Mushroom Worlds: Cultivating Interdisciplinary Eco-art Education

The SUSHUM Project, under the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (IRCCS), rolled out its sub-project ‘Mushroom as Mediator: Fostering Interdisciplinary Co-habitat Art’ from January to May 2026. Drawing on environmental humanities and more-than-human studies, the initiative positioned fungi as active mediators of interspecies relationships and material transformation, addressing a gap in Hong Kong's urban eco-art landscape. 

From January to March 2026, the project team collaborated with the School of Everyday Life to pilot a five-session eco-art curriculum, ‘Mushroom World and Human Life’, at a local primary school, reaching around 20 students. The sessions combined in-class art-making with a field visit and a hands-on workshop at a local mushroom farm, supported by data collection through lesson observation and learning journals. In April 2026, the project hosted a public sharing session for local environmental educators on the theme ‘Mushroom and Human Life’, featuring Dr Tang Ming-chak Alvin, a fungi scholar from the School of Life Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He contributed to the curriculum development during the initial phase and shared his expertise at the public session, grounding the curriculum in rigorous biological knowledge. 

The programme culminated in early May 2026 with the weekend residency ‘Fantastic Fungi’ at Urban Mushroom Farm, in collaboration with Art on Heart HK (放心藝術). Around 15 local artists and eco-educators joined the residency, while some 20 families with children took part in the subsequent Family Open Day, engaging in co-created mushroom-themed eco-art activities developed on site. By bridging primary schools, university researchers, NGOs, and families through what the team describes as ‘mycelial pedagogy’, the project established a replicable model of sustainable art education and reinforced EdUHK's role in fostering ecological literacy. 

A lesson from the eco-art curriculum ‘Mushroom World and Human Life’ introducing participants to fungal ecologies

Group photo of participants at the ‘Fantastic Fungi’ weekend residency

Promotional poster for the weekend residency ‘Fantastic Fungi’ at the Urban Mushroom Farm