Education for sustainable development (ESD) is a foundational aspect of the transformatory capability of sustainability science at the individual and group levels. Despite international frameworks to promote and monitor the development of sustainability competences, evidence of the efficacy of ESD remains limited and even challenging. This article proposes drama-based educational approaches, as part of an increasing body of arts-based methods used in sustainability science, which materially impact a wide range of sustainability competences. Drama is a practice-based approach that intentionally uses carefully designed educational activities involving body, story, interaction, and collaboration to generate sustainability awareness, knowledge, mindsets, and action taking for individuals and groups within higher education. Examples of applied drama practices can include various forms of role play, forum play (playing out roles and pausing/fast-forwarding/reversing to explore possible solutions), and legislative theatre (where participants collaborate with lawmakers to address local issues). This article draws on an international project applying drama methods across disciplinary areas, and outlines how drama methods may contribute to sustainability competences applied in practice. As a result of this, we propose further research to inform future high-impact practices of applied drama for the field of ESD.

Drama has been described as a powerful method in teaching difficult, multifaceted, contradictory issues loaded with values and emotions, such as those concerning sustainability. This chapter explores how drama can contribute to the necessary renewal of higher education to meet the sustainability challenges of our time. Results are presented from a drama-based research project in higher education, and in a youth project. In the chapter, so-called nomadic enquiry is combined with an arts-based approach to participant interviews. Through this innovative method, an image of a rhizome emerged. This rhizome of expanded learning highlights five necessities or critical nodes for expanded sustainability-oriented learning: emergence, expansion through role, embodiment, connection to self and others, and crucial conditions. The rhizomatic perspective not only shows the transformative potential of drama in higher education and adult learning but also identifies the levers and barriers teachers, students, and the academy as an institution are likely to encounter when trying to move towards a socio-ecologically more civilized world. The results point to how the integration of knowledge and wisdom that are striven for in the philosophy of ecological civilization can be put into pedagogical practice through the holistic learning of drama.

In a time marked by ecological and social uncertainty, there is a growing need for educational practices that foster hope, agency, and embodied engagement with the future. This doctoral thesis explores how applied drama can serve as a resource in sustainability education. The study investigates how university students and young adults engage in embodied and imaginative practices that enable them to relate to sustainability issues in new ways. The research is conducted within the framework of drama education and is based on drama interventions with students in a university course and participants in a youth project. Of the 85 participants in four groups, 36 volunteered to be interviewed afterwards about their experiences. The transcribed interviews and other documentation were analysed through an approach that evolved from qualitative to post-qualitative, including arts-based elements. Additionally, the thesis contains autoethnographic traces and reflections from clown work related to sustainability issues.

The findings show drama to be a powerful, yet demanding, pedagogical tool in environmental and sustainability education. It enables emotional expression and embodied and collective reflection in the creation of imagined futures. It also fosters group cohesion and a sense of hope in the face of complex challenges. However, drama as a teaching method requires not only knowledge of both drama and sustainability but also participant willingness, psychological safety, and time to build trust. The research further demonstrates that drama and creative processes can contribute in a meaningful way to knowledge production, particularly when addressing existential and societal crises. The aesthetic dimension is revealed as valuable in order to remain open, playful and creative in the midst of uncertainty.

Purpose – In an era of social and ecological crises new ways of teaching are being called for. This paper aims to explore applied drama as a teaching resource in learning about sustainability and future scenarios. The imaginative aspects of drama are explored as a possibility to find hopefulness and support transformative learning.

Design/methodology/approach – Drama workshops were carried out in a higher education course and with young adults in a youth project. The participants were interviewed after the drama interventions and the transcripts were analysed from the perspective of transformative learning, to understand how drama methods can contribute to the field.

Findings – The results show drama to be a supportive resource in the first stage of transformative learning, in this material in relation to learning about sustainability issues and the emotions that this generates. Drama is also shown to be a possible spark to transformative learning in that the teaching method is unfamiliar to many participants and can initially be uncomfortable and disorienting. Additionally, drama is shown to have relevance to embodied cognition. Finally, the idea of drama enabling role cognition is introduced. Role cognition is suggested to be a part of drama that reaches beyond the embodied aspects and comes out of the specific element of taking on another role in drama.

Research limitations/implications – The study is limited to the experiences of drama as expressed by participants in interviews. To further understand the implications of drama in higher education and in environment and sustainability teaching, research that observes what is happening in the interactions should be carried out.

Practical implications – This study points to the possibility of drama to support transformative learning processes and be a practical resource in working with embodied cognition and role cognition.

Originality/value – This study meets the need of developing teaching methods that are explorative and give room to embodied and emotional dimensions of environment and sustainability teaching.

Drama has been described as a powerful method in teaching difficult, multifaceted, contradictory issues loaded with values and emotions, such as those concerning sustainability. This chapter explores how drama can contribute to the necessary renewal of higher education to meet the sustainability challenges of our time. Results are presented from a drama-based research project in higher education, and in a youth project. In the chapter, so-called nomadic enquiry is combined with an arts-based approach to participant interviews. Through this innovative method, an image of a rhizome emerged. This rhizome of expanded learning highlights five necessities or critical nodes for expanded sustainability-oriented learning: emer-gence, expansion through role, embodiment, connection to self and others, and crucial conditions. The rhizomatic perspective not only shows the transformative potential of drama in higher education and adult learning but also identifies the levers and barriers teachers, students, and the academy as an institution are likely to encounter when trying to move towards a socio-ecologically more civilized world. The results point to how the integration of knowledge and wisdom that are striven for in the philosophy of ecological civilization can be put into pedagogical practice through the holistic learning of drama.

