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Workshops & Symposiums

The Action has organised the following events:

 

Placing Culture in Sustainable Development

23-25 November,  2011

Local organizers: Hannes Palang and Helen Sooväli-Sepping,  University of Stuttgart, SI Institute of Urban Planning and Urban Design,and

This was the first working meeting of the action, with the main aim of creating the conceptual basis for our further work. The aim of the first workshop was defined to strengthen and extend our common knowledge base on culture and sustainable development, and discuss their role and meaning in our society. This was achieved by listening to three keynote presentations and on working group meetings.The three keynote lectures addressed the following topics:

  • What can culture offer sustainability? By Prof. Michael Redclift, Kings College London
  • Cultural theory and sustainability, by Prof. Mihail Lotman, Estonian Institute of Humanities
  • Governance. Cultural Sustainability and Agenda 21 for Culture,by Jordi Pascual, United Cities and Local Governments

The working group meetings on the second day focused mostly on the state of the art of the problem in their relative fields.

  • WG 1 discussed the plurality of definitions of sustainability of culture and concluded that Instead of the definition, sequences of options and dimensions used in particular context for particular goals could be useful. The next step for the WG would be to make a broader and wider inventory/map of concepts on cultural sustainability relating to: 1) variety in different countries 2) conceptual variety in dimensions and options 3) our own interest.
  • WG2 on Policy practices for cultural sustainability made a clustering of perceived topics and decided to focus on two tracks they will pursue further: 1) Conceptual level 2) Bringing illustrative examples and explaining these. The WG has also decided the procedures and schedule for further work along these tracks before the Coimbra meeting.
  • WG 3 on indicators of cultural sustainability made an extensive overview of different sets of indicators used in sustainability studies and decided to elaborate an internal publication on these issues, to be done by the next meeting.

 

The third day was spent on summarizing the results of the working group meetings and determining next steps. It also contained a MC meeting. The major challenge for the further work remains to link the works of different WGs.

Symposium: Placing Culture in Sustainable Development: Policies, Strategies and Processes

14-16 May 2012. Coimbra, Portugal

Local organiser: Nancy Duxbury, Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra

 

The aim of the Symposium was to give an overview of the policy context where culture meets sustainable development, and of the strategies and processes which guide culturally sustainable development at local, regional, national and transnational levels. Moreover, during the Symposium the participants identified and established “thematic clusters” on various topics of cultural sustainability, which will serve as forums for future collaborative work.

The symposium featured five keynote presenters from Finland, Australia, Canada, and UNESCO:

  • Prof. Yrjö Haila provided a broad-scope overview of the evolving relationships between human and natural cycles, introducing the perspective of metabolic processes, edges and symbiosis to understand these relationships. Post-normal scientific inquiry was posited as the necessary paradigm to understand contexts of high uncertainty, such as human-nature relationships and conditions of today. He stressed sustainability science’s need for help from other fields, and the importance of changing the discourse around sustainable development, intellectually and symbolically most interesting when it contains some ambiguity.
  • Dr. Catherine Driscoll presented on a current interdisciplinary research project on cultural sustainability in Australian rural towns, providing valuable insights on research approaches to this topic as well as highlighting both the necessity and challenges of multidisciplinary research projects. Adopting a cultural studies model, the project defines culture as networks of value by which social order is reproduced, experienced and communicated, and the field in which we negotiate meanings. The project focuses on amenities, mobility and everyday life in three case study communities and strives to ‘keep the contradictions in view’.
  • M. Sharon Jeannotte and Dr. Caroline Andrew discussed current research investigating on the inclusion of cultural considerations in Canadian Integrated Community Sustainability Plans (ICSPs). ICSPs are long-term integrated community plans structured on a four-pillar model of sustainability, with culture as one of the pillars. They were a national initiative beginning in 2005, initially tied to ‘gas tax’ funding, and developed locally through participatory processes in cities and smaller communities across the country. In the context of conceptual uncertainty about the ‘culture pillar’, Individual communities developed a wide variety of locally resonant approaches to articulating culture’s place in community sustainability, pointing to the importance of acknowledging and examining practice-based innovations and challenges within academic research circles.
  • Dr. Keiko Nowacka outlined UNESCO’s Culture for Development Indicator Suite (CDIS), an international pilot project, linked to the 2005 Convention, to develop and implement cultural indicator suites in a variety of ‘non-cultural’ fields to develop evidence of the impacts of culture in these development areas. The nature of the topic selections within the indicator suites, the emphasis on relationships between different dimensions of development and ‘comparative understanding’ (but not ranking), and the graphical presentation of the indicator suites as ‘Culture and Development DNA’ all provided valuable input into the COST Action’s investigation into approaches to indicators for cultural sustainability.

