In concluding our series about the younger generation, we had a podcast with Ieva Bykova. 19-year-old Ieva, an aspiring singer and event manager, shared her thoughts on social media, the future, and communication among young people.

In our series about art and community, we had a podcast with Dr. Jessie Croteau, Director of Communications of the College Ecological Design Collective (EDC), Baltimore/USA. Jessie is also a post doctoral fellow at Haverford College, after receiving her PhD in political Science from Johns Hopkins University, and received several awards.
EDC is a space for collaboration among artists, designers, researchers, writers, activists, and communities who are all asking how we might live differently and more responsibly with one another and with nature, i.e. the more-than-human world. In our podcast, Jessie addressed the basic intention of EDC, to expand design beyond mere form-making and to build more just ecological futures. One of the main principles of such a design is to focus on relations, not on objects. In the context of the futures mentioned, we addressed the problems of cities today and the need for a paradigm shift in city redesign. Success factors in building communities via art have been illuminated, together with the vision of how an ecological, as well as socially just future can look like in its concrete terms.
In a second podcast, we spoke about the difference between ecological and normal design, and how an ideal space could look like that is based on ecological design. Referring to the notion of a concrete utopia (the konkrete Utopie from German philosophy), we discussed the possibilities of implementing such an ideal space into the fabric of existing cities, under the conditions of the existing political and socioeconomic frameworks.

Art as a Motor of Change

Jessica Croteau, The Ecological Design Collective

In our series about art and community, we had a podcast with Dr. Jessie Croteau, Director of Communications of the College Ecological Design Collective (EDC), Baltimore/USA. Jessie is also a post doctoral fellow at Haverford College, after receiving her PhD in political Science from Johns Hopkins University, and received several awards.

EDC is a space for collaboration among artists, designers, researchers, writers, activists, and communities who are all asking how we might live differently and more responsibly with one another and with nature, i.e. the more-than-human world. In our podcast, Jessie addressed the basic intention of EDC, to expand design beyond mere form-making and to build more just ecological futures. One of the main principles of such a design is to focus on relations, not on objects. In the context of the futures mentioned, we addressed the problems of cities today and the need for a paradigm shift in city redesign. Success factors in building communities via art have been illuminated, together with the vision of how an ecological, as well as socially just future can look like in its concrete terms.

In a second podcast, we spoke about the difference between ecological and normal design, and how an ideal space could look like that is based on ecological design. Referring to the notion of a concrete utopia (the konkrete Utopie from German philosophy), we discussed the possibilities of implementing such an ideal space into the fabric of existing cities, under the conditions of the existing political and socioeconomic frameworks.