The Comeback of the Book: Roundtable Discussion with The Lighthouse Book Club. 

Anja Plugge & Sanne Kamphorst/discussion

Description

How can we encourage students to start reading again? What makes young people pick up a book, and which stories truly speak to them? The Lighthouse Book Club brings students and staff at THUAS together to read and discuss books. During this roundtable discussion, the organizers of the book club will share their experiences and challenges. All participants of this session are invited to exchange ideas freely concerning questions such as: How do you lead an engaging book discussion? Why and what should young people read? And how can we reignite students’ love for stories?

Biography

As a programme maker and event manager at The Lighthouse & Events, Anja Plugge loves creating spaces where students can connect and be inspired. Together with the Language Point, she started the Book Club to spark a love for reading and to build a community around books and conversation.  

Sanne Kamphorst studied Comparative Literature and now works as a language teacher and educational consultant at the Language Point. She is passionate about helping students strengthen their language skills, and she enjoys using literature as a powerful tool to support their academic and personal development.

Empathy at Stake: Theater in the Classroom. 

Paul de Regt/workshop

Description

Can theater foster students' empathy and bridge the gap between student groups? That was the central question during a theater project last June at The Hague University of Applied Sciences' HRM program. This presentation includes a video that provides a glimpse into the project. Afterwards, we will discuss with the attendees what and how theater in the classroom can contribute to education.

Biography

Paul de Regt, the initiator of this project, is a lecturer in the HRM program and a researcher in the Change Management research group. Since 2020, he has been working to establish a permanent place for theater in the program's curriculum. His efforts were rewarded in 2024 with a grant from the NRO, which led to the project in this video.

Analyze This! 

Thijs Bos & Chris Heydra/workshop

Description

Students often have clear opinions about everything. But when it comes to giving feedback on someone else's work, it often gets stuck at "Yeah... It's pretty good." To help students learn to look critically, we use film as a tool. By analyzing film clips, students learn to consider the choices a creator makes consciously: why did they choose a particular camera angle? How does the use of color affect the tone of the movie? How does sound contribute to the experience?  During our session, we'll demonstrate how you can challenge students to look deeper in an accessible and engaging way. We'll watch clips, analyze them together, and experience how this approach helps students go beyond "pretty good."

Biography

Thijs and Chris both primarily teach at the CMD program. Together they have 13 years of experience in teaching about analysing film at both THUAS and KABK. And since 2024, they have also organised the Lighthouse Filmclub. To them, Film is a language that we all understand, but it has a lot of fascinating, subtle intricacies that they love to talk about.

Paradox as Praxis — Educational Transformation as Social Sculpture

Matthew Rich-Tolsma/workshop

Biography

In an era of social acceleration, ‘social sculpture’ invites us all to become co-creators of learning ecologies beyond traditional boundaries. This talk explores how the practice of Joseph Beuys’s concept of social sculpture invites us to orient ourselves differently to the reality of organisational life. Drawing on applied projects in higher education and community settings, I argue that embracing paradox not as a problem to solve but as an ontological ground offers a horizon for pedagogical transformation. Participants will leave with concrete imaginaries and provocations to cultivate spaces where difference, tension, and co-creation become the fabric of learning as social artistry.

Description

​​Matthew Rich-Tolsma is an organisational consultant, group-analytic practitioner, and artist-educator whose work integrates social sculpture, complexity thinking, psychoanalytic insight, and decolonial critique. He works across corporate, public-sector, and civil-society organisations, supporting leaders and teams to navigate change through participatory, reflexive, and relational practices. As Pedagogue-in-Residence at ArtEZ Academy of Theatre and Dance, he leads the development of an equity-based pedagogy and institution-wide learning processes. Together with theatre maker Lotte van den Berg, he co-founded Workspace Social Sculpture, a research and consulting initiative bringing artistic and dialogical methodologies into organisational transformation. His international practice focuses on trauma-informed groupwork and cultivating just, resonant, and adaptive organisational cultures.