Hello, I am Aryan Hasanvandi, I am originally from Tehran, Iran.
As a self-taught visual artist, the subject of “learning” became interesting for me to explore and experiment with. To that effect my path led me to pedagogics.
I have completed my BA degree in industrial design. However, I ended up working in the fields of media and art education. Besides my personal artistic practices, I am also active as a freelance illustrator and nowadays I am more than before drawn to children’s media.
My passion is to teach art for people of different ages. I have been working as an art educator and facilitator with both children and adults at institute and private classes. My main focus is to explore ways of enhancing creative visualization by drawing and painting techniques.
I chose to continue my studies in NoVA MA programme to develop my competencies in pedagogy. In particular, I am interested in investigating teaching styles and pedagogies used in Nordic countries. Finland seemed an interesting place to start this journey of exploring the global phenomena of contemporary art education.
Currently I am working at European school of Helsinki (ESH) as an art teacher for after school activities. It is a great opportunity for me to work with primary students from different countries. I am organizing classes such as sculpture, drawing and painting, and visual storytelling. I am also collaborating with EMMA museum of modern art in organizing workshops for children and their parents.
My favorite course in NoVA was “Art Pedagogical Practices and Theories”. I found it really essential to learn more about different ways and approaches to the context of art pedagogy. At the end of the course, we were supposed to design a workshop based on our interested topic. Which made the whole learning process instructive and practical.