A small, informal meeting was organized in Utrecht, the Netherlands on December 15^th 2022 with a focused group of 7 funders and policy makers in the Netherlands who had been involved in the development of CreaTures evaluation and impact methods. In the atmospheric environment of local Utrecht print collective KAPITAAL, the group discussed and reviewed the CreaTures 9 Dimensions evaluation tool in depth. 🫱‍🫲

Participants praised the simplicity and accessibility of the tool when many other academic tools are much too complicated to be used in practice – while also seeing how it can capture the richness of creative practice. The 9 Dimensions tool will be integrated into a prominent impact toolkit for creative practitioners, often used by funders to support creatives and which is currently being revised.✨ 

Participants included people from different Directorates-General around culture and sustainability; people from the New European Bauhaus project, various people from the Joint Research Centre; and people running EU-level networks of creative practices and arts organizations. The session was hosted by Maciej Krzysztofowicz from the EU Policy Lab – a  physical space designed to foster creativity and engagement to develop interactions, processes and tools contributing to bring innovation in the European policy-making. 🫱‍🫲🧰🔧 

The CreaTures team provided an overview of key CreaTures project and framework elements. They also presented a new tool: nine dimensions to reflect on evaluation and learning in relation to creative practice and sustainable futures. Through interactive breakout groups the nine dimensions tool was validated in terms of its relevance and helpfulness to those taking part.

Overall, the feedback was very positive and the process provided valuable insights about the use of these dimensions for funding and policy making. A second breakout session focused on a higher level overview of how creative practice, and its evaluation, can be part of systems level change. A broad ranging discussion identified the need for the role of creative practice as part of governance mechanisms, by creating conditions through local realities and horizontal place based approaches, both in terms of disrupting and inspiring action. Much attention was given to the importance of trust and relationship building as part of the process rather than one-off interventions. Participants reflecting on the session thought it was highly inspiring and many are looking forward to using the 9 Dimensions tool and wider CreaTures Framework. ✨

This is an in-person event that involves a 2-days field trip into the protected landscape area Křivoklátsko (CZ) to walk with the local forest and its creatures.

The walk is organised by the Open Forest Collective – a multi-disciplinary group of forest-curious creatures of diverse cultural, professional and biological origins – and guided by one of the Collective’s members, Chewie. We will follow Chewie to explore a patch of the local Bohemian forest and learn about its complex multi-species environment. On the way, we will exchange our experiences, observations and sensory impressions in the form of forest-stories. The walk will be performative and open-ended, centered around the elements of spontaneity, surprise, curiosity and squirrels.

The walk builds on the Collective’s previous experimental walks in other forests around the world that invite diverse forest creatures, including forest dwellers, Indigenous forest guardians, healers, scientists, data managers, artists, designers, as well as dogs and trees, to walk together and share their stories. Through these encounters, the Collective hopes to better understand how various stakeholders make sense of forest; questioning what can constitute a forest dataset, how it can be produced, and by whom. The main aim is to learn how forests and forest data can be produced, thought of and engaged with otherwise, in feral, co-creative ways that consider perspectives of diverse forest creatures and reach beyond techno-solutionist perspectives.

With many overlapping social and ecological crises, we urgently need to transform how we live together on this planet. Artists, designers and social change-makers have been developing alternative forms of eco-social thought and action rooted in ‘multi-species’, ‘more-than-human’, and ‘feral’ modes of co-existence. How can these creative practitioners connect fruitfully with policy-makers, who work with related ideas around ‘natural resource management’, ‘ecosystems services’ or ‘biodiversity conservation’?

In October 2022 the CreaTures project bought together stakeholders and practitioners from both creative and policy fields to ask: how can creative practitioners and policy-makers work together for multi-species governance? 

A panel of four creative practitioners shared experiences of cross-sector working and explored the value of creative practices in opening up public dialogue and developing policy around environmental governance for the benefit of all species.  The hybrid session was part of the Uroboros Festival in Prague (exploring creative pathways to eco-social transformation). 

