Sustainable art studio by Ivan

I believe in a open, free and fluid education with network learning based on autonomy and independence. I believe that art and environmental education naturally incorporates these ideas. Officially, in Brazil, sustainability and eviromenetal education is viewed as a transversal and fundamental, which means that it should be discussed and taught within all subject areas.

However, in most of the schools, overworked teachers have time little to invest in the inclusion of these themes and rarely have the knowledge or training to even regard it as a priority. So with these difficulties how is it possible to work with these themes? The reality is that we are not working with sustainable themes and providing the environmental education in a transversal way to students or teachers (let alone parents and communities etc). On the rare occasions that we do manage to have some sort of environmental education it is always more or less the same, make a toy with recycled material, which generally goes into the trash the next day... If we don't have complex thought and make connections with all the knowledge that surrounds us, it's not possible to have a real impact in the day to day reality.

Sustainable ways of thinking and choosing for me is associated with art because it is about rethinking the way we look at the world and the way we live in it. It is about looking for new answers and finding alternatives to old problems. For me this the same for art. We you are creating solutions to or inverting "norms", you are doing the exercise of looking again and finding new meanings. This is an important part of the art world.  

 When Ivan writes about "the sustainable art studio" I agreed with it so much that it seemed like I had written it myself.  The idea that is not just a subject but a life style, that it can bring the communities together, the magic the environment contains, the way we can look differently at the place we inhabit and have a different relationship with it all. And how all this is connect with a different way to deal with education. A education of and for the future.