Art And Sustainability

Form, Art and the Environment: Engaging in Sustainability adopts a pluralistic perspective of environmental artistic processes in order to examine the contributions of the arts in promoting sustainable development and culture at a grassroots level and its potential as a catalyst for social change and awareness. This book investigates how community arts, environmental creativity, and the changing role of artists in the Polis contribute to the goal of a sustainable future from a number of interdisciplinary perspectives. From considering the role that art works play in revealing local environmental problems such as biodiversity, public transportation and energy issues, to examining the way in which artists and art works enrich our multidimensional understanding of culture and sustainable development, Form, Art and the Environment advocates the inestimable value of art as an expressive force in promoting sustainable culture and conscious development. Utilising a broad range of case studies and analysis from a body of work collected through the international environmental COAL prize, this book examines the evolution of the relationship between culture and the environment. This book will be of interest to practitioners of the environmental arts, culture and sustainable development and students of Art, Environmental Science, and International Policy and Planning Development.

This book stems from the 2019 meeting of the UNESCO UNITWIN international network for Arts Education Research for Cultural Diversity and Sustainable Development. It presents scholarly, international perspectives on issues surrounding arts education and sustainability that addresses the following questions: What value can the arts add to the education of citizens of the 21st century?; What are the challenges and ways forward to realize the potential of arts education in diverse contexts? The book discusses empirical research and exemplary practices in the arts and arts education around the world, presenting sound theoretical and methodological frames and approaches. It identifies policy implications at national, regional and global levels that cut across social, economic, environmental and cultural dimensions of sustainable development.

Sustainability in an Imaginary World explores the social agency of art and its connection to complex issues of sustainability. Over the past decade, interest in art's agency has ballooned as an increasing number of fields turn to the arts with ever-expanding expectations. Yet just as art is being heralded as a magic bullet of social change, research is beginning to throw cautionary light on such enthusiasm, challenging the linear, prescriptive, instrumental expectations such transdisciplinary interactions often imply. In this, art finds itself at a treacherous crossroads, unable to turn a deaf ear to calls for help from an increasing number of ostensibly non-aesthetic fields, yet in answering such prescriptive urgencies, jeopardizing the very power for which its help was sought in the first place. This book goes in search of a way forward, proposing a theory of art aiming to preserve the integrity of arts practices within transdisciplinary mandates. This approach is then explored through a series of case studies developed in collaboration with some of Canada's most prominent artists, including internationally renowned nature poet Don McKay; Italian composer and Head of Vancouver New Music, Giorgio Magnanesi; the renowned Electric Company Theatre, led by Kevin Kerr; and finally through a largescale multimedia installation aiming to reimagine the relationship between climate, culture, and human agency. Sustainability in an Imaginary World will be of great interest to students and scholars of arts-based research fields, sustainability studies, and environmental humanities.

Kagan starts his analysis pointing at the Western development model and the modern worldview that lie at the heart of unsustainability. He characterizes the modern worldview as based in the classical scientific method and as atomistic, materialistic, individualistic and Eurocentric. Kagan's assumption is that in order to change our actual culture of unsustainability in a sustainable one, we will have to look for an alternative worldview and go beyond utilitarian rationality that is so very common in our contemporary cultures and in most analyses of sustainability. We will have to engage ourselves in a really fundamental rethinking of our culture and our ways of thinking, knowing and seeing ourselves and the world. With an overview of ecological art over the past 40 years and a discussion of art and social change, the book assesses the potential role of art in a much needed transformation process. Review in: International journal of cutural policy.19(2013)1(141-143).

This book explores the potential of arts and cultural education to contribute to on-going efforts to promote Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in line with UNESCO’s conceptualizations of the field. It builds on the experiences of arts educators working to build sustainable futures and portrays new and innovative approaches. Chapters comprise case studies that combine arts, culture, sustainable thinking and practices. They also include research from historical perspectives, evaluations of public policy measures and offer theoretical approaches and methodologies. The book unfolds the possible relationships between arts and cultural education and Education for Sustainable Development.

Environmental art or ‘ecoart’ is a burgeoning field and includes a wide variety of practices, some of which are exemplified in this collection: from sculptures or installations made from discarded rubbish to intimate ephemeral artworks placed in the natural environment, or from theatrical presentations incorporated into environmental education programs to socially critical paintings. In some cases, the artworks aim to create indignation in the viewer, sometimes to educate, sometimes to create a feeling of empathy for the natural environment, or sometimes they are built into community building projects. This timely book examines various roles of the arts in building ecological sustainability. A wide range of practitioners is represented, including visual and performing artists, scientists, social researchers, environmental educators and research students. They are all united in this text in their belief that the arts are vital in the building of sustainability – in the way that they are practiced, but also the connections they make to ecology, science and indigenous culture.

Dealing with time is intimately linked to sustainability, because sustainability, at its core, involves long-term ethical claims. To live up to them, decision and policy-making has to consider long-term development of society, economy, and nature. However, dealing with time and such long-term development is a notoriously difficult subject, both in science and, in particular, in practical decision and policy making. Rooted in philosophical and scientific reasoning, this book explores how the concept of time can be incorporated into effective practical action. The book describes a system and uses case studies to help sustainability practitioners and researchers consider the long-term consequences of our actions in a methodical way. The system integrates scientific and practical knowledge about time and temporal developments to help break down the sometimes overwhelming complexity of sustainability issues. Combining theoretical conceptual thinking and practical applications, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of sustainability science, environmental sciences, sustainable development, environmental economics, political sciences and practical philosophy.

This book explores the nature of Britain-based artists’ engagement with the transformations of their environment since the early days of the Industrial Revolution. At a time of pressing ecological concerns, the international group of contributors provide a series of case studies that reconsider the nature–culture divide and aim at identifying the contours of a national narrative that stretches from enclosed lands to rising seas. By adopting a longer historical view, this book hopes to enrich current debates concerning art’s engagement with recording and questioning the impact of human activity on the environment. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, environmental humanities, and British studies.