Phases:

The course will consist of 7 phases over two and a half days, alternating between plenary exchanges and working sessions in smaller groups:

1. Setting the Stage (plenary afternoon + informal evening – September 5^th)
In the opening plenary, an overview of the summer school will be presented (including its structure and its working concepts), then each participant will be given a brief presentation time to introduce themself and to present one specific project, group, or activity in which they are involved (whether as researcher, artist, activist, and/or other type of participation). The evening will consist of an informal programme during which participants can learn more about each other and the projects that were introduced, and to set the stage for a collaborative atmosphere over the next 2 days.

2. Asking questions and reflecting on questions (plenary – morning of September 6^th)
To begin this session, moderators will briefly introduce the themes and suggest 4 categories of research questions reflecting key dimensions of (socio-ecological) creative practice (see working questions listed below). Participants will then reflect on the questions, from their perspectives as a researcher, artist, activist, and/or practitioner, with attention to their own biases and issues regarding transdisciplinary research. A facilitated discussion will then enable these reflections to be brought forward to re-think/revise the questions, and potentially complement them with additional questions.

Possible question themes/categories:

● Values - In sustainability-searching (ecological, social, political, etc.) creative/artistic practices, which values are articulated and how do they show up in these activities? Do these practices foster self-reflection on these values? If yes, how? (i.e., How do the professed values relate to the practice?)

● Learning processes and knowledge - Which learning processes are embedded in these practices? Which forms of knowledge emerge from these practices?

● Creative practices - What kinds of individual and social/collective creativity are manifested?

● Participation - What functions does participation fulfill for the artistic/creative projects? What kind of participatory culture is claimed by the participants, in comparison with what can be observed in the practice?

3. Comparative explorations (split into 4 to 6 groups – September 6^th, late morning)
Each group will focus on at least 2 out of the 4 categories of questions. Participants will explore the questions with reference to their own research/practice projects on resilience and sustainability in specific urban contexts (whether completed or ongoing), and especially to their own experiences with specific artistic interventions, creative urban practices, and/or urban practices at the nature/culture nexus. In this process, they will also reflexively consider to what extent these questions are relevant and important to more deeply understanding the practice, or need to be rethought and modified. Each group will capture the key points of their discussion in written form as their discussion unfolds.

After lunch, a Reporting Out and overall synthesis of the small group discussions and reflections will be conducted in plenary, with key points reported by question-area, followed by overall assessments and reflections.


Workshop: Intertexting Espinho: Writing the Urban (outside – September 6th afternoon)
This workshop will address the writing practices of a moving reality through the sensory experience of spaces as well as their imaginary experience (fiction, memory). It is mainly built around a field writing workshop which will permit testing new urban exploration methods (artistic use of augmented reality, experimental tourism, de-tourism) and involve descriptive issues along with writing practices. Two entries will frame the workshop : the long-time movements (describe/write the dynamics and transformations of urban spaces, their heritage) and the short-time movements (describe/write the immediacy of the individual multisensory experience of displacement, its objects, based on certain forms like traveling, wandering, peregrination, stroll as much as its figures : circumvention, stop, a visit…

4. Looking for trouble (plenary – September 6^th afternoon)
In this session, we will explore the difficulties/challenges and limits encountered within artistic and other creative interventions and initiatives, as well as the difficulties/challenges and limits encountered by researchers working with them. Based on insights from existing research and practitioners’/artists’ experiences, this will include:

● Looking at potential or observed issues within these practices. This could be, for example, the lack of integration of “hands,” “mind,” and “heart” in ‘Transition Town’ initiatives, or the gap between knowing and acting.

● Looking into different types of relationships (of cooperation/collaboration, competition, opposition, manipulation) between particular artistic/creative initiatives and wider social movements.

● Looking into issues stemming from relationships with local governments, such as impermeability of sectoral policy departments, ‘schizophrenic’ urban policies, and/or neo-liberal urban development, and how these are addressed.

● Looking into potential tensions between process-oriented approaches vs. approaches seeking immediate fixes (e.g., technical “solutions”), and into limits to deeper learning processes.

● Identifying and looking into perverse feedback effects, unintended consequences, and equivalents of “rebound effects” negatively affecting urban resilience in the area of artistic and creative cultural practices for sustainability.

5. Finding key leverage points (mix of plenary and split groups – September 7^th, whole morning)
We revisit the issues discussed yesterday afternoon, looking for key leverage points for social transformation that are relevant in specific contexts and maybe also trans-locally. This process will start with the playing of a systems-thinking game and inputs by the organizers, introducing “leverage points” thinking. We will then alternate short cycles of split groups and plenary exchanges.

6. Interrogating resilience (split into 4 to 6 groups - September 7^th, over lunch and early afternoon)
How do different forms of creativity contribute to urban resilience? Taking into account the complex issues and potential leverage points that were articulated in previous sessions, we go into smaller groups to refocus more deeply on the specific cases known by the participants. The participants will discuss which specific characteristics of resilience (redundancy, diversity, learning modes, self-organization) are affected by artistic and other creative practices, and consider to what extent these effects have been researched in the context of urban cultural practices. Where is further research most urgently needed? What kind of research is required? In this phase, participants will also consider the integration of cultural/social and ecological dimensions of urban resilience, and discuss the “scaling up” potentials: Beyond their immediate effects, to which social innovations and which specific areas of urban sustainability do the creative practices (discussed so far) contribute? How does or can this materialize itself in systemic manners, for example, as institutional innovations at a city-wide level?

Each group will capture the key points of each discussion in written form.

7. Synthesis and outlook (plenary – September 7^th late afternoon)
First, a Reporting Out / Synthesis of phases 5 and 6 will be conducted in plenary, with time for further reflections and discussion in the session. Finally, participants will share concluding reflections on the summer school and an outlook on possible next steps and further exchanges.

Follow-up
The small group discussions will be captured on paper (with contact info for any follow-up clarifications that may be necessary), and plenary sessions will be audio-recorded and/or filmed. Nancy Duxbury and Sacha Kagan will coordinate a synthesis/reflections report, to be prepared following the course, which will be disseminated to summer school participants and then across our networks and online platforms. Some of the insights from the summer school will also be shared at the European Sociological Association – Sociology of the Arts Research Network conference in Porto, which follows right after the summer school.