Creativity

Sustaining Creativity

Via Julie’s Bicycle.

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Julie’s Bicycle has launched Sustaining Creativity, which is looking at what the creative community perceives as the critical drivers for change and the role of sustainability in this process.

The launch event occurred on November 19, 2013.

‘Sustaining Creativity’ is a series of conversations and events exploring environmental challenges, drivers of change, and the opportunities that transformative solutions offer to the creative community. 

‘Sustainability’ generally refers to an approach that balances social, financial and environmental considerations. Julie’s Bicycle’s focus is environmental sustainability. While Julie’s Bicycle recognises and seeks to reinforce the synergies between social, financial and environmental wellbeing, economic and social development are ultimately contingent on a healthy planet.

Sustaining Creativity will take a holistic approach, intent on shoring up strength and wellbeing over the coming decade. It will consider the likely systemic changes already influencing mainstream thinking and put sustainability at the forefront of creative and cultural innovation.

Sustaining Creativity will:

  • Discover what the business critical issues are perceived to be from a wide range of representatives from the creative community.
  • Extend ambition about what is possible using real examples.
  • Identify some key shifts needed to develop a creative infrastructure commensurate with global challenges.
  • Outline what might be done over the next five to ten years to create optimal conditions for change.
  • Foster confident decision-making that looks beyond political and funding cycles
  • Produce a series of events and publications

Julie’s Bicycle will gather and present this thinking at a national event in Spring 2014.

Julie’s Bicycle Sustaining Creativity Sector Survey

This post comes from Creative Carbon Scotland

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Julie’s Bicycle wants to understand how the creative community is thinking about the coming decade, what it perceives as the critical drivers for change and where sustainability fits into the picture. ‘Sustaining Creativity’ is a series of conversations and events exploring environmental challenges and the opportunities that transformative solutions offer to the creative and cultural sectors.

To take part in the survey follow this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/75JFV68?c=a6a2f208c0

Sustaining Creativity will take a holistic approach, intent on shoring up strength and wellbeing over the coming decade. It will consider the likely systemic changes already influencing mainstream thinking and put sustainability at the forefront of creative and cultural innovation.

Sustaining Creativity will:

  • Discover what the business critical issues are perceived to be from a wide range of representatives from the creative community.
  • Extend ambition about what is possible using real examples.
  • Identify some key shifts needed to develop a creative infrastructure commensurate with global challenges.
  • Outline what might be done over the next five to ten years to create optimal conditions for change.
  • Foster confident decision-making that looks beyond political and funding cycles
  • Produce a series of events and publications

You can participate in Sustaining Creativity and share your views by answering this 10 minute survey. It is aimed at directors and senior managers of creative and cultural organisations.

The survey will close at 5pm, on Friday 13th December.

All participants will be invited to an event in spring 2014 to announce the results and discuss next steps, and will be entered into a prize draw for a case of English champagne in time for Christmas.

For more information, please visit www.juliesbicycle.com/Sustaining-Creativity

The post Julie’s Bicycle Sustaining Creativity Sector Survey 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

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The Man Who Planted Trees (Seminar) at WSD2013

mwplatedWed 11 Sept 15.00 – 16.00

The Willow Theatre

The Man Who Planted Trees was awarded the 2012 CSPA Fringe Festival Award for Sustainable Production and the 2007 Eco Prize for Creativity.

The company will share their experience of creating and touring the show, conscious how lightweight set design, reuse and recycling, low-impact lighting design, backstage chat at countless venues – plus the power of a great story – has helped them to be sustainable not only in environmental terms but also as individuals working together over the last 7 years.

Who should attend?

Open to all interested in sustainability.

Price: £6

BUY TICKETS

Key contributors

Puppet State Theatre Company - http://www.puppetstate.com

The AWEinspiring Award 2013 to Platform

This post comes to you from Cultura21

372x521xAWE-inspiring-certificate-2013-620x869.jpg.pagespeed.ic_.oPzTg0xr8u-214x300The AWEinspiring (Art, Water & Environment) Award celebrates an artwork, project or artist, recognising their contribution to The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management’s (CIWEM) vision of putting creativity into the heart of environmental policy and action.Since its formation in 2007, the primary vision of CIWEM’s Art and Environment Network has been to put creativity at the heart of environmental policy and action. The Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW) has joined CIWEM in creating the AWEinspiring (Art, Water & Environment) Award, giving it to The Harrisons in recognition of their unique contribution to public understanding of climate change through the vehicle of art and creativity, linked with science.

