Our exhibition opens 25-26th September 2025.

Charteris Land Foyer and First Floor Stairwell, Moray House School of Education and Sport, Edinburgh, EH8 8AQ

During the Professional Graduate Diploma of Primary Education (PGDE) Programme, our students explore and experience inter-and-trans-disciplinary practices through STEAM. STEAM as an acronym is commonly understood as SCIENCES, TECHNOLOGIES, ENGINEERING, ARTS and MATHEMATICS. But the letters S. T. E. A. M. also refer to SENSING, TIME, EMBODIMENT, paying ATTENTION and MOVEMENT. When STEAM is enacted in embodied and explorative ways, rather than as an accumulation of disciplines, multiple of ways of being, knowing and relating to each other and the world are made possible. Through this process we begin to see and do differently. We can ask new questions.   

Conceived as a response to Jane Wheeler’s painting “Tell me you’ll come home”, the exhibition unfolds as a collective performance, weaving together a panel discussion with artistic interventions occupying the formal spaces of Moray House School of Education and Sport. Drawing on the aesthetic character of the garden, multi-sensory modalities integrate with a range of disciplinary frameworks across Sciences, Technologies, Mathematics and the Arts (STEAM), inviting viewers into a playful-imaginative-making space, posing a question to the aims and purposes of education: beyond its function to serve pre-established expectations, in what ways can we re-imagine our spaces, and our work as educators, interrupting dominant discourses and re-engaging with what’s meaningful in our lives? And what forms of research and teaching practices can sustain us in this endeavor? The aim is to bring diverse communities in conversation; to inspire thinking about life and mortality, order and power, and for education to engage with the ways in which we come to be with one another in the world.

The garden painting is the beginning of an itinerary through the space, inviting the viewers to respond and participate in material and symbolic exchanges with the artworks. As you move through the building and up the stairs to the half-landing, you will encounter a collection of  paintings and poetry which have been curated to give an insight into the exploratory ways in which education can attend to the bigger questions that challenge us as humans on a shared Earth. The diverse range of images and words captures the experiences of our students, including their encounters with their own educational experience. The soil samples speak of geographical diversity but also of the students’ homes and own life experiences, surfacing and seeping through layers at each brush stroke. 

The soil paintings featured in the stairwell were crafted by student teachers on our PGDE Primary Education programme. They are accompanied by panels and poems that resonate with the poems. You can listen to some of the poems through QR codes.

There is often a disconnect between soil, the passages and intentions of people and other creatures; only when it is worked through at the touch, soil reveals its living properties. Each student brought a sample of soil from their own locality; their variety spoke of geographical diversity, but also of the students’ homes, and own life experiences, surfacing and seeping through layers at each brushstroke.

Watch a documentary film on our STEAM Week here.