Care-full, convivial, curious: Weaving Canadian artists’ conceptions of art as a form of transformative environmental education

Abstract

Addressing global climate change beyond short-term fixes requires wider cultural change. Artists, as cultural workers, play a valuable role in attending to questions of social and ecological justice. While there is growing artistic engagement with environmental research, there are few studies which critically explore the confluence of contemporary art, sustainability, and informal education within Canada. Using a framework of poetics (poiesis), this study explores how an environmentally engaged arts practice is a form of transformative environmental education. We interviewed 24 current Canada-based visual, installation, and performance artists to understand how they conceptualize their role in fostering socioecological transformations. We used an inductive thematic coding scheme to analyze transcripts and compared emergent themes to current ecocritical literature. Results reveal a framework of artist-researcher-teacher as facilitator of conviviality, curiosity, and care, showing the agency of artists and a need for poetics in environmental work, research, and education.

Keywords:

• environmental art
• environmental education
• art in the Anthropocene
• cultural transformation
• poetics
• informal education