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.

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.

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.

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.