Liene Brizga-Kalniņa, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, August 2023
From August 4-11 in Smiltene the Summer School Care of Earth, Care of People took place. This year’s program was focused on an inclusive and sustainable contemporary culture and environment, thinking of them as interconnected and mutually supportive.
Through workshops, lectures, and creative work in groups the summer school asked questions – how can changes in the strengthening of a diverse and inclusive society influence awareness, responsibility, and engagement in the current environmental and climate crisis? How can we shape our own environments and communities to embrace a more harmonious and holistic relationship between people and nature? And what role can contemporary art and culture play in this? As a sustainability consultant, I participated in the development of the summer school programme and curated separate events, as well as acted as a mentor in one of the groups.
The summer school brought together over 20 participants – including artists from different fields, art historians, curators – from all over Europe. Sustainability was embedded not only in the content of the summer school but also in its practicalities, for example, only vegetarian food was served. The sustainability was addressed by the following events of the summer school:
1.) Lecture and workshop with environmental researcher Jānis Brizga from the University in Latvia. Although we all seem to know what is climate change, it is necessary to obtain knowledge on the scientific basis of the issue, and this lecture provided the basics of climate science and the main data. It also included a flash workshop where participants were asked to think about different alternative scenarios for a sustainable future.
2.) The fieldwork day was devoted to visiting two places – a permaculture homestead and community Zadiņi and the open-air exhibition Savvaļa. Zadiņi is an example of creating an alternative and sustainable way of living and taking care of nature and land – it is a permaculture community with 4 households that together manage the land in an environmentally sustainable way. The leader of the community led a tour and told the Zadiņi story, stressing that their success can be attributed to the fact that they have always prioritized social sustainability over other aspects – it means that the relationships among the residents of the community are the most important factor that allows also to be environmentally responsible.
3.) The next visit was to the open-air exhibition Savvaļa, a place created by artist Andris Eglītis. The territory that consists of a homestead, meadows, and forests is over 10 ha large and all over it you can find more than 10 open-air art objects. This time the focus of the visit was not on the art, but the basis of Savvaļa – the meadows and their plants. The walk, led by a botanist, was aimed at getting to know what plants we can find in a meadow, how to recognize species, and how to evaluate the biodiversity in a meadow.
4.) A talk by political scientist Baiba Witajevska-Balvilka “Do populism and Climate Skepticism Go Hand in Hand? Challenges for a Green Deal in Europe” dwelled upon the growing populism among political parties in Europe and the types of climate skepticism. The talk was open to the public and was attended also by local residents and Smiltene municipality staff.
5.) During the summer school, the participants joined in working groups that each developed a creative project to be presented at the end of the summer school week. Two groups were directly devoted to sustainability – The sufficiency group and the Biodiversity group.
6.) Sufficiency is one of the keywords of the idea of sustainability. That means to live within the limitations of such consumption that uses only the amount of resources that can be renewed. That poses a question – what is sufficient for a modern person? Where are the limits of our sufficiency? What are we ready to say “no” to? The discussions in the Sufficiency group were centered around the personal experiences of the participants and reflections on what is needed to deeply feel sufficiency. The answer that this group discovered was – slowing down and being mindful, thus tying the sustainability idea closely with mental health and stability. The group developed an installation “SNAIL IT” that stressed slowing down – being a contemplative snail that observes the slow dripping of water. The installation was both a representation of an idea and also a prototype for a potential open-air object that combines an invitation to mindfulness, meditation, and slowing down in daily life and elements of green infrastructure. The installation was constructed by using materials that were found in nature or used materials.
7.) The group that worked with biodiversity issues created a performance that illustrated and expressed the concerns, anxiety, and longing for coming together in solidarity with each other and the Earth. This group also used the plants gathered in Savvaļa to tell their story.
