Arts Imagining Communities To Come

Dr Rhiannon Jones was invited to chair an online workshop that was designed to provide a call to action for the art and design industry to commit to a sustainable, climate-first future. The workshop provided an opportunity for academics to participate in a discussion about Imagining communities of the future. In order to enable this, Dr Jones shared learnings from DesignforPlanet www.designforplanet.org where she had returned from the Design Council, UK summit, for COP26 as a guest speaker. A landmark event to galvanise and support the UK’s design industry to commit to a sustainable, climate-first future in response to COP26, hosted at the VandA Dundee; the only UNESCO Design City in the UK. This workshop provided time to disseminate key objectives and reposition these within the art and design global network of Cumulus. Colleagues from the UK, Finland, Italy, Ecuador, Germany. This international research activity allowed Dr Jones to discuss artistic approaches for co-designing with communities in urban and rural locations. This, workshop resulted in perspectives on the industrialisation of countries and perceptions of the impact of the climate crisis being shared and reinvigorated the questioning of the value of art and design, as an instigator and leader for climate change.

The workshop led by Dr Rhiannon Jones sat at the heart of Cumulus Conference Guayaquil 2021: Arts Imagining Communities To Come. It promoted academic reflections and artistic performances focusing on different ways of working with local communities. It invited artists, scholars, professors, and researchers to share their experiences and reflections on this matter, pre, during and after the pandemic.

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