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The role of interdisciplinarity in achieving authentic and transformative learning outcomes is both contested and complex. At the same time, traditional disciplinary ways of being, doing and knowing have been further tested by the impact of COVID-19 on students, schools and communities. In Tasmania, already experiencing amongst the lowest levels of educational attainment in Australia, the educational implications of COVID-19 have been polarising. Preliminary reports have employed interdisciplinary perspectives to understand how the situation is unfolding. Extremes of privilege and poverty have intensified, with accentuated disadvantage experienced by already vulnerable groups, whilst ingenuity, adaptability and innovation have flourished elsewhere. The spectrum and range of this polarisation yield compelling evidence for the inadequate address of complex societal problems through singular disciplines or institutions. This article explores storied data generated from the intersections of interdisciplinary strategy enacted across three settings: education, creative industries and community-based arts practice. The data derive from two Tasmanian case studies where interdisciplinary collaboration between the education sector, creative industries and community is well established. In subsequent discussion, the multidisciplinary authorship team make and offer meaning from participatory lived experiences of pursuing social justice outcomes prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. From this, we posit how lived experiences of interdisciplinarity impact social justice enterprise in times of increasingly complex socio-economic challenge. In addressing these concerns, we elucidate the role interdisciplinarity plays in both enabling and inhibiting social justice imperatives shared across education, creative industry and community-based arts practice immediately prior to and during a global pandemic. In so doing, we elicit the ways interdisciplinary practices, partnerships and priorities recalibrate in response to global challenges.

This chapter explores the urgent relevance of posthumanist theory and practice for democratizing creative educational experiences in 21st-century schools, universities, and informal learning environments. Posthumanism challenges the myopic centering of the human in creative education in an age of climate change, artificial intelligence, and zoonotic disease, where nonhuman agencies are intricately imbricated in human cultures and lives. Using a cartographic methodology, the chapter critically maps key theories and debates in posthumanist creativity studies across four substantive fields of inquiry: (a) process philosophy; (b) affect studies; (c) place-based education; and (d) creative ecology. Drawing links between theoretical concepts and practical examples of creative experience across formal and informal education contexts, the chapter scopes an alternative agenda for critical studies of creativity in light of the posthuman turn.

This Special Issue of the journal Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education (ADCHE) revisits the purpose and potential of art and design from an Australian perspective. It draws on the November 2023 Australian Council of University Art & Design Schools (ACUADS) 43rd conference, co-convened by Thao Nguyen, School of Art, RMIT University and myself. This national forum sought to consider the following: (1) how can creative education and research embrace our unique Australian perspective and integrate First Nations knowledge to cultivate a 'thriving future'? (2) What is the potential of creative research and pedagogy in responding to the climate crisis and other urgent societal concerns? (3) How has the global pandemic disrupted and catalysed innovation in creative art education, including the rapid uptake of digital media by traditionally haptic disciplines? What are the key technological agendas for art and design schools? Drawing on our unique perspective, with particular acknowledgement of First Nations knowledge and ways of being, our colonial history and Asia–Pacific context, this edition considers how creative education and research can contribute not only to economies but also to the array of pressing social, environmental and cultural issues necessary to enable thriving futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant contention underpinning the commentary around STEM/STEAM is the evidence of discipline hierarchies, and inherent binary perspectives and/or biases that lend themselves to privileging one or more disciplines over another in an interdisciplinary education context. The current focus on increasing engagement with STEM in Australian schools provides opportunities to explore how the creative and liberal arts, and arts-based approaches to teaching and learning are being adopted to significantly enhance teaching and learning outcomes in and for STEM education. This article examines how design for a STEAM education programme evolves and is adopted in an Australian context. Tasmania represents one of the most vibrant creative communities in Australia. At the same time it has one of the lowest levels of educational attainment. Entrenched teaching habits and disciplinary hierarchies often create significant barriers to the implementation of STEAM despite genuine goodwill and enthusiasm for STEAM among teachers and within schools. This article argues that, despite the contrasting dynamics extant in the Tasmanian educational context, it is here that some of the nation's most curious and exciting examples of STEAM teaching and learning have emerged. It offers an example of an innovative learning project and proposes the means by which these disciplinary strands have been effectively entwined.