Biophilia and Sustainable Museum Education Practices

Abstract

Museums offer significant learning experiences that contribute to sustainable societies and lifelong learning. However, museum education has historically been a field in flux, and a constant revitalization is needed. This paper examines Biophilia, created by artist and musician Björk, as a case-study to illustrate the potential of its pedagogical approach to affect sustainable museum learning practices. Biophilia inspires children to learn about sound, science, and nature through technology; it is an app-album that manifested itself in a museum context both as a concert venue and a multi-disciplinary experimental educational platform – ideal for museum learning. While the project was formally implemented in Iceland through high levels of inter-institutional collaboration, its theoretical relationship to museum education and critical pedagogy of place was overlooked. Using the Biophilia’s analogy of an ‘infectious virus’ and a futurist’s framework of creativity and play, I ask: what can the field of museum education learn from Biophilia?