Monthly Archives: January 2017

Ben’s Strategy Blog: It IS what you do (not just the way that you do it)

The post Ben’s Strategy Blog: It IS what you do (not just the way that you do it) appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

The Climate Change (Scotland) Act of 2009 places a duty on every public body to act:
1) in the way best calculated to contribute to delivery of the Act’s emissions reduction targets;
2) in the way best calculated to deliver any statutory adaptation programme; and
3) in a way that it considers most sustainable.

But what does that third duty really mean?

Most if not all public bodies, which include everything from local authorities, universities and NHS trusts to cultural NDPBs such as Creative Scotland and the National Galleries, are now reporting and working to reduce their direct carbon emissions and developing adaptation plans. But the third duty is less specific and, I think, less acted upon. Indeed the 2011 Guidance on putting the Public Bodies Duty into practice is much less detailed about what ‘Acting Sustainably’ means, partly I imagine because it will mean very different things to different organisations.

The first two Public Bodies Duties focus on the direct impacts and responses to climate change of the Bodies involved. They must consider their own carbon emissions and their own adaptation plans. But George Tarvit of the Sustainable Scotland Network, which works with Public Bodies to support them in their duties under the act, points out that the third duty provides an opportunity to look not at their operations, but at their functions: what they do, not how they do it. And to me, this is the more interesting area.

A core finding of my PhD research, working with His Majesty’s Theatre (HMT) in Aberdeen, is that whilst the theatre triggers hundreds of thousands of journeys each year by audience members, 70% of which are made by car, the theatre hadn’t previously been involved in transport planning in the region. Meanwhile Aberdeenshire Council, from where many of the journeys start, hadn’t previously talked to HMT about transport planning; nor had Stagecoach, which provides the relevant bus service. A similar situation recently came to light at a meeting convened by Transport Scotland of the Edinburgh Festivals and all the relevant transport providers. In both of these situations, the individual organisations were generally thinking about their own climate impacts and adaptation, but perhaps not how they were involved in, and could help influence, those of their partners and collaborators.

Working together

My project in Aberdeen brought together HMT, Aberdeenshire Council and Stagecoach to work together to overcome some of the barriers to travelling by bus which no single partner could control – things like the geography of Aberdeen or the coordination of bus services with show times. Whilst the project was only moderately successful in moving people from car to bus, it was acknowledged that these changes take time. What I hope will be its greatest success is that HMT will now see itself as an active partner in transport planning and the others will consider the theatre in their strategic planning. If so they will be able to have a much greater impact on theatregoers’ travel than if they all act individually.

There’s a link here, incidentally, with the Scottish Government’s ISM (individual/social/ material) model of behaviour change. Behaviour change usually focuses on the individual whose behaviour someone is hoping to change (the clue’s in the name). But the ISM model can (I’d say should, but that’s a different blog) be used to influence not individuals but those bodies, companies etc which control or dictate the ‘material’, whether that be the physical infrastructure or the laws, regulations and immaterial infrastructure that we operate within.

There is such a thing as society

The Public Bodies between them interact constantly with all of Scotland’s population. Their first two duties clearly focus on their own climate impacts and adaptation. When it comes to Acting Sustainably, I’d suggest it would be useful to think about how they can work together and with other partners to change the complex social system within which we all live (you might want to call this ‘society’) to help achieve those demanding national carbon reduction targets and adapt to the new world we are building.

Alongside the Act and the Guidance sits another document, the Low Carbon Scotland: Public Engagement Strategy. This was published at the tail end of 2010 and focuses on achieving the carbon reduction targets set by the Act. It stresses that:

Setting targets was just the start. Achieving them can only be done through a joint approach, with government; the private, public and third sectors; local communities and individuals all contributing. (p4)

Let’s consider the role of the cultural strategy

As I have argued before in these blogs, achieving these very demanding targets – which may well be increased in forthcoming legislation following the Paris Agreement – will require a massive change in the ways in which the people of Scotland live. In other words, a massive change in our culture in the widest sense. The Public Engagement Strategy only touches upon culture – in the narrower sense of what the Mexico City Declaration describes as ‘the arts and letters’ – very briefly. On p10 it states, ‘We will also consider the role of the cultural sector which has the capacity to educate, influence and stimulate debate.’ Whilst I would say this is rather a narrow vision of what culture is (there’s more to it than the cultural sector) and what it can do, it’s good to see it in there.

