From Script to Sustainability: Drama-Based Approaches to Green Education
Introduction
Turn environmental awareness into meaningful action through drama. This course empowers educators to explore sustainability using storytelling, movement, and participatory theatre, helping students connect emotionally with ecological issues and become active, responsible citizens.
Description
This course explores how drama-based pedagogies can enhance Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) by fostering emotional engagement, critical thinking, and active participation. Grounded in experiential learning and approaches such as Drama in Education and Theatre of the Oppressed, it equips educators with practical tools to address environmental challenges in the classroom. Participants will engage in embodied activities, storytelling, role-play, and site-specific performance to explore themes such as climate change, biodiversity, and human-environment relationships. The course emphasises learner-centred methodologies, interdisciplinary connections, and the development of key competences aligned with Erasmus+ priorities, including sustainability, inclusion, and active citizenship. By the end of the course, participants will be able to design and implement creative, drama-based learning experiences that promote environmental awareness and inspire meaningful action among students.
Learning Objectives
Participants will:
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Understand key principles of Education for Sustainable Development and their relevance in school contexts
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Explore and apply techniques from Drama in Education to support sustainability learning
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Use storytelling, role-play, and embodied learning to teach environmental topics
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Apply elements of Theatre of the Oppressed to foster critical thinking and active citizenship
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Design inclusive, student-centred learning activities addressing ecological challenges
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Develop skills in facilitating reflective and experiential learning processes
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Integrate outdoor and place-based learning into sustainability education
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Create classroom-ready lesson plans promoting environmental awareness and engagement
Methodology and Assessment
The course adopts an experiential, learner-centred approach combining drama activities, collaborative creation, reflection, and micro-teaching. Participants engage actively in all sessions and co-construct knowledge through practice. Assessment is continuous and formative, based on participation, peer feedback, reflection journals, and the design and delivery of a final lesson or performance task.
Materials, Digital Tools & Other Learning Resources
Participants will use a range of creative and digital tools including Padlet, Canva, and Kahoot! to support collaboration and content creation. Additional materials include storytelling prompts, drama technique cards, lesson templates, and curated resources on sustainability education. Outdoor environments are also used as learning spaces.
Preparation
After registration participants will receive pre-course questionnaire which will be used by the trainer to learn about participants’ teaching backgrounds and to assess their exact needs. Before the beginning of the course a basic reading list will be suggested to participants to prepare for the training. Participants will also be asked to prepare a presentation about themselves, their professional context and their culture which will be presented during the course. Participants will receive information about the country they are going to visit in order to prepare them for their cultural experience.
Follow up
After the course participants will be asked to share what they have learned with the rest of the staff in their schools. Further books and articles to deepen the topic and contacts with some other practitioners all over Europe and in the world will be suggested by the trainer. The methods shared and explored and the bibliography given will allow the participants to complete and improve their educational path.
Certificate
Each participant will get a course attendance certificate and on request we will complete the Europass Mobility Document.
Accommodation
We do not directly offer accommodation and subsistence and participants are responsible for organizing it by themselves.
Paperwork
We also provide all the support with paperwork you might need for your Erasmus+ project documentation such as mobility agreement and registration letter.
Fee: 560 €
Cancelation policy
Free cancellation up to 30 days before the start. After that, the reservation is not refundable. Changes in name and profile of the participant are possible any time before the start of the course (replacement participants from the same school/org are accepted at any time). In case the school/org doesn't find a replacement, we will still offer a place at any of our confirmed courses later in the year without any additional costs but we can not guarantee that every course session will be confirmed and the school/org will only be offered to choose from already confirmed course sessions. In case it will not be possible for the participant to attend the course or for us to organize the course due to extraordinary circumstances (classified as such by the European Commission) which present themselves in the period of less than 30 days before the start of the course and we don’t manage to find an alternative solution, we will keep 50 % of the payment and refund the remaining balance of 50% to the payer’s bank account.
Draft Programme - 35 didactic hours
Day 1
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Welcome and introduction
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Outline of the programme
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Cultural exchange
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Warm ups and icebreakers
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Course expectations and needs analysis, setting up a collaborative learning environment and creating an educational contract
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Introduction to sustainability in education
Day 2
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Introduction to Drama in Education
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Drama as a tool for learning, not performance
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Exploring environmental issues through drama
Day 3
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Movement and sensory activation exercises
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Connecting body and environment
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Environmental challenges
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Creating visual representations of issues
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Building sequences (cause–impact–future)
Day 4
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Improvisation and collaborative storytelling
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Narratives focused on environmental themes
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Transforming narratives into dramatic action
Day 5
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Ethical dilemmas in sustainability
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Exploring conflicting perspectives
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Stakeholder role-play scenarios
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Debating environmental decisions
Day 6
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Introduction to the Theatre of the Oppressed
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Forum Theatre principles
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Creating and replaying problem scenes
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Testing alternative solutions
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Whole group reflection
Day 7
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Design of personal plan for implementation of drama-based approaches to green education
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Presentation of outputs(personal implementation plans)
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Group reflection, feedback and discussion
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Dissemination strategy and European dimension
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Validation of the learning outcomes
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Evaluation of the course
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Closing session