Catalyst: reimagining sustainability with and through fine art
- Submitting institution
-
Manchester Metropolitan University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 257182
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
-
10.5751/ES-08717-210421
- Title of journal
- Ecology and Society
- Article number
- 21
- First page
- n/a
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 4
- ISSN
- 1708-3087
- Open access status
- Technical exception
- Month of publication
- December
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
-
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/625611/
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
4
- Research group(s)
-
A - Architecture
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This paper was a result from the AHRC-funded Jetty-project that investigated how a practice-led fine art project can meaningfully contribute to the multi-layered debate around sustainability in the urban environment. A collaboration between social scientists and fine artists, the project resulted in a site-specific, temporary public sculpture in Gateshead, UK. An international book Catalyst: Sustainability, Art, and Place in the Work of Wolfgang Weileder, edited by Simon Guy, described the work and sets it within wider theoretical debates in science and technology studies. This article departs from the book by emphasising that, rather than simply being a way to communicate climate change in the urban realm, creative material experimentations can be an active research tool through which ideas about urban environmental change can be tested without knowing predefined means or ends. The case shows how such creativity acts as a catalyst to engage a heterogeneous mix of actors in the redefinition of sustainable urban spaces, by juxtaposing past and present with the ephemeral and the (seemingly) durable. The article was refined after several conference papers by Connelly and Guy including the British Sociological Association (2015) and the Association of American Geographers (2015). The paper was part of a special issue in Ecology and Society entitled ‘Reconciling art and science for sustainability’, and deliberately published in a high-impact scientific journal to emphasise the contribution of the arts and humanities to climate change research. Whilst part of a burgeoning literature base on art and climate change, the paper is original for exploring how interdisciplinarity works and can depart from existing disciplinary foundations to create new insights.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -