Nine ways to reflect on how art can contribute to sustainability transformations

Many people understand intuitively that the arts have an important role to play in shifting people’s experiences and paradigms to create a better future. But both people and organizations often struggle to make the link between the arts and societal change concrete, limiting funding and options for action. Responding to this challenge, an international team of researchers led by Utrecht University's Joost Vervoort have created 9 dimensions for evaluating how art and creative practice can contribute to sustainability transformations.

The new paper in Ecology and Society describes the 9 Dimensions tool, the result of years of collaboration with European researchers, artists, funders and policy makers through the EU Horizon project CreaTures. CreaTures combined research and creative practice with 20 experimental productions that together connected with 300,000 people across Europe.

Creating a shared language

The 9 Dimensions tool creates a shared language between creators, funders and researchers. It is designed to recognize and reflect on the multidimensional richness of creative practice and what it can do to create a more sustainable world. To do this, the research supporting the tool combines insights from transformations research, sociology, psychology, anthropology, science and technology studies, theory of change research and media studies.

The 9 dimensions are organised in three categories:

1. Changing meanings includes embodying, learning and imagining
2. Changing connections includes caring, organizing and inspiring
3. Changing power includes co-creating, empowering and subverting

“Through the tool, creative practitioners can work out which dimensions are most useful to reflect on for their work, get a detailed background on how each dimension connects to societal change, and use key questions to interrogate their practice,” explains Vervoort, an associate professor at Utrecht University's Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development.

Applicable to a wide range of creative practices

The 9 Dimensions tool was originally published in 2023 on the CreaTures framework website. Since then, many people and organizations, from artists to funders to teachers, have reported using the method to, for example, apply for funding, define strategic priorities. As one respondent said: ‘this is the first evaluation framework for the arts where I thought – this is it’. One notable example of the use of the 9 Dimensions is in the UN report The Most Creative Look to the Future, which explores the transformative potential of creative practice.

The tool is intended to be used across a wide range of creative practices – from installations to community art to performances, documentaries, video games, music and more. Vervoort is currently working with Amsterdam-based organization Impact Makers to develop an app-based quiz for creatives to use the tool to think about marketing and funding their work.