ENTANGLED FUTURES: Co-Designing Interdisciplinary Sustainability Education

About this initiative

The ENTANGLED FUTURES project introduces an innovative model for sustainability education by integrating science, poetry, and art to reimagine how challenging concepts are taught and understood. Through immersive, interdisciplinary workshops culminating in the collaborative creation of large-scale tapestries, staff and students will engage in a mixed-format approach we recently piloted (FIG1). This method aims to make sustainability more personally meaningful, reflective, and impactful by transforming complex topics into shared creative inquiry.

Key Deliverables:

• A series of four structured interdisciplinary workshops, each addressing a specific challenging sustainability concept through an art–poetry–science format
• A curated public exhibition showcasing workshop processes and outputs, hosted in UCD Science Centre and Humanities Institute.
• Four collaboratively produced large-scale tapestries, each representing a co-created interpretation of a key sustainability concept
• A set of four detailed case studies, each documenting a workshop model, concept addressed, and pedagogical approach
• A practical, simple toolkit, including:
  1) workshop design templates
  2) sample activities and prompts
  3) guidance for interdisciplinary collaboration
• A collection of participant-informed insights on teaching challenges and innovative responses
• Open-access digital materials (e.g. guides, visual outputs, reflective content) to support wider dissemination and reuse

Outcomes for Students:
Students will benefit both as partners in the project and as future learners in programmes influenced by its outputs.
As partners, participating students will:

• Develop skills in co-design, collaboration, and interdisciplinary thinking through working with artists/students in other disciplines.
• Gain experience contributing to curriculum innovation
• Enhance their understanding of sustainability as a multi-dimensional concept

More broadly, the project will support improved student learning by:

• Introducing more engaging and inclusive cross-college teaching approaches
• Supporting deeper understanding of complex sustainability challenges
• Encouraging critical, reflective, and creative engagement with subject matter
• Bridging scientific knowledge with ethical, cultural, and societal perspectives

The project will also contribute to a shift towards more participatory and student-centred learning. By generating ready-to-implement teaching interventions, it will enable future cohorts to benefit from more innovative and meaningful learning experiences.