Michele Gregson considers the importance of design in the curriculum and the potential of the art room to nurture green design skills.
Earlier this year, the Design Council launched an ambitious campaign: to upskill one million designers by 2030. The focus is quite rightly on the green upskilling journey of those who are in preparation for joining the design workforce, or are indeed already part of it. And we know that green upskilling needs to be a continuous process of professional development – because the big questions posed by climate emergency are not fixed and the solutions will only ever be provisional – because that is the nature of wicked problems. But I invite you to consider this question: Just How early does upskilling need to begin?
What if the designer’s green upskilling journey was part of an education pathway that began at school entry? What are the learning behaviours, attributes and dispositions that we might usefully nurture from the earliest stages of education? After all, the five-year-olds of today are the designers of 2040 – their journey is just beginning.
What is happening already in our schools that aligns with planet-positive principles – and how that good practice might underpin a green skills framework – not just now, but in the future.
How and where are learners already being prepared to be part of the planet positive workforce of tomorrow? One of the key places is the art room. Art and design are taught in all schools, and the A level remains one of the most popular subject choices.
When done well, teaching design practice within art contexts lays the foundations for the green skills that we desperately need. I propose that’ designerly thinking’ (as championed by Gary Granville and others) is planet positive pedagogy in action.
When designerly thinking is taught as part of an art and design curriculum, we can take advantage of the learning behaviours that are championed in the art room – a space where we are given permission to be comfortable with – in fact actively leap into – the ambiguous, the uncertain, the risky, the tentative. In short, to be open to changes of direction. In the art room we can develop the capacity to embrace abductive reasoning and the flexibility to work with provisional solutions to 'wicked problems' and big questions.
Art rooms are naturally attuned to structure learning with a helpful emphasis on "learner autonomy and innovation, solving problems through the application of their own imagination and agency".(Granville, Creighton and Byrne, 2024, p.118). Not just problem solvers, but problem identifiers. In addition, the freedom of a curriculum that is concept rather than content driven provides the opportunity to explore socially engaged practice, the meaning of citizenship and empathy as a design skill. All things that create a sound base for the green skills framework
However, I am not going to claim that this practice is widespread.
In far too many schools, design can be almost an afterthought, with the curriculum emphasis firmly on art. Which is strange, because art and design teachers come from a wide range of design backgrounds. Once in school however, too often they become bound by an established, worn-out curriculum, narrowed by over a decade of shrinking resources, curriculum time and high stakes assessment which encourage a risk averse approach (ironically). A fine art bias becomes orthodoxy and design the outlier. We must address this and support our teachers to be as designerly as they are painterly. That way we can embed green skills for a planet positive curriculum from the very start.
But we can take heart from the fact that we are not starting from zero – the foundations can be laid in our schools and colleges. Our challenge is to make planet positive pedagogies the norm, not the exceptional.
Granville,G. Creighton. E, Byrne.F (2024) ‘Creativity, Designerly Thinking and the Wicked Problems of Life’ in Ash. A, Carr.PA Practical Guide to Teaching Art and Design in the Secondary School, Abingdon, Routledge, pp 115-127