Expanding Communities of
Sustainable Practice

Friday 16 November 2018, 10am-4pm

Keynote Speaker: Dr Joanna Boehnert

Building on our successful symposium in October 2016, we are excited to announce our second, one day symposium at Leeds Arts University continuing the dialogue on how to expand communities of sustainable practice within and beyond art and design schools.

Given the need for art and design education to transform its mode of operating in times of massive ecological crises, the symposium is an opportunity to learn from cases of good practice and to network with others who are eager to make art and design education an effective advocate of sustainable practice.

The symposium is now fully booked

Communities of sustainable practice are groups or networks of educators, designers, artists, craftspeople, researchers and students who aim to place sustainability concerns at the heart of their practice. Through the symposium we want to provide a space for people involved in such initiatives to effectively network and strategise together in order to enhance the positive impact and reach of what they do.

Image: Carol Sowden MA Creative Practice Show Reel 4. 

Aims & objectives

We want to focus on the importance of collaboration and networks in creating art and design practices that contribute to the four pillars of sustainability; environmental, social, economic and culture. We are especially interested in complicating as well as expanding the notions of sustainability within art and design education and on how they contribute to engaging the public in sustainable and progressively transformative practices.

As we are convinced that sustainability is also about meshing up and intersecting practice and theory, the day will span from theoretical to practical engagements with sustainability - always with a focus on making this day productive in terms of building alliances, projects and shared commitments between the people attending.

Keynote Speaker

Dr Joanna Boehnert, author of Design, Ecology, Politics: Towards the Ecocene and founder of Eco Labs - a not-for-profit design research lab and studio engaged in the communication of complex environmental problems that creates resources, projects and programmes that nurture ecological literacy, critical whole systems thinking and agency.

On the day

This one day event will begin with the keynote presentation (Dr. Joanna Boehnert) followed by parallel discussion sessions where papers to be presented include: Reciprocity for sustainable social design; Delivering meaningful social engaged projects across an art school curriculum; Exploring the commercial viability of bioengineered fashion and textile products; Embedding sustainability in design education; Still life, vanitas, and commodity culture: Things devouring time; Eating mothers - milk matters and many more.

It is the intention that all presenters’ essays will be published in the form of symposium proceedings.

The symposium is now fully booked