Transformative Pedagogies and the Environment: Creative Agency through Contemporary Art and Design

Abstract

Interdisciplinarity has become an increasingly important goal for both industries and universities around world, championed as a necessity if wicked problems of our times are to be addressed. Creative practices such as art and architecture have long histories of and therefore play an important role in preparing students for careers that will necessarily be situated in an environmentally challenged future. This chapter cites several art projects that collaborated across art, architecture, science and engineering, and which in turn engaged transformative pedagogical approaches to connect audiences and students with ecological imperatives. The case studies demonstrate different interdisciplinary perspectives and methodologies being effectively combined in making of contemporary art and design. As institutions, universities have always been characterised by evolution, splitting, and reforming of disciplines such that routine interdisciplinarity driven by emerging challenges is a defining feature (Davies & Devlin, 2010). Boyer acknowledged this imperative in his seminal 1990 report for Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching, where he introduced notion of a scholarship of integration: the work of scholar also means stepping back from one's investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and (Boyer, 1990). This model of research through integration and of engaging theory with practice is a feature of inquiry-based learning processes that characterise pedagogic objectives of projects undertaken at several Australian art and design schools. For this chapter, examples include Monash Art Design Architecture (MADA) at Monash University, Tasmanian College of Arts at University of Tasmania, UNSW Art & Design, and Victorian College of Arts at University of Melbourne. In all of these institutions, far-reaching collaborative approaches engage with real-wo