Joining the Dots: our 2023 annual conference
Our annual conference goes beyond the catch-all keyword to highlight specific intersections between culture, ecology, digital practices, and care.
Many pathways to low-carbon futures have been articulated, but most fail to engage communities in imagining themselves as part of those futures and involved in the transition. Cultural centres play an important role in building imaginaries and providing inspiration to navigate future horizons. How can they become key actors in the necessary environmental, social, and digital transition?
Post-fossil societies would look very different from the ones we inhabit today in Europe. Landscapes, transport systems, buildings, communities, and indeed most social relations would be transformed. For this meeting, our guests will be practitioners, multidisciplinary researchers, artists, and policymakers working on low-carbon futures, who will share the concrete questions they are working on and the practices they are building to help citizens appropriate the future and feel that they can create it.
Leaving petro-culture behind will not happen just through mitigation of fossil fuel use. It will also require systemic and cultural change. In-depth workshops will look at how cultural organisations can
switch to a more ethical and sustainable use of digital
care for their human resources
improve their environmental impact
use art as a transformational practice
A key concern will be moving away from extractive logics - which exhaust natural resources, human resources, and data - towards collective practices for care, creation, and flourishing.
Who will be interested?
Coordinators and staff of cultural and community centres and cultural networks
cultural managers and policy experts
professionals involved in mental health and well-being, digital and cultural rights, sustainability, and climate justice
artists, activists, educators, social workers
researchers and students
policymakers from the local, national, and international levels.
This event is organised in collaboration with the Municipality of Orihuela, Casa Mediterráneo, the Diputación de Alicante, and the Catedra Iberoamericana Alejandro Roemmers de las Industrias Culturales y Creativas of the Universitas Miguel Hernandez. It is endorsed by the New European Bauhaus and funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Commission.