The CreaTures project promotes action for social and ecological sustainability by identifying those aspects of creative practices that contribute most effectively to positive social transformation.
Drawing on pilot research (Light, Wolstenholme and Twist, 2019) that shows how collaboration, reflection and direct engagement are key to changing the public’s orientation to socio-ecological issues, the three-year project (January 2020-December 2022) involves three interrelated components:
- Observatory, identifying and mapping existing, fragmented and often hidden transformational creative practices.
- Laboratory, supporting new experimentation and direct collaboration with diverse stakeholders, by mounting several different scales and types of arts production.
- Evaluation, testing new and existing creative practices for their impact, in a systematic and concerted way.
These components are interwoven with a series of engagement events enabling broad access to the evolving outcomes of the project for different groups, including policy actors, scientific community, and members of the public.
The CreaTures processes will result in The Open Creative Practice Framework (OCP), an open-access, transdisciplinary, evidence-based framework demonstrating effective paths to achieving sustainability, social cohesion and peaceful co-existence at a time of rapid change. The OCP Framework will offer a strategic research agenda for key stakeholders, a set of innovations addressing the cultures and conditions for delivering greater sustainability, and recommendations for policymakers.
Our research and practice are led by the following questions:
- What are the specific qualities of transformational creative practices?
- How might artistic and transformational aspirations and aims be aligned in practice?
- What are the ways to measure and communicate the impact of such practices?
- How might we encourage and support future transformational creative practices from the individual to infrastructural level across Europe and beyond?
There are 11 partners in the CreaTures project, bringing together several organisations associated with creative approaches to transformation and sustainability.