#iSustain. Online and Offline Sustainability Conversations Promoting the SDGs in a higher education setting.

In this paper, the combination of an art-based, participatory intervention (#soundslikesustainability; 2022) and an online conversation (#iSustain, public facebook group, 2020-2022) are presented as examples for communication about and for sustainability (Weder, 2021a) and possible way to promote the SDGs in a local area (here: in a metropolitan region in Australia). These two examples were theoretically conceptualized as "conversational spaces" (offline & online) and, retrospectively, explored and analyzed as case studies with a mixedmethod content analysis (thematic & frame analysis). The findings of these case studies show how particularly students and staff in a higher education setting started to collaboratively generate an understanding of sustainability and sustainable behavior by negotiation, by sharing their own examples, perspectives and challenges. Furthermore, the students started to take responsibility, advocacy and authorship for transformation and creating their own sustainability stories for sustainable development. Beyond these insights, the presented case studies show how conversational problematization and sensemaking in online and offline conversational spaces around sustainability can be initiated by creating innovative and sometimes unsettling moments of reflection. The paper contributes to the emerging area of sustainability communication, works with a critical environmental communication pedagogical approach (following Weder & Milstein, 2021) and offers innovative ideas for local engagement and community building where transformation and a bottom-up cultivation of sustainability can be realized - especially in a context of missed opportunities, a lack of political strategies and dominant economic interest in sustainability issues, like Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]