Climate Culture: Transition polices for sustainable cultural ecosystems

This panel explores the intersections between culture and climate through three different but connected perspectives: sustainable development, policy and systems, and art making. Each contributor expresses climate action through a different lens asking whether current cultural norms and attitudes are fit for purpose in a context of climate crisis and global inequity. Combining expertise in justice and sustainable development, policy making and urbanization, creative economy, art work and natural and cultural heritage, the contributors ask what values are at the root of cultural practice that are driving the system. The panel identifies that top-down processes of cultural policymaking are too big, clumsy and disconnected with local and intimate culture-making; therefore, they are effectively broken and do not serve culture, communities or climate action.

In anticipation of the COP26 climate summit, taking place in a profoundly altered world, the panel concludes with observations on the value and values of culture, and the possibilities, particularly as the EU redefines cultural priorities in the context of the Green Deal, for culture, the arts and the creative community to reshape the future.

Speakers
Nancy Duxbury, Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra
Robert Palmer, International Cultural Expert, Former Director of Culture and Cultural and Natural Heritage, Council of Europe
Anaïs Roesch, Head of Project - Cultural sector, Climate and Energy, The Shift Project

Moderator
Alison Tickell, Founder and CEO, Julie’s Bicycle