Central to the conference is a core question: ‘What might a model or methods of ‘mirroring’ mean and become through its development and application through art and design research?’. We hope to encounter a variety of ways that participants and contributors can demonstrate diverse and wide-ranging uses of this idea which will help reveal the potential for further possible practices of mirroring. We also look forward to opportunities for discussion and the development of the mirroring concept as a way to establish spaces and build bridges for dialogue, conversation and collaboration among global youth when it is applied across geographical distances. We are keen to explore how mirroring might be further used as a potent political tool across the arts and in terms of design so that it can help inspire or influence social movements. We also hope to encourage innovations which explore how care, responsibilities and relationships might become central to our ways of approaching and utilizing mirroring in the contexts of arts-based and design methods.

The concept of mirroring has much to offer in terms of how it can be utilized within and outside of individual academic contexts or disciplines. It allows us to recognize or acknowledge empathy, intersubjectivity and understanding in our own actions, and in those of others (Zahavi 2012). Neurologically, the large scale networks and mirroring mechanisms in the human brain create the basis for a social mirroring (Iacoboni 2007) while also contributing to motion, emotion and empathy which create the aesthetic experience (Freedberg & Gallese 2007).

Interpersonally, mirroring can embody action which, when used as movement in performance or dance, can create emotional understanding and empathy for others (McGarry & Russo 2011). We can also see instances of mirroring in structural and organized social relations through our interactions or correspondences as members of a community, and through society and culture. Indeed, since mirroring acts upon social perception multidimensionally, its potential can expand beyond straightforward comparison (Hřebíčková, Graf, Tegdes & Brezina 2017).

Mirroring, therefore, can contribute to achieving social empathy and an understanding of others (Segal 2018), and can be practiced as part of a variety of tacit social interactions (Hasson & Frith 2016). Further, through acts and actions which work to mirror our own views, values and ideas with those of others we are able to learn socially. Such a pluralistic and heterogeneous approach, we believe, will promise and contribute more to creative processes and solutions than if we continue to remain fixed upon homogeneity and the limitations of ‘singularism’ (Wals 2010).