Drawing flowers to visualise sustainability in your area

‘The aim of the drawing is to move the discussion of sustainability from a very general and abstract opinion, to more direct prisms of interaction between people. In that, the experiment is in watching the move from problem calling to solutions, creations, or expressions. The main element is the “flower of sustainability”, a visual and textual aid to bring out reflection and ideas on how to live with sustainability.’

Insa Winkler & Oleg Koeford, Germany

‘Since 1987 sustainable development is defined and convened by the United Nations as balancing the fulfillment of human needs with the protection of the natural environment. Thus needs can be met not only in the present, but in the indefinite future. The field of sustainable development has been conceptually broken into four constituent parts: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, social sustainability and political sustainability. But it is defined as a process or state that maintained a certain level indefinitely’,  writes artist Insa Winkler.

Insa and her partner have created a participative drawing project that can connect individuals and communities to visualise sustainability in peoples’ everyday lives by literally drawing flowers. I found Insa’s work at Copenhagen last December and have just done my own sustainability flower for my own art practice, it can be for anything though. The beauty of this drawing idea is that is can be used to think about one’s own vision of sustainability and equally it can ’seed’ sustainability ideas whole local communities in an afternoon. Just imagine giving this idea, a box of chalks and the free down-loadable flower templates (they come in all sizes, with few to many petalled varieties) to people to decorate their street for a day. There have been a variety of ways this idea has been presented, as pavement drawings, as furniture, as large windmill flowers in urban shopping areas…

I’m not surprised these artists works has travelled to far away places from Kyrgystan to South Korea and not surprisingly it coincided with a Joseph Beuys Living Sculpture project in Venice (Beuys, a leading German artist believed that art had an important role in visioning social change, he had a huge interest in the environment and one of the founding members of the first Green Party).

Goto http://www.flower-of-sustainability.eu/ to learn more and download your flower. I also have one free small booklet on this project free to the first person interested. (I’ve just realised I’ve heard of Insa’s before in the RSA’s Land Art -A cultural ecology handbook (p.113), she’s done a great permaculture/ slow art type project on pigs, acorns and  farming too, see here

If you are interested in further reading on Art/Culture and Sustainability do check out this higher education book put together by Sacha Kagan/Volker Kirchberg

‘Sustainability: a new frontier for the arts and cultures (2008) (I got mine from Amazon Germany no problem).  I’m not surprised Insa’s work is on the cover and one of the contributing authors is David Haley, who leads the Social and Environmental Arts Research Centre, A&E: Art & Ecology Research Group, Water & Well-Being and  the MA Art & Environment programme at Manchester University. I had the good fortune to meet David at the first RSA Arts & Ecology Programme/Forestry Commission conference last year in London.

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PS my last post about Wordsworth had a small test video I had done attached but it didn’t show up in the email post that went out. You can see it here if you missed it

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1. Tips on creating great art & ecology projects – THE RULES
2. Thinning to easily create an ecologically & economically sustainable forest, in South Carlow, Ireland
3. MOOT VI: THE CURRENT CLIMATE Art, Ecology and Sustainability in Kilkenny
4. Review of art, ecology and politics in CIRCA
5. Simple Stick Drawings attract 3 million to understand Unsustainable Consumerism

Tagged as: art and ecology artists, art and ecology theory, art and sustainability, Copenhagen 2009, drawing, environmental artists, Environmental Communication, Relational Aesthetics