Conference Agenda

Children’s lives all over the world are marked by ecological crisis, social and political upheaval, war, and migration. Even in the Nordics, where most children’s everyday lives continue to appear relatively safe and predictable, childhoods are framed by and entangled in complex social, political, economic and ecological processes with rising tensions and uncertainties. As researchers based in three Nordic countries and working within the interconnected fields of early childhood education, childhood studies, children’s geographies and anthropology, we share an interest in exploring research approaches which can attend to often-overlooked complexities of children’s everyday lives in precarious times.

In this paper we are interested in how to, under these circumstances, do research that values curiosity, imagination and collaboration, and that resists leaning on ‘the dreams of modernization and progress’ (Tsing, 2015, p. 2). Moreover, we aim to work against a colonial and imperial modernity that haunts both the field of sustainability education and dominant knowledge concerning children and childhoods (Nxumalo, 2019; Spyrou, 2018; Sund & Pashby, 2020). Thus this paper engages in particular with the following question from NW 30’s special call: What kind of research is required to grasp the complexity entailed in poly-crisis?

We do this by sharing several threads from our collective project-in-process. In this project, we insist on engaging with a contradictory, contested, and multifaceted site that likely does not, at first glance, direct educational scholars’ thinking toward sustainability education research, nor toward its connections with childhood: the shopping mall. Inspired by various thinkers that encourage re‑imaginings of sustainability, urban spaces and childhood in ways that are disruptive, political, and transformative, and that go beyond a human-centered onto-epistemology (Kraftl, 2020; Malone, 2018; Malone et al., 2017), we ask: How might shopping malls become a vibrant place for noticing critical issues such as non-belonging, inequalities, overconsumption, plastic pollution, destructive food systems and acceleration of waste generation, and its entanglements with children and childhoods? What kinds of world-making projects are going on in shopping malls?What imaginations can be re-opened from what is noticed?

In her book The Mushroom at the End of the World. On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2015) proposes to study processes of capitalism in the Anthropocene through watching ‘unruly edges’ and ‘unpredictable encounters’ (p. 20) and looking’for what has been ignored’ (p. 20). Through arts of noticing, Tsing (2015, p. 22) suggests we explore practices overlooked because they do not easily form part of narratives of progress. Peter Kraftl, in the book After Childhood, Kraftl (202, p. 2-3), suggests to decenter the study of childhood through starting somewhere else - in order to research how complex challenges are affecting particular places, and only hereafter looking at how children are positioned and located within such challenges. In the project-in-process, we draw inspiration from both of these propositions.

Clothing is an essential part of our daily lives, but rising consumerism has created major environmental problems (Brooks et al., 2017; Fletcher, 2016; Clean Clothes, 2018). Europeans consume nearly 26 kilos of textiles and discard 11 kilos each year, of which 87% is incinerated or landfilled (European Environmental Agency, 2020). This pattern must change, and we need new ways of relating to and learning about clothing as part of Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE). This theoretical paper presents a conceptual framework for developing an ecological aesthetical relation to clothing, with a specific focus on mending as a pedagogical activity.

Clothing education is not an independent school subject in any European country but appears across several subjects. In the Nordic countries, it has a long tradition within design and craft: In Finland’s ‘educational sloyd’ (kästiyö), in Norway, ‘art and handicraft’ (kunst och håndverk), in Iceland ‘design and handicraft’ (hönnum og smidi), in Denmark ‘handicraft and design’ (håndværk og design) and in Sweden in Sloyd education (slöjdämnet). Clothing also appears in Home Economic (care, laundering, consumerism) and in Natural and Social sciences, as part of resources and sustainability learning. Hence, there are plenty of opportunities for learning about sustainability and clothes both in the Nordic countries and in Europe.

Although opportunities for teaching sustainability through clothing exists, it is far from evident what and how to teach it (Hofverberg & Westerlund, 2021; Hofverberg et al, 2023). Design research highlights the need to shift from individualistic consumption to post-growth fashion by emphasising personal meaning in clothing use and encouraging engagement with clothing as more than mere “objects” designed for purchase and wear (Fletcher, 2016). Instead, designs – as clothes – are understood as integral parts of people’s lifeworlds that transcend consumerism (Fry and Nocek, 2021). As Maione (2023) argues, there is also a need to explore new ways of imagining plural futures for clothing systems through practices of craft and remaking, rather than continuing the current system of taking, making, and wasting.

Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) research shows that there are often two sustainability stories at stake when teaching about sustainable fashion: making smart choices in relation to clothing and having fun with clothes (Hofverberg et al, 2023). These stories draw on a rational idea – as if we know what sustainable clothing is, or that we take for granted that students want to have fun with clothes. This does not mean that there are no smart choices or that some students don’t think it is fun with clothes, but it limits pedagogical possibilities. Research shows that education needs space for a full range of emotions (Pivotti & Hofverberg, 2025), creating spaces for both hope and grief (Lindström, Jönsson and Hillgren, 2021) as well as creating spaces for the unknown in educational practices (Saari & Mullen, 2018). To address these needs, we will in this paper present a conceptual framework for developing ecological aesthetical relations to clothing.

To develop this framework, we draw on Japanese aesthetics (Richie 2007) and in particular Tanizaki’s In praise of shadows (1977) as well as Tim Morton’s work on hyperobjects, dark ecology, and ecological being (2013, 2016, 2018). This provides a vocabulary for engaging with the strange and uncanny dimensions of clothing. Our framework aligns with post-growth fashion and lifeworld perspectives that avoid reducing clothing to a tool for predetermined sustainability outcomes. The paper presents the theoretical foundations, illustrates them with examples from clothing education and mending activities, and discusses didactical implications for cultivating ecological taste—supporting acceptance of the existential conditions of both learners and content.

In recent years, makerspaces have gained significant popularity across European cities. These spaces, encompassing diverse forms such as fablabs, hackerspaces, tech hubs, and upcycling collectives and are united by a strong Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethos. This ethos is grounded in the belief that everyone should have the opportunity to engage with technology, tools, and materials, empowering citizens beyond passive consumption (Vandenabeele & Decuypere, 2022). In this paper, we will elaborate on one particular case: a makerspace in Leuven (Belgium) called ‘maakleerplek’. This makerspace is situated in the historical mills of Orshoven, along the industrial canal and in what is now a new residential area. The name chosen for this initiative reflects their ambition to be a place where everyone is welcome and where making and learning are intertwined in all its activities (maakleerplek, n.d.). To this end, several different workshops and ateliers are set up in these mills and its surrounding building, for example a graphic lab, a high-tech lab or repair shops. These places are the habitat for what we describe in this paper as a particular form of sustainability education where sustainable futures are shaped within the collective rhythms of making things together. The aim is of this paper twofold: to articulate the theoretical groundwork of this particular sustainability education and to present an empirical analysis of how this sustainability education becomes possible in two repair hubs of maakleerplek – one focused on textile repair, and another focused on the repair of electronics. Both work in the same manner: you can bring in clothes or broken electronics, which volunteers will repair for (and sometimes with) you. The research questions this paper seeks to answer are: How can we conceptualise the collective rhythms of making things together as a distinctive form of sustainability education? Which educational processes are characteristic for practicing sustainability education in this way?

To articulate the theoretical groundwork, the paper makes three steps. Firstly, and in line with Ingold’s (2021) research on making things, activities in makerspaces aren’t considered from a perspective of doing, where the maker frictionless imposes their ideas on the desired material, but as a permanent formative process of correspondence where makers, materials and their surroundings constantly affect one another by engaging and joining with one another. This making is understood as learning to dwell worlds together where people and things become interwoven, but still distinct - affecting one another through what Dewey calls a transactional field of doings and undergoings (Torenbosch & Vandenabeele 2023). Secondly, these processes of correspondence are being performed in rhythms, which can be understood as an “interaction between a place, a time and an expenditure of energy” (Lefebvre, 2004, p. 15). These rhythms compromise a captivating sustainability educational matter; not only as an individual, but as a community that is engaged in sharing knowledge, skills, tools and a space that is characterized by a polyrhythmic dynamic (Gauntlett, 2011; Lefebvre, 2004; Vandenabeele & Decuypere, 2022). Thirdly, this paper illustrates how sustainability education in makerspaces gains its transformative potential through the performance of durable rhythms or habits, which entail a certain obligation; the rhythms of making things must be repeated – not to become rigid or stagnated (Lefebvre, 2004), but to cultivate thoughtfulness, caution, vigilance, and attentiveness as essentials for living in a web of interdependencies with other people as well as with technologies, artefacts, the materiality of things, animals, plants, et cetera (Vandenabeele & Decuypere, 2022).