Conference 2023

What causes the most environmental damage to oceans? How does nitrogen affect biodiversity? How fast is the sea level rising along the Dutch coast? In the Klimaatcasino we test your knowledge about the climate. Maybe your name will end up on the wall of fame! If you are soon broke, do not grieve - there will be a climate scientist ready to update you!

Come and play videogames that explore different sustainable futures! The games are designed by students from Utrecht University and the Utrecht University of the Arts (HKU). The students will showcase the games in an interactive space where you can come play them and discuss their ideas and design.

The HKU students brought their skills in programming, game design, visual and audio art, while the UU students act as the sustainability experts in their teams. The course, co-led by games and futures researcher Joost Vervoort, helps students push the boundaries of what is possible in terms of transformative imagination for the games medium.
 

Do you ever wonder if there are ways of working where research, education and operations effectively interlace, allowing us to find and test new pathways and solutions for sustainability? In the Living Lab game, UULabs - Utrecht University living labs for sustainable development - showcases how you can use co-creation and real-life experimentation, moving away from traditional project methods, allowing for future proof, innovative and dynamic processes. Learn, create, test and develop by doing (together)!

In the urban nature book corner, you can take a break from it all and dream away. Flipping through nature books or philosophizing about the human-nature divide, you can engage in serendipitous conversations with others (or yourself) about what it means to be part of urban natures today, and in 2060. This is also the meeting spot for our current (or future) book club enthusiasts. 😊 Enjoy your imaginations! 

Things have changed unbelievably fast over the past 40 years and here in 2060 it’s almost impossible to imagine what the teaching programme was like at Utrecht University in 2023. We want to know what the biggest educational changes were in the intervening decades. What did you consider the most important change that ensured that the students we educate today are able to think deeply about and contribute to our sustainable world as citizens and professionals? Share your thoughts at our Sustainability Education and Engagement stand and help us develop the future of education and impact at Utrecht University.

Please join us for an intimate gathering with temporal agents who traveled from the past and the future to meet us in Utrecht: a former farmer and famous politician who radically changed Europe’s countryside, a 200.000 years old piece of rock, a multilingual black-tailed godwit, and various voices from the present and future who share their stories of sacrifice and hope. Let yourself be heard and help us, to paraphrase physicist Karen Barad, to trouble time in these troubling times. How can we navigate temporal tensions, for example between the short term need to build thousands of new homes in low-lying areas, and the long term threat of rising sea levels? Can we create collective imaginaries that challenge and change dominant conceptions of temporality that take progress as inevitable? Let’s listen to what the rock has to say about where and how we will live in the future. And what will you tell the oil executive who announces the company’s plans to invest in carbon neutral cities?

This theatrical journey and conversation across time and space was conceptualized by practice for cultural transformation Loom together with scenography studio Marloes & Wikke, and was commissioned by and developed in close collaboration with the Urban Futures Studio at Utrecht University and many others.

As an agent of change do you ever stop learning? The pathways to a sustainable world are riddled with obstacles and challenges that require reflection and academic knowledge. As part of the Continuing Education program, we are curious about what professionals in the sustainability transition encounter and, accordingly, want to learn. Similarly, the program is interested in what teachers could potentially offer. In an interactive format, we’ll organize a matchmaking stand for an educational curriculum that is truly lifelong.

Climate confessional is an interactive performance that invites you to explore the role of subjectivity in climate science. 

• As someone versed in climate change science, what keeps you up at night? 
• What thoughts do you withhold from your colleagues so as to not discredit your academic standing?
• If you could rewrite the rules of academic funding, what kinds of research would you really be doing?

Repurposing the space of a confessional booth, we invite you to help us plot out the emotional range of climate science, so as to consider the thoughts and emotions that lie below the surface of objective climate discourse.

In 2022 Ekaterina Volkova and Julien Thomas participated in the Imagining Low-Carbon Futures artist residency, a project of PhD candidate Lisette van Beek at the Urban Futures Studio. They continue their collaboration with the Studio during their current residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, where they explore clouds as social and scientific focal points of climate change discourse and action.

How can researchers achieve real impact and contribute to a sustainable future? The idea of a ‘theory of change’ means reflecting on how we actually think the world changes. What are your assumptions about how change happens? What are the different pathways and steps you think are important? People and organizations often have implicit theories of change, but these are not always carefully considered, and they may have significant gaps and inconsistencies. In this breakout session, we will be going through a short dialogue and training to examine our own and each other’s theories of change based on a series of fundamental questions. Supporting the conference theme ‘See the Future’, the goal is to have a better idea about what transformative impact really looks like - for research, education and public engagement. Supported by key insights from the theory of change and impact field, we will be opening our minds about all the change pathways and mechanisms we could engage with.

