ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the creative potential of pedagogy beyond the classroom. It focuses on a seven-day gallery installation, REFUGEE JOURNEYS THROUGH THE BALKAN ROUTE: A CRISIS NO MORE?, which brought to life a series of fieldwork experiences of four academics who embraced alternative methodological and dissemination practices in the context of the European Refugee/humanitarian crisis. The week-long installation featured a series of public speakers, interactive maps and videos, photographs as well as an arts and craft table. Guests were invited to draw, colour, and create a quilt to express their experiences of the gallery installation as they reflected on the various aspects of the installation. This chapter attends to the role that creative methods can play in the understanding of emotional practices of everyday international relations. In so doing it pays particular attention to the collective process of quilt-making and the stories that were shared during the making of a patch, as part of a wider quilt representing the region. We offer to the reader the opportunity to reflect on the artefacts (quilt squares) that emerged during this time. These squares, and their memories, are included in order to transcend the voices of the authors, and in so doing, bring to life the co-collaborative nature of the crafting space within the installation. The stories revealed through the quilt-making exercise demonstrate the emotional impact of the exhibit, while pushing us, as academics, to wonder what subversive roles emotional knowledge can play within a neoliberal university environment. We explore how learning beyond the university unlocks the capacity for creative and emotional practices relevant to everyday IR. Moreover, we begin to assess how such emotional and creative processes provide a space for non-hierarchical learning that can capture, and render explicit, emotional pedagogical qualities relevant to a creative interpretation of global politics.