 

Altogether, these international contributions helped situate the European-focused COST Action within a broader context of research activity internationally, and inform its development and work. Time was provided after each keynote presentation for participants to ask questions and discuss issues related to the presentation.

Local insights were included in the symposium though a brief session on the history, evolutionary change, and dynamics of the Fado of Coimbra (Dr. Manuel Malaguerra and Dr. António Olaio), and a panel of three creators/artists (Dr. António Olaio, José Valente and Dr. Claudia Carvalho) who introduced insights from artistic practice into the Symposium as they reflected on key messages of concern in their practices that relate to the COST Action. Topics raised by the panel included: change and permanence; the artist as a reporter to draw attention to detail within complexity and to raise awareness; purposeful contradictions in artistic practice; ‘usefulness’ through creating disturbances; deep knowledge of artistic heritage as a fundamental base for development of own creative voice; development of personal heritage through continual influences and use/mix of these influences (‘building up my own heritage’); artistic practice connecting people/communities onto a particular place/context; residents’ ‘real’ and symbolic appropriation of their public space through artistic practices; and linking history, memories, traditions and civic transformation. Further, the cultural programme inspired discussions about on-the-ground issues of cultural sustainability including tensions with tourism as both an enabler and influencing factor, the roles of amateur and professional cultural practices, and the ways in which cultural practices adapt (and are adapted) over time in different socio-cultural contexts and by different actors.

To inform the participants of a conceptual mapping exercise underway, Dr. Katriina Soini outlined her ongoing work (with Dr. Inger Birkeland) to map the conceptual discourses of ‘cultural sustainability’ within the academic literature and the emergence of seven ‘storylines’.

The COST Action participants met in the Working Groups to further their individual workplans. The participants also developed subject ‘clusters’ of key topic areas through interactive processes, coordinated by Dr. Lluis Bonet, and met within the clusters to explore in more detail possible avenues for joint research proposals and papers. The (informal) clusters were labelled:

  • governance
  • participation
  • territorial development
  • events, arts, creative industry
  • tourism
  • mobility
  • nature – culture interfaces
  • education
  • heritage
  • theory and concepts
  • methodologies
  • other

An overview of the progress of the WGs, an evaluation of the clustering exercise, and a meeting of the Management Committee occurred on the final day.

The symposium was attended by 51 participants representing 21 European countries as well as Canada, Australia and UNESCO.

 

Capturing Culture in Sustainable Development Assessments

22–24 October 2012, Innsbruck, Austria

Local organizer: Oliver Bender, Institute of Mountain Research: Man and Environment, Austrian Academy of Sciences,

While the first and second meeting dealt with the concepts of culture and the role of policy, this third meeting of the COST Action IS1007 focused on how to assess the role and meaning of culture within the framework of sustainable development. In addition, the participants worked on the various forms of outputs, publications, curriculums and research plans. The workshop was addressed primarily at the Action participants.

After the introduction by Action chair Katriina Soini and by the local organisers, Axel Borsdorf and Oliver Bender, the symposium featured three keynote presenters from Germany, the European Commission and Austria:

• Prof. Helmut K. Anheier (Hertie School of Governance, Berlin and University of Heidelberg): Cultural indicators and sustainability: what are the issues?

 • Dr. Andrea Saltelli (Joint Research Centre, Ispra): Communicating uncertainty: some applications of indicators and their validity

• Prof. Martin Piber (University of Innsbruck): The evaluation of culture? Biased agendas, politics and values

In sum, these keynote contributions greatly contributed to enhancing discussions about research on cultural sustainability indicators and assessments and to defining an appropriate frame for the ongoing work within the Action. After the three presentations a time slot was provided for a panel discussion with all keynote presenters and the Action members, chaired by Lluis Bonet.

The first afternoon of the workshop was dedicated to the ‘Action dissemination’: First, an introduction of the ‘Who’s who’ book by the relevant editorial group took place, followed by a presentation of the Action dissemination plan by Joost Dessein. Both were discussed in the plenary.

