A full paper on Designing for Transformative Futures: Creative Practice, Social Change and Climate Emergency co-written by no less than 11 amazing creatures has been published in the proceedings of the Creativity and Cognition 2021 conference 🦑🦑🦑.

Discussing themes in transformative creative practice, eco-social sustainability, and scaling of relational networks, the paper brings together three CreaTures ExPs: The Hologram, the Commonspoly, and the Experimental Food Design for Sustainable Futures.

A short presentation & abstract are available below; the full paper (open access) can be downloaded here.

Abstract

“We discuss three cases of transformative creative practice that aim to address large-scale societal issues related to the climate emergency by taking a series of interconnected, small-scale actions. Drawing on our first-hand perspectives, we reflect on how the cases address such issues by proliferating across different social contexts and supporting creative engagements of diverse stakeholders. We offer this empirical reflection at a time of rapid social and ecological change that has affected all life on the planet. Eco-social challenges and structural inequalities caused by shifts in global economic, political and technological power require new approaches and transformative actions to stabilize and restore ecosystems on which life depends. Our research shows that creative practice in art and design has a critical role to play in these processes of transformation. By discussing the opportunities and challenges encountered by our three cases within their transformative efforts and analyzing how they proliferate across diverse scales, we aim to expand the emerging scholarship on the transformative potential of creative practice.”