Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
now internationally renowned street artist Banksy has produced a striking array of
stencilled images that are both politically pointed and creatively daring. His work
is presented on the street, in art galleries and on the Web. Banksy muses:
Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw
wherever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and
little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like
a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big
business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall - it's wet.
(2005: 85)
Graffiti and community art, street theatre, fine art and architectural exhibitions,
the anti-globalization activists, and new media technologists are teaming up, producing
exciting, creative and innovative communications and many new political possibilities.
A number of art schools are now offering electives in sustainability-focused topics
such as, in the US, Maryland Institute College of Art's Sustainability and Social
Practice elective, which was offered for the first time in the autumn 2012.
Education for sustainable development
The UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), which ran from
2005 to the end of 2014, applied to all areas of education - formal and informal
sector, schools, colleges and universities, adult and work-based learning, learning
throughout life, from cradle to grave and in effect beyond. The UN Decade clearly
identified the main ESD tasks as to:
•
act as the primary agent of transformation towards sustainable development,
increasing people's capacities to transform their visions for society into reality;
•
foster the values, behaviour and lifestyles required for a sustainable future;
•
become a learning process, facilitating decision-making that considers the long-
term future of the equity, economy and ecology of all communities;
•
build the capacity for such futures orientated thinking.
The education systems in different countries and regions tackle sustainable develop-
ment issues in relation to the nature and the extent of their knowledge, cultural
values, languages, worldviews and ideological perspectives in different ways. Indeed,
the UN Decade suggested that culture, understood in a broadly anthropological and
connective sense, would in large part predetermine the way issues of education for
sustainable development are addressed in specific national contexts. The findings of
two DESD evaluation reports (Tilbury, 2009; Wals, 2012) indeed show that ESD
manifests itself differently in different regions. In some areas, ESD may be about
cultural survival or intelligent living; in others, such as Latin America, it may be
more overtly politically contesting existing institutions that are perceived as being
barriers to sustainable development. Underpinning the continuing development of
ESD is the perennial question about education itself. Is it about social reproduction
or social transformation? Wals (2012) notes that the answer invariably correlates
with a nation or region's interpretation of democracy, inclusiveness and participation.
There is also a danger that a more technical interpretation of sustainability, combined
