Ecology and whiteness: Art and Design Education in The Emergency

We are in time of increasing racism, anti-migrant violence, and denial of climate change. How might an environmental justice orientated art and design education help all students build community around an understanding that European colonialism and imperialism was essentially about economic exploitation and white dominance, and is a cause of our present-day global crises?

Decolonial feminist Francoise Vergès calls for addressing a ‘history of the environment that includes slavery, colonialism, imperialism and racial capitalism, from the standpoint of those who were made into ‘cheap objects of commerce’ (Verges 2017, p. 73). Boaventura de Sousa Santos urges us to pluriversal 'ecologies of knowledges' (Santos 2014, p. viii). Former NSEAD President Marlene Wylie calls this time 'a perfect storm' and asks 'How to balance the need to act… with the vital need for deep critical reflection on ourselves and our environments?' (Wylie 2023).

In this session, two art and design educators converse across their different positionalities as Brown and white, Muslim and secular backgrounds, fashion and fine art education. They dialogue on the inseparability of ecology from social justice, how educators' behaviours, pedagogies and curricula can challenge extractivist histories and ontologies; how these can play out in the art and design classroom.