Monthly Archives: June 2024

Year 2 done!

June 27, 2024Creative Green Tools, news

As we mark the two-year milestone since the launch of the Creative Green Tools Canada program, we are happy to share that nearly 900 users have embraced the Tools platform across Canada. These diverse entities, spanning organizations of all sizes, as well as individual artists, have embarked on a crucial journey towards quantifying their emissions and taking climate action.

The CG Tools have been widely adopted by organizations across provinces and territories within Canada.

It is amazing to observe the diverse array of individuals and organizations within the arts and culture sector using the Tools. Among the Footprints documented thus far we have:

Thanks to the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, this year we’re diving into research aimed at enhancing user experience and inclusivity, including:

Tailored tools for the publishing industry.
Expanded functionality for rural and remote users.
Enhanced transportation options for traveling artists & cultural workers.
Integration of Indigenous knowledge through language.

By adding your data, you contribute to the cultural community’s collective action on climate change.

Thank you for your support!

Visit our website to explore how CG Tools Canada can be part of your creative endeavors!

Have a question? Send us a message at contact@sustainablepractice.org

Fourth course out!

June 27, 2024Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, newsClimate Change

Introducing: At Least This Will Make a Funny Show by Kristina Wong

At Least This Will Make a Funny Show guides you through attempting to make dramatic social change in the world without giving into existing systems of charity, failing, and then making an original (maybe award winning) solo performance piece about how you tried.

This course is not to diminish the seriousness of the problems that overwhelm our world, but recognizes that the ability to persevere in this fight will require creativity and a lot of coping strategies, which include humor.

Includes a bonus module on how to deal with being cancelled, trolled, or blacklisted because your best attempt at making social change will always piss off someone.

How are you attempting to make social change?

Ready to start?

Join the Department community & enroll for free!

For more information, contact Kimberly Skye Richards, librarian for the Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, at kim@sustainablepractice.org

Spread out the word! Share with your team & network.

Third free course is out!

June 27, 2024Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, news

Introducing: Unsustainable Utopias by Meghan Moe Beitiks

Unsustainable Utopias is an exploration of the false promise of utopias and the human tendency to seek them out, build them up, and destroy them.

We will review failed utopias across time and cultures and examine the events that led to their various transitions into cults, militias, closed communities, tragedies or just discontinued projects.

This course is an exercise in learning from humanity’s most ambitious (and terrifying) mistakes– while remembering that we ourselves are human.

The course is a discussion of alternatives to utopias, based on research in community development and organizing, as well as the structures of inequity that inevitably inform even the most ambitious projects.

Together we will make a broken utopia based on the world’s worst mistakes and consider antidotes for the worst social poisons.

What utopias have you imagined?

Ready to start?

Join the Department community & enroll for free!

For more information, contact Kimberly Skye Richards, librarian for the Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, at kim@sustainablepractice.org

Spread out the word! Share with your team & network.

Second course out!

June 27, 2024Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, news

Introducing Crip Glam: Spells for Everyday Disability Activism by Julia Havard

Crip Glam highlights the aesthetic interventions that queer and trans disabled people use to undo ableism, cissexism and heterosexism, and casts spells for crip femme futures, a distinctly femme and disabled approach to aesthetics and activism.

Beyond survival, what are the practices and tools that are used by those who are multiply-marginalized to craft pleasure, to elicit joy, to invoke humor, and to gross people out?

This course supports learning about radical practices of disability arts and culture and practices of disability activism to underscore how the liberation of multiply-marginalized disabled people is integral to collective liberation.

Is this not a future worth creating?

Ready to start?

Join the Department community & enroll for free!

For more information, contact Kimberly Skye Richards, librarian for the Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, at kim@sustainablepractice.org

Spread out the word! Share with your team & network.

Our first course is out!

June 21, 2024Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, news

Introducing: Peasant futurisms by Sanita Fejzić

Peasant futurisms is a call to transform capitalist cities into edible and wilder ecocities, with protected greenbelts and foodbelts, rooted in circular economies with the goal of growing more liveable and delicious futures for all.

This course invites learning from peasant knowledges and practices of cooperative labour, mutual aid, subsistence farming, and self-sustainability to posit peasant futurisms as a joyful way of living locally and relationally that rejects forced ruptures from land and resist the compulsory digitization of life.

Is this not a future worth cultivating?

Ready to start?

Join the Department community & enroll for free!

For more information, contact Kimberly Skye Richards, librarian for the Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, at kim@sustainablepractice.org

Spread out the word! Share with your team & network.

Q42: A Myriad of Homes

June 13, 2024news, QuarterlyQ42: A Myriad of Homes

What constitutes a house?

It is an assemblage of a multitude; of social connections, of environments, of feelings, not limited to property and privacy. In fact, most homes, also more than human ones, are ecosystems themselves. The diversity of their nature becomes more and more apparent as we try to extend our understanding of what can and what could constitute a home. This issue features several artistic practices alongside an essay and poetry that engage with gameplay in different ways. These artists and thinkers consider the act of play, and playfulness as a way of inhabiting and creating environments, communities, and ecosystems (which is to say different homes). This collection of approaches towards game practices constitutes a reflection on our deeply entangled position in all these complex social ecosystems.

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