Creative agency, pedagogy, and the environment

The chapters in this book have examined transformative pedagogies in art and design tertiary education that address issues of the environment, and how these can be driven by the capacities and forms of creative agency inherent to art and design disciplines. Acknowledging the inherent interdisciplinary pedagogical scope of social change agendas, which are able to generate novel, relevant, and timely engagement with global issues, the authors offer studio practice and field-based case studies embracing ecological and broader environmental imperatives, and the dimensions of social responsibility and engagement these imperatives impart. These range from personal response to activism, to exercising the public platform of exhibition in preparation for professional immersion, to engagement with the local as an instance of the global, and the urban as an instance of the wild. As Noel Castree and Bruce Braun note, a fundamental question to be asked is “who constructs what kinds of nature(s) to what ends and with what social and ecological effects?” (2001, p. xi).