Syftet med vår performance lecture är att belysa frågor kring drama som forskningsfält i Sverige. Vi tar avstamp i Eva Österlinds två artiklar Dramaforskning i Sverige - två steg fram och ett tillbaka (2009) och Acting out of habits, can Theatre of the Oppressed promote change? (2008). I den senare pekar Österlind på Bourdieus koncept habitus som beskriver människans tendens att vilja upprätthålla status quo. Kontinuitet är viktigt för att skapa stabilitet men kan också leda till stagnation (2008). I sin deskriptiva analys av svenska doktorsavhandlingar inom dramapedagogik åren 1971-2009 beskriver Österlind dramaforskningen som en arkipelag; dramaforskare är som utspridda öar och det finns ingen gemensam och utmanande diskussion som skulle kunna utveckla dramaforskningen som ett fält, vilket är något som Bourdieu ser som nödvändigt (2009). När dessa artiklar skrevs fanns det ingen professor i drama i Sverige och det var inte möjligt att doktorera i dramapedagogik. Femton år senare är situationen en annan. Hur ska vi se på dramaforskning i Sverige i dagens turbulenta tid? Vi instämmer med Österlind att "för att undvika att uppfinna hjulet på nytt är det nödvändigt att utgå från våra företrädares arbete" (2009) och vi ser att i den näringsrika kompost av dramaforskning som genomförts under årens lopp finns en outnyttjad potential. Men hur kan vi utmana oss själva och trots samhälleligt och akademiskt motstånd undvika att klamra oss fast vid status quo och våga ta steg in på okända marker. Hur möts vi i en öppen, ödmjuk men samtidigt uppfordrande dialog för att kunna utveckla det arbete vi tror på?Performance lecture har på senare år utvecklats till en viktig praktik då den utmanar och utforskar pedagogik och konst genom att integrera element både av kunskapsförmedling och konstnärlig iscensättning (Ladnar, 2013). Med utgångspunkt i arts-based research och genom att utforska vad formen performance lecture kan innebära för det unika perspektiv och den unika kompetens som dramapedagoger har, har skapandet av vår performance lecture både haft funktionen som generering av material, som utgångspunkt för reflektion och analys och som meningsskapande i vår förståelse av dramapedagogik som forskningsfält.

This chapter outlines an exercise in which students are invited to imagine various aspects of life in the future and then collaboratively co-create poems about these futures. The chapter promotes and values the use of creative writing to promote futures thinking capabilities. 

This article presents results from a study where applied drama interventions were deployed in four different groups to build capacities to re-imagine economics. Participants were interviewed or entered dialogue with each other after completing the drama work. Through a close reading of one of the conversations that stands out as glowing in the research material and with inspiration from rhizomatic analysis, we identify four nodes that point to drama as a hopeful practice during insecure times. The dramatic arts have historically facilitated the navigation of localized political and economic tensions, but research and practice has not seemingly addressed the transitions to more holistic forms of development embedded within the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 8: Decent Work and Inclusive Economic Growth. Conceptualizing this transition as liminal, we argue for the use of drama(tic) arts to navigate this state. The node Space for emotions articulates drama as a possibility to embrace and integrate difficult emotions. The node Openings and invitations – a new learning experience describes drama as an unconventional form of teaching that opens for creativity and new understandings. The third node Pretending towards new realities points to how the imaginative aspects of drama can give experiences of new pretended states beyond the liminal. Finally, the node Discomfort and its reinterpretations shows how challenging aspects of drama can be understood as in itself creating a liminal state where the unexpected can emerge. Findings echo the transformatory potential of drama(tic) arts in prior environmental and sustainability education research but extend it in the specific context of navigating and re-imagining economic growth (SDG8), and point to specific qualities of drama when trying to move towards sustainability in difficult times.

This article describes the use of clowning in explorations of sustainability and economics. It analyzes the author’s own clown work through an autoethnographic study, and in relation to the field of transgressive learning. The analysis shows how clowning was a resource to overcome fear in facing difficult issues and to process sustainability with devotion, vulnerability, and joy. The clowning clarified important aspects of sustainability learning and the research points to the clown as an inspiration to imaginative and embodied ways of learning with the aim of transgressing unsustainable norms and transforming ourselves, as well as our societies.

The arts encompass a broad and diverse landscape of interrelated creative practices and professions, including performance arts (including music, dance, drama, and theatre), literary arts (including literature, story, and poetry), and the visual arts (including painting, design, film) (see UNESCO 2006). They have been explicitly linked to sustainable development in higher education at a global level through UNESCO’s Road Map for Arts Education (UNESCO 2006) and The Seoul Agenda: Goals for the Development of Arts Education (UNESCO 2010). Specifically, the arts have been deployed to promoting human rights, enhancing education, promoting cultural diversity, enhancing well-being, and, most broadly, “resolving the social and cultural challenges facing today’s world” (UNESCO 2010: 8).