Exciting new possibilities for cities to nurture creativity and support sustainable change are emerging in the 21st century. There is also a darker future where freedoms and amenities may be submerged in insensitive growth, unsustainable exploitation of resources and the alienation of public space.
Young people are citizens and the future consumers of the city and its public spaces. Their awareness and engagement (disengagement) will be critically important to the fate of public space, sustainable development, safe, energetic and creative cities. The more we can do as educators to promote active engagement the better. Art teachers shouldn't defer to anyone in developing pedagogy around built environment and public art. It's central to our role and, as a nexus between art, design, media and social sciences, a fertile breeding ground for cross-curriculum innovation.
By engaging with these challenges we can examine the role of public art and design in the contested domain of public space, and introduce students to the "slow" city, the city that reveals its poetry through idiosyncratic and unpredictable encounters, or with urban and public art that finds a way humanise public space - or urban design that connects, activates and invigorates the public realm physically, socially, culturally and even economically.
Critical literacy and creative intervention applied in the urgent context of changing urban spaces have together been the rationale of this program over the past 6 years.
