Principal Investigator (PI): Dr. Miranda Matthews, Educational Studies, Goldsmiths University of London, m.matthews@gold.ac.uk

This website presents a collaborative research project between the Centre for Arts and Learning and Climate Museum UK, with school and university students. Students at schools in South East and East London were invited to take part in a research project to explore Ecologies in Practice through participatory arts methods.

The Centre for Arts and Learning (CAL) at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Climate Museum UK are exploring Ecologies in Practice, looking at the ways in which arts practice can relate to changes in the environment, and to cultural ecologies. The purpose of the project is to research how arts practice can enable young people to find their own ways of expressing themselves around the issues involved in the Earth Crisis. These issues include climate change, climate injustice, loss of biodiversity, extractivist processes, and pollution of the waters and the air. The project has intended to explore how meaning making that is created in material and discursive arts practice can release eco-anxieties into productive outlets.

These outlets are initially presented on this website in the artworks, creative texts and performance work created by young people, with the assistance of arts practice researchers. The research team would like to find ways of assisting young people to build on these initial experiences of focused expressive practice, with a view to enabling their continuing creative interventions in the Earth Crisis.

In 2022-2023 students aged 14-18 were invited to participate in a workshop, that included a visit to the Goldsmiths campus. This project has also aimed to help young people acclimatise to university cultures and environments. CAL and CMUK Ecologies in Practice set out to resource young participants with arts methods for engaging peers with evidence about central issues in the Earth Crisis. Arts methods helped the young participants to explore the issues raised, as they connected with their own lived experience, and to evaluate potential solutions.

Creative Methods

Participants experienced three creative methods for self-expression around the causal factors of climate change. These methods were: 1) dialogue around art, or ‘dialogic’, objects created in response to the collections of Climate Museum UK, 2) sound and movement created in response to listening exercises and playful learning activities, and 3) focused, expressive drawing and writing for emotive and empathic connections.

The research team wanted to find out how students would respond to these creative activities for supporting ecology and climate action. This project was developed to complement Key Stage 4 and 5 art and design practice in schools.

Theorisation for Ecologies in Practice has connected with indirect pedagogies – that aim to access more nuanced self-expression, and critical pedagogies – that aim to enable vocal, empowered and lateral participation. This research is also informed by posthumanist approaches that consider how human beings are interdependent upon other-than-human beings and the material conditions of their more-than-human environments.

Schools were invited to participate that had existing connections with practice research and the arts and learning at Goldsmiths. Schools also responded to Centre for Arts and Learning posts on social media, and were invited into the workshops. The schools are in South East and East London. They offer comprehensive, mixed ability state education, with a diverse ethnic and socio-economic intake. The schools have high expectations for all their students. All students participated on a voluntary basis, with written consent from parents and guardians. The schools, students and their parents gave permission for the material you see here to be included in public presentations of the CAL/CMUK project.

The Ecologies in Practice project has an evolving methodology, as a theorised approach to the arts methods. CAL and CMUK arts methods were found to increasingly enable empowered, creative student voice. CAL and CMUK reviewed the questions asked, content referred to, and focus information provided in each workshop. This material was reviewed again between the workshops, to further increase participant confidence and student voice.

Each school was invited to send 20 students aged 14-18 to participate in a workshop. The students came to the workshops with their teachers of art and design, and with learning support staff. All of the research team have worked with students in this age group and had completed new DBS checks before the project began. Each participating student experienced all three arts methods their Ecologies in Practice workshop. Participants took part in a focus group evaluation after the workshop, and all were invited to complete a post-workshop evaluation survey.

Centre for Arts and Learning and Climate Museum UK practice researchers worked with students and teachers from five schools to start building a network of participation. There was also a workshop for undergraduate students at Goldsmiths, that enabled the research team to compare responses to the three arts methods from participants at different stages of their journeys in education.

We found that it was important to facilitate immersive, creative, social spaces for participants to vocalise protest about the Earth Crisis, and to engage meaningfully with the issues involved. We also found that feelings of belonging in transitions to university cultures – whether at Goldsmiths or at other universities, increased among the young participants during the project’s development.

The practice researchers are continuing to investigate how young people can take up arts methods, to develop their own ideas for eco-research through arts practice. We are continuing to investigate and form collaborative analysis of how ecological arts practices and interventions can be made more accessible for young people in schools, community centres, and at museums. This project also has relevance for mature students who may be in minoritised groups in university cultures, and have yet to find spaces to express their own creative voices and lived experiences. Ecologies in Practice are now building bridges of learning and research exchange with international arts, learning and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Centre for Arts and Learning and Climate Museum UK practice researchers would like to thank all participants in the workshops, focus groups and survey evaluations. The insights gathered in this research are helping the team to make recommendations for how to address Earth Crisis issues with arts methods, and enable more empowered creative youth voice in the international academic community. We would also like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Goldsmiths, University of London, for enabling this research to happen.