Event Concept
Culture is both part of the cause and part of the response to climate change. On 1 March, the Climate Heritage Network and Culture 2030 Goal are joining together to host a very special debate that will explore these tensions and their implications for cultural policy.
On the one hand, the take-make-waste ethic that has emerged since the advent of the industrial revolution has spread what environmental humanities scholars call ‘petrocultures’ and ‘carbonscapes’ across the earth.
On the other hand, traditional knowledge that pre-dates (or works independently of) the fossil fuel era can point the way to post-carbon living at scale. The worldviews and interpretations of development held by Indigenous Peoples and local communities that were never co-opted by modern take-make-waste approaches offer counterpoints to prevailing paradigms of ‘progress.’ Artistic and imaginative tools support a profound examination of inherited assumptions and hold the potential to transformatively reinterpret today’s carbon-scapes and their accompanying mindsets.
This debate is being organised as part of Resiliart, a global movement to gather inputs to inform the preparatory process of Mondiacult 2022. The UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development, known as MONDIACULT 2022, will be held in September 2022. It is meant to be ‘a renewed reflection on cultural policies to tackle global challenges and outline immediate and future priorities.’ The sponsors propose that climate change is a defining challenge of our time, requiring a robust yet well considered treatment in cultural policy for the foreseeable future.
The event is free and will be presented in both English and Spanish.
Debate Provocation
A short provocation has been prepared to guide and inform the debate. The provocation can be found here:
Questions Addressed
The debate will consider:
How do cultural actors address petrocultures, with their extractive, take-make-waste systems and unsustainable consumption and production patterns? How do we contextualise and interpret the heritage of the carbonscapes they have unleashed during the Anthropocene? Do approaches developed to address other so-called “toxic heritage” hold analogies for addressing petrocultures?
How can cultural institutions be accomplices, or even just allies, in the resistance of local communities and Indigenous Peoples to unsustainable, extractive models of governance and living? How can they help lift up traditional and Indigenous ways as counterpoint perspectives to unsustainable models of ‘progress’?
How can cultural policies support artists, heritage advocates, traditional knowledge holders, cultural, and creative voices to help people imagine – and realise – new post-carbon, climate resilient futures?
Programme
Welcome
Andrew Potts and Angelica Arias
Keynote Address: “Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven’t We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?”
Isak Stoddard
Talk: “Toxic Heritage and Climate Change: Lessons for Cultural Policy”
Elizabeth Kryder-Reid
Talk: “The Potential of Artistic and imaginative tools to transformatively reinterpret today’s carbon-scape and its accompanying mindsets”
Isabelle Fremeaux
Roundtable
Andrew Potts, Moderator
Discussants: Jordi Pascual, Alison Tickell and Ege Yildirim
Panel: How can Cultural Voices bring a people-centered approach to climate planning, one which addresses socioeconomic dimensions of the climate crisis? (In Spanish with English Translation)
Angélica Arias, Moderator
Intervention 1. Paula Trujillo, Colombia
Intervention 2. Simón Gangotena-Ortiz, Ecuador
Intervention 3. Saul Alcantara, México
Concluding Remarks
Andrew Potts and Angélica Arias
Speaker Bios
An architect by profession, Angélica Arias Benavides serves as the executive director of the Instituto Metropolitano de Patrimonio de Quito (Ecuador) where she is in charge of the management, coordination and supervision for the conservation of cultural heritage. Quito was the co-first city in the world to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage City. Angelica previously served as the Minister of Culture and Heritage of Ecuador. Before assuming the position, she was Undersecretary of Social Memory of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage of Ecuador, where she promoted the development, implementation and monitoring of repositories of libraries, historical archives and museums in the country. Angélica was recognized with the 2018 Program of Invitation of Personalities of the Future (PIPA), sponsored by the Government of France. Additionally, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Climate Heritage International Network.
Saul Alcantara Onofre from Mexico President of ICOMOS Mexico. He is a professor at the Autonomous University Metropolitan Azcapotzalco and has expertise in cultural landscapes and natural heritage. He is an architect specialized in the restoration of monuments and historical centers by the School of Restoration of Monuments and Historical Centers of Florence, Italy and master in landscape architecture by the University of the Studies of Genoa, Italy.
Isabelle Fremeaux is an educator, facilitator and author. She was a lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College-University, London. (2001-2011) before deserting the academy to apply herself to movement building. She co-authored/directed the film/book Les Sentiers de L’utopie (La Decouverte, 2010) and most recently We Are Nature Defending Itself: Entangling art, activism and autonomous zones (Pluto/Vagabonds, 2021) with Jay Jordan. Isabelle inhabits the liberated territory of the ZAD in Notre-dame-des-Landes, a rebel territory that fought off a climate wrecking airport project.
