Sustainability research has been funded and supported massively by EU’s Green Deal policies. Researchers seem to agree that no discipline has the key to a sustainable future, and that a transdisciplinary approach to both research and social transformation are more efficient than multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches. Moreover the understanding is that scientific research for the first time ever has to embrace knowledge from various communities beyond those scientific ones and that whatever technological innovation will be proposed needs to go hand-inhand with the respective social transformation without which any measure is deemed to fail. A special position in transdisciplinary knowledge creation is occupied by Science and Art or ArtScience. Combining scientific with artistic research has the potential to enrich science with new insights of ethics and aesthetics and make it more approachable and credible to people, particularly under the aspect of the world-wide populism wave. SciArt is only now trying to establish itself thanks to some courageous artists and scientists, who practice it and try to train others in it, but it is by far not easy given the centuries long divide between science and art. There is no common language, no standards and very little acknowledgement of the work of artists and scientists engaging in it. Research programs do not dedicate any funds to SciArt/ArtScience work proposals. Universities have noticed the lack of professionals that can combine and synthesize knowledge from various disciplines and knowledge communities and try to close the gap by offering interdisciplinary courses but they remain rudimentary given the lack of concrete requirements from the industry and the lack of established evaluation methods. Researchers have an easier life if they stay in their disciplinary ivory towers. This paper shows that Europe already has a lively SciArt community, very much linked with universities and research institutions, which struggles to be acknowledged and funded. The European Bauhaus was key to starting stirring the stagnant waters of scientific research, but more is needed. At the same time new groundbreaking technologies such as quantum and AI do require transdisciplinary thinking to be mastered and scientific journals have started already thinking of how to change their evaluation models to allow for more complex thinking in their publications. The young generation is fully aware of the complexity in which it is immersed and asks for new educational methods and new professions in line with sustainability and wellbeing considerations. Universities still haven’t yet figured out how to provide the right skills and knowledge to a demanding and sustainability aware generation Z. The Community of Practice of SciArt in education has the scope of creating the network, collecting and distributing existing good practice and proposing new ways of learning, work, care and wellbeing for the society of tomorrow. This report is a collection of good practice as implemented and presented by the various community members during the monthly online recorded workshops. Therefore the name of the presenter is next to each chapter describing the good practice. The chapter on education is a collection of the discussions the community of practice carried out throughout the year.
Kourti, N., Newman, A., Mckeon, A., Paolini, C., Sarmento, C., Bergaust, K., Hoch, M., Purg, P., Dominici, P., Van Den Akker, R., García Robles, R., Greaves, S., Chemi, T., & Denigot, T. (2024). Science and Art for Transdisciplinary Education. A Collection of good SciArt education practice (p. 48). https://www.iscap.pt/cei/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Science-and-Art-for-Transdisciplinary-Education.pdf