Summary

The four contributors offered a fascinating range of practices for bringing the more than human into the policy conversation.  Iryna Zamuruieva presented artist-led workshops in which experiencing and responding to videoed river journeys encouraged policy makers to think from the perspective of a river, exploring a non-anthropocentric understanding of flood risk management.  Ruth Catlow described how LARPs (Live Action Role Play) enabled users and managers to experience the perspective of the non-human inhabitants of a local park.  Julia Lohmann showed how exploring algae both as a biomaterial and an organism in its own right engaged senses and emotions beyond material process design.  Marion Lean described how gamification enabled policy makers to explore scenarios and impacts in a narrative form.

Across these diverse projects there were identifiable commonalities in approach.

• Opening up spaces to consider different futures was a recurring theme, through shared processes of imagination, pre-figuration or speculation.  The fact that these processes were done collectively enabled understanding of, and incorporation of, wider perspectives.

• Processes of design were used to explore how a current situation could be changed to a preferred situation. what that preferred situation might be and for whom – both human and ‘more than human’.
• Engaging actively with the ‘more than human’ raised questions around what and who is forefronted in such discussions – opening up a ‘multi-species’ perspective.  At the same time, decentering the human, prompted questions of equity and social justice within the human realm and explorations of the rights of the individual versus the rights of community. The inclusion of non-human presence helped engage participants in experiences which were tactile, sensory, emotional – bringing different perspectives and modes of thinking.

• Activities offered connection to head, heart and hands (described by one practitioner as knowing, caring, acting with creative practices serving as ‘flux’ between these states).

• Experimentation was key – supporting participants to move away from formal policy spaces (characterized by responsibility, delivery and deadlines) and encouraging questioning, exploration, imagination and failure.  Projects offered a safe space for creative thinking, permission to play and encouraged a sense of agency – underpinned by the belief that everyone has innate creativity, a valuable contribution to make and a role to play.

• There was recognition of the intrinsic value of the processes involved.  Ensuring good process is often as important as attempting to seek definitive answers to what are often multi-layered and challenging questions.

• There was particular impact from activity that built connections and was rooted in place. Working with and supporting existing local connectors and making the effort to involve as many people as possible who have a stake in the process and outcome of change.

• A common theme was the vital importance of allowing time for this work.   In order to build relationships and trust, allow for deeper connection and reflection and ultimately create more powerful impact.  Projects started from a place of shared values and made those values explicit in the process.   As one panelist observed – ‘don’t underestimate the time it takes to translate the ‘arty bollocks’ into something that is inviting for many people and makes them feel at home’

• Panelists explored ways to achieve longevity of impact when programmes like this are often limited by short term funding.  These included empowering participants to feel confident in their experience of new ways of thinking to support them applying these in ongoing practice.   Seeking out and working with people who are energized to take the ideas forward and repeating activities over time allowed for reconnection with the ideas and practices. 

In Conclusion

In her closing remarks, panel moderator Ann Light observed that whilst this Feral panel was taking place, in a swimming pool at an arts festival, elsewhere in Prague the inaugural meeting of the European Political Community Summit was being held.  The question hanging in the room as the session closed – how can we bring these worlds together in future? 

Panelists:  

Marion Lean (SCT/UK) –is a Scottish design researcher based in London. The focus of her research is improving choice and empowerment through real-world research, storytelling and collaboration, within different cultural settings and with different species. Marion is currently a Design Coach and Innovation Fellow, Centre for Digital Citizens, Newcastle University. She was based at Building Digital UK and laid the foundations for a Policy Design Lab at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Julia Lohmann (DE/FI) – is a Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at Aalto University and the founder of the Department of Seaweed, a transdisciplinary community of practice investigating the potential of macro algae as a design material. She uses her artistic practice as research through design to explore the ethical and material value systems underlying our relationship with flora and fauna. She is a creative practitioner in CreaTures and a researcher in the Academy of Finland funded Biocolour research project on natural dyes, and in the Nordplus funded Nordark research project that investigates non-human needs in relation to after-dark outdoor lighting.

