Arts and Sustainability Case Studies Impacting the SDGs
SETU Sustainability in the Arts Festival
Project Team: Dr Hazel Farrell, Dr Don O’Neill, Dr Susan Connolly, Dr Susan Flynn, Noeleen Dooley, Michale Quinn, Jackie Raftery, Denise McAllister Wylie, Nidhi Piplani Kapur
South East Technological University
Background:
The Sustainability in the Arts Festival was established in 2023 in alignment with the university strategy to address the challenges of embedding sustainability in the curriculum and university community. This initiative was underpinned by the broader goal of raising awareness of the global SDGs in the context of Higher Education and an ongoing desire to enhance student engagement, create meaningful learning experiences, and positively influence the practices of peers. Funded by SATLE, the Sustainability in the Arts Festival was piloted in 2023 as a 1-day event on one SETU campus with the intention of learning from the experience and building on this the following year. This expanded into a 3-day event in 2024 encompassing the Waterford, Carlow and Wexford campuses, additional subject areas, and local and international partners with funding from both SATLE and N-TUTORR. Further growth resulted from this, and the 2025 festival ran for a full week with new local, national and international collaborations. This exponential growth clearly exemplifies the impact of the initiative on learners, peers, and the wider community.
Impacts, Outcomes and Key Learnings:
The festival platform was chosen as an ideal mechanism to promote inclusivity and collaboration, while encouraging student-led initiatives and ensuring broad impact. This approach also stimulated investment in their own learning and served to empower the students to lead specific aspects of the festival. The integration of creative disciplines including undergraduate programmes in visual art, graphic design, culinary arts, languages, and postgraduate studies in internationalisation formed the basis for a rich and diverse learning environment where students and staff could benefit from the knowledge and skills of others.
This also resulted in the identification of specific modules where the principles of sustainability could be integrated and the development of projects that could be incorporated into the festival. For instance, art and design colleagues decided to focus on artefacts made from recycled materials or sustainable printing for student assessment portfolios, while culinary colleagues focused on sustainable foods in cooking practical exams, and music research students undertook projects exploring the connection between music and the SDGs. This innovative platform showcased learning to a broad audience far beyond the classroom, thereby leading to increased investment by learners and arguably a higher standard of work.
Actively striving to overcome political inertia and to empower and motivate our students-the future leaders- the festival uses creativity to help communicate the urgency of the crisis.
The festival provides students with a means of disseminating their work to a broad audience thereby creating opportunities for meaningful and deep learning experiences.
Innovative approaches which were introduced and embedded by the festival include the introduction of sustainability criteria in many of our continuous assessment briefs across disciplines such as Music, Visual Art, Graphic Design, Culinary Arts, and Sociology. Integrating a sustainability perspective in module delivery involves connecting socio-ecological sustainability aspects to tangible learning outcomes. The festival provides clear examples of how to integrate sustainability aspects to a range of discipline areas thereby providing dynamic sustainability education.
Strategic external partnerships with Georgia Southern University, our EU Conexus partner La Rochelle University in France, QUB, UCC, and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Ireland have been formed through the festival.
The Sustainability in the Arts Festival will be embedded into future teaching and learning through a structured and actionable plan. Institutionally, SETU will integrate the festival's active learning methodologies, such as project-based work, interdisciplinary collaboration, and reflective assessments. Staff will be supported through CPD workshops and mentorship programs, empowering them to embed sustainability principles into their teaching practices and fostering leadership in interdisciplinary collaboration.