Formed in 1983, Platform have performed across the world, from the Tate to the Camp for Climate Action, from Glastonbury to Pittsburgh, and from Bristol to Nigeria. They hold exhibitions, write books, initiate research, and develop pioneering education programmes to promote radical new ideas that inspire change. About their work, they said : ”Platform, a London-based, innovative arts collective, was selected for its long-standing commitment to using the arts to open up spaces for transformation, inspiration and change in ecological and social justice. Platform aims to achieve long-term shifts that make alternative futures possible. They engage, support, challenge, and apply their art tirelessly to the most pressing issues of the day, notably focusing on the social, economic, environmental and cultural impacts of the global oil industry. Formed in 1983, Platform have performed across the world, from the Tate to the Camp for Climate Action, from Glastonbury to Pittsburgh, and from Bristol to Nigeria. They hold exhibitions, write books, initiate research, and develop pioneering education programmes to promote radical new ideas that inspire change.”

Platform is launching a new art work ‘Two Degrees: Oil City’, a piece of site-specific immersive theatre going deep into the underbelly of London’s oil economy, on 10 – 23 June 2013.

See also our earlier post : http://www.cultura21.net/activites/exhibitions/artsadmins-two-degrees-festival

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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MAKE8ELIEVE – online art magazine issue dedicated to oil

305092_489458227750074_33562497_nAs an organisation that combines arts, activism and research with a pretty hefty focus on the damage caused by UK oil companies, we were super-excited to have a flick through the third issue of an online arts magazineMAKE8ELIEVE, that aims to “build international connections by publishing creative interpretations of one topic per issue.”

It’s a 254 page, full colour labour of love, with submissions from many different artists with a dizzying variety of practices. Campaigners on oil issues would do well to have a browse and draw inspiration from the creativity of the contributions rather than falling back on what can become quite a tired pallet of images and associations that evoke the impacts of the global oil industry.

It’s particularly great to see Liberate Tate‘s dramatic participatory and unsolicited The Gift that took place in Tate Modern last July, and involved the installation of a 16 metre wind turbine blade as a reaction to Tate’s ongoing and increasingly controversial sponsorship relationship with BP. You can browse this stunning publication below (Liberate Tate can be seen on pages 151-161), or visit the MAKE8ELIEVE site for more info on the artists.

Symposion on culture & sustainable development

This post comes to you from Culture|Futures
The French and Québec ministries of culture organize a symposion on culture and sustainable development 22 and 23 November 2012 in Paris. Read more about the symposion at www.culture-dd12.org  

Culture|Futures is an international collaboration of organizations and individuals who are concerned with shaping and delivering a proactive cultural agenda to support the necessary transition towards an Ecological Age by 2050.

The Cultural sector that we refer to is an interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral, inter-genre collaboration, which encompasses policy-making, intercultural dialogue/cultural relations, creative cities/cultural planning, creative industries and research and development. It is those decision-makers and practitioners who can reach people in a direct way, through diverse messages and mediums.

Affecting the thinking and behaviour of people and communities is about the dissemination of stories which will profoundly impact cultural values, beliefs and thereby actions. The stories can open people’s eyes to a way of thinking that has not been considered before, challenge a preconceived notion of the past, or a vision of the future that had not been envisioned as possible. As a sector which is viewed as imbued with creativity and cultural values, rather than purely financial motivations, the cultural sector’s stories maintain the trust of people and society.
Go toThis post comes to you from Culture|Futures

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CSPA Quarterly: On Art & Agriculture

The seventh issue of the CSPA Quarterly is now available!  Cultures around the world rely deeply on both local creativity and agricultural activity. Creative culture and agriculture are inextricably linked, and both are facing challenges as we globalize. This issue contains stories from public projects, visual installations, film, and theater, and examines local vegetable farming, cotton and rice paddy industries, and shrimpboating.

Featured artists include Susannah Mira, Thomas Buttery, Jeremy Pickard, Hui Ling Lee, Eric Leshinsky and Zach Moser.

