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WATCH: UCL and BSR Sustainability as Cultural Practice series
28 July 2021
The series of four online events was jointly hosted by the UCL Cities Partnerships Programme, the British School at Rome and the British Embassy in Rome
Through the month of July 2021, the UCL Cities Partnerships Programme in Rome, in collaboration with the British School at Rome (BSR) and the British Embassy in Rome, hosted a series of four roundtables entitled Sustainability as Cultural Practice: Verbal and Visual Art, History and the Environmental Humanities.
The virtual series was part of the All4Climate – Italy 2021 pre-COP26 programme, a line up of events promoting 2021 as a landmark year for climate ambition, launched by the newly established Italian Ministry for the Ecological Transition.
Each of the four events were open to the public and also featured in the event line up for the U7+ Worldwide Student Forum 2021, co-led by UCL and Northwestern University, where 94 student participants were nominated by 24 U7+ universities in 12 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe and North America to engage with this year's theme of climate change and intergenerational alliance.
The roundtables brought together scholars from UCL Anthropocene, SELCS, Slade School of Fine Art, Institute of Global Health and Faculty of Arts and Humanities, as well as from UCL's partners in the UK and abroad including New York University, Princeton University, Stony Brook University, Oxford University, Kings College London and University of Nottingham.
Among the speakers across the four events were the series’ organisers: Professor Florian Mussgnug, Cities Partnerships Programme Director for Rome; Dr Harriet O’Neill, Assistant Director for the Humanities and Social Sciences at BSR; and Professor Chris Wickham FBA, Director of BSR.
Professor Florian Mussgnug said: "The climate crisis demands new forms of empathy, literacy and imagination. We must learn to move between different scales and to communicate the unfamiliar. The international success of our series is a powerful reminder of the importance of the arts and humanities, and the social and historical sciences, in the year of COP26. It proves that the struggle for sustainability and climate justice must cross borders, and that it must be attentive towards cultural and linguistic difference and respectful of diversity."
The four roundtables in the Sustainability as Cultural Practice series are available to watch below:
Youth, climate advocacy and verbal art: imagining a different future
Coping with climate change in past societies
Sustainable art practice for a sustainable world
Translating climate change
More information
- UCL Cities Partnerships Programme in Rome
- The British School at Rome (BSR)
- The British Embassy in Rome
- All4Climate – Italy 2021
- U7+ Worldwide Student Forum 2021
Image
By Sarah Dorweiler on Unsplash
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