Ruth Catlow (UK) –is a recovering web utopian and a creative practitioners in CreaTures. As artistic director and co-founder of Furtherfield London’s longest-running (de)centre for art and technology, she curates and creates collaborative, playful and emancipatory artworks to engage people across silos around emerging technologies and the wicked social and political problems they give rise to or intensify.

Iryna Zamuruieva (UA/SCT) – makes images, writes, walks, organises and performs. Originally from the middle of the Ukrainian steppe, Iryna now lives by the North Sea coast in Scotland, working with sustainability organisation Sniffer, a partner in CreaTures, on transforming organisations and places to flourish in the future climate. This involves leading climate change adaptation projects (with Adaptation Scotland) and creating structures for collaborative, care-ful and non-hierarchical decision-making. In her independent practice Iryna explores multispecies relations from pigs and viruses to natures to walking and steppes & ecofeminism.

Co-moderators and respondents:

Lara Houston (UK) 

Ann Light (UK/SE)

Markéta Dolejšová (CZ/FI)

You can join in person, in the Kasárna Karlín venue, Prague (CZ). Please register via the Uroboros festival Eventbrite.

Creative reflection, self-awareness and embodied activities are applied to guide participants on a journey where the ability and willingness of individuals to let-go, shift perspectives and adopt new roles and practices is central.

The transformation toward eco-social sustainability involves a personal dimension of change. It calls for turning inwards and paying attention to the fundamental, innermost questions: Who am I (as part of a larger whole and eco-system)? What is my work? (as a human being on this planet)? Such personal, internal journeys of change often require external stimuli to help us become aware of what might have been invisible, stuck and hidden. These experiences might help foster our understanding of our interconnectedness: how we relate to the world, to other human and non-human creatures, and to ourselves.

In this session, we will approach such personal dimensions of change by guiding participants on a journey of shedding their skin through creative reflection and self-awareness practices, as well as generative embodiment activities. We will explore our inner worlds and the fundamental questions of our entangled existence through a co-creative exercise in opening a space for non-doing, pause, and letting-go. We will pay attention to the qualities of our relating, focus on how our perspectives shift, and experiment with radical openness: receiving and trusting the emerging elements that unfold beyond our control. By creating connections between non-doing and doing as an inspiration for future shifts, these exercises may enhance our sensitivity to how ‘change’ might feel like here and now.

This is a hybrid event: you can join us in-person in the Kasárna Karlín venue, Prague (CZ) or remotely via the online Zoom platform. Please register via the Uroboros festival Eventbrite. A Zoom link will be provided to all registered participants closer to the event date.

This meditation builds empathy pathways to other life forms. It is part of a larger collaborative role-play project called The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 depicting the story of the dawning of interspecies democracy. It’s a new era of equal rights for all living beings, where all species come together to organise and shape the environments and cultures they inhabit, in London’s Finsbury Park (and urban green spaces across the UK, the world, and beyond!) After much protest it has been agreed that a treaty of cooperation will be drawn up.

The meditation is used as a tool for character development and immersion. As participants we use our imaginations and a bonding ritual to enter the body and consciousness of a different species and to reflect on the nature of their existence. This ritual transports us to the interspecies multiverse where we sit for a guided meditation. The meditation is followed by a sharing circle where we describe the experiences we have of our new bodies and sentience. By listening to each other we understand more about our place in webs of life.

Credits:
Treaty concept by Ruth Catlow and Cade Diehm
Meditation by Ruth Catlow and Sarah Friend in 2021.
The bonding ritual was originally created for a multispecies food justice LARP called ‘Now London is a City Farm…’ created by Ruth with Sara Heitlinger, Lara Houston and Alex Taylor as part of the Algorithmic Food Justice research project.

You can join in person, in the Kasárna Karlín venue, Prague (CZ). Please register via the Uroboros festival Eventbrite.

This sharing session invites all Uroboros festival visitors to engage with outcomes of The Feral Gift Loop – a co-creative experiment in shared ways of understanding, doing, and becoming eco-social change.

