Janeke Wienk

Janeke Wienk is an artist-educator from the Netherlands who has been involved in many forms of education in, with, and through art over a lifetime spanning nearly forty years. Inspired by her love of art and her own work as a painter, she has developed forms of teaching that increasingly focus on what she sees as the strongest power of art: its ability to connect us with our humanity.

Over the past ten years, Janeke has conducted PhD research (supervised by educational philosopher Gert Biesta) aimed at better understanding and defining this existential dimension of art, always in relation to the question of good education. In her view, it is a loss when art is primarily understood as an instrument for achieving external goals, because this risks obscuring its most fundamental quality: that art existentializes our experience and connects us with our humanity.

In several publications, Janeke has explored the role of art in education, consistently taking her own teaching practice as both point of departure and orientation. In practice she has worked at all educational levels, from primary to higher education, with children, young people, adults, and older students. She has also been involved in the development of a master’s program in art education that focuses on conflict transformation and peace education at ArtEZ university of the arts in the Netherlands.

Recently, she published a book presenting her vision and working approach. She wrote it with the intention of supporting other art educators in finding and sustaining the own natural connection of human beings with art.