Glasgow Women’s Library
18 November 2023
Convened by Anne Daffertshofer
Looking North Presents: Exploring Post-Growth and Sufficiency in Art & Exhibition Practices in Scotland was a roundtable event that aimed to explore the role of the art & culture sector in diversifying positive environmental action. The panel of four speakers included Nick Addington (CEO, William Grant Foundation), Lucy Steeds (Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh), Tim Collins (artist & researcher, Collins & Goto Studio) and Deborah Jackson (Head of Fine Art Critical Studies, Glasgow School of Art).
Although de-, slow and post-growth are slowly entering more mainstream discourses, they can be perceived as opinions tend to polarise between utopian positions and the desire to retain the economic status quo. The idea for this event was to bring together different perspectives and experiences from within the world of art to facilitate an open conversation led by curiosity and a sense of pragmatism instead of ideology. In other words, the event’s aim was not to discuss post-growth at large, but instead to consider it as an umbrella term for a set of thoughts and actions worth considering. Taking post-growth as an intellectual provocation in that way, the conversation sought to explore which parts may be helpful to implement or communicate by the art world. Recurring talking points included the meaning of post-growth and possible ways to reframe the notion of growth, for example in the context of collaboration and broadening epistemologies in face of the ecological crisis, as well as shared ownership and strengthening links between urban and rural institutions.