The Feral Gift Loop has been a six-week process of performative storytelling, where six creative contributors experimented with various meanings and feelings related to eco-social change. Inspired by feral approaches to design research and the Fluxus tradition of scores, the Loop participants explored what something as grand and complex as eco-social change could possibly mean in their diversely situated – local, cultural, personal, intimate – contexts.

Guided by selected eco-social narratives (books, essays, poems, songs), they devised and exchanged scores for situated exercises, which they enacted in the space-times they were currently inhabiting: a kitchen in Helsinki, an art space in Tokyo, a living room in Colombia, a forest patch in Umeå, a mountain in Edinburgh, an elevator in Newcastle, a home in Seoul, a seacoast near Seville…They shared these situated enactments with each other in multiple documentation formats, as a gift. Throughout this process, they explored the theoretical eco-social narratives through very concrete, sensorial, personal and on-the-ground activities. They touched, smelled, tasted, listened to and felt what eco-social transformation might possibly mean to each of them. 

At the Feral Gift Exchange session, these authors present the gifts they have been sharing with each other for the past six weeks and discuss, performatively, bits and pieces of their joint, feral journey. All festival visitors are warmly welcome to join, listen, and share what eco-social change means to them, in their own personal, intimate, and otherwise situated contexts. The session hopes to open an informal conversation on what eco-social transformation may mean, to whom, where and why.  

The Feral Gift experiment was proposed by Markéta Dolejšová (Czech Republic/Finland) and Danielle Wilde (Australia/Sweden/Denmark) and brought to life together with Iryna Zamuruieva (Ukraine/Scotland),  Martyna Miller (Poland), Ann Light (United Kingdom/Sweden),  Felipe G. Gil (Spain) & the Open Forest Collective (Jaz Hee-jeong Choi – South Korea/Australia, Andrea Botero – Colombia/Finland, Markéta Dolejšová – Czech Republic/Finland).

A selection of seven experimental productions from the CreaTures Laboratory was showcased at the Cooler Planet exhibition organised as part of the Helsinki Design Week 2022 🌿🌲🌡️

The seven CreaTures experimental productions featured at the exhibition were:

Open Forest

Author: Open Forest Collective

Open Forest is a collective, experimental inquiry into different forests and more-than-human dataflows. The project explores how forests and forest data can be produced, thought of and otherwise engaged with, in playful ways that consider perspectives of diverse forest creatures and reach beyond geo-engineering, techno-solutionist perspectives. In practice, the project consists of experimental forest walks followed by a co-creation of forest stories. Through these playful activities, the project entangles existing forests’ datasets with data that questions and obscures the currently collected and available – mostly quantitative – insights about various forests. At Cooler Planet, visitors can browse through existing documentation of the Open Forest walks, stories, and forest patches and contribute their own stories and experiences.

Read more about the collective here.

Experimental Food Design for Sustainable Futures

Author: Feeding Food Futures collective

Experimental Food Design for Sustainable Futures was a two day workshop experimenting with food as bio-design material and an accessible starting point from which to explore values, concerns, and imaginaries associated with food futures and climate resilience. Through playful food engagements and discussion, participants co-created eleven experimental food futures recipes that aim to provoke imagination and inspire critical thinking on how human-food practices could be different, supporting sustainable flourishing. The recipes together with other workshop outcomes were compiled into the More-than-Human Food Futures Cookbook which is showcased at the Cooler Planet exhibition and available online, as open access publication.

Read more about the project here.

Nocturne

Author: Isabel Beavers

Nocturne is a series of wild altars meant to be experienced at dusk, dawn, or at night. The altars are experienced outdoors in chance encounters, as well as in museum and gallery exhibitions. Rooted in intimate experiences with the elements, landscape, seascape, and more-than-human species, each site calls upon a specific and ephemeral moment of sensory collaboration: times when the sun, light, sound, and scent coalesce through the senses of the human body to produce sublime or ordinary but intimate moments. The work is an experiment in care-taking, eco-rituals, and a seduction into intimate moments with the more-than-human world. The practice of generating new ceremonies and rituals with more-than-human species serves as a method of re-localization, de-emphasizing the human-human connection, and reemphasizing the grounding impacts of human-more-than-human interactions.

