Yearbook of the European Network of Observatories in the Field of Arts and Cultural Education (ENO)

This book explores the potential of arts and cultural education to contribute to on-going efforts to promote Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in line with UNESCO’s conceptualizations of the field. It builds on the experiences of arts educators working to build sustainable futures and portrays new and innovative approaches. Chapters comprise case studies that combine arts, culture,  sustainable thinking and practices. They also include research from historical perspectives, evaluations of public policy measures and offer theoretical approaches and methodologies. The book unfolds the possible relationships between arts and cultural education and Education for Sustainable Development.

This book is motivated by questions of how arts and cultural education—like all other fields—are affected by and—together with other fields—can contribute to glocal developments, challenges, and shifts. However difficult the times, arts, and culture in educational contexts have the ambition to make a positive contribution and foster creativity, empathy, and inclusion to encourage critical change, innovation, and peace. But if arts and cultural education remains traditional, unchallenged, and exclusive, those ambitions for critical change towards more inclusive practices that dare to act and make a change in the world, run the risk of remaining utopian rhetoric. It is time for a critical self-examination and willingness to change powers and privileges also within arts and cultural education.

Against this background, this book presents brave research on arts and cultural education that offers insight into the conditions, contexts, effects of, and critical changes needed within arts and cultural education. It addresses our time’s great changes, challenges, and possibilities for innovation.