Abstract
This paper argues for an integrative approach to sustainability transformations, one that reconnects body and mind, that fuses art and science and that integrates diverse forms of knowledge in an open, collaborative and creative way. It responds to scholarship emphasizing the importance of connecting disparate ways of knowing, including scientific, artistic, embodied and local knowledges to better understand environmental change and to foster community resilience and engagement. This paper draws on the experience of an arts-based project in Lisbon, Portugal, and explores embodied and performative practices and their potential for climate change transformations. It puts forward and enlivens an example, where such forms of engaging communities can provide new insight into how equitable, just and sustainable transformations can come about. The process involved a series of interactive workshops with diverse arts-based methods and embodied practices to create performative material. From this process, a space emerged for the creation of meaning about climate change. Three key elements stood out in this process as being potentially important for the emergence of meaning-making and for understanding the impact of the project: the use of metaphors, embedding the project locally, and the use of creative, embodied practices. This furthers research, suggesting that the arts can play a critical role in engaging people with new perspectives on climate change and sustainability issues by offering opportunities for critical reflection and providing spaces for creative imagination and experimentation. Such processes may be important for contributing to the changes needed to realize transformations to sustainability.
Highlights
At a time when the awareness of humanity’s impact on the global environment has become part of the mainstream discourse radical, transformative approaches to climate change are increasingly being considered for their potential to create bold solution spaces
In climate change research and practice, transformation is often seen as an approach that focuses on changing societal systems, structures, and relationships, which are seen as the root causes of unsustainability and climate change (Kates et al 2012; O’Brien 2012)
We explored how embodied art forms can lead to a deeper understanding and connection to a topic that is commonly perceived as abstract and distant
Summary
At a time when the awareness of humanity’s impact on the global environment has become part of the mainstream discourse radical, transformative approaches to climate change are increasingly being considered for their potential to create bold solution spaces. Recognizing the diversity of perspectives on transformation, the concept can be broadly characterized as “significant changes in form, structure and/or meaning-making” (O’Brien 2018). It can further be understood as a psycho-social process that uncovers the human potential to commit, care, and effect change for a better life, or an internal shift that alters the way one experiences and relates to oneself, others, and the world (Schlitz et al 2010; Sharma 2007). We further explore how embodied art forms can create space for dynamic solutions to emerge, and how learning through the body can be a way to engage the complexities of climate change. While we do not aim to provide absolute answers on the manner of transformation, nor a blueprint for performative arts-based approaches to climate change, we wish to shed light on the power of integrative and embodied approaches to inspire subtle, yet profound, individual changes in relating to sustainability transformations
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