Teaching on a damaged planet: Learning lessons from lockdown

During the UK COVID-19 lockdowns (2020–21), new approaches to online teaching and learning were developed in all fields of higher education. As we move, we must hope, out of the most critical phases of the pandemic, the question arises: what should be retained of this work? In some quarters, anxiety has been voiced that important potential lessons are being jettisoned in favour of a return to ‘business as usual’. Taking the first WoW Special Issue’s focus on experiments in teaching and learning in visual culture as my focus, and in particular those detailed in Rebecca Bell’s article ‘Untrammelled ways: Reflecting on the written text, nourishment and care in online teaching’, this article will argue that to fully learn from the pedagogical experiments undertaken during the UK lockdowns and to protect safe and caring spaces for critical thinking, the pandemic needs to be understood as linked to environmental and climate emergency.