The first day closed with an introduction of the following four book projects (by the respective co‐ordinators):

• Place‐based development (Elena Battaglini)

• Human‐Nature interface (Nathalie Blanc)

• Memory, Identity and Place (Graham Fairclough)

• Culture in the Urban Age, and Re‐imaging Europolis (Svetlana Hristova)

The second workshop day started with parallel book sessions to discuss possible contributions to these four books, followed by the three working group meetings. The afternoon was reserved as ‘creative space’ for an exercise linked to the topic of the Action by Mari Kivitalo and Christiaan de Beukelaer, for planning and writing joint papers and research proposal meetings, for starting work on the training programmes and curricula on the topic, and also for the Research Strategy Group meeting.

The third meeting day again consisted of plenary sessions in which the results of the parallel book sessions and those from the Research Strategy Committee, the working groups and the ‘creative exercise’ were presented, followed by a discussion of the next steps. The workshop ended with the Management Committee meeting.

In the late afternoons, excursions, i.e. a guided city tour in two groups, led by Axel Borsdorf and Oliver Bender, and a visit to the Museum of Tyrolean Folk Art, gave local insights on how the town of Innsbruck and the federal state of Tyrol are trying to valorise their cultural heritage by means of cultural tourist activities. A brief address by the local organiser, Oliver Bender, during the conference dinner also touched on the interrelation of regional products and tourism.

Workshop organised was attended by 41 participants representing 22 European countries as well as the European Commission.

 

International Conference: The Sense of Place: Cultural sustainability and regional development

April 10-12, 2013

Local organisers: Dr. Elena Battaglin, IRESi and Dr. Anna Palazzo Faculty of Architecture, University of Roma Tre, Roma, Italy

The overall theme of the Conference was territorialisation, to be understood as a process which links physical, socio-economic and cultural place-based conditions for sustainable development, encompassing sense-making and giving meaning to places through cultural practices, place identities, narratives, values and sense of place.

The conference theme has combined regional development with the main topics of the Cost Action "Investigating Cultural Sustainability". This combination has lead to four thematic lines, that have been explored in five key-note sessions:

1) Memory, identity and places. Key-note speaker: Prof. Graham Fairclough

2) The role of culture in place-framing and making. Key-note speaker: Prof. Anssi Paasi

3) Urban and regional planning: cultures and practices. Prof. Zoran Djukanovic

4) Territorialisation: the theoretical challenges. Prof. Andrea Mubi Brighenti

5) Place-based sustainable development: the challenges for urban policies. Key-note speakers: Francesco Rutelli, Rome Mayor (1993-2001); Jordi Pascual, Coordinator, United Cities and Local Governments’ Committee on Culture.

These thematic lines have been also reflected in the Parallel sessions, as they dealt with different COST book projects. The International scholars and experts invited as key-note speakers have contributed to the Parallel Sessions’ discussion on the topics of the work-in-progress COST books.

Of course, the Conference has allowed us to discuss the Cost action work-in-progress and the future activities and also to further work within the 3 Working Groups.

The Local Organisers have tried to devote the optional activities to the main issues of the conference organising:

‘The Sense of Taste’ – a territorial wine and cheese-tasting together with Sandro Sangiorgi, Sommelier; And Walking dinner at the National Roman Museum at Palazzo Massimo. Visual-art exhibition among the Roman statues "The sense of Rome’s place", presented by Arch. Piero Meogrossi.

More than 80 person have actively participated to the working sessions either as participant of the IS 1007 Cost Action or as external.

The Value of Heritage for Sustainable Development

September 2-4 (Mon.-Wed), 2013

Local organisers: Prof. Loreta Georgieva-Jakolevska and Dr. Mishel Paslov,Faculty of Law, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia  

The topics relations and value are important for cultural sustainable development at local, regional, national and transnational levels. Because of that, the aim of the COST Action IS1007 meeting The Value of Heritage for Sustainable Development was to give an overview of the relations between heritage and memory, identity and place, and the value of heritage for social cohesion, economic viability and good governance. During the meeting the participants identified interdependence between the protection of cultural heritage and the politics of memory, the creation of identity and sense of place. On the other hand, this COST meeting was concentrated on the cultural heritage as a tool that provides social cohesion and collective identification, impetus for economic growth and strategies for good governance. The theoretical issues about the relationship between cultural heritage and community and the practical questions of how cultural heritage serve the society in order to provide a benefit to people's daily lives was discussed in:

Three plenary sessions (key note speakers):

  • Dr. Milan Popadic; Dr. Dragan Bulatović (University of Belgrade)
  • Dr. Molly Steinlage, (UNESCO)
  • Dr. Claske Vos, (University of Amsterdam)

Four parallel sessions working on the Books:

  • Re‐Imagining europolis: art, creativity, and cultural sustainability
  • The place of heritage, identity and memory
  • Territorialisation. Place based approaches to sustainable regional development.
  • Human‐nature interface

 Two special parallel sessions:

  • Food and cultural sustainability (lecutrers/co-ordinators: Agnese Cretella, Wageningen University and Ina Horlings, Wageningen University)
  • Arts and visualizing cultural sustainability (lecturer: Barbara Benich, Artmill, University of California)

Also we had Research Strategy Group Meeting and Working in the subgroups. Last day of the meeting we had Plenary session: Progress and Future Steps of COST Action, as well as MC meeting.

