Sustainability in the UK art & design university curriculum: the how and the why

Sustainability is about ensuring everyone's basic needs are being met and can continue to be met in the future. It has two main areas: the social and the environmental. Some include a third: economic. There is a requirement in the UK for universities to implement and promote sustainability, including in the curriculum. This paper concentrates on how this is affecting learning and teaching in art and design. Sustainability in the curriculum has been resisted by those who cling onto an essentialist, formalist curriculum. However, the majority have a broader view of the curriculum in line with changes which took place in the professional sphere from the 1960s. These changes force artists and designers to consider such things as socio-cultural context. In the 1970s, this led to a gradual unfolding of a new curriculum, which has now become widespread. But even within this framework, teachers often find engaging with sustainability in their teaching to be challenging. It forces everyone to reassess their ways of working and living and even their fundamental beliefs and is sometimes considered an irrelevant initiative of management, or government. It can be seen as being in opposition to many of the practices of unfettered capitalism and neo-liberalism; more likely, it exposes some of the contradictions inherent in that ideology. But sustainability can also be considered a dogma in its own right, or even a set of uncomfortable truths people prefer to ignore. Some artists and designers embrace a social practice, but others prefer to indulge in a much more private way of working. Just as some universities wholeheartedly embrace sustainability while others do little more than play lip service to it, so some teachers are enthusiastic and others not. This paper discusses some of the ways sustainability has been introduced into the art and design curriculum, illustrated through case studies. It concludes that it works well if there is a faculty member who champions this way of working, but works best when embraced by most teachers and, in particular, students.