The role of artists and researchers in sustainable place-shaping

The conference “Cultures in Sustainable Futures” in May 2015 in Helsinki raised important questions such as: Is sustainability a cultural issue? How does culture play a role in sustainable community development and planning? What is the role of the artist? How can agency support change? These questions are highly relevant at this time in which transformative agency is needed to address an array sustainability crisies: the food crisis, energy crisis, climate crisis and depletion of resources are all interlinked and unfolding in complex ways in communities and places. We have a responsibility not only to change our practices, but also to rethink and re-imagine our current mind-sets, our institutions and our worldviews (Hedlund-de Witt, 2013; O’Brien, 2009), which are all influenced by culture. So indeed, sustainability is a cultural issue.
Culture also plays a key role in processes of place-shaping and participatory planning, as will be argued in this chapter. The aim is to pay specific attention to the role of artists and researchers in these processes and address the following questions:
1. how can sustainable place-shaping practices be understood?
2. what is the relevance of re-imagining knowledge to create new futures?
3. how do the individual and collective values of people play a role in processes of place-shaping and participatory planning?
First, I will explain how place and place-shaping can be conceptualized from a relational, dynamic perspective and how culture plays a role therein. Then the potential role of researchers and artists in place-shaping and participatory planning processes will be explored. The chapter ends with a plea for a value-oriented dialogue as part of these processes, to make the inte