Read more about the series here.

Sustainable Futures Game

Author: Hellon

Accelerating sustainability transitions requires imagination and creativity to concretise desirable futures narratives. For this purpose, Hellon designed the Sustainable Futures Game that connects societal sustainability goals with everyday organisational contexts to help build organisations’ capacities for imagining alternative futures. The game is designed for decision-makers and planners within public and private organisations, offering a creative and holistic approach to address sustainability challenges. The purpose is to help players co-imagine a desirable future state of a commonly decided city in 2030 through fictional storytelling and design prompts and then backcast ways to tackle critical challenges to reach the co-narrated future. As the story is co-narrated, the outcome of each game session varies depending on the participants interests and aspirations. This diversity of perspectives helps the participants find new opportunities and create novel pathways for reaching desirable futures.

Read more about the game here.

Cyano Automaton

Author: Agniezska Pokrywka

The Cyano Automaton author Agniezska Pokrywka recently embarked on an analogue space mission to Mars, in the Utah desert, to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, and to challenge her criticism of space colonization. Her preparations for this adventure included the cultivation of cyanobacteria; more specifically: Arthrospira platensis. Spirulina, as it’s more commonly known, has been used as food in the past (pre-colonial Mexico and Chad); in the present (in hipster and health-oriented communities); and will be in the future (on deep space flights). The spirulina cultivation set-up that is presented here is called Cyano Automaton: a vessel in constant evolution, reflecting the infinite changes that every living system goes through. In spite of these transitions, some questions remain unaltered: What can we learn from this silent observer of our planet and its billion-year-long wisdom?

Find out more about the project here.

Baltic Sea Lab 

Author: Julia Lohmann & Department of Seaweed

The Baltic Sea Lab develops co-creative ways and tools to activate people to promote sea health. The project aims to grow a network of potential “sea stewards”, caring for their local sea environment through co-creative engagements. In 2020–2021, the Lab with its multi-sensory seaweed pavilion Hidaka Ohmu, hosted exchanges, panels and co-creative ocean literacy and research events, partnering with local Finnish institutions like the John Nurmisen Foundation, the Hanaholmen, and the Tvärminne Zoological Station. Drawing on these activities, a framework was established to support creative practices in engaging communities with ocean literacy: Knowledge (awareness of ecological and cultural issues), Care (empathy, emotional and embodied connection), and Action (active participation, agency).

Find out more about the lab here.

Pixelache

Author: Andrew Gryf Paterson, Irina Mutt, Sumugan Sivanesan, Antti Ahonen

Pixelache Helsinki is a Finland-based creative association on emerging creative practices with almost 20 years of activity in 2022. Starting as a Festival of Electronic Arts & Subcultures, throughout the past decade the association has been running a trans-disciplinary platform for emerging art, design, research, technology and activism that involved a dynamic local community, and an annual festival experimenting with a rotating directorial model. The rich association’s history and activities in the field of transformational creative practice are the core focus of the association’s process, by engaging with organisational meta-data, and Pixelache’s production office in Suvilahti as a tangible memory device. We set out the hope of answering: How do we keep going? The Cooler Planet exhibition presents two audiozines resulting from an experimental archival and ethnographic work that sought to gather perspectives from active Pixelache members reflecting upon how the organisation has transformed between 2013-2019 via objects and narratives. Within the space are several of the objects referenced in the audiozines, as well as a handmade Gantt chart showing active members in the association.

Find out more about the project here.

🌿The Cooler Planet event:

When: 7. 9. –12. 10. 2022
Where: Väre building in Aalto University campus, Otaniementie 14 – FK lobby, at the entrance of the Department of Design (2nd floor)
Opening hours: Mon-Thu 7:45–21:00, Fri 7:45–20:00, Sat 9:00–17:00, Sundays and 10. 9. Closed

🎤🦑 The CreaTures showcase was introduced at the Helsinki Design Week Pecha Kucha Night on Wednesday 07.09.2022, 6-8 pm, in the Aalto campus. More details and registration are available here.