The Local Organizers tried to devote the optional activities to the main issues of the conference organizing: Visit to the St. Panteleimon Monastery and Sightseeing of Old Skopje Bazaar More than 40 persons have actively participated to the working sessions.

The meeting was organized by the Centre for Culture and Cultural Studies (CCCS). Scientific Committee: Katriina Soini, Joost Dessein, Graham Fairclough, Elizabeth Auclair, Loreta Georgievska Jakovleva, Mishel Pavlovski Local Organizers: Loreta Georgievska Jakovleva and Mishel Pavlovski and volunteers from “Orce Nikolov” high school.

 

Many of the Action participants participated in the Conference on Culture and Memory after the COST workshop in Skopje. The Action has also a panel in that Conference on culture and sustainability related to heritage and memory chaired by Graham Fairclough and Elizabeth Auclair.

 

Cultures of Sustainability in the Age of Climate Crisis

14-16 May, 2014

Local organizer: Dr. Inger Birkeland, Department of Culture and Humanities, Telemark University College (TUC), Norway, in.

The aim of the COST Action IS1007 meeting was to provide new perspectives and practical examples of the transformative role of culture for a sustainable future. The symposium investigated many ways of integrating perspectives on cultural change, social learning, experience-based training and transdisciplinary research, to grasp the role of culture in sustainable development, working with a dynamic and transversal concept of culture (culture as process and communication). Thematically, the scientific program raised more attention to the cultural meanings of sustainability and sustainable development in an ecological or environmental sense, compared to previous Action meetings. In addition, the evening cultural program invited to more active exploration of the natural surroundings of the venue, with outdoors walking and organized talks outdoors. The Department of Culture and Humanities at TUC applied and received additional funding from the Norwegian Research Council prior to the COST meeting to cover for the costs connected with the open parts of the scientific program.  

The meeting featured four key note speakers from Scotland, England, Norway and Germany, and one book launch, and which was made the open to the public. This program was announced through the TUC cultural research email lists within the Nordic countries (in addition to the invited COST Action members). The key note lectures were videotaped and will be (or are already) published online on the COST Action website and TUC own website. These lectures contribute to promote the aims of the Action and COST Action research networking to the public. The key note speakers were:  

Professor Deidre Heddon, at Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, provided a broad and theoretically sound overview of the relationship between performance and sustainability, and drew on her long experience from performance and theatre studies and practices. Heddon gave thought-provoking examples from her research with and through performance studies. Heddon’s lecture was very well received and showed the Action members novel perspectives concerning performance’s complex relationships to the environment, ecology and global concerns.

Outdoors educator Dave Key presented the results of the Natural Change Project, commissioned by the WWF Scotland (2008-2011) where Dave Key designed the core program. The project has developed theory and methods for catalysing leadership for sustainability. The presentation caused many questions and a very vibrant discussion. In order to exemplify his facilitation style for groups, Dave Key also facilitated a discussion in the evening (a fire circle) as part of the scientific program. The event gathered many participants who together explored personal and emotional responses to climate change.   

Kjell Ole Kjærland Olsen, Professor of Cultural Policy at Department of Culture and Humanities at Telemark University College, has in particular researched border cultures, identities and ethnicities in Arctic North of Norway and Sapmi, which is the homeland of the indigenous Sami people. The lecture took an explicit Nordic perspective and provided the many participants of the Action with a superb overview of the cultural histories and complexities of the border zone cultures of the European North, and with many questions afterwards from an interested group of participants.

Dr. Sacha Kagan is research associate at the Leuphana University Lueneburg, presented a lecture on transdisciplinary research cultures (TRC) exemplifying how this is useful and relevant for the fields of arts and (un-)sustainability. Kagan gave an intense and very compelling overview over the development of TRC that has come as reactions and solutions to new society-science relationships, of two major “schools” of TRC in Europe today, and pitfalls and challenges for TRC in concrete research practices. The lecture is very useful for the Action members and final output of the Action. 

