Collective 360˚ blind contour drawing Seminar Into the Wild HKU 2025: Top view of several hands drawing on a round sheet of paper on the ground, surrounded by vegetation.
Over the past 20 years, Janneke Berendsen has worked as a art educator in primary education, secondary education, vocational education and higher arts education, where she has served as a teacher, educational developer and project coordinator in collaboration with partners such as Meervaart, TENT and Kunsthal Kade.
Currently she is affiliated as a Lecturer in Drawing at ArtEZ University of the Arts for the courses Comic Design and Animation Design.
A common thread running through her work is the pursuit of (neuro)inclusive and accessible arts education based on an intersectional approach. A brief overview of a number of arts education projects she initiated and developed:
Neurodiversity Art Lab 2025
In this seminar neurodivergent students from eleven different courses at HKU University of the Arts did artistic research to reveal the ways in which neuronormativity within Higher Arts Education influences their creative processes.
The artistic research included creating a Mini-zine as an ode to their unique bodymind, redesigning teaching-/creating spaces, imagining the academy as a camouflage-free zone, and autonomous works that stretch our thinking about neuronormativity, which resulted in moving, revealing and humorous outcomes.
The research shows that students experience various aspects of neuronormativity influencing their creative process. These relate to lesson design, the physical learning and creating environment and social norms.
These insights have been translated into neuroaffirmative pedagogical strategies that can contribute to unlearning neuronormativity and underlying power structures in order to promote a neuroinclusive learning and creating environment.
Guest lecture of fashion designer Myrthe van der Tier during NAL 2025
Decolonizing Games 2025
Citywalk ‘Traces of Slavery’, led by cultural historian Nancy Jouwe as part of Seminar Decolonizing Games 2025
Dance me your story / Dans me je verhaal 2023
Making of Short Dance Film 'Amaryllis' 2023