More about the wider Cooler Planet exhibition is available here.

The Cooler Planet event is organised as a part of Helsinki Design Week’s official festival programme and a World Circular Economy Forum 2022 (WCEF) side event. Aalto University is also one of the EU’s New European Bauhaus partners.

🌳 29 June – 1 July 2022 🦋

The CreaTures Festival will bring the project’s people to share and reflect on the project learnings, their future, and their impact on eco-social transformations. 

We will do this though four key types of public activities over three days:  

1. Panel discussions and presentations from CreaTures researchers, advisory board members and invited guests across different sectors.  

2. Exhibition of selected Experimental Productions and local creative initiatives and projects.  

3. Knowledge exchange and co-creative workshops  

4. Keynote/s by internationally esteemed speakers.   

 
The event will be a meeting and exchange point for local citizens, thinkers, creators, actors, researchers and policy makers.

The CreaTures Festival website is now up and running. See the full program and register to attend here:
https://creatures-eu.org/festival/

Introduction

How can decision makers in policy fields best connect with the knowledge that creative research uncovers when investigating the biodiversity and climate crises? Artists have been exploring ways to deepen our connection with the more-than-human, taking innovative approaches to sustainability challenges. Creative practices have the power to change how people think and act in relation to ‘nature’ and the living things around us, so how might the world benefit from these insights?

In June 2022, the CreaTures project invited policy makers, artists, and practice-based researchers to the event Managed or out of control? Bridging policy and creative perspectives on ‘nature’ (part of the New European Bauhaus Festival). Six panellists from policy and creative practice presented their conceptions of ‘nature’ and ideas about how creative practitioners and policymakers might work together to trigger the transformations needed for planetary care. Whilst different approaches and challenges emerged, what was striking was the commonality between perspectives.

Four key points to take away –

Speakers were wary of approaches that do not step outside power dynamics of extraction and exploitation. For instance, Michal Mitro argued that the idea that we need to ‘fix’ climate change and biodiversity loss is a human-centric one, assuming humans are separate from the rest of nature and somehow control it. It was agreed that dominant Western beliefs about nature need changing to acknowledge that all life is interdependent and vulnerable to human negligence.

1. Create spaces for deep listening

The need to create spaces for deep listening ran across the discussion – perhaps most profoundly to ‘tune in’ to more-than-human life-forms, but also to connect humans working together across sectors.

Phil Tovey from DEFRA described how the schedule and usual working environment of policy makers is not set up in a way that makes entering into this sort of deep listening easy. Finding ways to make space to slow down and ‘be’ can enable transformative ideas to take shape.

In order to listen deeply, we need to acknowledge our own subjectivity and position, and to be quiet and observe, giving space for the more-than-human to communicate with us in their own ways, through their own bodies, interests, and points of communication. Markéta Dolejšová explored this in depth, describing arranged walks through the forest led by Chewie the dog.

2. Value experiential knowledge as a powerful route to transformation

Several of the speakers described the way experiencing feeds more effectively into transformation than reading about others’ experience. This is particularly true when relating to beings that communicate using ways other than human language. Artists are ideally placed to explore this, and their work can offer fresh perspectives in discussions about ecology.

The Treaty of Finsbury Park, for example, explores new ways to build empathy with non-human life-forms. The treaty is a Live Action Roleplay Game; participants are assigned a species mentor, attend a preparation workshop and then can take part in interspecies assemblies representing the species they were matched with. The game builds understanding of the more-than-human species in the park in a playful and engaged way that fosters more creative forms of understanding.

3. Enable translation across spheres

All the speakers agreed that transformational shifts require new ways of working across disciplines and settings. Clive Mitchell from NatureScot noted that policy makers almost always work within a specific ‘domain’ e.g. forests, water, etc, without necessarily connecting these to the wider systems round them. Artistic processes operate more freely, often creating situations where multiple forms of expertise can be heard and valued together. More holistic approaches can enable insights into new ways of relating and inspire potential solutions that domain-specific experts may miss, in being so focused.

