CULTIVATE was a regional leadership programme, running May 2021 – October 2023, for creative practitioners and local communities to collaboratively explore new ways of embedding creativity at the core of grassroots collective action for climate justice, across the Tay region.
Creative Dundee
Go To WebsiteAddressed Challenges:
- Health & wellbeing
- Greater fairness/ Just transition
- Excessive consumption
- Waste/Circular economy
- Food security & supply
- Biodiversity loss
- Flooding & drought
Action Areas:
- Circular Economy
Initiative Purpose:
- Mitigation & Adaptation
The Story
Environmental challenges were made starkly visible over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, with inequalities more often felt by those with the least say. The climate crisis presents some of the most critical, pressing and systemic issues of our time, and we believe that resolutions must also come from community-led organising and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Creative practitioners are leading the charge for change, enabling a transition into a sustainable creative ecology for the resilient wellbeing of our communities. They are also well equipped to engage people and support local networks to imagine collective actions and communicate them.
The ambition of CULTIVATE was to pioneer a model which resourced Creative Practitioners and Communities across the Tay region to navigate climate justice through creativity and community connection. As a new initiative which launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and continued through the recovery period, CULTIVATE provided commissions and community engagement to enhance local activities and foster skills and confidence for stronger community cohesion.
Led by Creative Dundee over three years, and funded by Creative Scotland’s Culture Collective, this pilot project brought together creative practitioners and community groups to explore climate justice in a practical and meaningful way.
The programme included two rounds of 12 Creative Practitioner freelance commissions, in partnership with communities across Dundee City, Perth and Kinross, Forfar and North East Fife. Each project engaged with groups on the fringes — younger generations, people facing poverty-stigma, people from the global majority, and those in rurally isolated communities — and facilitated space for people to come together to imagine, envision, co-develop and embed creative responses locally.
The various processes and approaches which were developed and used included: practising radical hospitality; amplifying and celebrating people’s experiences through creativity; networking, learning, and sharing with peers; and exploring collective actions that have multiple benefits.
Creative Dundee is committed to ensuring that Creative Practitioners and Communities are resourced and supported to bring their strengths and skills to complexity. As an organisation which is always in the process of expanding our understanding, we have learned a great deal from CULTIVATE and are now applying the practices across our work, and as part of an innovative community-led project, Dundee Changemakers Hub from 2024 onwards, in partnership with Transition Dundee, The Maxwell Centre, ScrapAntics and Uppertunity.
Success & Outcomes
CULTIVATE has been a significant catalyst project for Creative Dundee, enabling our organisation to demonstrate the potential when trust is placed in small, yet capable, well networked organisations. We’re grateful to Culture Collective, funders, partners, Creative Practitioners and Communities for their belief and support throughout. The programme was iterative by design, with review, reflection and redesign built in throughout to improve the pilot project as it evolved during and post-pandemic.
For the second round of CULTIVATE Creative Practitioner freelance commissions, we collaborated with a learning partner, tialt//there is an alternative, who worked in close relationship with the producer, wider Creative Dundee team and commissioned creative practitioners to reflect and share more about the programme’s approaches, processes and impacts.
You can find out more about our key learnings and the full report on our website – Ripple Effects Report: Creativity and Climate Justice: https://creativedundee.com/2024/06/ripple-effects-report-creativity-and-climate-justice/ and delve into our case studies here: https://creativedundee.com/cultivate/#case-studies
Advice for others looking to do something similar
The commissioned Creative Practitioners used a mix of approaches from working in group settings and one-to-ones, and centring sharing food and stories at the core of their activities, to making art together without purpose, and equipping participants to lead and hosting their own exhibition, producing collective and individual artworks.
Key learnings emphasise the importance of time for trust-building, respect in artist communities, evolving plans, amplifying different narratives, embracing intersectionality and interdisciplinary practices, safe(r) space creation, fair artist compensation, and advocacy power.
“... we feel like we don't have power, or we don't have agency… I'm trying to create a space for people to find that power within themselves. That they wouldn't otherwise have” – from one of our Creative Practitioners.
In more detail the approaches used include:
Time and care to build understanding and trust with partners, practitioners, and communities.
- Time and resources to research, explore, experiment, fail, grow, build confidence/agency, and learn from each other – for practitioners and communities alike.
- Need for visible (high street), accessible and safer spaces for community engagement – spaces specifically tailored and identified for a community of interest or identity.
- Find connections between things/issues/opportunities – promote and facilitate access to actions with multiple benefits.
- Importance of storytelling and making art together, to foster collective imagination and action – first bring people together around food, then keep them around through creatively making together, to finally engage them with bigger issues like climate change/justice.
- Forster or shift leadership / give power away to others – leadership, agency and collaboration are not ‘qualities’, they are ‘skills’ that can be developed and shared.
- Nurturing positivity, hope and belly laughs, and looking out for the positive changes and opportunities to learn, share and take action for future making.