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Call for Contributions to Kaleidoscope III: Faith, Spirituality and Art

 

The EFACIS Kaleidoscope Series engages with writers and artists from the island of Ireland about topical interests. While Kaleidoscope 1 collected fifty observations about the act of writing fiction, Kaleidoscope 2 asked what Europe means to the authors.

Kaleidoscope III explores views on Faith, Spirituality and Art. A quarter of the way into the twenty-first century we look back on the wide variety of ways in which religion has shaped the emotions and ideas of people in Ireland. As many religious institutions have lost much of their credibility in (Northern)Ireland and elsewhere, authors explore new perspectives on the sacred. As they look at their own daily life, the quality of attention is a central factor.

The Kaleidoscope III website contains thirty contributions from Irish authors and, in a second step (June-September), academics and representatives of different institutions will add their voices on the topic, which will be considered from different disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, sociology, theology, literary theory and education. Four of these contributions are already online and more will be added.

In a third step in the Kaleidoscope III project, we are extending the invitation to contribute to a wider academic audience. We would like to invite you to encourage your students to share their views on faith, spirituality and art. Students can select a passage from an artistic or academic contribution on the Kaleidoscope III website and elaborate on it in an essay or other well-composed text. We will ask you as the local supervisor to assess the submissions and if you think they deserve 85% or more, they can be considered for publication on the EFACIS website. Contributions by supervisors are also very welcome.

 

The content of the text can be:

  • an original analysis of a passage from one of the texts (creative or academic);
  • a reaction to one or more texts from the website (with clear reference) from the student’s own experience;
  • an analysis of a passage from another work by one of the participating authors that is relevant to the key concepts faith, spirituality and art;
  • a reflection on one of the following questions, most of which we put to the first contributors:
     
    • What does religion (or faith) mean to you, personally?
    • How did religion/faith play a role in your childhood? What effect did religious stories, images, objects or rituals have on you? How would you articulate it now?
    • Have you had spiritual experiences/ experiences of the numinous? In art, nature, elsewhere?
    • Is the climate crisis changing our life and belief systems, and if so, how?
    • Which possibilities/dangers do social media and/ or AI bring in matters of spirituality or art?
    • Which moment(s) in history strike you where people led by a certain conviction have either liberated groups of people from some narrowminded system/tyranny, or led them to lose themselves, discarding fidelity to traditional values?
    • Are there specific philosophers, psychologists, theologians, sociologists, art theorists … who inspired you with some striking concept?
    • How does a caring religion deal with fear and distrust, desire and trust?
    • Do you have striking examples of how life-giving spirituality leads to social action?
    • The word “education”, derived from the Latin “educare” (leading out) aims at opening up students’ frames of reference to other systems. Can you see this happening in your classes?
    • Can literary language play a role in articulating emotions and the unconscious?
    • Faith, spirituality and art could be seen in contrast with “mihilism” – a combination of egocentrism (“me”) and a lack (or a “nihil”) of curiosity about the unknown. What can art and/or spirituality do in times of increasing individualism, narcissism and anxiety?
    • Are there literary stories, poems, films, art works …which drastically shifted your perspective?
    • Do terms like “forgiveness”, “redemption”, “grace”, “the afterlife” still work for you in any way?

 

The form can be:

■ a classic essay;

■ a real or fictive interview;

■ a literary memoir-like text;

■ a short story:

■ or another form that fits the argument.

 

Length: 1500-2000 words

 

Practical matters

  • The deadline for the texts is 22 December 2026.
  • We ask the* local supervisor to do a first assessment of the submissions. If the texts deserve 85% or more they can be considered for publication on the EFACIS website.
  • Texts should be sent to Hedwig Schwall (Hedwig.schwall@kuleuven.be) and EFACIS coordinator Sien Deltour (efaciscoord@efacis.eu), who are managing the Kaleidoscope III project.
  • Please ask your students to look up the source texts on the Kaleidoscope III website. Increasing the number of website visitors will show our sponsors (Herman Servotte Fund, Druwé Fund and the Irish College Leuven) the importance of keeping this information free of charge.
  • The texts will be published under the Creative Commons Licence 4.0 AttributionSharealike 4.0 International, which means participants can reuse their text in other contexts if they wish.
  • The best essays by students will be rewarded with a modest monetary prize of €50€200 and a special mention on the website and on EFACIS social media. We hope this award and the publication itself may give students a boost. Contributions by supervisors are not eligible for this prize.

 

Any questions about the project can be directed to Hedwig Schwall (Hedwig.schwall@kuleuven.be) and EFACIS coordinator Sien Deltour (efaciscoord@efacis.eu).