The Society for Strategic Education Studies National Conference 2025 (S4SES: Ehs-for-sehs)
I enjoyed the last two days (Februrary 27-28, 2025) at the Society for Strategic Education Studies National Conference at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in Diliman, Quezon City. The theme for this year’s S4SES (prounounced “ehs-for-sehs”) was “Enhancing Cultural and Arts Education with Critical Discourse on the Interface of Ecological Issues, Social Justice, and Human Rights”… quite a mouthful! The conveners from the UP Diliman Arts and Letters Cluster, composed of the Colleges of Fine Arts, Music, Arts & Letters, Human Kinetics and Media & Communication, put together a stellar schedule… it was difficult to pick which breakout rooms to attend! I presented our Performing Arts Medicine experiences and learnings during a panel focusing on health. The other speakers were Albert Dimarucut from the College of Human Kinetics discussing Dance Movement Exploration and Dayang Yraola from the College of Fine Arts talking about her workshops with neurodivergent students. And the networking: wow, so many interesting people and the ideas for collaboration that they brought to the table! I felt a bit out of place as a healthcare practitioner (it was a non-medical conference after all), but right at home as an educator, museum geek and artist 🙂 Very grateful for the opportunity to be part of this conference and contribute in my own little way to the arts and culture education world.
Extra thank yous to the conveners, especially Teacher Je and Doc Joy from the College of Music, who answered my many questions especially the most important one: how does the Performing Arts Medicine experience fit into all this? Well, it did – under the theme of wellness and resilience among performing artists. Now we’ve got the visual artists interested as well in what rehabilitation medicine has to offer… looking forward to working with them too!
