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Art and Ecology connects with education of young people (as well as to life long learning) in many ways.  This page includes links to a range of resources aimed at encouraging learning about ecology through the arts, creating art that engages with ecological issues, and raises awareness of the biodiversity, water and other aspects of places.

There are a range of links to resources on this page.  If you are looking for Higher Education, MA or PhD level courses in the UK you should check out the page entitled Study.

The Eco-Schools programme, which operates in 48 countries world-wide and is particularly active in Scotland (Eco-Schools Scotland) is an excellent resource for environmental education in Schools and has resources and programmes suitable for ages 3-18.

Learning and Teaching Scotland, the curriculum development agency, has a number of resources including Marks on the Landscape, which has several sections on artists, and Weather and Climate Change, which doesn’t have anything about creativity, but is useful in other respects.

Planning Aid for Scotland as a section on their web site with resources aimed at formal education (Primary and Secondary) as well as informal education (young people).  They also run a programme called YEP! using drama ‘up-skill’ young people to be able to participate in the planning process.

Greenmuseum, a major resource on environmental art, has a Toolkit for Educators.  Edited by Ann T Rosenthal, the introduction provides a valuable overview of issues, pedagogical theory,  and a range of case studies.

Ann Rosenthal also has a syllabus for an ecoart course (designed for formal education) on her website.

Liza Behrendt‘s Beauty of Water (follow the link for a pdf) programme outline provides an excellent workplan for anyone wanting to develop a learning project around water and the associated issues.  Based very much on an outdoor classroom model of learning, the programme also makes recommendations about a number of films and other resources to draw on.

The Atlantic Rising project has an excellent programme of work and a huge network of schools located around the coastline of the Atlantic from Africa through Europe and from South through Central and up through North America.

International Eco Partnership: Gift Amu Logotse is an experienced educator originally from Ghana and living in UK, and has delivered many African Arts and Culture studies, Interactive Dance and Drama workshops to schools throughout the UK, including Decorative Arts, Storytelling and Percussion workshops.   The focus of current work is to engage young people in where their food comes from, and the issues that surround Global food production and consumption.  Website: http://kofiamulogotse.co.uk; Contact: 01414401207; mramu@btinternet.com

Growing Our Future is an project based in the cluster of schools in and around Okehampton in Devon, and includes work on Food Miles, Composting, Biodiversity.  It links to a number of areas of the curriculum.  This is the project site rather than a completed case study.

Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design ideas for schoolyard transformation, by Sharon Gamson Danks,  (ISBN-10 0-9766054-8-1 ISBN-13 978-0-9766054-8-5 Publication Date November 2010)    “No longer simply a place to practice sports games and swing on the monkey bars—our school sites now have the potential to teach ecological literacy, invigorate children’s bodies, open and inspire young minds, and knit our communities more closely together.”

Nature Art Education is a research group on arts-based environmental education at the University of Art and Design Helsinki.  The site contains both academic papers and case studies of project in educational settings.

Return of Birdsong:  an art installation for four screens, where children in Finland and Kenya are imitating rare and endangered bird species. The installation consisting of four video projections, the groups of children are presented in an interactive relation to each other – each group, one at a time, imitates the birds while the other groups listen. The audience steps into the centre of the piece and joins the listeners.   The Return of Birdsong was commissioned from Milja Viita, a member of the Artists’ Association MUU.

A Handful of Seeds, developed by the Occidental Art and Ecology Center, is programme targeted at schools to develop the understanding of seeds using school gardens.  Developed and tested in California, it takes account of the seasonality of the natural world and the cycle of schools (ie it is geared to schools being closed in the summer months!).

Fishes Feed Us was an international project developed by ASCI for the UN Environment Day in 2007.  It involved young people in the Phillipines, Malaysia and NYC.  From posts on a blog, a series of monologues were developed and spoken by 5th graders as a performance.

The Council of All Beings is built on the philosophy of the Deep Ecology movement and is intended to reconnect individuals with their environment and sense of being part of a greater whole.