European congress concentrated on European and global issues around art education and its connections to societal and scientific topics. At the time the congress was held, Europe and the rest of the world were going through (and continue to go through) significant changes and facing major challenges. At this congress, art educators, artists, art teachers, curators, museum educators and researchers discussed these challenges and changes, bringing their local perspectives and experiences into the discourse.Participants were offered the possibility to learn from the strong Finnish art education structures and practices throughout the congress program, developed alongside local art and art education professionals. Art and its education met with Eco/Bio/Tech/Digital/Societal connections in Aalto University, on many levels.

Within the last two decades, academic research has become subject to interdisciplinary work of increasing frequency. Interdisciplinary and, more recently, transdisciplinary collaborations are some- times understood as the most prospective solu- tions to solve contemporary world’s problems that are typically not discipline-based. The diverse backgrounds of researchers allow potentiality for convergent research (Kallio-Tavin, Fast, Heimonen, Pusa & Hari, 2021). As Riitta Hari (ALLEA, 2021) says, “most important problems don’t need to come in packages that feed just one discipline, and that is why we have to convert across disci- plines” (1:05). There are undoubtable advantages that come with processes of interdisciplinary col- laboration, such as constantly extending new areas of knowledge, finding solutions to the important problems, along with refining methodological prac- tices. At the same time, due to the differences in approaches and theoretical frameworks, collabora- tions can have significant challenges and even tan- gle consequences.