Understanding Sustainability Through The Public Art Project.

Each academic year environmental art students initiate and develop projects outwith the studio and gallery context, engaging with complex and challenging issues in relation to ‘audience’ and ‘place’. Although sustainability is in no way made explicit within the project brief, students often ‘bump into’ sustainability as they explore and fathom the multi-layered context of this live research environment. In doing so their work makes sustainability tangible.

Using various case studies this paper will explore sustainability from an Environmental Art perspective. I will suggest that there is a need for students to take ownership of sustainability on their own terms for it to have authenticity and meaning. What can students teach us about the values of sustainability? And how might Fine Art practice differ from other disciplines in how it engages with and formulates sustainability?

This paper relates to the following themes:
The politics of sustainability in art and design education;
Collaboration and the importance of networks in creating sustainable practices;
Critical perspectives on sustainability, globalisation, and art and design education.