Best intentions gone wrong? Lessons learnt from a decade of teaching in sustainable film-making practice by an eco-enthusiastic educator

Over the last decade, many UK universities have sought to embed and evidence the UN Sustainable Development Goals across all their curricula and subjects, with varying degrees of success. This article is an educator’s reflective account of the different attempts made between 2012 and 2024 to teach sustainable film-making practice in undergraduate film programmes at two institutions, and the lessons learnt from those experiences. Despite plenty of enthusiasm and recognition, the overarching sentiment is that staff and student engagement has often been superficial. The article investigates such challenges as: embedding sustainable practice as education versus offering it as co-curricular training; grappling with university quality procedures and student satisfaction; and establishing sustainable practice as a culture or narrative across a programme and staff team. Unsurprisingly, there is evidence that the enthusiasm for sustainable film-making practice is not always shared by everybody, and engagement with it needs some significant scaffolding and contextualisation, or it risks having the adverse effect of pushing staff and students away from the topic. Without nuance and thoughtful application, it can be perceived as ‘box ticking’. Having demonstrated the mistakes and challenges that have been encountered, this article will attempt to formulate a series of recommendations for moving forward. The aim is not to formalise best practice, but to share a road map of experience by an eco-enthusiastic educator who took the long way/wrong way round when teaching sustainable film practice.