IMAGINE THE GREAT TRANSITION 22 JUNE 2013, TOYNBEE STUDIOS
Artsadmin & LIFT in association with nef as part of Imagine 2020 Are we trapped in business-as-usual? Could the ‘less’ make us happier than the ‘more’? What do we really value? In 2009 nef (new economics foundation) published The Great Transition, “the first comprehensive blueprint for building an economy based on stability, sustainability and equality”. Now as part of Imagine 2020, a European network of eleven arts organisations engaged in arts and climate change, Artsadmin and LIFT present the first in a series of events across Europe imagining and initiating how the Great Transition might look. Imagine the Great Transition takes place on the final day of Artsadmin’s Two Degrees festival, a week of art events about climate, consumerism and community. Follow the conversation #greattransition @artsadm @LIFTfestival @imagine_2020 artsadmin.co.uk | liftfestival.com | imagine2020.eu | neweconomics.org
photograph by Ludovic Alussi (XTNT)
PROGRAMME 11am-midday Toynbee Studios Theatre keynote lecture
Seeking Goodland | Andrew Simms We keep being told there is no alternative. That we must accept the world and the economy as it is, divided and degraded. But what if the better world we dream of is already being invented here, now? What if pieces of quite other futures already exist? In this keynote lecture nef fellow and author of ‘Cancel the Apocalypse’, Andrew Simms goes in search of Goodland and invites us to imagine for ourselves other, better ways of living, that politicians insist cannot exist. And then to find them in the real world.
Midday-2pm (15 mins) Toynbee Studios Theatre screening
Imagine the Great Transition: Imagine2020 Film Commissions Inua Ellams, Gonçalo Tocha, Mels van Zutphen and XTNT Four new short films commissioned by the Imagine 2020 network. Artists Inua Ellams, Gonçalo Tocha, Mels van Zutphen and XTNT respond to the ideas in nef’s The Great Transition in their own diverse visual language.
12:30-1:30pm Ashbee Hall discussion
Language of Transition, Transition of Language Panel including Inua Ellams and Michael Pinsky Do we need to learn the economist’s jargon? Should theory be made comprehensible to all for global change to happen? What role can artists play in reducing complexity and empowering the outsider? This panel discussion revolves around presentation and representation of economic research and why the language of transition matters.
2-2:30pm Toynbee Studios Courtyard performance
Families in Transit The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home A nuclear family rehearses excerpts from The Great Transition, inviting audiences to pick what they think will be the most effective bits to get other families on-board. What tone should the Great Transition take? Shall we keep it scary? Fun-filled? Serious? Rhetorical? Bombastic? Gentle?