Of the Public Bodies, a number have a cultural focus: Creative Scotland, the National Galleries, Historic Environment Scotland, the National Museums, the National Records of Scotland and the National Library. The Scottish Government has seconded Creative Scotland’s very forward-thinking Director of Arts and Engagement Leonie Bell to write a Cultural Strategy. Wouldn’t it be interesting and exciting to see the Cultural Strategy take on the challenge of climate change directly and develop the role of culture in steering us towards a positive future? Wouldn’t it be interesting if the cultural NDPBs, as those bodies shaping our wider culture, were to take a lead and make building a low-carbon, equitable, post-climate changed society a part of their core purpose?

 

Image Credit: Ella Fitzgerald New York ca 1946. William P Gottlieb


Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

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UK Based Event to Inspire Urgent Action on Climate Change

The Season 2018 (working title)

A creative season celebrating the environment and inspiring action on climate change.

What is it?

From June 1st to December 1st 2018 a UK based, internationally connected ‘Season’ will unite the Creative and Cultural Community in a global chorus celebrating the environment and inspiring urgent action on climate change. It is programmed to coincide with the landmark COP24 global climate talks due to take place in November 2018.

The Season will celebrate the widest (and wildest!) range of creative responses to climate change and the environment across arts, design, broadcast, film, fashion, music and in museums, galleries, theatres, venues, cinemas, festivals, parks, schools, and on the streets.

What can you do?

You can choose to do any number of things, including:

  • Programme special events, commission a piece, organise debates, curate an exhibition, provide space for spontaneous performances, host open calls…We just ask that you put climate change and the environment centre stage in whatever creative way you can!
  •  Turn your organisation or practice inside out and tell audiences about what you’re doing to work more sustainably behind the scenes.

The most important thing is that you speak out. All together this season will champion change, showcase sustainable practice, and inspire urgent climate action. If you want to be inspired by what others have done, browse through case studies below or visit: http://www.juliesbicycle.com/the-season-2018-brief

Who can take part?

Everyone is welcome – individuals as well as organisations, large and small-scale, local and national, commercial to community.

JOIN IN

Take part between June 1st to December 1st 2018:

1. Tell us if you are interested in joining. Sign up here to register your interest in taking part: http://eepurl.com/ctcwp5

2. If you are an NPO, or planning to apply to the portfolio this February, it would be fantastic for you to include environmental sustainability and mention ‘The Season 2018’ in your submission, operationally or artistically. Even if you are not sure how you will engage, we encourage you to mention it via a simple phrase such as:

{Organisation name} is participating in Julie’s Bicycle, Artsadmin and Battersea Art Centre’s ‘Season 2018’ taking place between June – December 2018 celebrating the environment and inspiring action on climate change. (Please do adapt to suit you)

The Season Team

Judith Knight Artsadmin, Alison Tickell Julie’s Bicycle, David Jubb Battersea Arts Centre, Lucy Wood and Olivia Gray. If you have any queries get in touch: theseason2018@gmail.com

What do we want to achieve?

The Season originated during an industry discussion about the arts and climate change. When the provocation question arose ‘What if the UK cultural and creative sector were to come together in a collective moment focusing on climate, raising profile and awareness to such an extent that it could not be ignored?’ countless organisations in the room said they wanted to join in, and the idea took on its own momentum.

We want to:

• Put the issue of climate change higher up both personal and political agendas and rethink our relationship to the environment.

• Celebrate the vibrant green movement already taking place across the arts and creative industries, and inspire others to join.

• Make positive change feel achievable for all.

• Inspire creativity and unleash new design to construct a low-carbon world.

• Raise our voices to policymakers to show them that they have the support to make ambitious political decisions for a sustainable future.

• Create spaces for people to intellectually and emotionally engage themselves with climate change and what it means to build a sustainable, equitable future.

Next steps

A steering group currently comprised of Artsadmin, Julie’s Bicycle, Battersea Arts Centre and London Theatre Consortium is talking with organisations across the UK who want to take part. The conversation to date has been about creating regional networks by identifying a champion in each region, with organisations supporting each other to be part of this national season. Organisations and individuals are encouraged to take their own lead, but will be brought together by a central website and major social media campaign.

Early champions committed to the project represent a range of art forms, geographic spread and size to ensure diversity and inclusivity, including: Curzon Cinema Group, Manchester International Festival, Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, Free Word, Artsadmin.

Why does it matter?

Powered by human activity, climate change is wreaking havoc on average global temperatures, weather patterns, ocean levels, land and water ecosystems, disrupting natural equilibriums that have sustained life for over 800,000 years with potentially disastrous consequences on communities, habitats, and biodiversity across the globe. We need to rapidly control greenhouse gas emissions, rethink our land and water use, and completely reshape the way we use and employ resources and technologies.

