This paper explores the intersection of creativity, data, and well-being within educational environments, drawing on experiences from the PEDAL and Link Sound Sinfonia projects. The PEDAL project demonstrates how Generative AI (GenAI) can transform quantitative data into immersive, sensory-rich experiences by integrating environmental data with digital music creation in the Metaverse. This innovative approach enhances interdisciplinary learning, allowing non-specialists to develop technical skills and creative expression, bridging the gap between the hard sciences and the arts.

Simultaneously, the Link Sound Sinfonia Project at Lingnan University emphasises music's therapeutic and inclusive power, particularly in diverse community settings. By engaging individuals of varying backgrounds, including those with special educational needs (SEN), the project fosters a platform for equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). The project revisits the link between music and wellbeing through collaborative music-making, highlighting music’s universal potential for enhancing mental health and social cohesion.

Together, these projects illustrate the potential of integrating data, creativity, and well-being to foster a holistic educational approach that is both sustainable and inclusive, encouraging educators to embrace similar methodologies for transformative learning.

Creativity in the Metaverse - Enrico Bertelli

This paper delves into the unique educational experience offered by the Metaverse, a virtual environment that fosters innovative expression. It uses the PEDAL project (Presenting Enviro-cultural Data for Interdisciplinary Learning) as a case study to show how the Metaverse, by integrating environmental data with digital music creation, enhances interdisciplinary learning. This approach, which bridges the gap between technology and the arts, is a novel way to facilitate innovative expression.

Central to this approach is the use of Generative AI (GenAI) in data analysis, visualisation, and music composition, allowing students to engage in a transformative learning process. These tools enable the conversion of quantitative data into immersive, sensory-rich experiences within the Metaverse without requiring the combined expertise of a scientist, data analyst, and composer. Non-specialists can develop technical skills by leveraging their creative ideas, which are articulated through natural language, to Generative AI. This process bridges the gap between the hard sciences and the creative arts, fostering collaborative opportunities across disciplines.

The Metaverse, particularly platforms like Decentraland, serves as an interactive digital canvas where students can curate and exhibit their creative outputs: from oral history records to original compositions. This virtual environment facilitates an engaging and dynamic learning experience and provides a rich context for creative exploration. It allows students to experiment with data-driven creativity in ways that transform abstract concepts into tangible, auditory experiences deeply connected to their personal and cultural narratives, engaging them in the potential of this platform.

This interdisciplinary approach has significantly enhanced students' creativity and technical proficiency while fostering greater confidence in their abilities. Early findings indicate that the PEDAL project has profoundly impacted student engagement and learning outcomes, highlighting its potential for wider educational use. We encourage educators to consider similar applications of Generative AI in teaching, focusing on boosting creativity, developing technical skills, and fostering collaboration across disciplines.

Music and well-being in the context of liberal arts education: a case study of the Link Sound Sinfonia Project - Professor Dr. Kimho Ip

Link Sound Sinfonia Project is a social impact project initiated and coordinated by the Music Unit at Lingnan University. Through practical sessions in real-life community settings, the project aims to offer individuals from various backgrounds and musical abilities the training to interact with music learners, including people with physical, mental and/or intellectual disabilities (PWD) and special educational needs (SEN).

The project developed network ranges from students, staff and alumni to musicians, schoolteachers, social workers, clinical psychologists, technologists, as well as local charitable organizations and special schools. By gathering these cross-disciplinary professionals and facilitators we established a platform that cherishes diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) with a shared love for music. The project also suggests tailor-made solutions based on the diverse needs of individual, to revisit links between the study of music with our own well-being, and to open new dialogues on issues concerning creativity and sustainability.

The presentation focuses on the role of the researcher to review pedagogical approaches based on the experience in the teaching modules of the Link Sound Sinfonia Project, using them as case studies to explore how music-making activities may enhance the co-learning of students and community participants, such as SEN youth with autism. Through that we establish the essence of music in the context of liberal arts education, and the universal potential for music's therapeutic role in our well-being.