CARPA 9: Vision statement
The ninth Colloquium on artistic research in the performing arts will be organised in 28-30 August 2025.
Ecological Design and Performance Pedagogies: Sustainable Practices and Interdisciplinary Acts in a Climate Changed World
The 9th Colloquium on Artistic Research in the Performing Arts, CARPA9, explores pedagogical approaches to, in, and for performance making in a climate changed world. The conference envisions more ecologically and socially sustainable performing arts practices in higher education and university pedagogy. CARPA9 is a platform bringing together different perspectives and concerns around understanding and enacting climate justice in performing arts training and research.
Here, sustainability is used in the broad sense of interconnected material and social phenomena, through which we all enact ecological storytelling in the cultural realm. We understand sustainability as a post-humanist approach in a world transformed by the global ecological crisis but also as a pedagogical, socio-cultural and epistemological issue of human interaction, learning, teaching, knowledge formation and understanding. Sustainability in the performing arts and in performing arts pedagogy requires that we imagine and implement new kinds of cultures, new ways of thinking and acting for future generations.
The conference brings together acute concerns in performing arts practice and pedagogy in higher education. The presentations will address questions of ecological design practices, performance training and storytelling forms addressing environmental relations across different geographical locations and cultural mindsets. Together, we make visible artistic and pedagogical practices that have generated ecologically sensitive work environments for study, research, and art making. We will have performative keynotes as well as academic ones, diverse modes for sharing research and practice, and colloquial get-togethers.
We want to transform the narratives around climate justice in performance design and performance making, including embracing First Nations solutions to environmental challenges and learning practices? As researchers, practitioners, educators and mentors, how do we foster ecological stewardship and facilitate co-action to be change-makers of the future.