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/328247/follow

The Home and the World – On Being at Home

This post comes to you from Cultura21

From the 19th to the 21st of June 2012 a creative summit for artists and other thinkers will take place at Dartington Hall Estate in south Devon/England.
The summit will focus on the question if the alienation of humankind from the natural world has effected his condition and psyche and if there is a general loss of knowledge about the interdependence of all living things.

The leading questions are:

  • What does it mean to be at home in the world? What does home mean to us?
  • How can we be more aware of our ‘inhabited place’ in the world?
  • Why do we all too often fail to understand the impact we have on the world around us?
  • It’s been more than fifteen years since Gablik suggested that art can re-enchant our connection to the world – how have we responded?

Artists and thinkers are invited to submit proposals. The organizers search for a broad mix of challenging ideas and submissions for the three days of the summit. These ideas should investigate, how we live in the world; how we find our place – our home – and how we use creativity and the arts to ask questions, present problems, and offer up solutions, homages, and celebrations.
Submissions with innovative, participatory, performative and/or interactive formats will be favoured. Since most of the sessions are live streamed on the internet, applicants may work  this into their proposal.

The hosts of the summit are Aune Head Arts and The Arts at Dartington. It is part of the ‘Artful Ecologies’ series of conferences organised by RANE at University College Falmouth.
The deadline for submissions is the 24th of February 2012.

For further information about the submission details see www.thehomeandtheworld.info
The Call for Proposals as well as the print flyer can be downloaded there, too.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Culture|Futures conference in Milan, Italy: Oct 19, 2011

This post comes to you from Culture|Futures

The amazing Palazzo Marino in Milan will October 19th 2011 be the setting for another international Culture|Futures conference, which in Milan is organised by Ragnarock Association in cooperation with the City of Milano and other partners.

The conference will discuss the role that Scandinavian and Italian actors in the creative industry have in reaching an ecological age that is the Culture|Futures vision for 2050.

The conference will also be focusing on the way design, food, fashion and innovation can guide people towards more sustainable standards of living in the next few years.

To speak at the conference, Culture|Futures and Ragnarock have invited several guests from the sector to talk about how they connect creativity and sustainability, the guest-list includes among many others Kigge Hvid (CEO of INDEX), Francesco Paulo Zurlo (Vice director of INDACO) and Guizy Bettoni (Director of CLASS).

For further details on the Culture|Futures Conference in Milan and the full program and guest-list of the day download the Culture Futures programme

For registration  please write conferenza@ragnarock.eu

Please also see, RSVP the Italia Facebook Event page

If any other question, please contact:

Elisabetta Ferrario

e-mail: elisabettaferrario@ragnarock.eu
mobile: (+39) 3473578941.

Culture|Futures is an international collaboration of organizations and individuals who are concerned with shaping and delivering a proactive cultural agenda to support the necessary transition towards an Ecological Age by 2050.

The Cultural sector that we refer to is an interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral, inter-genre collaboration, which encompasses policy-making, intercultural dialogue/cultural relations, creative cities/cultural planning, creative industries and research and development. It is those decision-makers and practitioners who can reach people in a direct way, through diverse messages and mediums.

Affecting the thinking and behaviour of people and communities is about the dissemination of stories which will profoundly impact cultural values, beliefs and thereby actions. The stories can open people’s eyes to a way of thinking that has not been considered before, challenge a preconceived notion of the past, or a vision of the future that had not been envisioned as possible. As a sector which is viewed as imbued with creativity and cultural values, rather than purely financial motivations, the cultural sector’s stories maintain the trust of people and society.
Go toThis post comes to you from Culture|Futures

Good Cents in the Museum – a case study

This post comes to you from the EcoMuseumMany people will wonder at first, what the connection is between immigration, museums and the environment.

For the last two and a half years Melbourne’s Immigration Museum has been developing a unique and contemporary exhibition based on what identity actually means to those living in Australia today. The transient nature of ‘identity’ as a concept meant a high degree of creativity was required. The project team worked on this challenge for over two years, and in addition, managed to integrate a high degree of environmentally conscious initiatives. Identity: yours mine ours launched on May 9, 2011 and has an eight to ten year life span.

