Taking a Hopeful Approach

In recent years, environmental educators have been struggling with increasing levels of eco-anxiety in their students, and wondering how to counter this with environmental learning that is less focused on ‘doom and gloom’. The work of Canadian scholar Elin Kelsey has influenced my thinking about this – she argues that moving away from a legacy of fear and taking a hopeful approach to teaching and learning about the environment and sustainability is necessary, and more productive, in helping students cope with the threatening realities of the climate crisis. One of the strategies she recommends is giving them the tools to take action on environmental issues, to engage them in the process of positive change and develop their sense of agency. In my experience, the arts are a fantastic way to do this. Art-making is a form of visual story-telling, and as Kelsey writes, “The stories we tell ourselves shape how we live and what we believe to be possible.”  Artists around the world have taken this to heart – the explosion in the number of artists focused on environmentally-focused art-making has been extraordinary over the last decade. Each enacts David Orr’s quote “hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up” in unique and creative ways. As educators, we need to share the works of these artists with our students, and invite them to utilize all of the arts to shift the narrative, and our thinking, to imagining and enacting a world that is more just, equitable and sustainable.

No Comments

HilaryInwood, March 19th 2021 | Posted in eco art education, eco art readings, nature-based art, resource book

Choice-based Approaches to Art Education

Inspiration for moving Art Ed online

What a year this has been! The pandemic has continued to hold me back from blogging, thanks to the seismic shift to online learning and all of it new dimensions. One of my biggest challenges has been how to move my Art Education courses online – how do I teach basic art techniques to preservice teachers, many of whom haven’t made art since their own time as elementary students? And how do I do that with no access to a common set of art materials or tools?  Lots of talking with my artistic friends and fellow art educators made me realize that mailing out a set of basic tools and materials would only add to the carbon footprint of the course, which is the opposite of what I’m trying to teach.  Instead, I drew inspiration from Deborah Sickler-Voigt’s book Teaching and Learning in Art Education.  In it, she promotes the notion of a comprehensive approach to art education, which is student-centred, inclusive, multidisciplinary, and most importantly, choice-based.  What if I moved the focus away from technique and put more emphasis on mean-making? What if the tools and materials they used were based on what they had on hand at home, rather than on what I provided? I piloted this approach last spring for the first time, and taught it again this fall, with steadily improving results each time.  I saw the same realization grow from week to week that my students are indeed creative beings (just like I have seen in my F2F classes), and that they could make art in lots of different ways, using a wide range of materials and techniques.  Letting the ‘big ideas’ they feel passionate about be at the centre of the creative process ensured their buy-in, and we were all amazed at the incredible variety of artworks that resulted.  We used the online app ‘SeeSaw’ to share our artworks, ensuring a rich trading of ideas between students. While I still miss learning alongside them in person, giving them more creative latitude and choice are elements I’ll keep in play in this course moving forward.

No Comments

HilaryInwood, November 13th 2020 | Posted in elementary project, professional development, resource book

Eco-learning to E-learning through Nature Journaling

Like so many things over the past few months, my blog writing has been sidelined since the arrival of the pandemic in Canada in March.  I’ve been working on how to take an active PD series focused on environmental and sustainability education and shift it quickly to e-learning. We’ve been using the Zoom platform to bring EcoSchools teachers together with some success, as we’ve had more teachers involved than ever before. But my next challenge – how to do this with environmental art-making? The limitations have been daunting – the weather outside was wet and chilly, teachers were only able to join online, with no guarantees of specific art materials or tools on hand. But spring always brings with it a sense of excitement and anticipation in a cold climate, so turning our attention to nature-journaling seemed like a viable way to re-connect with other living beings in a time when we were mostly staying inside. I had great models to follow – check out the amazing work of Clare Walker Leslie, or that of John Muir Laws and Emily Lygren – artists who have written inspiring books on nature journaling for teachers to follow. I discovered that nature journaling can be framed through the 4Rs – reconnect with nature, record nature, research nature, and reflect on nature – and can be easily integrated with math, literacy, geography, and science. Its flexibility can allow for teachers and students to use any art materials at hand, putting their creativity into play as they learn about ecology, biodiversity, and climate change.  Most importantly, the process of nature journaling can remind us that we are part of nature, not separate from it. If you’d like to experience this webinar, you can find it in the TDSB’s archive.

