The Climate Classroom: Integration of theory and practice in design education as a facilitator for bringing environmental issues into the curriculum
Abbie Vickress + Sakis Kyratzis, University of the Arts London, United Kingdom
Break out Session 1: Thursday 24 November 14:30 - 16:00 (Helsinki Time)

Current design education assumes a kinaesthetic learner, and thus tends to keep theory away from the studio. Environmental issues tend to be treated like theory in the classroom, integrating them into the curriculum becomes a challenge. The climate classroom brief argues that combining theory and practice in the studio will facilitate students in exploring their own values in relation to their practice and prime them for socially responsible and sustainable design. This contribution is part of the Plastic Justice research project.

The Office for Para-Pedagogical Activities / The Danube Transformation Agency
Andrea Palasti, Academy of Art, University of Novi Sad, Serbia + University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria
Break out Session 1: Thursday 24 November 14:30 - 16:00 (Helsinki Time)

Have you ever wondered how it feels to withdraw with the low tide? Or to burrow yourself as a clam? This is your chance to join the ‘Fitness for unlikely species’, a session of shape shifting exercises mimicking more-than-human worlds. Using the Danube river as a case study, the Office for Para-Pedagogical Activities will deliver an illustrative lesson and a fitness training all rolled into one. By blending conceptual art with pedagogical impulses, the presentation will guide you through a set of examples on how we transformed art lessons with a series of performative events outside the school settings. The presentation is part of the collective Danube Transformation Agency for Agency, co-founded with Solmaz Farhang, Alexandra Fruhstorfer, Lena Violetta Leitner, Ege Kökel, and supported by the INTRA.

stuff – new material cycles in theatre

Nadia Fistarol, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland and Barbara Ehnes, Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany
Break out Session 2: Thursday 24 November 16:30 - 17:30 (Helsinki Time)

It’s time to turn over every stone, also in theatre, yet we still work with materials that are harmful to the environment and disposed of after a brief period of use. Working on developing alternatives which are not harming our ecosystem, this session invites students and professionals from all fields of design, architecture, and theatre who are interested in developing a transformative force in their fields to join a workshop aiming to establish effective alliances for the mindful management of resources.

Green Impact, a bottom-up campaign for sustainability at LUCA School of Arts
Nikkie Melis + Geert Werkers, LUCA School of Arts, Belgium 
Break out Session 3: Friday 25 November 9:00 - 11:00 (Helsinki Time)

Green Impact is a United Nations award-winning programme to support environmentally and socially sustainable practice in organisations. LUCA is the first arts school to oversee the campaign during the academic year 2021–2022. The main goal is to inform, engage, and activate as many people as possible. The impact works on three levels: 1. Existing policies, initiatives, and projects for sustainability are implemented in the work and study space; 2. Behavioural change for both individuals and teams; 3. Stimulating a sustainability culture to awaken sustainable entrepreneurship. Presenters will share with participants how the Green Impact initiative is being implemented throughout the whole institution, involving both staff and students. What are the main results and insights?

The launch of a new ecological platform at UMPRUM
Klára Peloušková, Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM), Czech Republic 
Break out Session 3: Friday 25 November 9:00 - 11:00 (Helsinki Time)

The current structure of UMPRUM follows a modernist Bauhausian model of an academy based on a masterclass system and nurturing connections between artistic and industrial practices. Recent developments in art, design, and architecture education in the international context as well as the multitude of pressing environmental, societal, and political crises have led to an update of the inherited institutional structure. UMPRUM decided to launch a platform that presents an alternative to the existing studio model and fosters teamwork and transdisciplinary practice-led, cross-scalar research focused on the issues of planetary viability and possible new co-dependencies within natural and artificial environments.

Miraculous Futures for Living Materials: Speculative storytelling with living materials
Hazal Ertürkan + Sarah Lugthart, St. Joost School of Art & Design, TU Delft, Netherlands 
Break out Session 3: Friday 25 November 9:00 - 11:00 (Helsinki Time)

This workshop aims to broaden the perspective of biodesigners and stimulate design ideation with living materials (e.g., bacteria- and algae-based materials) based on speculative storytelling strategies and recent research on designing with living materials. Building on the Miraculous Futures card deck, which is a tool developed by Klasien van de Zandschulp and Ashley Baccus-Clark for designing speculative stories, a special living materials edition of this card deck was designed based on the research ‘Living Material Vocabulary’ (Erturkan, Karana, Mugge, 2021, [under review]) to discuss possible futures for living with living materials. The card deck helps to understand what living materials are by introducing their qualities and stimulates the imagination to speculate on radical futures integrating living materials. During the workshop, this card deck is used to spark ideas and generate concepts. World-building exercises and templates help to develop these ideas further. The workshop results in a speculative story (a scene or situation) that can take place in the world that is created.

The Assembly, incomplete lexicon for now
Jocelyn Cottencin + Christelle Kirchstetter, École nationale supérieure d'art et de design de Nancy (Ensad Nancy), France 
Break out Session 3: Friday 25 November 9:00 - 11:00 (Helsinki Time)

The crisis linked to the pandemic has put even more tension on the Western vision of the world, the concepts of modernity and ‘nature/culture’. Climate and ecological issues are the determining elements that replay current political questions. ‘The Assembly, incomplete lexicon for now’ is an editorial utopia, both modest and ambitious, from the field of art in dialogue with other disciplines. It is the creation of a lexicon to rename the world, or rather to re-engage a reading of it in the light of the animal, plant, and climatic interdependencies that we seem to have forgotten. Talking about milieu rather than environment is already the beginning of changes in posture in order to understand where we are. ‘The Assembly, incomplete lexicon for now’ is simultaneously an art project and a workshop at ENSAD Nancy. The experiment will be continued with students in Helsinki and presented in the form of a performative lecture.