Weaving the Filigree: Paradoxes, Opposites and Diversity for Participatory, Emergent Arts and Design Curricula on Sustainable Development

Abstract

Evolution and whole systems ecology, thrive on emergent novelty, diversity, and the resolution of opposites. Creative arts and design learning, teaching and research must be encouraged to do the same, otherwise, we risk developing ‘art by design, design by statistics and research by bureaucratic policy’. This paper identifies how the space for epistemic complexity is encouraged through a participatory emergent curriculum. As a creative process for teaching, learning and research, this methodology is being developed as a collaborative transdisciplinarity project between Università degli Studi di Firenze and Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). It includes the schools of Art, Architecture, Science and the Environment, and MMU’s Centre for Learning and Teaching to face the indeterminacies of Climate Change and other 21st Century challenges’. Firstly, it presents this approach through case studies highlighting informal, non-formal and formal aspects of Education for Sustainable Development, including ecological arts for ‘capable futures’, the paradox of sustainable airport development, and critical global citizenship through autoethnographic explorations. Then, the synthesis is expressed through the “Walkabout the City?” project that entails the psychogeographic convergence of diverse thinking and physical practice to generate emergent knowledge for urban resilience.