Performing the new sustainability paradigm: The role of culture and education

Abstract

This chapter examines how “performance” as a concept and practice can be leveraged to re-value both culture and education in the context of the new sustainability paradigm. Artistic Research Collaboratives (ARC) on Participatory Choreographies in Our Future Cities is a set of a place-specific interventions that uses methods drawn from the arts, design, and new media in order to investigate how to involve diverse audiences in alternative modes of problem-solving, civic engagement, and public diplomacy regarding local and trans-border sustainability issues. In order for us to have a clear understanding of the increasingly delicate links between culture, place, sustainability, and our futures, we need to engage in a range of place-based research projects that heighten sensitivity to and awareness of the local and that translate it in effective ways across our many national and geographical borders. This type of performance research work, such as these pilots and others underway, can lead to innovations in cross-border cultural and arts exchange, a range of new forms of social and cultural entrepreneurship, university-community engagement, and pedagogical transformation in a global context.