What can art-science interactions bring to the climate debate? What would the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) look like if it engaged with artists? In this breakout session, we draw on inspirational examples of art-science interactions to explore the possibility of an alternative IPCC working group. 

In the first hour, attendees have the chance to share their own interest in art-science interactions, and to hear inspirational examples from two artistic groups. In the second hour, we time travel into 2060, when, drawing on inspiration from the first session, we look back on the foundation of Working Group IV in the early 2020s and the unique approach that led to its success. 

On Working Group IV

The IPCC is currently divided into 3 working groups. Leaning on the quality and quantity of experts involved, the findings of these working groups are collectively held up as “the science” that needs to be listened to. This approach neglects the fact that knowledge is constructed, and encourages us to marginalise alternative ways of knowing associated with art. Artists’ embodied and experiential forms of knowledge can offer alternative forms of representation and sensation and can create spaces for the creative imagination of radically different worlds. With the inception of Working Group IV, together with a transdisciplinary group of academics, policymakers, and artists, we explore the possibility of place art-science interactions at the heart of the climate debate.

The demand for materials and energy is driven by population growth, the rise of living standards and urbanisation. Material and energy production- and consumption-trends leads simultaneously to significant pressure on the environment. The acknowledged building blocks to anticipate these trends are ‘circularity’ and ‘net-zero’, while ensuring ‘equitable and inclusive transitions’. However, the translation of these ‘buzzwords’ into practical actions, results in diverse outcomes, following a multitude of perspectives on the role of technical and social innovations. In this breakout session, we will explore building blocks and design perspectives on material and energy demand in 2060, for specific themes like ‘plastics’ and ‘long distance transport’. After a plenary introduction by scientists and stakeholders from industry and society, we will work in subgroups to explore different perspectives and aim for a shared view about urgent actions towards 2030, 2045 and 2060.

The 'modern city' has evolved over time as a place that extracts natural resources for urban use. This has led to the idea of the city as a place that should (and could) be distanced from nature. However, the views on this separation of nature and city are changing. Climate change, biodiversity loss and urban densification ask for a different approach to urban nature. With the term 'urban nature-based solutions' the narrative of urban nature is being reimagined, repositioned, and revalued. But which and whose values, interests, principles and politics are being designed into/out of current practices and imagined futures? And what do we think about when we talk about nature: parks, animals, farming, nature as a threat or nuisance, a solution to current problems, something that contributes to the aesthetics of our surroundings or essential for the wellbeing of citizens? In this session artists, scientists, policymakers and community representatives, from Colombia and the Netherlands, will share their views on urban natures. We invite participants to (re)imagine shared urban futures for 2060.

Whose voice(s) count when we talk about "our oceans"? Considering who "we" are - Western society, governments, scientists, sea-going specialists, fishing or increasingly energy industries, or humans in general - is crucial. If we don’t start thinking about who "we" are now, a sustainable future for the ocean - and our planet - of 2060 is not possible. To spark a different, explorative, active and courageous debate about "whose ocean", this breakout session aims to find creative ways to multiply "our" voices, also the many human, oceanic and nonhuman ones that have not been heard. The breakout session invites artistic, academic and activist practitioners to think toward social and planetary justice.

Imagine it is 2060. We are in the Western Netherlands, in both rural and urban areas. Here we live in a real Symbiocene where nature, humans and technology co-exist in a balanced way. In the Symbiocene area human activities enhance a desirable mutual interdependence and mutual benefit for all living beings. They also play the essential role of nurturing all species and the mandatory role of protecting the health of ecosystems. In this session we will ask the central question: how did we get here? In doing so, we want to explore with stakeholders and researchers what steps we need to take to get to the Symbiocene. What are bottlenecks? How can we address these bottlenecks and who needs to sit at the table to make the Symbiocene happen? We take the delta of the Western Netherlands as a case study and will address issues as food production, biodiversity, land subsidence, regulations, responsibilities and governance.

For those who would like further background information, the documentary 'Welkom in het Symbioceen' (VPRO Tegenlicht) explores how we can move to an era in which humans live together with nature. We invite participants to watch the episode beforehand.

Please note that the main language of the session will be Dutch.