  • John Muir Laws & Emily Lygren
  • Clare Walker Leslie

No Comments

HilaryInwood, May 18th 2020 | Posted in eco art education, eco art readings, Eco-artists, nature-based art, professional development, resource book

Aligning the (Eco-Art) Medium with the Message

Remember McLuhan’s famous quote about aligning the medium with the message?  He wrote this in the 1960s, well before environmental art-making became so popular, but it’s a good reminder for those of us practicing eco-art ed with learners of all ages. It’s not sufficient to be making art with a sustainability message if the media you use doesn’t align with it.  Working with toxic materials like spray paint or oil-based paints subverts the very message we aim to communicate, and demonstrates a “do what I say, not what I do” attitude.  Our students are attuned to this type of hypocrisy, and know when we don’t ‘walk the talk’. Art educators need to lead by example, finding ways to share our ideas in low impact, sustainable approaches to art-making. Some make work with their students that is biodegradable (think Andy Goldsworthy as an exemplar); others reuse found materials (Louise Nevelson was an early adopter of this; Tony Cragg also uses it effectively.)  I hear of lots of art teachers experimenting with low impact art-making techniques, like gelatin printing and cyanotypes.  Others are minimizing their waste and reducing their energy consumption and capturing the waste water from acrylic painting.  If you’re looking for ideas on how to proceed, look to the Karen Michel’s book “The Green Guide for Artists” as a great starting point. Consider how can you take the next step in aligning your sustainability message with the media you use in your art classroom.

No Comments

HilaryInwood, June 26th 2019 | Posted in eco art education, eco-art projects, Eco-artists, resource book

Eco-ARTS Education is on the Rise

I’m really pleased to see that environmental ideas are infiltrating across the arts these days.  When I first started to research into eco-art education, I was hard-pressed to find examples of drama, dance or music educators taking up the challenge of integrating environmental literacy into the work they did.  I’m sure it likely was happening in some pockets, like in visual arts education, but it wasn’t being documented or researched perhaps at the same level.  This wasn’t due simply to a lack of professional exemplars; here in Canada we’ve had many professional musicians, like R. Murray Schafer, Bruce Cockburn and Sarah Harmer using their music to connect to nature-based learning and environmental advocacy.

This is spreading, as artists from all of the arts disciplines are more frequently contributing their unique skills to raising awareness about environmental issues in plays, dance performances, and music videos.  Here in Toronto we have the Broadleaf Theatre company that specializes in plays with environmental themes; their recent show The Chemical Valley Project tracks the deep challenges of environmental racism and colonialism in relation to Canada’s petrochemical industry.  And now there’s lots of evidence that arts educators around the world are taking up the challenge of doing this work at all levels of education.  I was happy to work with colleagues in the US and Australia on a chapter in a terrific book called Urban Environmental Education Review last year on this topic.  And I was honoured this week to address a group of educators on this topic at the NORDPLUS Horizontal Green Actions conference in Finland; they had come together from Greenland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Latvia to discuss, debate, and share promising practices in this area (thanks to David Yoken for the invitation!)  Maybe we have reached a tipping point in the arts – imagine what could happen if we all applied our creativity and innovation to the greatest environmental challenges of our times?

No Comments

HilaryInwood, March 4th 2018 | Posted in eco art readings, eco art research, Eco-artists, resource book, Uncategorized

Inspired by Burning Ice

What a busy fall!  Not as much time to blog as I would have liked following my trip to the Arctic this summer, but the trip has given me lots to think about in relation to climate change and the role that artists can play in addressing it.  This was furthered by listening to a talk by Nigel Roulet in October – he is an eminent Canadian environmental scientist from McGill university who shared his belief in the power of the arts to communicate environmental ideas in moving ways, something that science hasn’t typically done well in the past.  

Perhaps the best way to magnify the communications about climate change is to take a multi-faceted approach.  The Cape Farewell project is one of the best examples of this so far; by bringing environmental scientists together with artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers, aiming to create innovative ways to reach a wider audience about the impacts of climate change.  Their interdisciplinary book, called Burning Ice: Art and Climate Change, serves as travelogue, atlas, art catalogue, and scientific documentation all in one.  Other groups have experimented with this model, including Greenpeace and 350.org, bringing scientific knowledge together with the affective and intuitive ways of knowing from the arts to create memorable and moving messaging about climate change.  The Canada C3 expedition I was on last summer is aiming to do the same.  They have a number of legacy projects on the go to share our collective experiences about climate change, reconciliation, and inclusion in the North; I’ll share these as they come available.