Simón Gangotena-Ortiz from Ecuador – Founder, executive and musical director of the InConcerto Foundation, an organization created in 2012 and dedicated to the generation and management of cultural and musical projects in Ecuador. One of its emblematic projects is the MúsicaOcupa Festival, whose main objective is the decentralization and democratization of classical music, the rescue of material cultural heritage and immaterial and the construction of social, cultural and political dialogues within our society through music.
Elizabeth Kryder-Reid (Ph.D Brown University) is Chancellor’s Professor, Anthropology and Museum Studies, in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, Director of the Cultural Heritage Research Center, and the former Director of the IUPUI Museum Studies Program. With a background in archaeology, art history, and public history, her research investigates cultural heritage with a particular focus on the intersections of landscape and power and the contestation of social inequalities across gender, race, class, ethnicity, and religion. She is the author of “California Mission Landscapes: Race, Memory, and the Politics of Heritage” (2016), a contributing author to Interpreting Religion (2018) and Keywords in American Landscape Design (2010), and PI of Shaping Outcomes (www.shapingoutcomes.org). She is the coordinator of the Toxic Heritage Research Collaborative.
Jordi Pascual is the founding coordinator of the Committee on culture of the world organisation of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). He has published books, articles and reports on cultural rights, international cultural relations, culture and sustainability and the governance of culture, which have been translated to more than 20 languages. Some examples: “Cultural rights, local cultural policies and sustainable development. Looking for a coherent narrative” (Journal of Law, Social Justice and Global Development, 2018), “Culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development: the best is yet to come” (Economia della cultura, 2016), “Rio+20 and culture: advocating for culture at the centre of sustainability” (UCLG, 2012), “Culture and sustainable development: institutional innovation and a new cultural policy model” (UCLG – UNESCO, 2009), “On citizen participation in local cultural policy development for European cities” (European Cultural Foundation, 2007), or “Third system: arts first! Local cultural policies, third system and employment” (European Commission, 1999). Jordi has been a member of the jury of the European Capital of Culture and teaches cultural policies and management at the Open University of Catalonia.
Andrew Potts coordinates the Secretariat of the Climate Heritage Network on behalf of ICOMOS, which hosts the Secretariat. The Climate Heritage Networks links organisations around the world that share a commitment to the role arts, culture and heritage can play in tackling the climate emergency. Andrew formerly coordinated the ICOMOS Climate Change and Heritage Working Group (CCHWG). In 2019 the CCHWG released its report The Future of Our Pasts: Engaging Cultural Heritage in Climate Action. The Future of Our Pasts Report scoped hundreds of ways in which cultural heritage can drive transformative climate action and catalogued the myriad impacts climate change is having on every type of heritage. Andrew holds a legal degree from Indiana University. He previously served as Associate General Counsel of the US National Trust for Historic Preservation and received its John H. Chafee Trustees Award for Outstanding Achievement in Public Policy. He also previously served as ICOMOS Focal Point for the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Isak Stoddard is a PhD candidate in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development at the Department of Earth Science. In his current research he is focused on the strategies and imaginaries informing regional climate and energy transitions within Sweden. His educational background is in engineering physics. For the past decade he has been mainly focused on developing transdisciplinary approaches to higher education at the Centre for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS). He is the lead author of the article “Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven’t We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?,” on which the Provocation for this event is partially based (Isak Stoddard, Kevin Anderson, Stuart Capstick, Wim Carton, Joanna Depledge, Keri Facer, et al., “Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven’t We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 46:1 (2021): 653-689, accessed 20 February 2022, https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104).
Alison Tickell established Julie’s Bicycle in 2007 as a non-profit company helping the music industry reduce its environmental impacts and develop new thinking in tune with global environmental challenges. JB has since extended its remit to the full performing and visual arts communities, heritage and wider creative and cultural policy communities. JB is acknowledged as a leading organization bridging sustainability with the arts and culture. Originally trained as a cellist, Alison worked with seminal jazz improviser and teacher John Stevens. She worked for many years at Community Music and at Creative and Cultural Skills where she established the National Skills Academy. She has been on many advisory and awarding bodies including Observer Ethical Awards, RCA Sustainable Design Awards, D&AD White Pencil Awards. She has been on the boards of the Music Business Forum, Live Music and Sound Connections, and is on the board of Energy Revolution. In 2021, Alison became a lifelong Ashoka Fellow.
Paula Trujillo from Colombia – Specialist and manager in the world of Creative and Cultural Economies between Europe and Latin America for more than 15 years. She has been the Manager of the first Creative Hub in Colombia, triggering action of the Creative District of Medellín in the industrial zone of Perpetuo Socorro. Member of Boards of Directors/Boards of Directors of some companies, and professor at universities in Spain and Colombia. She has worked on Medellín’s internationalization strategy in the period in which the city decides to move “from fear to hope” as Director of International Business and Executive Director of the Agency for Cooperation and Investment of the City (ACI).