The creative community has a vital role to play in meeting global sustainability challenges. Climate change is not just a problem of science or technology: many (although by no means all) of the solutions we need are well known and understood. But action to date has not been commensurate with our knowledge. That makes climate change, at its core, a cultural challenge. And at the heart of culture sit the arts and creativity: the stories we tell, how we tell them, and elusive matters of the heart – how we feel about things – but also how we design, craft, and build the world around us, demonstrating positive solutions and stimulating imagination.

Further information and inspiring case studies can be found here: http://www.juliesbicycle.com/the-season-2018-brief

And remember to sign up simply go to: http://eepurl.com/ctcwp5


Image courtesy Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2014, The Voice Project

Call for Papers: Postcards from the Anthropocene

This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

This opportunity comes from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

The post Call for Papers: Postcards from the Anthropocene appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.



If the emergence of the Anthropocene implies an epistemological shift, how might this transform the way we think about representation and, more specifically, its geopolitics? What kinds of representations carry significant material, metaphorical and methodological implications for this question, and can help us to ‘situate’ ourselves – if that is a still viable term – in our new conditions of groundlessness and scalelessness?

This symposium proposes to explore this through the motif of ‘Postcards from the Anthropocene’. The postcards that we imagine are documentary space-time snapshots, which convey complex assemblages of dynamic, non-linear, unpredictable, ad-hoc networks between interdependent and trans-scalar actants. They may raise questions about the ethical and political challenges of the dominant modes of technoscientific production in the Anthropocene, modes that are constituted through existing power relationships, subject positions, differences and inequalities. On the other hand, they might open up new streams of speculative and creative geopolitical imaginaries and forms of collective subjectivities that recalibrate existing value systems and indicate alternatives.

For this symposium we are seeking presentations that deploy different formats to reflect upon new kinds of reciprocity between geopolitics and representation through a found, described, designed or imagined postcard from the Anthropocene. We anticipate that this proliferation of anthropocenic representations will reveal and encourage transformations in practices of scrutinizing, strategizing, mediating and assembling, which are in turn animated in complex ways by operations that range from positioning, scaling, scripting, and weathering to fabricating, mining, reframing and recalibrating.

Two kinds of submissions are invited. Intending participants should submit either:

1) a 300-word abstract of a proposed conference presentation;

or 2) a single image together with a 300-word commentary on it. Invitations to speak at the symposium will be extended on the basis of the abstracts. The image/text submissions will be reviewed, and selected submissions presented in a parallel format in the symposium.

SUBMISSIONS

Proposals should be sent by email to postcardsfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com by Friday, February 24th 2017. Proposals should also include a short biographical note (maximum 150 words), together with the author’s institutional address and full contact details.

PUBLICATION

It is intended that an edited book will be developed from selected papers and images presented at the symposium.

CONTACT

postcardsfromtheanthropocene@gmail.com

MORE INFORMATION

www.postcardsfromtheanthropocene.com


Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

Powered by WPeMatico

Open Call: The Morning Boat Research and Production Residency

This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

Introduction

The morning boat is an international artist residency and laboratory for artistic research and action. Activities will focus on local industries in Jersey that are often referred to as the foundations of the island economy – Agriculture, finance and tourism – and their impact on people’s lives. The morning boat responds to an urgent need for a reflective and meaningful public discourse on complex critical issues and real life practices that are central to the island’s economy, social fabric and way of life. Artists will be invited to Jersey whose work is thought provoking, unforgettable, accessible to its audience and sensitive to the context in which it is presented. Projects will be developed specifically for the island of Jersey, responding to its unique character and narrative. Work will take place in public spaces and every-day working environments, in collaboration with the local community.

Thematic focus for 2017 and 2018: Agriculture and fisheries

Working together with farmers, fishermen, seasonal workers, politicians, chefs, retailers and consumers, artists are asked to investigate and respond to the locally grown, caught, gathered and reared food chain. They will explore the past, present and future implications of agricultural practices in Jersey. They will interact with and respond to existing infrastructures, farming practices, social structures, economic conditions and the products themselves.

Working with and for the local community

The morning boat aims to be an arts residency that takes place in the heart of the local community, from the research that is undertaken, through to the public presentation of the work. At the start of each residency artists will be paired with local experts and employees, to conduct first-hand research and develop an understanding towards industry practices, working environments, concerns and challenges. This experience provides the starting point and inspiration for continued research and the creation of new work that interacts with existing infrastructures and reimagines daily routines.

Conditions

Artists will receive an artist fee of between 1800 and 2000 pounds for a period of approximately four weeks in Jersey. Travel expenses will be reimbursed and accommodation will be provided. A small production budget will be available for materials and a network of partners are standing by to provide additional material and logistical support. The curatorial team will assist you throughout the residency, but a level of autonomy is desirable.