 

COMMITMENT

 

One of the first commitments the project team made came in 2009, with a collective agreement to seriously consider environmentally sustainable initiatives within the concept and development process. Each important element of an event – be it exhibition, festival, theatre production – needs a champion.Identity had champions for content, multimedia, lighting and so on, but it also had a champion for environmentally preferable initiatives.

 

METHODOLOGY

 

Keeping an eye on the overall production, and another on the possibilities of integrating sustainable initiatives into the proposed design, isn’t that difficult.

 

Re-use (re-using stuff)

 

The demolition of the exhibition previously occupying the Identity gallery enabled the team to save various materials for use in Identity itself, and for use throughout the rest of Museum Victoria.

 

Around 18m² of laminated glass was saved and reinstalled into purpose-built Identity cases, a saving of around $8,000. Around 500kg of timber was saved for other uses as well. Graphic panels from the old exhibition were reused for education and decorative purposes in the Immigration Museum’s Education Room and Theatrette. Public programs took possession of older bespoke plinths and cases, and fitted them with wheels for portability, thus extending their original life expectancy many times over. Another site rich in immigration history, Station Pier, is negotiating with the Museum to take the remainder of the exhibition graphic panels in order to augment its premises on the pier.

 

It is worth noting however, that construction methods and material choices made much of the pre-used timber untenable. ‘Screw don’t glue’ is definitely something the team has a deep understanding of after watching the demolition process and noting the broken and torn elements thrown in the skip. Undaunted, ‘small steps’ was a common maxim throughout, and one which reminded us that every environmental achievement enables future teams to take our lead, and go even further.

 

De-materialisation (using less stuff)

 

Knowing that exhibition graphics are one of the most energy, material and maintenance intensive components of exhibition production, keeping a vigilant eye on the emerging design is crucial. WithinIdentity, the unique line-work developed by Gina Batsakis emerged as a major graphic feature. Previous work with a landscape artist/signwriter provided the impetus to explore similar possibilities withinIdentity, and although the team initially felt anxious, our early commitment to facilitate a sustainable outcome determined the contracting of a specialist painter.

 

The results are surprising – far superior to that which could have been produced mechanically by a printing machine. Early planning and decision-making enabled enough time for the extensive paintwork to take place – a crucial factor in an innovative environment. The final outcome consumed similar financial resources to that required from graphic printing and related materials. More importantly, the 150m² of painted graphic will require very simple, low energy maintenance across its ten year life – involving human dexterity, paint and a paintbrush. What could be more…sustainable!

 

This environmental achievement was important in terms of boosting the project team’s satisfaction in their commitment, and gave an eye-opening model initiative to other Museum Victoria exhibition project teams. Scienceworks has taken up the scenic painter challenge and greatly benefited from it. Being brave and trialing new concepts has always been crucial, especially in the world of the museum. Have we forgotten this in our world of automation and programmed productivity? The Identity project team discovered an unexpected delight and control in veering away from machine-led production.

 

Identity is a big exhibition in a small physical space. How does one do justice to such a broad, contentious topic and still keep the exhibition spatially contemplative? By using hundreds of intangible layers of digital information of course. These digital stories are interpreted through touch-screens, the web and multiple projections.

 

The project team wanted gallery products that combined reasonable financial outlay, with low energy usage and long lived consumables – like globes. Using a range of product information and organisational experience, different products were put through a data-crunching excel calculator. After putting the exhibition’s lighting through the same rigorous process, the completed Identity now consumes the least amount of energy per square metre of any exhibition at Museum Victoria, and has set an organisational benchmark.

 

The environmental consequences of energy creation arguably impact our lives more significantly than any other human activity, and consume a huge amount of our finances. Reducing our need, and therefore general demand, is definitely something worth giving some time and thought to.

 

Some of these practices are standard in many smaller organisations throughout the country because of individual budget restrictions. Some are practices that have died out only in the last few years. Even so, it’s liberating to explore and rediscover new frontiers, and if you can save money and time while simultaneously reducing your impact on the environment, it just makes good sense (and cents) to continue pushing those boundaries.

 

the EcoMuseum, is a project of Carole Hammond, Exhibition Manager and museum professional: combining the complex ideologies of aesthetics, culture, objects, entertainment…and environment.

Go to the EcoMuseum