About

Learning in Becoming is a platform dedicated to sharing practices, perspectives, systems, and pedagogies that engage with environmental education from a critical, posthumanist, and decolonial perspective. 

Learning in Becoming looks for other ways of environmental education through collaborative, artistic or transdisciplinary approaches. In other words, ecopedagogy through the arts and in ways that inspire hope, action, community and justice at a time of converging crises that urgently call for cultivating our imagination and an understanding of our intra-dependence.  

These ‘other ways’ are rooted in centuries of Indigenous wisdom or sprout from mutual aid grassroots movements. Some have been spelt out by the wonders of the world since the beginning of time, while others have been decoded by climate scientists and supercomputers. Others have been whispered by sentinel plants and fungi into the ears of artists and authors. Critical theorists, ecologists and philosophers have also proposed other ways of doing things. While some ways have been formed during assemblies in community centres, or forged by climate protesters alongside musicians. Dramaturges, dancers and acrobats have also choreographed ways to heal, to resist and to mourn.  Other ways have been designed by our ancestors and continue to inspire architects, builders, farmers and engineers. In all their brilliant diversity, difference and entanglement, these other ways attempt to imagine beyond the escalating and converging crises of the present and craft worlds we want to live in.  

HOW THIS WORKS

The notions of Sayings, Doings and Relatings stem from an approach called ‘practice architectures’ which is dedicated to studying how practices may transform. ‘Sayings’ looks at how language, words and thoughts contribute to the discourses and culture of a practice. ‘Doings’ looks at the site, time and material configurations a practice depends on or builds from. ‘Relatings’ is about the relationships and alliances within a practice, and the degrees of power, care, and solidarity that determine them.

These three are interconnected continuously shifting and influencing one another. Feminist scholar and philosopher of science, Isabelle Stengers (2013) suggests that an ‘ecology of practices’ aims to approach practices as they may become, not as they are and advocates for new ‘practical identities’ to be constructed that allow them to be connected.

This platform recognises the value of both qualitative research frameworks and post-qualitative methods. Following this thread it embraces one of the most widely known teachings of Elders Dr. Albert and Murdena Marshall from the Moose Clan of the Mi’kmaw Nation, that of the ‘Two-Eyed Seeing’ (‘Etuaptmumk’ in Mi’kmaw). ‘Two-Eyed Seeing’ teaches us to see the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing from one eye, and the strengths of mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing from the other, with the purpose to bridge cultural and epistemic divides.

Learning in Becoming also embraces the generative effect of getting lost among them. I hope the reader also feels comfortable and even curious to roam in the folds and overlaps of the
‘in-betweens’.

WHO IS THIS FOR

This space aims to inspire as well as celebrate educators, creatives, (re)searchers, curators as well as institutions and organisations, whose work and curiosity lie in the folds of creatively and critically learning about our worlds through the arts. It offers insights from a variety of disciplines and perspectives and, in a variety of formats and vocabularies, in an attempt to bring ideas together in a world still primarily understood in silos that assigns voice and credibility solely to experts and undermines ways of knowing that do not conform to the mainstream.

BY WHOM

Learning in Becoming is the online home of the practice-led study ‘Learning on a Damaged Planet’ initiated by Cypriot curator and researcher Denise Araouzou and funded by Kone Foundation. The study began in 2021 at the intersection of an MA in ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ at the University of Gothenburg and a post-masters at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, titled ‘Collective Practices II: Symbiotic Organisations’ led by Grégory Castéra. The research project unfolds across Cyprus, Italy, Sweden and Finland while being inspired by several collective efforts elsewhere.
Many have contributed to making it what is and they are, and will be acknowledged in Relatings.

WHY

Learning in Becoming wishes to contribute to ongoing efforts across cultural and pedagogical fields that remember and build ways of becoming more response-able for the planet and the life we have inherited. More specifically, it proposes that an ecopedagogical approach may be a way of addressing certain blind spots and challenges present across individual, collective and institutional frameworks.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is important to acknowledge the remarkable publication ‘Arts for Living on a Damaged Planet’ (2017), co-edited by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Elaine Gan, and Heather Anne Swanson, which has inspired this endeavour and the name of this study.