Local Cultures – Global Spaces
Abstract
Humanity faces serious challenges in the coming decades: climate change, biodiversity loss, growing inequality, and more. We have a collection of rules and norms that reward some behaviours and punish others. In their current form, our systems seem to incentivise overconsumption, degrade communal bonds, and destroy natural wealth. The researchers in this project believe that place-based approaches and community engaged arts practices around the theme of sustainability, can enable a growing network of ecological citizens. In this paper we will explore how through creative arts practices, sharing ideas, thoughts, and questions and learning from best practices at a local, national, and international level from a variety of partners can create sustenance for a community-based network. Ways of building a network of new and existing place-based arts research and knowledge exchange which has the potential to include children and young people in the decision-making process, will be considered. We will consider how examples with embedded creative practice, such as community growers/larders/kitchens, forest schools etc., support partnership working within place-based projects. We will also discuss a people-centred approach to helping stakeholders, children, and young people, to make transitional choices, mitigate against negative consequences and empower local agency, in different localities. We will aim to show how diverse groups of people can begin to make impactful change through for example, community-focused approaches and community-led practices, activism and collective learning, advocacy, and design thinking in projects.
Alec is Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Arts and Society at Wrexham University. Trained in fine art his work engages in the societal and pedagogical aspects of creative practice and the belief in education as the key to transforming lives. Alec’s Artistic Research has attracted funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the British Council, the Arts Council of England, and the Arts Council of Wales. His research emanates from his art practice concerning people and place.
Daniel has a passion for product design and an eye for functional products that stand the test of time. From creating performance fabrics to crafting premium electronic consumer goods and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), Daniel’s research focuses on the interface between design products and ecological citizenship. In this research he explores the challenges, tensions, paradoxes and opportunities, examining new standards, materials, methods and processes, to prepare communities nurture their own needs
and their environment, for future generations to come.
Karen leads on the MA Art Interdisciplinary Practice and the MA Design Interdisciplinary Practice programmes and together with teaching, exhibiting, writing and presenting at conferences, Karen is also a visual artist, filmmaker and researcher. Her research explores the concepts of time, creativity and its relationship to video, site-specificity, and the philosophical complexities of arts and science collaborations.