Becoming Worlds: One or many times

Toward a planetary literacy of multiple timescapes

How we conceive time shapes our understanding of planetary challenges. Western education operates in the "mean time" of European modernity—a linear progression underpinning value prescriptions. This fails to account for plural times coexisting on our planet. Indigenous timescapes rupture linear models, returning us to cycles, ancestral connections, and responsibilities beyond human lifetimes. Engaging diverse temporal frameworks shows how education might include multiple ways of knowing.

To navigate our planetary challenges, we need educational frameworks that embrace temporal plurality rather than imposing a single timeline. This means cultivating an ethics that "respects vulnerability, but re-works it affirmatively, while actively constructing social infrastructures of generosity and hope" (Rosi Braidotti). It means supporting ecological reparation within colonised landscapes through appreciation for the slow, transformative forces that regenerate the poly-temporal diversities of life.

Drawing from earlier work with Larissa Pschetz in the 2013 "Time of the Clock and Time of the Encounter" project, we might consider how the rhythms of communities and ecosystems possess temporalities far more complex and differentiated than standardised clock time. Like the Time Bots (see this video) that revealed children's unique temporal patterns when set in motion together, our planetary entanglements reveal a cacophony of diverse timescales—geological, ecological, cultural, and technological—all moving simultaneously according to their own cadences. And it means recognising ourselves as creators of realities whose actions echo through and transform multiple timescales. Time is not simply a neutral backdrop against which education occurs—it is a fundamental material of how we make sense of our entangled existence on this planet, and it deserves our critical attention as we work toward more just and regenerative futures.

TimeBots Workshop: Holmewood School London