Education, Arts and Sustainability ― Emerging Practice for a Changing World

This book addresses this challenge by proposing an integration of sustainability and arts education in both principle and practice.

In a global context of intensifying social, economic and environmental crises, education is key to raising awareness and motivating individuals and communities to act in sustaining life in our more-than-human world. But how is this done when the complexity and need for change becomes overwhelming, and schooling systems become complicit in supporting the status quo?

Drawing on critical education theory and precepts of creativity, curiosity and change, it documents a series of case examples that demonstrate how five principles of Education for Sustainability - critical thinking, systems thinking, community partnership, participation, and envisioning better futures - are found at the heart of much arts practice in schools. Featuring the creative work and voices of teachers working in arts-based enquiry and diverse community-engaged contexts, the book investigates how sustainability principles are embedded in contemporary arts education thinking and pedagogy. The authors are unapologetically optimistic in forming an alliance of arts and sustainability education as a creative response to the challenge of our times, arguing that while they may have operated on the margins of conventional pedagogy and curriculum, they have more than marginal impact.

Mary Ann Hunter is Senior Lecturer in Arts Education at the University of Tasmania where she researches in the fields of arts education and peace building. She coordinated the Curious Schools project with Sherridan Emery and has current interests in artist pedagogies and the role of curiosity in educational and applied arts encounters. Mary Ann has worked in government, media, creative industry and community-based positions, including as coordinator with Aboriginal arts-based mentoring and alternative education program, meenah mienne.

Arnold Aprill is an award-winning director, producer and playwright, and founded the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) in 1993 and the Radical Compliance Arts and Learning Laboratory in 2013. As one of the co-designers of Habla: the Center for Language and Culture in Merida, Mexico., Arnold has lectured at numerous U.S. universities and consults nationally and internationally on the role of the arts in effective school improvement.

Allen Hill is Principal Lecturer in Sustainability and Outdoor Education at ARA Institute of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand, and is adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, University of Tasmania. Dr Hill’s professional career is characterized by a strong concern for issues of justice, equality, sustainability, transformation, and citizenship, with a focus on how education can contribute to a more sustainable future through healthy people, healthy communities, and healthy environments.

Sherridan Emery is a doctoral student in the Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, where she is investigating the concept of cultural wellbeing in classroom communities. Sherridan is actively engaged in international research collaborations in the field of early childhood education for sustainability and in postgraduate student wellbeing. She is a research assistant on the Australian Research Council project, ‘Improving student learning and wellbeing in low SES schools’.