The ecological sustainability of the city

THE ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY OF THE CITY

Taking Care workshop

Scholars have long concluded that environmental injustices are normally felt most by the most precarious in the city, the urban poor, or those with the most vulnerable or questioned citizenship status.

Given this situation and emphasizing that many ethnographic and world cultures museums are located in cities, we wonder the following questions: What role can they play in fashioning more hopeful and plural forms of living? How can they, with their collections full of diversity in knowledge and lifeworlds help us develop more sustainable and liveable environments? How can we bring the ecological knowledge embedded in the collections together with ecological knowledge diverse city dwellers to solve the problems that living together in cities creates? What role can our museums play in this ecology?

All these questions are the common thread of the workshop "The ecological sustainability of the city" organized by the Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Món within the Taking Care project.

This European project, started in 2019 and with a duration of four years, places ethnographic and world cultures museums at the centre of research into possible strategies for dealing with concerns about the present and future of the planet and the questioning of pluralist democracies. These topics are discussed and examined in different workshops, creative residencies and exhibitions, through artistic investigations, small laboratory meetings and in joint publications.

Within the Taking Care Project, we hosted the creative residency of the Australian artist Narelle Jubelin in the last quarter of 2020.

This year, on November 10 and 11, we organise the workshop "The ecological sustainability of the city" that will host different panels and presentations and will be able to be followed live streaming via Zoom platform.

 

PROGRAMME

Wednesday 10th November

15:00 Welcome (Director of Cultural Heritage. Barcelona City Council)

Topic 1: Ecological Sustainability

15:15 Keynote speaker: Xavier Casanovas. Professor of the Ethos Chair of the IQS School of Engineering- Universitat Ramon Llull. Sustainability: from word to action. Diagnosis and challenges for a dystopian future.

16:00 Q&A

17:00 Panel 1

• Miquel Rodríguez Planas. Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda (Barcelona City Council). The 2030 Agenda or how to work to acomplish Global Sustainability.
• Giulio Cappadona. Founding member and worker in FoodCoopBCN. Consumers cooperatives: How self-organization can feed us better and bring us to more sustainable cities.
• • Ascensi Mir Ulldemolins –Head of Production and Maintenance (ICUB) - and Júlia Barba Miralpeix (Environmental manager). Barcelona Institute of Culture (ICUB), Barcelona City Council. Enviromental sustainability and Culture. The sample of ICUB.

18:00 Q&A

Registration

Thursday 11th November

Topic 2: New models for the City

9:30 Keynote speaker: Daniel Alsina. Coordinator Architect of the Technical Office Barcelona Superblock: Re-programming the city: Barcelona Superblock.

10:15 Q&A

11:15 Panel 2

• Ricard Gratacos. Architect and Anthropologist. Singularities in the urban landscape of a dense and compact city.
• ATD Quart Monde.
• Carme Trilla. President of the Metropolitan Housing Observatory and President of Habitat3 Foundation. La sostenibilitat social a les ciutats europees en el Segle XXI.

12:15 Q&A

12:45 [Out of Programme: Conversation with Narelle Jubelin, Taking Care Project artist in residency (2020) and co-curator of the experimental exhibition (2022)]

Topic 3: The role of museums in the social and environmental ecology of cities.

15:00 Keynote speaker: Dr. Katrin Vohland. Director of Natural History Museum (Vienna). How museums take new roles for society.

15:45 Q&A

16:45 Panel 3

• Ana Omedes. Director of the Museu de Ciències Naturals (Barcelona). We can always be more sustainable.
• Dr Mario Mineo. Archaeologist - Museo delle Civiltà, Rome. "To bee or not to be". The bees sentinel of the environment.
• Josep-Miquel Faura. Coordinator of Social Responsibility and Projects of Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Promoting Social Responsibility at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya: an inescapable need.

17:45 Q&A

18:15 Closing remarks

Registration