Spaces that allow for communication through and between these different approaches allow artists and policy makers to find common languages across differences. The ‘soft spaces’ engagement approach introduced by Astrid Mangnus from SCP provides an interesting example – offering sessions when creative methods can undo hierarchies and provide freer spaces for designing alternative futures. Here, policymakers are invited to take deep listening and experiential knowing more seriously, while creative practitioners are invited to explore what an ‘evidence base’ for their practice might look like.

4. Move from extractive to regenerative value systems

Modern Western cultures have created devastation for living things. To move towards regenerative futures, speakers proposed that we change our value systems and re-imagine our worlds. However, these cultural dynamics need to be paired with practical, remedial action on the ground as part of holistic systems change. The Zoöp project presented by Klaas Kuitenbrouwer subverts a pre-existing legal framework to incentivise the regeneration of land. Instead of being a hidden vulnerable externality, more-than-human inhabitants of the land have a seat on the organisational board, intended as ‘shareholders’ of a better future. 

Speaker Biographies

Markéta Dolejšová, representing the EU CreaTures project, presented artworks that ask people to embrace more-than-human worldviews – for example by role-playing as animals (in the Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025), being taken on a walk by Chewie the dog (in Open Forest) or dining with multi-species companions (in Refuge for Resurgence). With these works from partners, she illustrated the possibilities inherent in stimulating imagination, by playing, experimenting and storytelling, for finding new forms of understanding of the world around us.

Klaas Kuitenbrouwer is a founder of Zoöp, a governance model that seeks to incentivise regeneration, rather than extraction. Organisations sign up as a Zoöp and appoint a Speaker for the Living onto an organisational board, using existing co-operative legal structures to represent more-than-human dwellers (inspired by cases of legal personhood for rivers).

Astrid Mangnus, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP), introduced the idea of transformation – the need to make urgent and radical changes to our ways of life, to halt the breakdown of earth systems. She highlighted how creative practices can be helpful in creating ‘soft’ spaces, where the governance of social and natural systems can be explored more imaginatively (outside of traditional ‘hard’ governance spaces).

Clive Mitchell, Strategic Resource Manager on nature and climate change at NatureScot, described the hidden values at work in how we talk and think about nature – even when we use the same scientific terms. Policy must balance the costs and benefits in how we use our shared natural resources, meaning that we cannot avoid questions of climate and environmental justice, he said.

Michal Mitro, an artist and researcher, spoke about the importance of relationships. Coming from a background of psychology and sociology as well as arts practice, he works with a forest that was once carefully managed by humans but is gradually growing wilder. His work acknowledges that we are always coming at things from a human point of view, but can listen to and contemplate other perspectives.

Phil Tovey, who leads the DEFRA futures team, highlighted some of the barriers to incorporating the needs of more-than-humans in policy. Policy-making is often not set up for deep listening. He suggested that more-than-human empathy needs to be combined with practical action involving a range of groups to be effective as a technique for governance. Creating systemic theories of change would be helpful to translate across spheres.    

In Conclusion

CreaTures’ Nature: managed or out of control event was encouraging in bringing together artists and policy-makers to respond to social and environmental challenges. There were differing approaches, but more noteworthy was the shared worldview between the artists, researchers and policy-makers in terms of vision and aims. In addressing the urgent need to find new, more sustainable and nourishing, ways of living on our shared planet, it can be all too easy to assume we need to abandon either the radicalism of imagining different futures or a focus on impacting everyday life. However, with suitable translators between contexts, the space for dreaming and deep listening to develop into practical action looks possible as well as important.

Thanks to all the speakers for their time, and the rich insights that they shared.

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CreaTures project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.

Participation is open to everyone but registration is required. To join, please fill in your details in the registration form and we will email you the link a day ahead of the seminar. 

The seminar will be recorded for archiving and research purposes; by joining the session you consent to the recording. Please read the Participation Information Sheet and Privacy Notice. CreaTures project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.

