At last week’s Beautiful Renewables Practical Workshop, two interesting ideas arose that support one of Creative Carbon Scotland’s main aims: to encourage and support more cross-fertilisation between the arts and cultural sector and others working on sustainability. (I hesitate to call it the ‘sustainability sector’ because it is so broad and all-encompassing: renewables, low-carbon technologies, energy demand management, clean-tech, adaptation, environmental pressure groups… and that’s just the beginning of the environmental sustainability part).
- Chloe Uden from RegenSW, a community energy organisation in Exeter, argued that every community energy group should invite an artist onto its board, an idea she has followed up in her blog at Power Culture. Interestingly, her list of characteristics and skills – that artists might have and the boards might find useful – has some similarities with the American artist, Frances Whitehead’s, piece What do Artists Know?, that I blogged about recently.
- Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry from the Land Art Generator Initiative posed the idea for a ‘Percent for art’ as a requirement for energy projects, adaptation projects, environmental remediation etc. Some people may remember that this was an idea that used to have some currency, mainly for more general civic development, new office buildings etc. Section 75 of the Town & Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 provides the opportunity for local planning authorities to ask for some planning gain when approving a planning application (in England it’s Section 106, and thanks to Ross Anthony of the valuable Theatres Trust for his advice on this). So the mechanism exists.