Abstract
This article was first presented in the Think Global, Act Local Congress in 2023. I argue for the radical role of the arts in changing the very meaning and purpose of education, from the efficient transmission of knowledge from teachers of one generation to students of the next, to an endless journey of discovery on which teachers and students are embarked together, driven not by a humanistic ideal of progressive improvement but by a passion to seek the truth of what is real and present in the world. Instead of educating students in the subjects of art, here it is the practices of art that educate. In this journey students are brought into an ongoing dialogue with the world itself, affording the possibility to attend to the things or beings to be found there, to answer to their presence, and to explore the conditions of coexistence with them. I present the concepts of response-ability and undercommons, and highlight their effects on the effective construction of democracy and sustainability.
Keywords:
Response-ability; Undercommons; Arts; Sustainability