Application process

Please read the FULL OPEN CALL document for application details. Submission deadline: February 10th 2017.

Selection criteria

The morning boat is a multi-disciplinary programme. Among others, we welcome proposals from architects, film makers, theater practitioners, puppeteers, choreographers, robotic engineers, writers, sculptors, sound artists, musicians, textile designers, food artists, interdisciplinary collectives and undefinable practices. A specialism in public art practices (either as ‘interventions’ or as live programmed events), might be helpful, but is not essential.

More information is available on The Morning Boat website.

The post Open Call: The Morning Boat Research and Production Residency appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.


 


Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

Powered by WPeMatico

Shaping the Future of Festival Vision: 2025 at The Festival Suppliers Awards

This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

Meeting to shape the future of Festival Vision:2025 at The Festival Supplier Awards, Jan 26th 2017

The post Shaping the Future of Festival Vision: 2025 at The Festival Suppliers Awards appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.



 

Powerful Thinking and Julie’s Bicycle will hold the first Festival Vision:2025 meeting at The Festival Suppliers Awards on January 26th 2017 at The Hurlingham Club, London.

The Meeting will bring together 30 plus Vision Festivals, events that have pledged to work together for a more sustainable festival industry, to shape the future of the 10-year Vision, and take part in professional skills workshops for their onward journey to more sustainable events.

The day will include workshops on reducing fuel use and energy costs, waste management, sustainable travel, and accurate measuring and recording of impact data by Julie’s Bicycle, ZAP Concepts, and the sustainability teams from Shambala Festival, Festival Republic and Cambridge Folk Festival.

Alison Tickell, CEO of Julie’s Bicycle, will host a discussion on the future of the Vision as well as giving attendees a broader perspective of the opportunity in the arts and cultural sector for climate leadership.

Guest speakers will include Richard Gillies, former Sustainability Director for The Kingfisher Group and Marks & Spencer, and CEO of Festival On The Wall, who brings insight into influencing the supply chain change in a client facing business.

There will also be space to network and share experiences as well as explore opportunities for collaboration and influencing the supply chain through collective purchasing.

The event is free for Vision:2025 Festivals who will also receive a free place to The Festival Suppliers Awards (normally £280), which are generously hosting the event, including drinks reception, evening dinner and awards ceremony — where Powerful Thinking Steering group member Victoria Chapman, Sustainability Coordinator for Festival Republic, will present the Green Supplier Award on behalf of Powerful Thinking.

There are still a few places available for the event. All UK Music Festivals are welcome to reserve a ticket providing they have taken the Festival Vision: 2025 pledge to aim for a more sustainable event.

For more details contact bethan@powerful-thinking.org.uk


Creative Carbon Scotland is a partnership of arts organisations working to put culture at the heart of a sustainable Scotland. We believe cultural and creative organisations have a significant influencing power to help shape a sustainable Scotland for the 21st century.

In 2011 we worked with partners Festivals Edinburgh, the Federation of Scottish Threatre and Scottish Contemporary Art Network to support over thirty arts organisations to operate more sustainably.

We are now building on these achievements and working with over 70 cultural organisations across Scotland in various key areas including carbon management, behavioural change and advocacy for sustainable practice in the arts.

Our work with cultural organisations is the first step towards a wider change. Cultural organisations can influence public behaviour and attitudes about climate change through:

Changing their own behaviour;
Communicating with their audiences;
Engaging the public’s emotions, values and ideas.

Go to Creative Carbon Scotland

Powered by WPeMatico

Call for Papers: Cogent Arts & Humanities

Cogent Arts & Humanities welcomes submissions of research articles, critical and curatorial essays to a special collection on “Seeds of fierce engagement: Creative work at the intersection of contemporary art with ecology, climate change, and environmental activism”. Artwork, films, audio pieces, datasets and other multimedia files can be submitted as supplementary material.

Humans are having an unprecedented and devastating impact on the earth. Our way of living is causing disastrous climate change, unsustainable levels of toxicity of the water, air, and soil, and shocking extinction rates of organisms that form the fabric of life. We have made decisions that led us to this current situation and we can make decisions to change course. What we need is fresh vision and collective will. Artists, activists, political and cultural theorists, philosophers, curators, architects, designers and others are doing creative, unconventional, and ambitious work to expand our vision in ways that cultivate positive change.

