This unit begins with an exploration of art as a primary need, working with the raw materials of the world to make and re-make, to explore and inquire, to present and represent.

Arts experts (artists, researchers, and educators) from Africa, North America, and Europe will work with you to share and explore the practices of craft, play, creation, representation, collaboration, and imagination. The course will expand the notion of the arts as entertainment and as illustration; and engage with arts as critical contemporary research and learning practices. As a group, the cohort will address using culturally relevant arts to engage people, to educate, and to research.

Creative practices, ways of being, knowing and doing are ever more critical in a world that is in unprecedented environmental fragility, and a moment of exasperated global social upheaval.

The sub-units aim to equip participants with the knowledge, place-based practices and pedagogical strategies necessary to integrate ecological awareness, Indigenous and local perspectives and sustainability with the arts as a way to uplift and weave together notions of artistic creation, inquiry, and learning. By emphasising local relevance and global context, the course fosters a relational approach to arts practices that relies upon dialogue and collaboration to bring about ethical partnerships of action.