedagogies that seek transformative development of education for democracy.

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