Although we welcome a variety of approaches, authors and artists are invited to consider the following questions in preparing submissions:

  • What are the possibilities for and limitations of artistic and curatorial models that respond to climate change and ecological crisis, including the massive depopulation of non-human life on the planet known as the sixth extinction?
  • In this time of climate crisis, what role is contemporary art playing in advancing an understanding and valuation of biodiversity, in shaping the relationships between people and the non-human world or in advancing rights for non-human entities?
  • The Global North is largely responsible for the environmental problems at the heart of the climate change crisis. How are artists, activists and theorists working between the Global North and South to generate harmony and collaboration with the goal of environmental justice?
  • How are creative practitioners and cultural theorists constructively troubling definitions of “nature” or “sustainability”?
  • How are creative practitioners engaging ideas of energy futurism in relation to alternative structures of living and locality in production and consumption?
  • How are artists, media producers and other visual culture practitioners catalyzing positive changes toward solving ecological concerns (a “Great Transition”) and against the paralyzing narratives of disaster capitalism?
  • How does environmental activism function within the spheres of art / creative practice?
  • How is the art historical field framing work by artists and artist activists engaged with issues surrounding climate change and political ecology?
  • How does work in aesthetic fields join with activism and Indigenous philosophies to suggest a future of increased environmental justice?
  • How might art recover environmental understandings held by indigenous populations that are lost or nearly lost?
  • What role does art have in interrogating our assumptions about agricultural and industrial revolutions and about pre-modern peoples?
  • What historic creative or scholarly works inform contemporary art as it grapples with climate and ecological crises?

To submit your work, and to view our author guidelines, please visit the journal’s website: https://www.cogentoa.com/journal/arts-and-humanities

The deadline for submissions for this special collection is 15th August 2017.

During the submission process you will be able to confirm that your work is intended for the special collection on art and environment.

We look forward to working with you to bring exciting new scholarship to the widest possible audience.

Zoé Strecker, Senior Editor for Visual and Performing Arts, Transylvania University.

Call for Papers: Making and Unmaking the Environment

call for papers

Design and designers hold an ambiguous place in environmental discourse. They are alternatively being blamed for causing environmental problems, and hailed as possessing some of the competences that could help solving those problems. Despite this long-standing centrality of design to environmental discourse, and vice versa, these interrelations remain underexplored in design historical scholarship.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Simon Sadler – University of California, Davis

Jennifer Gabrys – Goldsmiths, University of London

Peder Anker – New York University & University of Oslo

Half a century ago, Leo Marx coined the phrase ‘the machine in the garden’ to describe a trope he identified as a prominent feature of 19th and early 20th century American literature, in which the pastoral ideal is seen as disturbed by the invasion of modern technology. Marx subsequently shifted perspective from this fascination with ‘the technological sublime’ to a deep concern for the environmental ramifications of technological progress. The question of how we as society deal with the allegorical machine in the proverbial garden is more relevant than ever.

Design is both making and unmaking the environment. Conversely, it might be argued that the environment is both making and unmaking design. This conference seeks to explore how these processes unfold, across timescapes and landscapes, thus opening a new agenda for the field of design history. Design thinkers from John Ruskin and William Morris to Richard Buckminster Fuller and Victor Papanek and beyond have grappled with the intricate and paradoxical relations between the natural environment and the designed environment. From Ghandi’s India to Castro’s Cuba, design policy has been enmeshed in concerns for its environmental ramifications. From prehistoric stone implements to contemporary nanotechnology, design has been key to shaping our environment.

In the anthropocene, we can no longer talk about design (and) culture without also talking about design (and) nature. The conference theme is intended to stimulate new directions in design historical discourses that take seriously design’s complex interrelations with nature and the environment. Not only does design feature prominently in the making and unmaking of the environment; studying the history of these processes will also help reveal how the idea of the environment itself has been articulated over time. Engaging with issues of environmental controversies and sustainable development can move design history beyond its conventional societal significance, and may thus enable more resilient futures.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

-  Design and consumption
-  Repairing, fixing, mending
-  Design in nature
-  Design of nature
-  Histories of sustainable design
-  Histories of unsustainable design
-  Environmentalist movements and design
-  Design movements and the environment
-  Durability and ephemerality
-  Impacts of materials and manufacturing
-  Imaging nature(s)
-  Greenwashing & greenwishing
-  Designs on the Anthropocene
-  Politics and policies of sustainable design
-  Design and alternative energy

-  Designing doom and gloom
-  Designing technofixes
- Appropriate technology
- Eco-modernism vs. green conservatism
- Eco-fiction/Eco-topias
- Deep ecology as design philosophy
- Traditional design for resilient futures
- Visual culture of the environmental crisis
- Waste and afterlives
- Silent springs and atomic winters
- Social sustainability
- Ecology and systems design
- Navigating spaceship earth
- Earthships and biodomes
- Biomimicry and generative design

Special anniversary strand: Making and Unmaking Design History

2017 marks the 40th anniversary of the first Design History Society Annual Conference, held in Brighton in 1977, as well as the 30th anniversary of the Journal of Design History. In celebration of this landmark, we invite proposals for papers addressing the historiography of design and the history of the discipline, with the aim to curate a special anniversary strand on the making and unmaking of design history.

