seminars
Art and the Rural Imagination / June 29 -July 5 2020
MTP and Arts University Bournemouth. Uk
Standart Thinking is invited to contribute with work and participate in this exciting conference and project.
Art and the Rural Imagination, a slow conference presented in partnership with Arts University Bournemouth. The conference explores ‘The Rural’ as a central concern in contemporary artistic practice and debate.
Artists today make work in or about rural locations, producing startling visions and radical conceptions of life and space beyond the urban centres. This conference approaches ‘the rural’ by exploring relations between people and places, including the visible and invisible inhabitants that populate or traverse it. What is the lure of ‘the rural imagination’ as a site for alterity or a space of existing power relations? How might critical art discourse and practices reimagine or reinvent the rural for our present moment?
The project culminated with a printed publication featuring transcriptions and content derived from the sessions plus contributing work from participating artists.
Get your copy here
Arctic Arts Summit 2019 Rovaniemi, Finland / 3 - 5 June 2019
The Arctic as a Laboratory for sustainable art and cultural policy
The Arctic region is changing rapidly. On the one hand, ecological, cultural, social and economical changes pose challenges for well-being and sustainable development and on the other hand, some of the changes also create new possibilities.
In the AAS 2019 the challenges and circumstances in the Arctic are seen as a ‘laboratory’ in which sustainable art and cultural policy is developed in collaboration with all of the Arctic countries. Artists and representatives of art and cultural policy will discuss the theme and promote circumpolar collaboration.
Standart Thinking was invited to participate as panelist to present and discuss regenerative visions for cultural development and art residencies in the nordic context:
Do residencies reinforce the process of cultural homogenisation, or are they supporting cultural diversity? How would we consider this to be reflected through our projects? What value framework are we bringing into play?
Refinery Project / Russia / Lithuania / Finland
Arts Promotion Centre Finland. Oct 2018 > Nov 2019
Standart Thinking was invited by TAIKE ( Arts Promotion Centre Finland) to participate in this exciting year long enquiery exploring the potential of culture as a force for sustainable development across the nordic region.
The program comprised of field trips to Petrozavodzk, Russia, Vilnius, Lithuania and Rovaniemi and Helsinki , Finland. In each location we had an opportunity to meet local cultural actors, visit cultural associations, museums and listen to a variety of presentations from experts working in different disciplines.
We looked at service design tools and methodologies to develop comprehensive ideas around cross-sectoral collaborations in the fields of culture, tourism and environment according to local resources, traditions and people.
Through this program, Standart Thinking established and develop working partnerships to create an arts mobility program focusing on rural cultural heritage and vernacular crafts across the Barents Region: Cultural Paths
P.E.A.T.S Green Village – Sustainable Rural Development
Grampus Heritage / Sublime Magazine
Cyprus. March 2018
Standart Thinking joins Grampus Heritage on a tour de force around Lefkara and surrounding villages.
A comprehensive field work and presentations to map and find ways to update traditional skills and find new markets for local rural products. What connections can be made between the different sectors and makers to improve resilience and meaningful development at a local level?
Of course the process is best done in partnership and Grampus, from Cumbria in the north-west of England, links to other remote areas such as the Devetaki plateau in Bulgaria, Transylvania in Romania, the Dübener Heide in Germany, among others.
Meetings and visits to diverse cultural actors and authorities from the region took place including Silversmiths, Lace makers, the local history museum, a dairy farm producing delicious Halummi cheese among other food producers and the mayor of Kato Drys village.
The Perennial Wisdom in Everyday Life / Sept 2017
Seminar with Colin Tudge at the Chisholme Institute
There is a way of feeding everyone, and feeding them well, and feeding their children and their children’s children and all the generations to come. It can be done. Our planet can happily sustain all of us and our fellow creatures too. We should not be in despair. We should be thinking with real hope about the next million years.
But how to know what is truly right farming and right food? Perennial wisdom is the guide - but to understand what this is, what Perennial Wisdom can teach us, it is necessary to understand its basis, its metaphysics.
The seminar aimed to bring together theory and practice. Theory based on how Perennial Wisdom can inform us what proper food and farming policy should be; practice tells us how to do it. Right measures needed now should take advantage of the knowledge contemporary science is unveiling. So the seminars will hear from speakers familiar with the latest thinking about farming, food culture and interchange..
Speakers and doers:
Colin Tudge / College for Real Farming & Food Culture
Dr Laura Santamaria
Consultant, researcher and co-founder of Sublime Magazine www.sublimemagazine.com
Nibthwaite Grange Farm / Dodgson Wood
Carlos Monleon-Gendall
Visual Artist & Chef
Peter Young
Former Principal of the Chisholme Institute