The Offer

Arts & culture, governance and environmental justice

Revisit The Offer from 15 July 2020 – Arts & culture, governance and environmental justice. Featuring contributions from Malaika Cunningham, Professor Kate Oakley and and Lucy Latham.

As part of our bi-weekly online event series The Offer, CDE brings together a panel of speakers to discuss the relationship between arts & culture, governance, and environmental justice. What does an environmentally just cultural policy look like? What role could the arts play in environmental governance? And, how can the sector use their lobbying power to encourage more environmentally just policy-making?

To explore these questions, we have invited Malaika Cunningham (PhD student with The Centre for Understanding Sustainability (CUSP) and theatre maker), Prof Kate Oakley (Head of the School of Culture & Creative Arts, University of Glasgow and Research Lead at CUSP) and Lucy Latham (Policy Programmes Lead at Julie’s Bicycle).

Malaika Cunningham on sustainability, democracy and participatory theatre

Democracy is a crucial component of creating an environmentally just and sustainable society. Creating and maintaining environmental sustainability is a process – not a goal with a fixed end point. It is dependent on the transformability of society. An inclusive, imaginative and deliberative democracy are essential to process of sustainability. The issue is, democracy in the UK is not often any of these things. In this session I want to talk about the role of the arts in creating useful democratic spaces, which could help us to create these inclusive, imaginative and deliberative spaces, with a particular focus on participatory theatre.

Professor Kate Oakley on cultural industries and environmental crisis

Cultural industries – where they are considered at all in environmental debates – are generally viewed as either benign low carbon activities that bring pleasure and meaning, or as irrelevant in the face of existential crisis. I want to reject both these readings and instead argue for a critical consideration of the role and potential of cultural activities in the face of mounting crises, environmental and otherwise.

Lucy Latham on creative climate action now

Galvanising the necessary shift in the cultural community in order to meet the ambitions of the European Green Deal requires policy, investment, training, tools and resources that integrate environmental sustainability into the very fabric of creative and cultural practice. In this session, we at Julie’s Bicycle will reflect and share some of our learnings from our most impactful policy & partnership programme, and also share our recent advocacy efforts to promote investment in a green and just cultural recovery.

“The Offer” online events series

Presented as part of The Offer – a series of regular online events from Culture Declares Emergency. Discover upcoming events and watch any past events you’ve missed.
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