We are inviting proposals for individual papers of 20 minutes, or proposals for thematically coherent panels of three papers. Panel proposals must include abstracts for all three papers in addition to a short description of the panel theme.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 20 January 2017

Please submit your proposals in the form of anonymous MS Word documents to:
dhs-2017@ifikk.uio.no


Convenor: Kjetil Fallan (University of Oslo)
Co-convenors: Ingrid Halland, Ida Kamilla Lie, Gabriele Oropallo (University of Oslo), and Denise Hagströmer (The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design)

The conference theme is informed by the RCN-funded research project Back to the Sustainable Future: Visions of Sustainability in the History of Design.

Event by Julie’s Bicycle: Energising Culture – March 9th, London.

Energising Culture
Thursday 9 March 2017, 11.00 – 17.30

Frobisher Room 1, Level 4, Barbican, London.

ORDER TICKETS HERE!

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

(Registration from 10.30, networking drinks reception and performance from 17.30)

Join Julie’s Bicycle for this first event in a series of conversations focusing on energy, ethics and finance for the cultural sector.

The ability to tap into the reserves of millions of years of solar energy concentrated in fossil fuels has driven and shaped our civilisation over the past few hundred years. But this relationship is also having profound impacts on our climate.

To keep climate change under 2°C, better yet 1.5°C, as mandated by the Paris Agreement, means we have to limit the amount of Carbon we put into the atmosphere – and that means limiting the amount of fossil fuels we burn and phasing out their use in the next couple of decades.

This urgency and pressure has already taken hold and is driving a shift in social, financial and cultural values. Experts in the financial markets are increasingly concerned about a ‘Carbon Bubble’ as ‘unburnable’ fossil fuels are at risk of losing value if we are going to meet our climate commitments.

In the meantime, investment funds committed to divesting from fossil fuels have doubled to over $5 trillion in the past year, global investment in renewable energy in 2015 increased by 5% reaching $285.9bn, and renewables supplied 10% of global electricity in 2015. Both the divestment movement and the call for a zero carbon transition to using only clean, renewable energy to power our societies have gained international backing and momentum.

What are the opportunities and risks for the arts and creative industries in the contexts of these growing movements? What is the role of the arts in this shift?
How can cultural organisations build their financial resilience to growing risks, while helping to build a more sustainable world?
What actions will have the greatest impact?

This event will be the first of several to bring together the cultural and creative sector with experts in the clean energy and ethical finance sector to discuss what new partnerships are needed to unlock this huge potential for new collaborations and approaches.

Be a part of the conversation – Reserve your free place now.


Venue Information and Access

The Barbican Centre is a vast building comprising many different venues. There is ramped access from the main entrance at Silk Street to the Level G Foyer where lifts service all levels. Our event space, Frobisher Room 1 is located on Level 4.

This event will be livestreamed and live subtitled. When booking please inform us if you require any additional access arrangements and we will be happy to accomodate these as far as possible.


Photo Shambala Festival 2012. Photo © Andrew Whitton.

This event is part of a wider programme of Julie’s Bicycle events supported by funding through Arts Council England and is held in association with our partners Good Energy and Innovate UK.

In Residence at the Former Apartment of Artist/Activist Friedensreich Hundertwasser

This post comes from the Artists and Climate Change Blog

Author: Yasmine Ostendorf 

screen-shot-2017-01-09-at-17-20-25

Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) was a rather eccentric Austrian artist, known for his colourful paintings and Gaudi-esque architecture. His work can be found all over the world, brightening up streets from Vienna to Osaka. He was unconventional and rebellious and stated  that “the straight line leads to the downfall of humanity.” He applied this rule to both his paintings as well as buildings, resulting in uneven floors and sometimes dangerously low ceilings. But the straight line wasn’t his only worry: he was an environmental activist concerned about our human relation to nature and addressing issues such as the quality of the air (“we are suffocating in our cities from poison and a lack of oxygen”) and dangers of nuclear power plants, through his art practice.

