From disruption to development: Moving forward with the relationship between creativity and sustainability

Individuals, teams, organizations and societies have been facing unparalleled challenges and disruptive events that affect environment, industries, administrations or and, communities in many ways. Some of these events are transformative to the extent that understanding and coping with them demands radical change and reactivity. Dealing with such challenges and disruptions requires creativity and sustainability driven mindsets that transcend disciplinary perspectives. We consider that multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches are required to address the complexity of disruptive and challenging events. These perspectives are being actively cultivated globally by the UN and ICN's UNESCO Chair in Arts and Science for Implementing Sustainable Development Goals, partner of ARTEM OCC conference.

The ongoing health crisis of COVID-19 pandemic is a striking example of disruptive events with global and far-reaching implications. It has fundamentally transformed many aspects of life, with both short-term and likely long-term ramifications at individual, team, organisational and socio-cultural levels. In exceptional situations, such as the one presented by the COVID- 19 pandemic, traditional approaches to managing crises seem to show their limitations to effectively cope with unforeseen events. In these cases, it is necessary to move beyond existing mindsets of crisis management and apply aptness to seeing the big picture from a comprehensive perspective.

The 2022 edition of ARTEM OCC seeks to continue addressing paths and actions related to how the interrelation between creativity and sustainability can move people, organizations and societies forward in various fields. In the upcoming edition we intend to continue the discussions started in the previous editions. This means fostering the dialogue between people, disciplines, and different ways of creating knowledge with the purpose of advancing solutions in the interplay between creativity and sustainability.

In order to discuss these issues and approaches from a comprehensive perspective including multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary views, instead of tracks, the conference is organized around different thematic challenges, each one offering a dedicated perspective on the interplay between sustainability and creativity. Each thematic challenge is convened by an international group of experts in the field. For this call we seek high-impact contributions, including scientific papers, artistic performances, role plays, experiments and project presentations that enhance conceptual and practical understanding of how creativity and sustainability are intertwined.

Questions to be addressed by the different contributions include, but are not limited to:  

• Art, creativity & disruptive innovation for sustainability in entrepreneurship and established organizations
• Understanding and fostering imagination for responsible innovation: foresight, fiction, and narratives and their influence, exploitation and potential.
• Future urban development: alternative governance and innovative technologies for sustainable and smart cities
• The art of changing habits: aesthetic research to ecologize our lifestyles
• Arts and aesthetics for humanizing climate trauma and grief in organizations
• Multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable development
• Engineering, technology, supply chain and knowledge  management in the  era of digitalization
• Implementing UN Sustainable Development Goals to build resilient post-covid and climate impacted communities and organizations
• Humanistic management: imagining possibilities and thinking “creatively, broadly, and provocatively about improving lives from many different perspectives”
• Unlearning social entrepreneurship in the 4^th industrial revolution
• Collective creativity in virtual contexts
• Assessing sustainability in complex design and development processes
• Circular economy for sustainable development: Rethink new approaches of education science, social and organisational change.
• Resource efficiency
• Human development and health care

By defining these topics, we aim to address sustainability issues such as, advancing the circular economy, moving forward with social justice, actions concerning the planetary boundaries, including climate change, air quality and pollution, digital fracture ….

Furthermore we are planning encounters and activities between academics, practitioners and students, such as "Fireside chat with a CEO or Community Leader", and "Corporate dialogue".

The ARTEM OCC is planned as a hybrid event which encourages physical presence on site but also enables distant online participation.