Pixelache – Andrew Gryf Paterson

Pixelache Helsinki is a Finland-based creative association on emerging creative practices with almost 20 years of activity, engaging issues in electronic arts and subcultures, eco-social and technological transformation, with a dynamic community that has produced an annual festival with various formats. This presentation shared our attempts this Spring to consider Pixelache Helsinki’s parallel organisational transformations, engaging with that which remains in our office, using memory recall and narratives towards an audio fanzine.

Yarmouth Springs Eternal project – Genevieve Rudd

Yarmouth Springs Eternal is a community arts, walking and nature project, instigated and led by community artist Genevieve Rudd. The project celebrates and connects with everyday or overlooked aspects of the natural world, whilst recognising the inequality of access to natural spaces, and challenging definitions of ‘nature’.

Visual trace to establish relation – View from the Window and DOMIE: Martyna Miller

Project View from the Window is a participatory process involving neighbors whose windows overlook DOMIE. DOMIE is a ruin, for four years becoming an engaged cultural center. The building looks like a small home in between tall, older tenements around. When photographed from above, due to the unusual shape of the roof, it visually resembles the first photograph ever taken by Nicephore Niepce in Le Gras (France). By playing with this visual connotation, she invites neighbors to evolve the feeling of something dear and beautiful, connected to memories and storytelling, and by this – slowly search for a sense of belonging and caretaking.

The Fallen Clouds – Josefina Buschmann, Daniela Camino

Josefina Buschmann and Daniela Camino presented the ongoing creative process of THE FALLEN CLOUDS, a speculative research-based project that delves into the socio-environmental impacts of digital infrastructures in Chile to break the great myth of cloud computing. The narrative follows a digital cloud searching for its body and origin extended among submarine cables in La Serena, data centers in Santiago, and minerals in the Atacama salt flat. On the journey it becomes entangled with human and more-than-human beings; socio-environmental conflicts; past, present, and future myths.

Open Urban Forest – Michal Mitro

Michal Mitro of ssesi.space presented the practical and conceptual background of the layered artistic research taking place in and about nature-reclaimed community garden in Brno, Czech Republic. Stacks, more-than-human actants, hyperobjects, as well as bees, retired gardeners and bonfires are all on the menu.

CreaTures project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.

CreaTures project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.

CreaTures project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.

On the second half of the seminar, we used these learnings to collectively design a “climate refuge” for our neighborhoods or local communities. Climate refuges are local spaces where vulnerable populations can take shelter during extreme weather events – but they can be much so more than that! Let’s collectively unravel their full potential to be truly inclusive, engaging, and transformative spaces in our cities.

CreaTures project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.

Creative practices have a lot to offer in terms of fostering a much needed transformation. CreaTures and Plurality University Network have been mapping libraries, repositories, hubs and other collections of creative and collective practices that pave paths towards sustainability transformations and new narratives. The goal of this work is to understand the social and ecological impacts of a wide range of transformative creative initiatives and to create opportunities for exchange and connection among these collections.

We invited a number of initiators and managers of such repositories to share their work, discuss their motivations and explain their selection and organisation criteria. The event started with fast-paced short presentations and concluded with a round table discussion tracing commonalities and differences in approaches, desired and achieved results, possible audiences, and seeking opportunities to amplify the reach and impact of these valuable resources. 

A report of the event, has been put together by Plurality University’s Julliettes Grossmann and is accessible here.

Speakers:

Daniel Kaplan and Chloé Luchs-Tassé –  Library of Alternative Narratives 

Summer Van Houten – Portolan Project 

Kelli Rose Pearson – ReImaginary project 

Diego Galafassi and David Tàbara – Arts for Sustainability Transformations

Romain Julliard and Joffrey Lavigne – Mosaic 

Lewis Coenen-Rowe – Library of Creative Sustainability

Garry Peterson – Seeds of Good Anthropocene

Lara Houston – CreaTures Observatory 

CreaTures project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. The content presented represents the views of the authors, and the European Commission has no liability in respect of the content.