Are there ‘rules’ for conveying emotion through art?

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Psychology and Art.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• While art and science are often separated in academia, there is a lot to be learnt by considering them together. This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Dirk Bernhardt-Walther and Dr Claudia Damiano, at the University of Toronto in Canada, and Dr Pinaki Gayen, at Visva Bharati University in India, who are combining their expertise in cognitive neuroscience and visual art to investigate patterns in how abstract art conveys specific emotions.
• This resource also contains interviews with the team. If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. The team will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the research, and tasks them to perform their own cognitive neuroscience experiment.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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