Creative Glasgow partners with University of Glasgow and University of Strathclyde

About the Project

‘Sustainable Designs for Living and Learning’ is a pioneer project that aims to support the development of new integrated approaches to learning for sustainability through languages and arts. The project starts from a critical observation: in our multilingual world, we struggle to bring together world-views, connect language resources and develop reparative solutions to human-environment systems.

The project, launched in May 2025, focuses on the role of multilingualism and principles of permaculture in shaping and supporting human-non-human ecologies. The project team is collaborating with a wide range of participants and co-researchers (including children, artists, teachers, researchers, and educators) to develop new creative learning approaches, resources, and professional development opportunities for teachers. The project aims to ensure that young learners can fully contribute to sustainability within their communities.

This project builds on previous collaborations and pilot initiatives (e.g.: Multilingualism through Art). These initiatives have laid the foundations of a series of innovative arts-based activities in language learning which continue to support teachers across Scotland to meet the language needs of all multilingual learners. ‘Sustainable Designs for Living and Learning’ (SDLL) will draw on this expertise and it will transform relationships between languages, the arts, and the environment by exploring in depth the potential for transforming schools through permaculture designs. You can see some of the research team’s previous work here.

The Project Team

The project is a 3-year collaboration funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/Z507404/1). It brings together a major partnership including University of Glasgow, University of Strathclyde and SCILT (Scotland’s National Centre for Languages) to explore innovative, arts-based approaches to language learning and learning for sustainability. The core team of researchers are working closely with three schools in Year 1-3 and will bring on board ten further schools starting within Year 2. The team includes three artists selected for this project: Hamshya Rajkumar, Florence Logan and Louise McVey (more details below).

As part of the interdisciplinary team, other key collaborators include Bilingualism Matters and ScotDec.

Creative Glasgow’s Role

Creative Glasgow partnered with University of Glasgow to support the opportunity promotion and selection of artists. We will continue to collaborate, disseminating the project learning and outcomes, as the project develops.

Project Lead Dr Lavinia Hirsu, Senior Lecturer in the School of Education (University of Glasgow), writes:

“The project aims to transform and enrich multilingual spaces in Scottish primary schools while building on design principles of permaculture. This work requires creativity, commitment to change, and an ongoing learning approach as the entire project team contributes to the project development.

Creative Glasgow has provided critical support in helping the research team identify artists whose knowledge, artistic versatility and collaborative practice will help push the boundaries of our work. We are very excited to be working at the confluence of arts, nature and social designs to create sustainable communities where young learners reconnect the resources from their natural and human worlds.”

MEET THE ARTISTS

We are delighted to announce the selection of three Glasgow-based artists who will contribute creatively to Sustainable Designs for Living and Learning: Hamshya Rajkumar, Florence Logan and Louise McVey. These artists will work over the next three years to develop permaculture designs and a living exhibition reflecting the project’s goals.

Creative Glasgow’s team were enthralled by the quality and diversity of artistic practice illuminated by this opportunity, and the sheer range of practitioners working at the lively intersections between arts practice, language learning, and environmental sustainability. The selected artists will make a critical contribution, supporting teachers to meet the needs of multilingual language learners, and transforming schools’ relationships to their communities through embedding permaculture principles. The project also offers a unique creative and professional development opportunity for these artists, supporting new forms of collaboration and co-production with young learners, providing training in permaculture design, and a major exhibition and public presentation opportunity.

Creative Glasgow are thrilled to have contributed to this critical phase of the project, and look forward to our ongoing collaboration, sharing the learning and creative outcomes as it develops.

Read on below for introductions to each of the three artists.

Hamshya Rajkumar

Hamshya is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, sculpture, ecology and community seed. By situating the body outside the constraints of binary structures, they explore our human place in a world where ‘Nature’ is separate, dominated and objectified.

 Combining a site-specific movement and visual arts practice; currently they focus on highly ‘disturbed’ places: ranging from post-industrial landscapes to gardens. For the past 5 years, Hamshya has been exploring the former industrial steelworks Ravenscraig site in Scotland.

Hamshya currently works as a Seed Librarian at the Glasgow Seed Library working with wild and cultivated seed.  As a member of Hewin, Rizzle & Baise, their multi-species design was longlisted for the Davidson Prize in 2024. In addition, with the tine collective, they recently exhibited in ‘A Fragile Correspondence’ at the Scotland + Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023 and the Dundee V&A in 2024-2025.

Formerly trained as a Bharatnatyam dancer and after failing their architecture degree, Hamshya pursued a BA(Hons) in Sculpture & Environmental Art at The Glasgow School of Art and participated in the Land Art of the American West program in 2016 at the University of New Mexico. They have recently completed their MSc in Wildlife Biology & Conservation at Edinburgh Napier University.

Image © Hamshya Rajkumar

Florence Logan

Florence is a Glasgow-based Scottish-French performance-maker, facilitator and play worker, working with children and young people from ages 0-18. 

As a performance-maker, she makes experimental, accessible and collaborative forms of storytelling. By playing with literal translation and engaging in site-specific processes, she explores and encourages the fantastical, absurd, poetic and silly reimaginings of everyday things. 

Primarily working with physical theatre, movement and oral storytelling, recurring themes in her work include care and revolt (as in ‘to disgust’, ’to be disgusting’ and ‘to rebel against’). She makes work for adult and for/with young audiences (most often as one half of lovebug + worm).

Florence graduated from Contemporary Performance Practice (CPP) at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2024. She was awarded the Drama in Education Prize as well as a Take Me Somewhere/Tramway graduate residency, and has recently contributed as a lead artist to 21Common’s Paul Hamlyn Foundation-funded Disruptive Pedagogy project. 

1st Image © Photographer, Jassy Earl

2nd Image © Florence Logan

Louise McVey

Louise is a sculptural ceramic artist, Street artist and musician based in Glasgow. Her current practice includes public art, street art, and designing large scale mixed media work and ‘Living Art work’ with a particular focus on supporting plant life, improving urban spaces and empowering communities.

In 2021 Louise worked closely with University of Glasgow’s biodiversity team on enhancing their wildlife garden, making sculptural work to enhance the space and support plant life. She also recently worked with a team in France and Luxembourg for Esch City of Culture 2022. There she created sculptural ceramics for a travelling garden, which toured through parts of France and Luxembourg near the border, bringing music, dance and gardens together.

In 2022 Louise completed a public art commission for Glasgow Canals to celebrate the opening of the Stockingfield Bridge. She created a 4 metre high flower burst ‘The Voice’ to celebrate the rejoining of 3 communities, with a cairn like base embedded with plants  between reclaimed stone below the sculpture.

1st Image: Louise McVey portrait, © Photographer John Devlin

2nd Image: ‘Living Bench’, New Green Bridge, Cross Tay Link Road, Perth and Kinross Council, © Photographer, Nichol Wheatley

More Information

• Building a path to sustainability through languages and art
• £1.3 million to build a path to sustainability through languages and art
• Cox, S., Phipps, A. and Hirsu, L. (2022) Language learning for refugee women in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic: restorative pedagogies for integrating to place– Perspectives from Scotland. Frontiers in Communication, 7, 982813. (doi:3389/fcomm.2022.982813)
• Permaculture Association: https://www.permaculture.org.uk/