Eco-Capabilities: exploring pedagogies at the intersection of nature, the arts and wellbeing

Professor Nicola Walshe

Eco-Capabilities is an AHRC-funded project situated at the intersection of three issues: a concern with children’s wellbeing; their apparent disconnect with the natural environment; and a lack of engagement with the arts in school curricula. It builds on Amartya Sen’s work on human capabilities as a proxy for wellbeing, developing the term eco-capabilities to describe how children define what they feel they need to live a fully good human life through environmental sustainability, social justice and future economic wellbeing. Through Eco-Capabilities, primary school children from two schools participated in eight full days of arts-in-nature practice, described as artscaping. The study drew on arts-based research methodologies, participatory observations, interviews and focus groups with artists, teachers and children. Findings suggest key elements of arts-in-nature practice contributing to the development of children’s eco-capabilities comprised extended and repeated arts-in-nature sessions; embodiment and engaging children affectively through the senses; slowliness which envelopes children with time and space to (re)connect; and thoughtful practice which facilitates emotional expression. Within this seminar, I will explore how through these elements, arts-in-nature practice supports children’s wellbeing, and guides them towards a more entangled relationship with nature and a clearer understanding of themselves as part of it, thereby motivating them to take better care of it.