Creating with Uncertainty: Covid recovery to educate for sustainable futures

Colleagues in the Schools of Education and Social Work (Perpetua Kirby, John Parry, Simon Thomson, Rebecca Webb) and Media, Arts and Humanities (Michael Jonik) have been awarded a Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) grant by the university to work with local schools, and with external partners such as The Living Coast (a UNESCO World Biosphere Region). The project aims to support social recovery from Covid by enabling schools to reflect on their pandemic experiences in order to think through how to reconfigure education in ways that embrace a creative engagement with uncertainty. The project builds on existing work in Education and Social Work (eg Green United, TRANSFORM-iN EDUCATION) to co-construct locally relevant and deeply engaging sustainability curricula that also acknowledge the existential and uncertain dimensions of the pandemic and climate change, and to identify gaps in established knowledge/skills. 

Students and teachers from schools in Lewes and Brighton will come together with Sussex faculty plus non-academic partners with a long history of sustainability expertise. In a series of creative experimental workshops, participants will together identify the uncertainties of the pandemic and the educational implications and possibilities for utilising uncertainty to educate for more sustainable living; identify what more students might need to know/do to transition to net zero, so as not to be put-off by complexity, anxiety or futility; and experientially engage with a range of sustainability issues. Workshops will be jointly facilitated with a range of Media, Arts and Humanities colleagues incorporating, for example, storytelling, poetry, magic and sound.