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Use Public Transport – Save the City (1989), Hundertwasser

This month I’m staying in Hundertwasser’s original former apartment in Vienna, as Curator-in-Residence of Kunst Haus Wien. The apartment, located on top of the museum, is a true health and safety hazard (even the floors aren’t straight) but allows for a great insight into his work and philosophies. Hundertwasser believed that art has to be the bridge between the creativity of nature and creativity of man, and that art has to include nature and its laws. For Hundertwasser it means, amongst other things, that one should be able to hang out the window and change the exterior of a building as far as the arm can reach (I haven’t tried this yet) but it also means one should be surrounded by plenty of trees. From the house one should be able to see the trees from different perspectives. This is certainly the case in his own home; not only is there a rooftop garden, but the apartment is full of windows, large and small, from which you can peek outside, or to the other rooms. Hundertwasser stated the trees are also tenants of the apartment, and that their contribution towards the rent is actually much more valuable than any currency humans use. His ten-point manifesto celebrates the tree tenants, bringing oxygen and “the needed moisture to the city.”

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Hundertwasser’s healing suggestion for a residential building, 1971/72 – Application of Window right and Tree duty

Already in 1975, Hundertwasser was exploring the idea of a “humus toilet,” a do-it-yourself composting toilet that doesn’t use electricity, water, or chemicals. He also developed a water purification system for urine and waste water using aquatic plants such as cypress grass and water hyacinth. Though none of these innovations are installed in his apartment on top of the museum (unfortunately?), what you do notice is how all the organic forms and shapes in his home – even the uneven floors – create a very relaxed, warm and welcoming atmosphere, like you are in a boat. Maybe it wasn’t all so crazy to think that “being forced to walk on flat asphalt and concrete floors […] estranged from man’s age-old relationship and contact to earth, a crucial part of man withers and dies.” According to Hundertwasser, living in these “designers’ offices” has “catastrophic consequences for the soul, the equilibrium, the well-being and health of man.”

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Hundertwasser’s water purification system

Being in residence in his house allows me to learn more about this curious persona and see what his legacy means to contemporary artists in Vienna. To what extent are these 70s and 80s rhetorics and aesthetics still relevant? This month, in collaboration with curator Jade Niklai, I will be interviewing pioneering artists, architects, designers, thinkers, curators and other creative professionals focused on the key environmental issues of our time: flooding, drought, ecocide, extinction of species, loss of biodiversity, waste, ocean acidification, climate change, energy transition, resource use; and the notion of the Anthropocene. The aim of the research is to map existing efforts by Austria’s cultural communities, facilitate their amplification abroad and develop an ambitious exhibition on the topic.

My first visit was to Brazilian artist Kadija de Paula, in residence at art space M21 in Vienna. Dinner on Saturday with the artist meant eating what she and her partner Chico found during a local dumpster-diving expedition. They found a lot of bananas which meant we ate both banana compote as well as a banana peel stew. It was surprisingly delicious! During their month-long residency they take up the challenge to live and work with found resources, food and materials, avoiding the use of resources that should not have been created or that will soon be depleted. They will research habits and processes of disposal, recycling and social assistance in Vienna, and collect found objects in the house (which was already getting a bit full after one week in town!). But sharing the food together, surrounded by beautiful objects, you could not not think about our ridiculous obsession with buying and consuming. It was probably my most sustainable meal ever and I think Hundertwasser would have been proud.

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Banana peel stew, photo by Yasmine Ostendorf

Diving into the life and work of Hundertwasser shows that artists working with environmental issues is nothing new, nothing “hip” and unfortunately it hasn’t become less urgent. Hundertwasser was a visionary artist expressing his concerns about nature almost 50 years ago and sadly we are still dependent on fossil fuels, addicted to consuming and creating unsustainable amounts of waste. This month I hope to find many more inspiring examples by artists and hopefully will be eating more banana peels.


For the whole of January Yasmine Ostendorf is in residence at Kunst Haus Wien. The research forms the foundation for an exhibition in late 2017, to be presented in the framework of The Garage Gallery’s ongoing programme on the topic. Follow Yasmine Ostendorf in residence at Kunst Haus Wien via her Instagram take-over.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

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Reimagining the Ruins of Scenography

This post comes from Ecoscenography

Happy 2017! I begin my first post for the year with an edited excerpt and introduction to my latest paper, ‘Reimagining the Ruins of Scenography’ (published in ASAP/Journal in 2016). The paper explores the role of the scenographer in seeking out the artistic potential of unconventional materials and discarded objects in and beyond the theatre. The full article can be downloaded here.

