Ecological-critical aesthetic education, or: In search of answers to the question “How do we want to live?”

The interdisciplinary research and development project EcoLit (Eco-critical Literacy in music- and literature-related practices of cultural education) explores the contribution that art education practice can make in dealing with the ecological crises of the present. We assume that the necessary socio-ecological transformation not only requires technological answers, but must also be accompanied by cultural change. This is a task for aesthetic education. The potential of aesthetic experiences lies in the fact that they enable both affective and critical reflection on living conditions in the Anthropocene. Through art, we can make the social and political dimensions of climate justice tangible and imagine changed ways of being in the world. The focus of EcoLit is on literature and music in schools, cultural education and beyond. Using case studies, we examine how artistic, political-activist and pedagogical-educational practices are interwoven and develop exemplary models for cultural education.

Christian Rolle is Professor of Music Education at the University of Cologne and has been researching questions of aesthetic education in the face of social transformation processes for many years.

Tanya Gautam is a research assistant in literary didactics and a member of the Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (Mesh) team at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. The working title of her doctoral project is: “The Living Lyric: Cont emporary Eco-poetics and the Eco-Political Praxis of Attention, Communication and Activism in a Time of Climate Crisis”.

Sara Walther studied media studies, philosophy, musicology and singing and is currently working on her doctorate as a research assistant at the Institute for European Music Ethnology in the Department of Art and Music in the Faculty of Human Sciences.