Dr Caroline Wilson, works as a Curriculum Change Lead within Curriculum 2025, and was interviewed by Patryk Zabinski and Alexandra Negoita, Curriculum 2025 interns about her professional experience linked to sustainability. Caroline is an experienced journalist and lecturer in communication, with a PhD in communicating about sustainability. One of her current goals is to help others embed sustainability into all courses offered by the university group.
Communication is one such area. Caroline emphasised the importance of accurate communication about sustainability in all realms of the field and exemplified the strategic element of communicating about this topic. Professionals who are involved in communication strategy often work in senior level within organisations, so they need to know how to emphasise the way in which sustainability can be an advantage for businesses and promote them to stakeholders. For example, a company taking positive action and communicating it wisely, can raise the profile of the business. As such, training in the sustainability agenda is going to be a key element in communication for businesses. This way communicators can be enablers of change when it comes to the sustainability agenda. Moreover, attention was drawn to how communicators must be knowledgeable enough, so they lead by example. A notable example is Greta Thunberg, who famously sailed across the globe instead of travelling by plane to attend the Paris climate summit, COP 24.
Collaboration was also highlighted as a key enabler for change. “Without a united agreement, there will be no action” Caroline continued, “A solution created by one group and implemented on another will simply not work. Individuals and societies must come up with solutions to tackle current climate issues that are a good cultural fit. For these to be achieved, parties need to agree on targets and action”. Caroline cited several weak attempts to reduce car usage in Western societies by use of persuasion only, when users needed infrastructure changes to make cycling safer.
On a more global level, one of the big cultural challenges is to acknowledge that while some societies focus on economic growth, others place greater value on land conservation and preserving cultural heritage; and there needs to be respect for these different perspectives. Caroline feels strongly that students equipped with the capabilities to analyse complex challenges, deal with uncertainty and to respect the needs, perspectives and actions of others will enable our graduates to contribute to the well-being of their communities and the planet.
With this in mind, rather than telling others what to do, Caroline recommended that we each learn more about what part we can play in becoming enablers of sustainability and choose an activity to fit our lives.
