Education in the Creative Fields in the Sustainability Transformation

In Finland, the education and training system for the creative fields is composed of a diverse range of institutions and actors, each playing an important role in enabling and accelerating the sustainability transition within the sector. From an educational perspective, it is particularly relevant to examine how different institutions and levels of education divide responsibilities in responding to the competence needs and transformation pressures of the sustainability transition.

Sustainability content is already included in the national curricula for basic education and upper secondary school. The task of higher levels of education should be to build stronger, field-specific, applied expertise and understanding of sustainability issues in the creative sectors. The education system must continue to foster a broad concept of education, while also redefining it to include an ecosocial perspective.

Many professionals already working in the creative fields would benefit from continuing education on sustainability topics, enabling them to integrate sustainability considerations into their practice. Traditionally, the Finnish education system has aimed to foster enlightenment, creative and critical thinking, active citizenship, and research-based knowledge – all of which are essential in the sustainability transition. Responding to complex sustainability challenges and ensuring a just transition requires comprehensive understanding and competence.

Education Influences Both the Field and Society

Education in the creative fields can support the sustainability transition on at least two levels. On one hand, educational institutions can help current and future professionals adopt and develop circular economy practices and methods that are sustainable for the environment, people, and other species within their respective fields. On the other hand, through their influence, these institutions can enable the creative sectors to generate, strengthen, and disseminate new ways of thinking, acting, experiencing, seeing, and feeling across society.

Contemporary art, film, music, architectural solutions, and other forms of art all shape people and society in different ways. Educational institutions in the creative fields can help strengthen the transformative potential of artistic and creative practices: the expressive power of the arts can drive the sustainability transition—sometimes in unexpected ways. Methods developed and used in fields such as visual arts and music can also be applied in sustainability education across other sectors.

Through art and culture, distant environmental issues can become tangible and emotionally accessible, which may increase a sense of ethical responsibility toward nature’s intrinsic value. Environmental education should encourage creative and solution-oriented thinking. Fields such as design and the applied arts have considerable experience in channeling creativity toward achieving specific goals.

Learning within the sustainability transition is based on experimentation, trying, and sometimes learning through mistakes. At their best, educational institutions offer supportive environments for such experimentation, free from the performance pressures of working life. From the open-ended experimentation typical in the creative fields, new models of action and ways of thinking can emerge—models that may benefit not only the creative industries but society at large.

Education Needs Experimentation and Freedom of Choice

In higher education, experimentation, innovation, and the construction of new understanding are part of the fundamental nature of research. Research that addresses sustainability issues can strengthen the integration of research-based sustainability content into creative fields education. It would be justified to further develop the current education system toward a more experimental, diverse, and flexible model—one that allows greater room for bold combinations, innovation, and inquiry driven by individual interests.

A more modular degree structure, allowing thematic content to be combined more freely and individually, would enhance creativity and support the development of more experimental and interdisciplinary expertise. The ability to combine methodological and thematic modules helps direct creative sector skills toward ecological sustainability. It is also important to facilitate students’ participation in inter-institutional courses, such as those offered by the Climate University.

Educational institutions can foster understanding and skills through interaction and co-creation: people from different backgrounds and roles meet, collaborate, and learn from one another. For example, in universities, knowledge and perspectives are transferred from research to teaching and to students—but also from students to teachers through teaching and mentoring interactions.

Institutions in the creative fields have the opportunity to support sustainability skills among professionals through continuing education and lifelong learning offerings. They can also convene diverse actors and collaborate with businesses and other organizations to enable and accelerate the sustainability transition.

Potential Comes with Responsibility

Potential Comes with Responsibility
The education in the creative sectors clearly holds strong potential as a driver of the sustainability transition. Educational institutions therefore have a responsibility to develop their operations in ways that allow them to fully realize this potential in support of sustainability. This requires motivation and the ability to change on multiple fronts—and often rapidly—so that institutions can respond more effectively to the challenges posed by the sustainability crisis.

Education in the creative fields must retain its core strengths while also updating its practices and mindsets to align with sustainability. Traditions, canons, and well-established methods have their place both during the sustainability transition and in the world that follows.

At the same time, it is essential to critically examine familiar practices, cultural conventions, and ways of thinking that have proven to be unsustainable. This tension is evident, for example, in how universities allocate resources between general education and fundamental research on one hand, and vocational skills training, solution-oriented courses, and applied research projects on the other.

Workshops organized by the LuoTo project in 2023 revealed that graduates from creative industries institutions are expected to be well-prepared to meet the demands of ecological sustainability in their fields. Education must be anticipatory: those entering the workforce should possess up-to-date knowledge and skills that will serve the needs of ecological transition for decades to come. A proactive approach to degree and curriculum design can reduce the need for later continuing education.

The societal legitimacy of the Finnish education system is grounded in the concept of the common good. In the era of sustainability crises, institutions in the creative fields can justify their existence only by demonstrating their contribution to the common good—by generating knowledge, practices, and skills needed for the sustainability transition, and by operating within planetary boundaries themselves.