Artivism for Sustainability: The Pedagogical Potential of Artivism
摘要
One of the specific goals of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, Quality Education, is to have all citizens acquire sustainability skills. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is one of the ways through which this can be achieved. Artivism, a compound of “art” and “activism,” has been practiced, creating social change through art. Said to have been born out of the Chicano movement in the 1960s, it has been used by creative activists for their campaigns on sustainability issues. As tools of peaceful advocacy, artivist works embody the artist’s intention, directed at social change, and deliver the call to action to their spectators. Artivism, therefore, promotes agentic learning that is the foundation of the sustainability competencies. The nature of artivist engagement makes it a good learning ground for the said competencies. Artivism requires critical thought, collaborative action, and problem-solving skills that are at the heart of sustainability change-agency. It also necessitates bringing the learning out of the classroom to public spaces for meaningful, real-life engagements. Using the cognitivist aesthetic framework, this chapter argues for the potential of artivism as a pedagogical tool for sustainability competencies, to be used in ESD or SDG-embedded curricula. It then discusses the nature of artivism and shows how it aligns with four-life learning (lifelong, lifewide, lifedeep, and lifewise) and the three learning domains (cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral), which support the achievement of the key sustainability competencies.