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How can we build a future for teaching and mentoring creative work and research that honors core disciplinary traditions, supports interdisciplinary collaborations, and enhances transdisciplinary work? How can evolving digital technologies foster innovation in the interwoven work of teaching-researching-creating, while supporting the best of traditional practices in the arts, design, and media disciplines?

This peer-reviewed open access eJournal—collaboratively brought to life by the international Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru) network, and a2ru member UNLV—provides a multimedia forum to address this and connected questions by exploring how creative work, teaching/mentoring, and knowledge creation/research are linked and in conversation with one another.

Call for Contributions | New themed issue

Ruptures and Rebirths

The Future of Creativity, Agency, and Education

We are entering an era of ruptures and possible rebirths for the arts: Current definitions of art are fracturing at the intersection of intensified technological acceleration, cultural upheaval, and political volatility. Shifting global economies are reshaping long-standing assumptions about creativity, labor, authorship, and the cultural value of artistic work. At the center of this transformation stands the figure of the artist—an identity undergoing radical redefinition, perhaps confronting what some have described as the “death” of its traditional form while maintaining timeless traits of making, imagining, and discovery.

What does it mean to make art, to experience art, or to support artistic practice in this moment, when algorithmic systems influence how cultural work is imagined, produced, circulated, and valued—and when both the embodied experience of art and the embodied experience of making art are reshaped by digital tools and mediated environments? How might emerging technologies simultaneously destabilize established creative identities and open pathways to new forms of agency, authorship, expression, and embodied engagement? And what responsibilities do higher education institutions have in preparing artists, designers, and media practitioners for a landscape in which cultural production is increasingly hybrid, contested, and globally interdependent?

Interrogating these shifts formed the foundation of our recent themed issue, Artificial Intelligence and Possible Futures for the Arts, which examined how emerging technologies using AI are reshaping creative labor, authorship, pedagogy, and cultural production.

For this new themed issue, we place commentary and critical reflection at the center. We invite educators, scholars, and creative practitioners to critically and productively respond to the arguments, tensions, provocations, and possibilities raised in Artificial Intelligence and Possible Futures for the Arts – and to expand the conversation.

We are seeking commentaries as well as complementary research articles, creative works, and critical editorials that extend, challenge, or nuance the arguments raised in the earlier issue; offer updated perspectives on rapidly shifting cultural and institutional conditions; or situate current transformations within broader historical, pedagogical, cultural, or theoretical frameworks.

We welcome contributions that interrogate, historicize, or theorize these shifts; propose pedagogical or institutional innovations; or creatively reflect on the tensions and possibilities at stake in a moment that may signal ruptures and/or rebirths of artistic practices, their fundamental reconfigurations, or the emergence of new creative paradigms not yet named.

We welcome contributions that address, but are not limited to:

• Reassess, extend, or challenge arguments from the earlier themed issue AI and Possible Futures for the Arts in light of a landscape of ruptures and/or rebirths in creativity, agency, and education.
• Offer perspectives on how technological, cultural, and institutional shifts are transforming creative practice, curricula, and pedagogy—often in ways that exceed traditional definitions of art.
• Examine emerging forms of artistic agency, authorship, embodied creative practice, and professional identity, including where these developments diverge from inherited models or point toward not-yet-imagined futures.
• Consider how higher education institutions—and the communities they serve—might navigate a terrain where established structures are fracturing while new creative possibilities begin to take shape.
• Reflect on how or why current transformations signal ruptures, rebirths, or a reconfiguration of long-standing paradigms that resist binary narratives.
• Provide historical or cross-cultural insights into moments when art, creative work, or arts education was remade through cycles of upheaval and renewal.
• Explore ethical, political, and economic implications of contemporary systems for students and educators as creative labor becomes increasingly hybrid, contested, and globally interdependent.
• Propose curricular, pedagogical, or institutional models capable of supporting creative practice in a world where future forms of art and artistic labor cannot yet be fully imagined.
• Challenge or reimagine the boundaries—including the embodied dimensions—of creative practice within higher education as both rupture and rebirth reshape what creative work can be.

Visual or multimedia submissions: Accompanied by a contextual statement, up to 2,000 words

Visual and multimedia submissions can include, but are not limited to, digital images, moving images, sound, interactive formats, or documentation of creative practice. These submissions need to be accompanied by a contextual statement that situates the work within relevant creative, pedagogical, or scholarly contexts, and articulates its contribution to conversations raised by this themed issue.

Commentaries: up to 2,000 words responding to the AI and Possible Futures for the Arts special themed issue

Commentary articles offer diverse perspectives on the shifting landscape of creativity, agency, and education, and can be short, argument-driven pieces that do not present new empirical research. They offer critical interpretation, analysis, or reflection on one or more contributions in AI and Possible Futures for the Arts or on the broader conceptual, ethical, methodological, societal, or policy issues raised by this themed issue.

Research articles: up to 4,000 words (excluding references)

Research contributions present original scholarly or practice-based research that advances knowledge in the arts, design, and media fields. Submissions may include empirical studies, theoretical or literature-based inquiry, or practice-led research where creative practice generates new insights. Research contributions should clearly articulate their methods, context, and contribution to contemporary debates on creativity, agency, and education, and include references to relevant scholarship.

All submissions undergo double-blind peer review with feedback.

Submission deadline: March 1, 2026

Publication date: Rolling publications Summer - Fall 2026

This special issue seeks to bring together international voices, perspectives, and practices to illuminate how contemporary transformations may represent a re-imagining of artistic possibilities, signal the end of inherited paradigms of art, creativity, and education, or other possibilities.

Inquiries: Tradition-Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education Editor-in-Chief Yvonne Houy: Yvonne.Houy@unlv.edu

See the About this journal for a complete coverage of the journal.