University of Sunderland

Creative Education for a Sustainable Future

In the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries (FACI), we believe that our students’ creativity can make the world a better place.

This cross-faculty project highlighted the importance of creativity and thinking sustainability in the creative industries. It showcased sustainability in the curriculum and celebrated diverse approaches from our students and staff. Importantly, the project is professions-facing to help tomorrow’s employees think sustainability into their careers.

In summary we:  

• Developed learning outcomes focusing on sustainability and contributing to society.
• Launched a student prize to celebrate creative sustainability.
• Introduced green audits for assessments as a tool for reflection and evaluation of environmental impact.
• Established links with industry level compliance procedures and best practice tools for sustainability monitoring.

Top 3 Learnings

1. Projects like this need leadership from the management team to focus, encourage and celebrate developments.
2. Alongside strong leadership it is important to create space for academics, technical staff and - importantly - students to feed in their ideas and priorities.
3. We recommend focusing on a limited number of priorities to start with which are then executed beautifully.