Culture, Arts and Society series continues with session focusing on ways to enhance resilience across sectors while inspiring creative projects
In a time of instability and unpredictability, people, places, and communities are being tested by different sources of shock, violence, and conflict. These trends are set against a backdrop of little trust and widening polarization in societies worldwide. Challenges of this complexity require the courage and resilience of those willing to adapt and create new solutions in the face of severe conditions. While technological, scientific, physical, socio-political and economic sectors have often been considered the first responders to these challenges, the role of the arts and culture has since become a new source of inquiry.The Salzburg Global Session,
The Art of Resilience: Creativity, Courage and Renewal, part of the long-running
Culture, Arts and Society multi-year series, will be held at Schloss Leopoldskron, February 7 to 12, 2017. An international group of 60 participants will convene and explore the dynamic relationship between the arts, culture, and resilience. This group will include artists, educators, and cultural leaders to name but a few. All practitioners span a broad spectrum of cultural expression and artistic endeavor, and different types of arts organizations will be represented. The creative sectors provide a source of unconventional thinking. Participants at this session will aim to identify and better understand ways in which artists, cultural workers and creatives can inspire and strengthen the capacities of individuals and communities to tackle the unexpected. Participants will explore cross-cutting questions during short plenary sessions, work in small groups, and will examine new tools and approaches for collaboration. Overarching questions to kick-start the discussion will include: what do we mean by resilience, and how far does current research shed light on its relationship with culture and the arts? What are we learning from the ability of cultures to survive, adapt, and renew themselves, especially in post-conflict settings? What happens to culture as a result of disruption or conflict? As well as other questions, participants will also ask themselves whether the arts can act as an early-warning system to help future-proof societies. In line with Salzburg Global's vision, participants will then focus on human transformation, urban transformation, and conflict transformation.The session will build on a series of previous sessions examining the transformative power of the arts, including
Conflict Transformation through Culture;
The Neuroscience of Art: What are the Sources of Creativity and Innovation?; and
Beyond Green: The Arts as a Catalyst for Sustainability.Salzburg Global's Program Director for Culture and the Arts Susanna Seidl-Fox says, "In times such as ours - fraught with conflict, crisis, and stress - our societies and our planet must prove their resilience more than ever before. This Salzburg Global session looks to the arts and to the cultural sector as a source of much-need creativity, courage, and renewal, to help us respond to the shocks that threaten the very fabric of our communities, our natural surroundings, our cultural heritage, and our futures."
The Salzburg Global program The Art of Resilience: Creativity, Courage and Renewal is part of the multi-year Culture, Arts and Society series. The session is being supported by the Edward T. Cone Foundation. More information on the session can be found here: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/573 You can follow all the discussions on Twitter by following the hashtag #SGSCulture.
