Institute Arts and Design Education (IADE)

Basel Academy of Art and Design

Art and design open up new perspectives for perceiving, questioning, shaping and changing social encounters. The Institute Arts and Design Education sees itself as a hybrid network that takes up diverse artistic and design-led views, develops them further and makes them effective in a variety of educational processes.

The Institute of Arts and Design Education is a vibrant place where students, lifelong learners in continuing education, our guests, practice and research partners from local and global educational contexts, together with the internal team of experts in art, design, research, and theory, practice, design, and implement teaching scenarios.
Creative and artistic experiments and projects form the basis for independent teaching in terms of sustainable global and self-efficacy. We contextualize the acquired knowledge in cultural, societal, and educational policy fields and implement it in practice and research.

Degree programmes

Arts and Design Education

Working with art and design – and with people: The bachelor in Arts and Design Education offers a strong foundation for direct entry into a career in socioculture, art, design and cultural education, or embarking on an Master.

Studying mode: Full-time
Teaching language: German
Place: Basel
Duration: 6 semesters
Next start: 14.9.2026

Arts and Design Education

As a graduate of the master’s programme arts and design education / teaching diploma baccalaureate schools, you will prove yourself as a teacher and as educator in art and cultural institutions outside of the school system. The study programme also qualifies you for advanced research-oriented work at an art or other university or educational institution.

Studying mode: Full-time
Teaching language: German
Place: Basel
Duration: 4 Semester
Next start: 14.9.2026

Continuing education

Artistic Literacy

How do you speak about your art - and through it? This programme invites you to deepen your artistic practice by connecting making with thinking. Through reflection, dialogue, and critical engagement, you explore your own position as an artist and expand your capacity to act, communicate, and contextualize in contemporary cultural settings.

Fee: CHF 7'000
Teaching language: German
Place: Basel
Next start: Rolling intake possible

Research

The Institute Art and Design Education (IADE) conducts research in the fields of art and design education, critical mediation, aesthetic research and artistic knowledge practices.

We pursue transdisciplinary research at the interfaces of aesthetics, art, education and society as well as applied research on the potential of art and design education in museum, school and other socio-cultural contexts. Research at the IADE combines thinking and acting; practice-orientated questions and theory-informed procedures; artistic and scientific research - always with a view to the social relevance of art and design and their current and future requirements for sensitive collaboration, sustainable education, transversal knowledge and mediation practices.

Specific focal points of the researching professors at the IADE

Information for interested parties

Research Responsible

Current research projects

The Smell of Switzerland

A transdisciplinary Travel of Concepts commenting on Othering and sensing of Communities through Smell

Institute: Institute of Arts and Design Education
Research field: Surprise

SkillResilience4EU

Resilience through re-skilling and upskilling for European labour market in transition

Institute: Institute of Arts and Design Education
Research field: Surprise

Materialised text-bodies. Sensual mediation and relational critique

Shortly you will get more information here.

Institute: Institute of Arts and Design Education
Research field: Surprise

Labs

Innovation Lab (IL)

The Innovation Lab focuses on educational issues and the impact of art and design-based practices, and develops therefrom innovative teaching formats such as CoCreate.

Learning Lab Arts and Design (LLAD)

The Learning Lab Arts and Design stands for a critical examination and documentation of teaching and learning practices in Art and Design on the basis of collaborations with museums, socio-cultural initiatives, schools, and universities.

Projects (DE)

Künstlerische Praktiken postdigitaler Verflechtungen - Reorganisationen zwischen Aisthesis, Kunst und Medien

Interdisziplinärer Workshop vom 11.-12. Juli 2024, Universität Osnabrück. Mit einer Keynote von Dr. Eva Backhaus und einem multimedialen Workshop mit dem Künstler:innen-Duo Jana Kerima Stolzer und Lex Rütten

Institute: Institute of Arts and Design Education

Interdisziplinärer Workshop

Ästhetische und künstlerische Praktiken als Reorganisation von Wahrnehmungsweisen

Institute: Institute of Arts and Design Education

Terrain

Terrain gilt den Diskursfeldern in Kunst- und Designvermittlung.

Institute: Institute of Arts and Design Education

Publications (DE)

Kleine Basler Designgeschichte – Gestaltungsikonen aus Basel für die Welt

Die von Benjamin Adler, Dorothée King und Meret Ernst herausgegebene und im Christoph-Merian-Verlag erscheinende «Kleine Basler Designgeschichte» stellt Gestaltungsikonen aus Basel für die Welt vor.

Date: 1.6.2026
Institute: Institute of Arts and Design Education

WALKBOOK

Das WALKBOOK resultiert aus dem Forschungsprojekt «Grenzgang – Künstlerische Untersuchungen zur Wahrnehmung und Vermittlung von Raum im trinationalen Grenzgebiet».

Date: 25.2.2019
Institute: Institute of Arts and Design Education

Forschungsskizzen

Ein neuer Beitrag zu einer aktuellen Debatte: das Buch zu den Theorien und Praktiken künstlerischer Forschung, wie sie an der Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst FHNW zum Tragen kommen.

Date: 15.3.2017
Institute: Institute of Arts and Design Education

Contact & Team

Prof. Dr. Dorothée King

Head of Institute Arts and Design Education (IADE)

Phone: +41 61 228 43 37 (Direct)
E-Mail: dorothee.king@fhnw.ch

Team Institute Arts and Design Education (IADE)

Phone: +41 61 228 40 88
E-Mail: info.iade.hgk@fhnw.ch

Getting there

Postal address

Visitor and delivery address: