ABSTRACT
Bricolage is about making do with what is at hand (as opposed to procuring the material and resources which seem to be needed to perform a certain task). Sustainability, in a nutshell, is about using only what is really needed now to leave enough for further generations to continue. With this in mind, we explore the role of bricolage in sustainability, and in particular in teaching sustainability. The main departure from existing work on sustainability is that using fewer resources by reusing existing ones is not just an end in itself but can actually make us more creative (necessity is the mother of invention, after all). We illustrate creative applications of this thinking from product innovation and creativity research, as analogies to innovating your teaching methods ‘on a shoestring’ and stimulating new ideas on how to teach sustainability creatively and with the most modest of budgets.
