Climate change education (CCE): a case study of the BAFTA albert Education Partnership’s Applied Skills for a Sustainable Media Industry module

This article explores the integration of sustainability skills within a screen industry module through the critical lens of climate change education. Applied Skills for a Sustainable Media Industry was designed for UK higher education by a university–industry collaboration with BAFTA albert. This initiative started with a handful of higher education institutions and representatives from education bodies, but it now includes more than 50 partner institutions and organisations. This case study focuses on the module developed by the university–industry collaboration. The Applied Skills course, which teaches both production-based and content-focused curricula, is explored through its various continuities and alterations in the context of the wider literature on climate change education. While the name may sound deceptively simple – in being teaching about climate change – climate change education is a complex and multifaceted concept which spans international education policies, disciplines, interpretations and actualisations. In recent years, focus has been placed on understanding climate change as a complex social issue as well as a scientific one. This has meant a shift away from a science-only approach towards more systems-level thinking that cannot escape sociopolitics. Thus, there is an imperative within climate change education to teach both ‘climate’ and ‘change’. In response, this article explores how the offerings from Applied Skills can be analysed with reference to the wider scholarship on climate change education, with a particular focus on the scientific (climate) and social (change) themes. The research concludes with an overall reflection on the BAFTA albert Education Partnership in the context of climate change education, the wider university landscape, and university–industry collaborations.