Appendix: Why did we make this?

Five points that informed this toolkit:

1. We wanted to help educators to really embed sustainability within existing media, arts and humanities curricula. Our scoping work revealed a wealth of wonderful resources, but many felt a bit generic and high level: basically introductions to sustainability science and policy. These can perhaps be usefully incorporated into arts and humanities teaching, but their uptake might be limited by the feeling that important things would be dislodged. We wanted to focus on resonances between sustainability and all the things the arts and humanities are already exploring (the environmental humanities, ecopoetics, new materialism, postcolonial studies, and much more). We soon found out how challenging this was — ‘media, arts and humanities’ is so broad, so how can you tailor sustainability to so many different things? — but hopefully this toolkit is at least fairly interdisciplinary, and hints at future cross-pollination possibilities.

2. We wanted to make something quickly. The Sussex Humanities Lab, where this toolkit originated, sometimes plays host to hackathons, games jams and makerspaces — we wanted to draw on that improvisational ethos and energy. In addressing the environmental crisis in the early-to-mid 2020s, every year, every month counts, but the rhythms of academic life, from grant writing to curriculum development, aren’t always best suited to acting fast. We wanted to create something that was good enough for now, and might spark ideas and enthusiasm for even bigger and better things in the future.

3. We were interested in activities and formats, especially the kind that educators might include into their existing teaching at short notice. Many of the resources out there are very content-focused, so we thought some focus on form would be useful. We did drift toward content, and away from activities and formats, compared with our initial aspirations. But hopefully the Activities Seeds at least start to address the gap we identified.

4. We hoped to approach sustainability as something that can be generative rather than restrictive. Many educators are under all kinds of (unsustainable!) pressures, and sometimes sustainability can be wrongly framed as another set of boxes to tick, or another bunch of prohibitions and obstacles. We have tried to emphasise sustainability as something fruitful and inspiring, even a source of energy.

5. We hoped not to reinvent the wheel too much. That’s why the core team invited colleagues from across the school and university to contribute (and thank you again to everybody who has). It’s also why this toolkit is so full of signposting to resources elsewhere, including the crowdsourced living document of links and resources, the bibliography on the next page, the quotations sprinkled throughout, and the big list of keywords in the Climate Justice section.