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Opening night at the theatre and the stage is awash with colour and spectacle, an awe-inspiring display of set and costume extravagance. Fast-forward eighteen months: this wondrous design has transformed itself into a mountainous ruin, oozing from a gluttonous skip deep in the bowels of the building. These contemporary “theatre ruins’” begin relatively harmlessly, hidden behind dusty staircases and at the back of storage units, crowding corridors and littering dressing rooms. But sooner or later, what doesn’t make it into the recycle bin is cast off to the land of “away,” where skips overflow into leaching landfills, and, inextricably, into our fragile ecosystems. It is here that we encounter the unsettling reality that our arts practices have consequences.

Image result for overflowing skipThe ephemeral and highly specific nature of theatrical work means that most set and costume designs are only valued for the duration of the performance season (often a matter of days or weeks) before they are discarded.  Designers are rarely contracted to consider the impact of their designs after opening night, or to build post-production possibilities into their creative processes. But does it need to be this way? Can the image of the skip as the final resting place of most theatrical designs instead be revised to find another endpoint where creativity and innovation can once again flourish? How might scenographers embrace cyclic rather than linear production processes to rethink the potential of art’s refuse?

Reimagining the Ruins of Scenography explores the role of the scenographer in seeking out the artistic potential of unconventional materials and discarded objects in and beyond the theatre. Here, extending the use of materials is not approached out of austerity but fuelled by a desire for invention and ingenuity—a way of rethinking design in response to ecological values. Moving beyond the transient nature of performance design, I ask whether post-production considerations can become an integral component of the design concept and thereby extend the legacy of the project. I consider how the temporarility of scenic design can be re-examined so that the “end-point” of production is no longer seen as waste, but becomes an opportunity (intellectual as well as material) for continuing the creative process itself.

Central to the investigation is a reconsideration of notions of value in and beyond the theatre. Instead of concentrating on waste reduction through the reuse of objects, the focus of this research is to examine how recycled materials and found objects can generate value and make a contribution beyond the restricted theatrical economy of production. For example, a set designer might seek out the untapped creative possibilities of readily available resources (such as stock items, found objects, and discarded materials), or materials that might ordinarily be rubbished or otherwise devalued, as a means of creating something of beauty and resonance that might also extend beyond the performance event.

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STRUNG performance (This Is Not Rubbish) using reclaimed salami netting, Central School of Speech and Drama, 2014  (London)

Reimagining the Ruins of Scenography begins by introducing the concept of ecoscenography, a practice I define as the integration of ecological thinking into all stages of scenographic production and aesthetics.  Rethinking conventional production processes, I examine contemporary thinking about material culture and agency through the scenographer’s practice of “making.” Using a practice-based research project—This Is Not Rubbish, which began in December 2012 and unfolded in four phases over a span of two years—I explore the journey of material rescued from the landfill and its capacity to create immersive performance spaces and wearable artefacts.

This Is Not Rubbish considers how post-production procedures may be considered an integral part of the scenographic event and its broader artistic project.  The project situates itself in the field of expanded scenography, where scenographic practices are considered outside of “conventional roles and sites of theatre”  to engage with broader issues of social and environmental advocacy. While This Is Not Rubbish was conducted primarily outside of traditional contexts of theatre making (to enable greater flexibility to explore novel ideas and approaches), the essay also considers potential applications of the project to conventional theatre design practices as well.


The post, Reimagining the Ruins of Scenography, appeared first on Ecoscenography.

Ecoscenography.com has been instigated by designer Tanja Beer – a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, Australia, investigating the application of ecological design principles to theatre.

Tanja Beer is a researcher and practitioner in ecological design for performance and the creator of The Living Stage – an ecoscenographic work that combines stage design, permaculture and community engagement to create recyclable, biodegradable and edible performance spaces. Tanja has more than 15 years professional experience, including creating over 50 designs for a variety of theatre companies and festivals in Australia (Sydney Opera House, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Queensland Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Arts Centre) and overseas (including projects in Vienna, London, Cardiff and Tokyo).

Since 2011, Tanja has been investigating sustainable practices in the theatre. International projects have included a 2011 Asialink Residency (Australia Council for the Arts) with the Tokyo Institute of Technology and a residency with the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London) funded by a Norman Macgeorge Scholarship from the University of Melbourne. In 2013, Tanja worked as “activist-in-residence” at Julie’s Bicycle (London), and featured her work at the 2013 World Stage Design Congress (Cardiff)

Tanja has a Masters in Stage Design (KUG, Austria), a Graduate Diploma in Performance Making (VCA, Australia) and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne where she also teaches subjects in Design Research, Scenography and Climate Change. A passionate teacher and facilitator, Tanja has been invited as a guest lecturer and speaker at performing arts schools and events in Australia, Canada, the USA and UK. Her design work has been featured in The Age and The Guardian and can be viewed at www.tanjabeer.com

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