No Comments

HilaryInwood, December 28th 2017 | Posted in eco art readings, Eco-art sites, Eco-artists, resource book

Bringing Creativity into Sustainability

I was lucky enough to spend some time learning firsthand from Mitchell Thomashow two summers back, a wonderful scholar, educator, and writer who has been influential on my own development in environmental & sustainability education (ESE).  His EcoIdentity book was one of the first books on ESE that I read years ago, and now I’m working through his Bringing the Biosphere home (also an excellent read.)  Mitch’s latest work focuses on the Ecological Imagination, recognizing the important role of expression, imagination, and creativity in working towards sustainability   (http://www.mitchellthomashow.com/ecological-imagination/ )  As part of the workshop he gave at OISE, he mentioned a book published by the Museum of Modern Art called BioDesign:  Nature+Science+Creativity (http://www.biology-design.com/ ).  It’s a fascinating look at how we can partner with natural organisms and their ecological design capabilities to create sustainable products, buildings, and communities.  It takes the idea of environmental art-making to a whole new level.  MOMA has posted a preview of the book on their website to give you a glimpse into a more sustainable future…I just need to find a way to do this, even if small-scale, with students.  Ideas anyone?

No Comments

HilaryInwood, February 21st 2017 | Posted in eco art readings, nature-based art, resource book

Mapping Sensory Experiences of Place

I taught a professional development course for teachers from the Toronto District School Board in July – always a pleasure to work with teachers who are so passionate about environmental learning that they give up three weeks of their summer vacation to learn more about it! I was pleasantly surprised to see such an interest in environmental art-making – there were lots of great ideas shared around the table, evidence of the experimentation going on in Toronto schools about how to use the arts to support eco-literacy. Many expressed their enjoyment of the ‘sensory mapping’ activity we did on our first day together – such a simple way to get learners to connect with and reflect on the power of place-based education. The teachers were asked to capture their sensory experience of the local park into the form of a pastel drawing. This requires them to consider how a sound translates into a line, a touch into a colour, or a smell into a shape. This proved to be a great way to get them to focus on the place, and to remove the inhibition that some have about drawing as all of the drawings turn out abstractly. Later in the course we talked about the power of ‘creative mapping’, drawing on the books The Map as Art (by Katherine Harmon) and Mapmaking with Children (by David Sobel.) Mapping and sensory experience can go hand in hand to help learners of all ages experience the environments in which we live in creative ways.

Sensory mapping

No Comments

HilaryInwood, August 11th 2015 | Posted in eco art education, eco-art projects, nature-based art, resource book

Pinning my passion for eco-art

My new favourite creativity tool is a digital app called Pinterest.  This app is easy to learn and use, and is perfectly geared to visual learners.  Think of it as a series of (digital) bulletin boards that allow you to save images anywhere on the Internet in an easily accessible way – no more file folders of clip art, lists of URLs, or bookmarked webpages.  With the Pinterest app installed on your favourite digital device, you ‘pin’ an image by clicking on the ‘pin it’ button (saving not only the image to your bulletin board, but its original URL as well. You can access other people’s bulletin boards by searching under key words…which (finally) connects back to environmental art.  Pinterest has many boards related to nature art, land art, ecology and art, environment and art – there is a board for just about any variation on eco-art you’d like.  I’ve started to compile a couple of boards in this area – check them out under the names ‘art & nature’, ‘art in schoolyards’, ‘upcycling’, ‘environmental art’ and ‘eco-art ideas’.  If you’re up and running on Pinterest, send me your board names if they connect to these topics, and I’ll re-pin your fascinating finds!

No Comments

HilaryInwood, January 17th 2015 | Posted in resource book

Going DEEPER

I have been focusing specifically on eco-art education in this blog since its inception, but have just finished working on a major document related to environmental and sustainability education and so would like to share it here.  Called DEEPER – the Deepening Environmental Education in Pre-Service Education Resource – it aims to support and inspire faculty, staff, and students to deepen the implementation of environmental education in initial teacher education programs across the province.

 This resource guide is a substantial publication that is the first of its kind.  It was a collaborative effort informed by the input of over 60 participants of the DEEPER provincial roundtable that we hosted at OISE last May.  Since that time, we have coordinated a team of writers and reviewers from faculties of education across Ontario who have shared strategies, practices, and resources to encourage initial teacher educators, teacher candidates and staff to improve the breadth and depth of environmental education in their programs, faculties and institutions.

 It has been a rewarding journey working on the DEEPER guide; I have learned so much about the field of environmental education, and its practice in Ontario teacher education programs, and there is so much more going on than I had anticipated.  Most importantly I have forged new connections with other environmental educators working across the province, which was in fact one of our motivations for writing this document in the first place.  I hope you will take the time to look through it; so much of what we have compiled could be applied in school or community settings.  I certainly hope that it helps you to go DEEPER into your own practice of environmental education moving forward.

The DEEPER guide can be found at:  

http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/ese/DEEPER.html 

 

Deeper Cover 2014

No Comments

HilaryInwood, February 18th 2014 | Posted in professional development, resource book
« Older Posts