Criminology picks up the gauntlet: responses to the Whole Earth exhibition

The Whole Earth? exhibition (http://www.hardrainproject.com/) currently hosted by several institutions of higher learning in the UK, Scandinavia and Australia, including Canterbury Christ Church University. The exhibition comprises of over 60 meters of images and text, reflecting on the consequences of our unsustainable living practices but crucially also seeks solutions and ways to enact positive change by issuing ‘university challenges’ relating to various disciplines. Criminology/criminal justice, while not mentioned by name in the exhibition challenges, includes various theoretical approaches (e.g. critical criminology, zemiology, green criminology and public criminology) with clear sustainability links. More broadly, issues of inequality and injustice (and ways of addressing them) can be linked to the four areas of environmental, social, economic and cultural sustainability (UNESCO, 2005). Indeed, Agyeman and colleagues (2003: 3) note how “justice and sustainability are intimately linked and mutually interdependent, certainly at the problem level and increasingly at the solution level.”

The project seeks to facilitate responses to the Whole Earth? exhibition hopefully moving toward concrete actions and behaviours. The more direct approach involves various reflective activities and focus groups, using the exhibition as a key stimulus to thinking about criminology/criminal justice links to sustainability and what the discipline and its students, both as a group and individually, can and should do. The ‘photo blogging’ activity allows students to draw the connections to their local context and encourages them to develop a ‘critical lens’ through which to view the issues of (in)justice and (in)sustainability in their own communities. This is particularly important as the exhibition images and text focus mostly on the developing world, the photo blogging

The project adheres to and seeks to further Education for Sustainable Development approaches and principles (UNESCO, 2004; HEA/QAA, 2014). It is explicitly values-driven and collaborative (students as co-authors of any dissemination of results). It is authentic (i.e. relating to real-world issues and experiences) and locally relevant, facilitating interdisciplinary thinking and critical problem-solving. The project also provides an opportunity for experiential learning (particularly through photo blogging) and greater engagement of students with their local communities. This both links to and expands the formal curriculum and in so doing encourages critical reflection on sustainability and justice (ibid, Cotton & Winter, 2010; Willmore & Tweddell, 2014). The hoped for long-term impacts include increased awareness of sustainability and justice among students that will hopefully last beyond the University as well as assist in on-going efforts to embed sustainability into the curriculum.