The programme

Image credits: AI generated via Firefly

The Sustainability, creativity and communication programme is one of the many programmes run by the Institute for Sustainability.

Find out more about the Institute here.

Our programme brings together researchers and non-academic partners from different fields who have an interest in art and sustainability.

We take the arts and creative practices seriously. In doing so, we emphasise not only their communicative and representative potentials, but also their contributions to individual and societal wellbeing. In addition, these practices offer opportunities for imagining and experiencing alternative ways of living.

But taking the arts and creative practices seriously also means understanding their limitations and their embeddedness with systemic inequalities.

Taking both a hopeful and critical approach to the arts and creative practices, this research programme is split into two interrelated streams:

Sustainability through the arts
Sustainability in the arts

Co-Leads

Dr Carl Thompson

Katy Downton

We celebrate and investigate the role of art, embodied, and other non-scientific forms of knowledge and communication in sustainability debates and projects.

Dr Carl Thompson and Katy Downton - Programme Co-Leads

The programme addresses a variety of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
(UN SDGs).

These include but are not limited to SDG3, SDG6, SDG7, SDG12, SDG13 and SDG17.

The multi-award-winning animation, ‘Remember the Future’ is a creative response to the Institute for Sustainability's agenda. Read more about the behind-the-scenes process and watch the trailer here.