(Ma)kin(g) Sympoietic More-than-Human Educational Futures

This chapter shares stories of creative ruptions, to think and do place-based education differently. We think-with Haraway’s (2016, Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press) idea of sympoiesis as collective making, to situate learners as kin in a mesh of relations with more-than-human worlds. Making-with draws on wisdoms of the past and experiences of the present, to shape educational possibilities for the future. To explore sympoietic thinking within educational assemblages we share two lively elemental encounters of collaborative research creations that involve lake, garden, children, teachers, student teachers and researchers. In these examples we ground the idea of making-with in practical, everyday and lifelong ways within which educators can nurture kinship. Collective making is not straightforward. Sympoietic practices foster creative, inclusive, non-colonising pedagogies, which can be challenging to put into practice, yet position creativity as a powerful and provocative agent of positive change.