Book launch

Dr. Inger Birkeland, local organizer and project leader for the symposium, launched her new book “Kulturelle hjørnesteiner” (Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2014) at Telemarksgalleriet, Notodden, as part of the scientific program open for the public. The event included wine reception with a short presentation of the book and a guided tour of the museum and gallery. The publisher was present. The author was interviewed by local newspapers about the book launch and the COST meeting.

Workshops (thematic)

In addition to presentations from invited key note speakers which were open to the public, the symposium hosted several types of meetings and workshops as part of the scientific program for the Action members. 1) Scientific workshops were organized to provide input for one of the main outputs in the final year of the Action, the White Paper. The workshops developed case studies (example material) of the role and meaning of culture in sustainable development, working across the three working groups within the Action so that both conceptual (WG1), policy (WG2) and assessment issues (WG3) were to be discussed for each of the thematic cases. Six workshops were organized, covering topics from industrial heritage in Norway, museums in Cyprus, governance of the nature-culture nexus in the Chilean Atacama desert, culture and sustainable development in Burkina Faso, Roma people nomadic heritage in Slovakia, and guerilla gardening in Paris. A shared, interdisicplinary framework for the workshops was presented and a joint plenary discussion was organized where the results of the workshops were presented.

Other meetings

In addition to the workshops, the symposium hosted work group meetings, where each of the work groups was asked to provide more empirical data for the White Paper. A Management Committee meeting was held at the final day of the meeting.

The symposium was attended by 37 participants, representing 21 European countries as well as Canada, USA and Chile.

Urban Futures – Implementing Cultural Sustainability in Governance and Spatial Planning

3-5 December 2014, Dortmund, Germany

 

Local organisers: Mario ReimeILS – Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development in Dortmund in collaboration with Jenny Atmanagara,  University of Stuttgart, SI Institute of Urban Planning and Urban Design

Workshop “ Urban Futures – Implementing Cultural Sustainability in Governance and Spatial Planning” organized by the ILS – Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development in Dortmund in close cooperation with the SI Institute of Urban Planning and Urban Design, University of Stuttgart has been attended by XY participants from XY European countries.The meeting was held in Dortmund, a city dealing for a long time with industrial heritage and its sustainable transformation. As a keynote, Mr. Martin Lürwer, head of the Department for Planning, Building and Environment of the City of Dortmund, opened the meeting with a short lecture on the role of industrial heritage for city development and its role for identity building and city branding.

The symposium then focused on working in six different subgroups, continuing the work started at the last meeting in Bö, Norway. The subgroups met on the first day of the symposium two times for two times (1,5 hours each) and for a plenary session in the afternoon, where the main results have been presented by the sub-group speakers to the plenary. One main activity has been to produce ad-hoc texts being later integrated in one of the main outputs of the Action, the so-called White Paper.

The White Paper serves as the final product of the COST-action IS1007 and is not a comprehensive and extensive report, but rather an accessible, short and attractive, this “policy-friendly” document of about 30 pages. The content is on the one hand conceptual and theoretical, based on the scientific work in the Action. On the other hand, the White Paper gives diverse illustrations to make the conceptual content more tangible and applicable. Finally, the White Paper gives recommendations for the scientific, political and practitioner’s communities.

On the second day, the discussion was bases on the work in three subgroups (concepts, policies, assessment), based on the work in previous meetings. In the afternoon, a field trip has been conducted, visiting some of the most famous locations for industrial heritage and its transformation (e.g. for touristic use etc.). In the afternoon (after the field trip), the Helsinki Confernce Meeting took place at ILS. The main strategic and organizational guidelines for the final conference meeting in Helsinki have been settled and presented on Friday morning in the plenary. After that (3rd day), three new subgroup meeting took place (research orientations, training programmes, publication activities). One of the main points in the discussions on research orientations was the strategic organization of further collaboration between partners of the Action concerning Horizon 2020.

 

Final Conference:

Culture(s) in Sustainable Futures: theories, policies, practices

Helsinki 6-8 May, 201

Local organisers: Katriina Soini (Chair), Anita Kangas, Mari Kivitalo, Katriina Siivonen, Antti Honkanen, Sari Asikainen.

The Action organised a final international, transdisciplinary conference in Helsinki, 6-8 May, 2015 "Culture(s) in Sustainable Futures: theories, policies, practices". The conference was open for scientists and practitioners working or interested in the field topic, and it attracted 290 participants from 40 countries across the world. Read more.