Our first in-person workshop took place in Summerhall, allowing the workshop members to ground some of the emergent discussions that came from the online introductory session in real-life contexts. Summerhall as a multi-use arts space within a urban contexts of a capital city (Edinburgh), provided a context to reflect on some emergent questions about sustainable prosperity and the very specific place-based concerns of being a private arts venue in the urban centre of Edinburgh: the world’s premier festival city, as well as a UNESCO heritage site. This specific context of Edinburgh provided some very (binary) issues, specifically:
- Cultural organisations are often limited by working within a pre-existing, heritage building that complicates delivering new, emergent works
- The Edinburgh Festivals draw the ‘world-class’ for a brief time, and it is therefore difficult to present ‘the ordinary’ for the rest of the year
- Rental market rates within a small urban centre like Edinburgh complicates both the offer and the mission of cultural organisations as they often require the economic stability of commercial tenants, but would prefer to support cultural tenants who are less able to pay market-rate rents.
Coming together to discuss these provided a good substrate to begin exploring cultural sustainable prosperity, and it was perhaps poor planing or serendipity that meant our first workshop occurred in same week as COP26 in Glasgow. As such, notions of sustainability and climate change were omnipresent. Dr Kate Oakly had been to the large scale climate march in Glasgow over the previous days, and she described the diversity participants from a variety of political and social spheres. This sheer critical mass was – on one hand – a positive sign of the growing concerns and interest in a broader examination of how we can adapt, change or examine our relationship to the environment. On the other hand, however, she described the sense that it was “not clear who was asking what of whom.” The sheer diversity of communities meant that there was little cohesive agreement about how to go forward, other than a general agreement that something needs to be done.
The lack of a clear ‘project’ complicates the narratives of sustainability and reminds us that ecological acts are inherently political because they are occurring in the public domain. Chantal Mouffe argues that “Public spaces [are] the battleground in which different hegemonic articulations are confronted. They are plural, always striated …there always exists a multiplicity of struggle.” There is therefore neither a single ‘public’ nor a single manifestation of hegemonies. How, to what extent, and for whom people act in regards to sustainability are political choices, and and it appears that those with resources (i.e., wealth) are – as usual – able to act more than those without access to such resources. Indeed, research into culturally led ecological regeneration – i.e., her research into Hay-on-Wye – show that the citizens and organisations of these places can act in such ways because they are predominantly well-funded and affluent. They can sell their 2nd home to fund a zero-waste, organic produce shop. What, then, do we do about those with fewer resources? Are poor people inherently ‘bad’ because they don’t chose to go vegan?
While flippant, this question does reveal that wrestling with such subjects veer dangerously into moral territory and indeed some of the questions raised in the workshop touched on such ‘moral narratives’ [LINK] and explored the problems of assuming such choices of sustainability are personal ethical decisions. Perhaps, one member suggested, these choices should be legislated to take away questions ‘personal morality’. However, how do policy makers or organisations make and enforce such choices?
This is tied into a whole raft of other challenges that were explored, including:
- Governance Models: do traditional, professional infrastructures reinforce unhelpful ways of acting? Could alternative models – eg, flat hierarchies, dual leadership – be more conducive to a sustainably prosperous way of life?
- What role does the the ‘bigger picture’ (i.e., policy/cultural infrastructure/funding) play in shifting narratives about cultural prosperity?
- What are the logistical and longitudinal risks for any cultural organisation attempting to be more sustainably prosperous? How are they mitigated?
- What are the financial risks for cultural sustainable prosperity (i.e., halting tourism within Edinburgh would be economically disastrous, and while such global travel is ecologically problematic, the pandemic proved how economically dependent that city is on such activity)
- How can cultural organisations contribute to a ‘just transition’ towards cultural sustainable prosperity?
- Within the cultural sector there is narrative of working hard (as one network member suggested: “A performance of busyness” ) that is both unsustainable and potentially damaging: how do we change this narrative?
- The expectations and infrastructures of connection (conviviality) are very different within urban/non-urban realms, and how can cultural sustainable prosperity understand these different place-based approaches.
- How can we relocalise and non-digitise in a post-covid world? Is this what cultural sustainable prosperity looks like?
- Is the role of the arts/cultures within a broader context to come up with different narratives? (i.e., to tell a different story about ‘how’ we save ourselves?)
For an initial network meeting, we therefore touched upon a broad raft of questions and issues; while there is little chance we could find solutions, this session did reveal an emergent ‘community of practice’ that were keen to explore these issues together, and to see how these questions are addressed in different place-based contexts
Place-Specific Approaches to Sustainable Prosperity in the Arts & Cultural Sector 